Natural Resources Committee on Dec. 11th, 2007

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Mr. Tonks, I'm sure I'm not the only member of Parliament who has Thursday fully scheduled too. I can't imagine that all of you don't have Thursday fully scheduled too.

I'm the chair of the committee at the regular meeting. We're talking about an extended meeting; that's what I was hearing from another member. That certainly concerns me. Of course, I'm here at the will of the committee, and I will do what the committee decides to do.

Mr. Anderson.

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

I would thank Madame DeBellefeuille for making the suggestion, because I think it's a good one. It's one we can support. I would like to make an amendment to add the CNSC to this as well. When you read the last one, you just mentioned AECL.

[Omar Alghabra, Liberal, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

I also said Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission.

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

Okay, so we'll make sure they are here as well. I will again take the message back to the minister and see if we can get him to come.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Yes.

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

I don't think that's a problem.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Mr. Allen, and then we'll go back to the mover of the motion, and then we'll put it to the question.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I do appreciate the fact that we are putting this off until Thursday. Having been through projects before, I know that when things go wrong it's important to do a lessons learned. I think that's what this committee can have a significant input to, into the lessons learned, in terms of what happened and why, because we don't want it to happen again.

I think this means that we have to have all the parties who were potentially involved in this, and that includes people who've been operating there who have the day-to-day decision-making management responsibility, as well as AECL and CNSC. I think we're not going to do justice to this unless we have all those folks involved.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you, Mr. Allen.

Mr. Alghabra, as you've heard, two members of the committee from two parties have suggested that this occur on Thursday rather than today. Would you take that as a friendly amendment?

[Omar Alghabra, Liberal, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

First of all, I want to say that by introducing this motion I didn't mean any disrespect to the committee and committee members. Yesterday the government House leader, Peter Van Loan, introduced a motion in the House calling on all parties to call on the AECL and the commissioner to work together, and asking us to prejudge the outcome of what's going on or what's happening.

So we couldn't necessarily agree to that motion, because there's still a vacuum or a lack of information. In order for us to respond responsibly to the motion that Mr. Van Loan wanted to table, we wanted to show that we agree with the fact that it's an urgent matter but we cannot support the motion that Mr. Van Loan had proposed until we ask for input from other stakeholders so we understand better.

That's why I'm proposing this motion. If the committee wishes to delay it until Thursday because of scheduling matters, I will accept a friendly amendment by any member of the committee here. I look forward to voting on this issue on behalf of Canadians so that they know what's going on.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Are you looking for a formal amendment or do you consider that you...?

[Omar Alghabra, Liberal, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

Actually, okay, I'm looking for an amendment. Yes, please.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Go ahead, Mr. Trost.

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

I'm prepared to move an amendment, however we word it, that we move to Thursday instead of at 3:30 p.m., as in the amendment.

[Omar Alghabra, Liberal, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

Do you want to make it an extended meeting? That would be reasonable; should it be another hour, perhaps, from 9 until 12 o'clock?

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Mr. Anderson, on this, we have to first find whether Mr. Alghabra considers this a friendly amendment.

Mr. Alghabra, are you willing to accept that? Otherwise we have to go to the question on your motion.

[Omar Alghabra, Liberal, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

Can we vote on the amendment?

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

We can.

Mr. Trost, you didn't indicate a time length for the meeting in your amendment to the motion.

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

I move that Mr. Alghabra's motion be amended to move the proposed meeting to next Thursday, commencing at 9 a.m. and potentially going until 12 o'clock. Would that be fine with everyone? That would be a one-hour extension.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Is the amendment clear now? Is there any discussion on the amendment?

Go ahead, Mr. Anderson.

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

I'm just wondering about the extension. I would like to see it extend up to one hour. If we get witnesses telling us that they're completely taken with this issue, and we can't get some of them in here, we may not have enough material for three hours. If you want to stay here for three hours for sure, that's okay; if you want to extend up to an hour, depending on what we have to hear, we could leave it to the chair's discretion.

Does that work?

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Mr. Trost indicated it was until noon, if necessary.

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

That would be provided we've got witnesses and questions. That's what I'm saying.

[Omar Alghabra, Liberal, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

What I'd like to suggest as well is that I don't know if it's necessarily appropriate to have AECL and the commissioner herself at the same time. Perhaps what we need to do is dedicate an hour to AECL, and then an hour for the commissioner, and then if the minister comes, maybe an hour for the minister.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

We'll vote on the amendment to the motion.

(Amendment agreed to)

(Motion as amended agreed to)