Natural Resources Committee on Nov. 15th, 2007

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Mr. Boshcoff.

[Ken Boshcoff, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

Thank you.

Mr. Chair, I will especially be voting against this, having been a victim of a filibuster in the springtime. Not only was my motion lost because of a filibuster, but so was the Bloc's and so was the NDP's. So I just cannot go along with this.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Mr. Anderson.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

This actually has nothing to do with filibusters and nothing to do with the situation that Mr. Boshcoff found himself in. It has to do with people bringing forward a notice of motion and then not bringing the motion itself forward. If a motion comes forward and there's a filibuster going on, that doesn't guarantee, with or without this, that it is going to be discussed. This has to do with people presenting a notice of motion and then not being prepared to deal with their motion.

So the suggestion is that if you want to bring a notice of motion forward, the person who made that notice of motion has two meetings to move the motion. Then it's up to the committee to decide when the committee wants to deal with the motion. So it doesn't have anything to do with the situation Mr. Boshcoff found himself in, unless he had chosen not to move that motion, if he left it as a notice of motion and didn't make it into a regular motion last spring.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Mr. Trost.

[Bradley Trost, Conservative, Saskatoon—Humboldt, SK]

I was just going to make the same basic point as Mr. Anderson. If they want to make an amendment to make it clear you cannot filibuster motions to death on this in some way, I would view that as a friendly amendment.

The purpose is to get the motion on so that it can be dealt with. There's nothing in here, from my reading of it, that would allow—and again I'm open to a friendly amendment—a motion to be filibustered to death. All it says is that “motions shall be moved”. Once they're moved, you can do what you want with them at that point, but there's no way, then, that you could filibuster to death. If they want to get some explanation for it, I'm open to that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Monsieur St. Amand.

[Lloyd St. Amand, Liberal, Brant, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

The premise of this motion just doesn't exist. If you were to listen to Mr. Anderson and Mr. Trost, one would get the impression that this committee—and perhaps other committees—is laden with motions that are cluttering up the agenda and that are being tabled and tabled and tabled interminably. That's not my experience on this committee, so, frankly, the motion is anticipating a problem that has never existed, and I dare say won't exist, and I see absolutely no reason whatsoever for this motion to be passed.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Monsieur Ouellet.

[Christian Ouellet, Bloc, Brome—Missisquoi, QC]

Mr. Chairman, that is precisely what I was going to ask for. I would like to know why this motion is being tabled. What difficulties, over the course of previous sessions, have made it such that this motion is put forward at the committee today?

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Mr. Anderson, would you like to respond to that?

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

There have been situations in other committees where members have brought forward a notice of motion but have never brought forward the motion itself. That notice of motion sat there interminably, without members having to deal with the motion. They could bring it forward at any time.

We're suggesting that if we're going to bring forward motions in good conscience that we have two meetings to bring them forward, and the committee will deal with them as it deals with every other motion. It's either to have people make motions or leave them off the notice of motion paper, so we know what we're dealing with.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Is there any other discussion on this motion?

(Motion negatived)

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Unless there is another motion that the committee would like to bring forward, we will go to time limits for witnesses' statements and questioning.

Who would like to bring forth a motion on this?

Mr. Allen.

[Mike Allen, Conservative, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

Mr. Chair, I'd like to see what we did in the last committee in the rounds of questioning, which I think worked pretty well.

With good time management, in most cases we were able to get multiple rounds in. The first round was seven minutes. Sometimes it went over, but mostly it was seven minutes. Round one was typically the Liberal Party, the Bloc, New Democratic Party, and then the Conservative Party. All other rounds after that were five minutes. The second round was the Liberal Party, the Bloc, and the Conservatives. The third round was Liberal, Conservative, Liberal, and then Conservative. And then in round four we went to the full parties again: the Liberal Party, Bloc, New Democratic, and Conservative Party.

I think that allowed a fair distribution for all the committee members to participate—split their time, if that was the case. But the first round being seven minutes allowed the party in its first round to get a good chance.

When you look at that in an hour-and-a-half meeting, the Conservatives and the Liberals ended up with almost 30 minutes each, and the Bloc and the NDP ended up with almost 20 minutes each. I think that was a pretty fair distribution.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

You've heard the motion. You actually have it in front of you. It is the same as the committee operated under last time, with the exception of seven minutes in round one. That's the change from the last committee.

I would like to bring something up here, if you would indulge me. You have witnesses being given 10 minutes for their opening statements. I don't know how often this committee has groups of witnesses, where there may be three or four people making presentations. Could we change that to a lesser amount, possibly at the discretion of the chair if there are, let's say, three witnesses or more? Otherwise, if you have four people giving 10-minute statements, that's 40 minutes taken up with statements.

That's something to consider. I'm putting it out for your consideration. We did that at the other committees.

Madame DeBellefeuille.

[Claude DeBellefeuille, Bloc, Beauharnois—Salaberry, QC]

Mr. Chairman, if we rely on what happened during the last session, our committee is likely to have more than one witness per meeting, and we could provide you with examples. Often, when we received several groups of witnesses, we were frustrated because after the presentations, there was not that much time left to ask questions and have exchanges. In fact, the real objective of having witnesses is to be able to ask them questions, to get answers and to better be able to understand the presentations and the issues emerging from them. I more or less agree with your motion because during the last session, the chair was really rather flexible and sometimes allowed members, in their passion, to ask questions. You could review the timekeeping. Some members—and I think that Mr. Allen was a witness to this—had more than seven minutes, which meant that people in the third round rarely had time to intervene, because we are people who are passionate about our subject.

I accept Mr.Trost's motion to keep seven minutes for the first round and to maintain what is written in the document that was presented to us. I will accept Mr. Allen's amendment.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

We'll go to the question.

Is the motion agreed to?

(Motion agreed to [See Minutes of Proceedings])

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Are there any other routine motions the committee would like to bring forward?

Seeing none, is there any other business?

Yes, Mr. Boshcoff.

[Ken Boshcoff, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

On the routine motion, no. I just have a submission.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Okay. We're through with routine motions.

Is there any other business the committee wishes to deal with today?

Yes, Mr. Boshcoff.

Mr. Trost, did you have your hand up as well?

Go ahead, Mr. Boshcoff.

[Ken Boshcoff, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

I would like to move the following motion: That the Standing Committee on Natural Resources study the implications of the development of the Keystone pipeline and report to the House of Commons.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Are we getting into a discussion of committee business? If we are, then let's do that. Let's put all the business the committee may want to deal with before the committee, have a discussion, and decide on that.

A motion like this certainly would require the 48 hours' notice, I would assume.

Mr. Boshcoff.

[Ken Boshcoff, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

Thank you.

I'm not really trying to complicate things. When we're discussing the agenda and the business, it can wait until then. I'm just filing it now.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

When would the committee like to do that? The next order of business is to have a discussion about committee business.

Yes, Mr. Anderson.