Natural Resources Committee on Feb. 5th, 2009

[Russ Hiebert, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC]

The point that I think Mr. Bains is not catching is that they are often the ones who boast about how they champion the rights of the minority. That's what I'm talking about here.

Let's take that principle of fairness and distribute it equally, putting aside partisanship and saying fine, we recognize.... Any sense of compromise on their part would be appreciated, because right now they're saying, “We're going to push this through and....”

Frankly, I don't like participating in committees where there's that hardness. I think we've come to a place where Canadians expect us to compromise and work together. I'm certainly prepared to do that with my colleagues, and I hope we can start things off with that sense of collegiality that Canadians expect.

So members opposite, please think about this.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Mr. Allen is next, and then Mr. Tonks.

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

Thank you very much.

I have a question and then two comments.

One amendment has been proposed by Mr. Regan. Is that where we are right now?

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Yes.

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

It is essentially the routine motion adopted from RNNR 39-2. Is that right?

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

That's correct.

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

I think it's more fundamental than that. It boils down to parliamentary privilege.

Everyone in this room, in September and October 2008, went out and knocked on doors in their constituencies. Almost every person here has industry in their riding, whether it is forestry, mining, other resources, or oil and gas. Every one of us went out there. We haven't always been successful, but we've fought three elections in four years. I remember knocking on doors in 2004, in December 2005, and January 2006. We've all worked hard to get elected, and we all have a right to represent our constituents.

In June, through a lot of hard work and compromise across all parties, this committee was able to publish a unanimous report on the forestry industry. Everybody will agree, considering where our Parliament was last spring, that was not an easy thing to do, yet we got it done.

There has to be fairness in this, and it really boils down to the privilege issue that each member should have the utmost opportunity to ask questions. Nobody's any less than anybody else in this committee, and there should be a fair time allocation to each member to be able to ask those questions. Before someone else gets a second round, everybody should have had that fair opportunity, because we all represent our constituents. That's our job.

So I'm going to propose a subamendment to Mr. Regan's amendment: round one would be seven minutes, Liberal, Bloc, NDP, and Conservative; round two would be Liberal, Conservative, Bloc, and Conservative; round three would be Liberal, Conservative, Conservative, and NDP; and because everybody would have had a chance to ask a question, round four would be Liberal, Bloc, NDP, and Conservative.

In fairness, that would reflect the four rounds we had. Everybody would get an opportunity to ask a question. It would reflect the NDP's additional time, because of the additional votes and seats they received. It would also reflect a prorated share, in fairness to all the committee members, who I believe have worked hard. I think it's fair to everybody to get that opportunity.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you, Mr. Allen.

You've heard the subamendment. Is it clear to everyone what was proposed here, or do you want to hear it repeated? Everybody has it?

Discussion on the subamendment, Mr. Anderson.

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

I just fail to understand why Mr. Siksay wouldn't support this. It gives their party clear advantage over what they've had in the past and clear advantage over the previous listings. I'm not sure why he would not be in favour of supporting this.

It seems to me that if Mr. Cullen were here, I would think--in his own interest, because he could have those two rounds--he would accept this. I think Mr. Siksay needs to take a look at it. It gives the NDP an advantage over what they had previously. It allows the Bloc to keep what they have. Nothing changes for the Bloc. And the Liberals, as Mr. Trost so clearly pointed out, do not have the same number of seats they had in the past.

Now, Mr. Chair, I want to go through this, because I think it's important that we talk about this order for a little while. Actually, let's take a look at what should happen here. I think the opposition might be interested in this.

If we have a two-hour meeting with two presentations, we're down to an hour and 40 minutes. The way the questioning should be split, according to the numbers in the House, is that the government should have 46 minutes of that 100 minutes, the Liberals should have 25 minutes, the Bloc should have 16 minutes, and the NDP should have 12. If you take a look at what we're offering here, the NDP is clearly ahead of that. The benefit for them in this situation...and the Bloc keeps what they have.

The Liberals realistically have to take a cut in the time they would expect to have, because they've taken that cut at the poll. The people of Canada made the decision that they did not want Liberals to be dominating committees when they made the decision to vote out....

How many were voted out, Mr. Trost, 25 or 26?

So the people of Canada have spoken, and as I think Mr. Allen pointed out earlier, this is an issue of parliamentary privilege. Those of us who have been given additional seats should be able to--

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Would you mind waiting just a minute? There's a lot of discussion here. I don't want to actually discourage the discussion amongst the parties--I think it's not a bad thing--but could you just hold off on the rest of your comments for a minute? We'll come right back to you.

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

I have lots of things to say, so I'll hold off for a few minutes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

I just want to make sure that people are actually listening to you.

Okay, Mr. Anderson, go ahead. Now I think we'll hear you okay.

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

I actually kind of forgot where I was, so I'd just like to go over some of the things I've mentioned already to the opposition. I think they're listening a little bit more now than they were previously, so hopefully they'll be able to catch some of this information.

I think, Mr. Chair, it's certainly good to resolve this, because we've gone through these other routine motions today and we've been able to agree on things like the service of analysts from the Library of Parliament, and that didn't take us any time at all. It was interesting to me that we came to an immediate agreement on whether we should have a subcommittee in terms of the agenda or not, so right off the bat we've shown that we can work together. I think we need to find some solution on this one. I wish people would come forward with a solution here that's realistic.

You know yourself, Mr. Chair, that we had quite a discussion on reduced quorum, and we were willing to go along with the decision that was made by the opposition. We certainly felt that we would have liked to have something a little bit different in that area, but we wanted to work with the opposition, so we were willing to find ourselves in a situation where opposition members could hear witnesses without a government member present. That seems to be a strange thing to me, but we believe the committee should work well together. We'll certainly be there, I would think, to hear witnesses if witnesses are coming and evidence is being presented. We want to work with the opposition on that.

We were able to reach agreement, obviously, on the distribution of the documents, and we talked a little bit about the staff at the in camera meetings and who we wanted there and how we wanted to do that. We were able to make an agreement on that.

Everyone was actually very enthused, Mr. Chair, when you brought up the issue of working meals, and we heard lots of collaboration there and lots of discussion among the members about what they would like to see there. They were giving you a little bit of a hard time about whether you'd be a generous chair or whether you'd be a tightwad. We believe that, as has been the case in the past, you're going to be very generous with us. I think Mr. Regan made the point very well that he wanted you to be generous with the committee.

Again, we work with the opposition in terms of those kinds of things, and we don't believe you're a tightwad. We think you're very competent, Chair. That's one of the reasons Mr. Hiebert put forward your nomination and felt so enthusiastic about it, as you heard earlier.

Obviously, we had a discussion about the witnesses' expenses, and we were willing to go along with the changes that had been made there in order to accommodate witnesses when they come.

We can go down further than that and talk about some of the other things--the motions that require 48 hours' notice but allow people to make substantive motions if they want to, as long as they pertain to the discussion we're having.

Mr. Chair, it's been a pleasure to work together on those issues to this point with the opposition. I'm not sure why we're running into such a roadblock here when clearly we want to come back to the idea that we want to see some fairness in the way this is laid out. I know that Mr. Allen or Mr. Trost or Mr. Shory or Mr. Hiebert would be willing to go and talk to any of the opposition members right now. We could try to come to some sort of conclusion to this. We certainly want to work with them. We would love to get this resolved really quickly here so we can go on to some other things. It would be a shame not to have this resolved quickly.

I just want to come back to what I was saying earlier about this specifically. If you take a look at the breakdown in the House of Commons--I think I have my numbers right here, and I guess some of the opposition members could correct me later if they're wrong--it's about 143 for the Conservative Party, 77 for the Liberals, 49 for the Bloc, and 37 for the NDP. That's off the top of my head, so if I'm missing a couple of numbers, Mr. Chair, you can certainly let me know.

As I said, we normally have two-hour committee meetings. If we have two presentations, they'll likely take up the full 10 minutes each, and we'd get down to about an hour and forty minutes. If you break it down according to the way the seats are distributed in the House of Commons, that would break down for the Conservative Party to about 46 minutes of questioning. That would be a reasonable share for us to have. That would give 25 minutes to the Liberals for their questioning, and it would allocate about 16 minutes to the Bloc Québécois in order for them to conduct their questioning and inquiry, and it would give the NDP 12 minutes.

Mr. Chair, I want to point out that in this amendment by Mr. Allen the NDP would actually have more than that, so I think they can be fairly happy with what they're getting here.

I'm a little bit concerned because we did make a suggestion earlier. We wanted to try to accommodate the changes that are taking place in the House of Commons, so we came forward with suggestions and actually offered the NDP the seventh slot in the second round.

I think they're sitting somewhere around 10, 11 or 12 if we go to the proposal that's been made by the opposition. I'm not sure why Mr. Siksay, in the absence of Mr. Cullen, would accept something like that when we're offering him something much better than that. We want to move them up and actually offered to give up one of our slots in order to slide them in. We're willing to take the delay for our own member.

It's interesting, because when I look at this, those are not at the end of the two hours. Those are somewhere in the middle of that second hour, and certainly they're going to get that opportunity. Mr. Siksay has said he's not interested in that, apparently because he'd like to be further down the list. Actually, for the NDP, being further down the list last time meant that most days they did not get that second round. There were some occasions on which Ms. Bell had the second round, but there were a lot of times when she was not allowed to ask questions in the second round just because we ran out of time. It's a puzzle to me, and perhaps Mr. Siksay can tell us a little later why he would be willing to put his colleague in a situation in which he probably won't get that second round when we've offered up, I think more than generously, that position for them to take.

Mr. Chair, I see some other people who want to speak. I have a little bit of math to do here on how the numbers would add up for each of these proposals. I would like to give my other colleagues here a chance to speak to this issue, and maybe we can come to some resolution. I really would like to come back with the numbers and the minutes that everybody would have under the various scenarios. I think we can spend some time on that and probably come to a reasonable compromise on that as well.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

I have a list here. Mr. Tonks is next.

I would like to remind members of the committee that many of us have flights to catch, and it would be nice to be able to do that. On the other hand, I am not going to cut off discussion. This is a fundamental discussion on the future of the committee and how we operate.

Mr. Tonks.

[Alan Tonks, Liberal, York South—Weston, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman, I hope this isn't trite, but there was a mayor in Toronto who always used to use the expression “If it ain't broke, why fix it?”

He was probably one of the most popular mayors because he didn't base his approach on the fundamentalist assertion that we equate the service and the rule simply on the basis of numbers. We base it on our willingness to get to the truth and to have good representation. That principle worked extremely well for this committee during the last session.

Mr. Chairman, I'll remind you that when we got to a point where issues were very complex, we actually passed motions by consensus giving additional opportunities out of sequence for members to ask questions. It was never denied, and it worked very well.

There are some issues that are implicit in representative government. One is that in a minority government, there is an opposition and there's a government. It is much easier for the government to stay together, and for whatever motive you apply to the opposition, the opposition is several entities. The tactic of dividing and conquering at specific times is just that, a tactic. It's not a strategy, thank God. Tactics win battles, but strategies win wars.

We could commence with the way we approached it last sitting. We had the same discussion, and there were those who put forward suggestions on the basis of representation just as have been put forward now.

Mr. Chairman, in order for us to get on with things, why not try it by consensus? We can always come back and change the order if it isn't working, or if we feel it isn't reasonable based on the way we want to represent in front of our witnesses and extract from our witnesses. Let's try, and hopefully it will be as successful as it was last term under your chairmanship.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

We'll have Mr. Bains, followed by Mr. Shory, Mr. Hiebert, and Mr. Trost.

Mr. Bains.

[Navdeep Bains, Liberal, Mississauga—Brampton South, ON]

I think Mr. Tonks summarized it very well and clearly. It was exactly what I wanted to say.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Mr. Shory.

[Devinder Shory, Conservative, Calgary Northeast, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would just like to make some comments regarding the natural resources committee. This is my first term as an MP, and when I was assigned to this committee, I spoke to a few members and was given the impression that this was one of the committees that worked very well, one where all the committee members were cooperative. But seeing all this mess today, I don't know how well this committee did work in the past.

As far as allocation of time is concerned, if we go with the voice of the Canadian people, I guess that voice clearly granted, on October 14, the seats for each party. If we go with all fairness, then we should allocate all this time in accordance with those seats.

I was surprised to see that when Mr. Siksay, an NDP member, proposed a subamendment, and this side of the committee agreed to the amendment, he did not simply withdraw but actually voted against that. I just want to know, are all the opposition members here just to oppose, or is there any intention to cooperate?

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you, Mr. Shory.

Mr. Hiebert.

[Russ Hiebert, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I listened to Mr. Tonks, and listened to his suggestion that we adopt the principle of “if it ain't broke, don't fix it”. But that only applies if you're dealing with the same whatever. If we're talking about a car, yes, that might be the case. But what happened between the last Parliament and this Parliament is that we have a different car. It's a completely different automobile. It doesn't apply to the circumstances the way it used to. So that idea doesn't fit the situation at all, unfortunately.

Looking at the proposal that my colleague Mr. Allen put forward, I think it's important to know that the opposition still gets 60% of the time. They're 53% of the chamber but they get 60% of the time. We're 47% of the chamber and we get 40% of the time.

There's still a spirit of compromise on our part. Mr. Regan told me in private earlier that he felt it was the opposition's obligation to hold the government to account, and they needed the time to do that. Well, this proposal gives them the time to do that. They still get 60% of the time.

In terms of the numbers, in the last Parliament the Liberals had four. Now they have three. But they still want to keep the same number of speaking slots, effectively giving themselves preferential treatment. Maybe we shouldn't be surprised at that, but let's hope we can move beyond that. We've gained a number, yet we're losing a spot to speak, under this scenario. That doesn't make sense either.

The proposal of 41 minutes for the opposition, so 60% of the time, versus 27 minutes for the government, or 40% of the time, I think is a compromise that, frankly, even Mr. Siksay thought was reasonable until other considerations came to mind. I'm hoping we can come back to that and resolve this and move on to the other business the committee has to address.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you, Mr. Hiebert.

We have Mr. Trost, and then Mr. Siksay.

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

I would just like to point out that when committees were setting up, I talked with my staff and checked to see when we were originally to set up. I found out that it was Thursday, the end of the week, and I thought, “Good, everything will be worked out in the other committees”. If there was any friction, I thought, it would be solved because other committees would have gone through the same procedures and would have been through it.

I checked to see what other committees had done. Mr. Allen's proposal currently on the table is more generous to the opposition than Mr. Anderson's original one, so remember that. Mr. Anderson's original proposal for the same time allocation was adopted by the justice committee and the international trade committee. So it was adopted by at least two committees and very possibly more. I know of at least two that adopted Mr. Anderson's original proposal. So the Liberal members on the justice and international trade committees, and the Bloc members and the NDP members on both those committees, both of which are historically more controversial than this committee, thought that was fine. On those two committees, the opposition parties, all three of them, thought it was fine. That was Mr. Anderson's original proposal.

The human resources and immigration committees evidently took the slightly amended formula, whereby we moved the NDP, with the Conservatives, toward the end, and they were fine with it. So in at least four other committees, and possibly more, the opposition was willing to agree to a proposal less generous to themselves than what is currently on the table here.

What I do not understand is why it was acceptable for the parties in those situations to accept that, but here it is not. I doubt if I'll get an answer, but I would like an answer from each of the other three parties. It's their choice if they want to add comments on that. In those four committees, why was it fine for all of them to go there, but here in this situation it is not? Also, this is even with a slightly more generous proposal now on the table here than the one that had been previously altered.

One of my concerns is the way this is going to be set up. Most weeks, I won't get to ask questions, or one member here or there won't get to, and there are things in which one is interested for one's constituency more than anything else. This actually has to be taken seriously.

The other thing that should be noted is that historically this is not a legislatively heavy committee. I doubt if this will change in this Parliament. There was not a lot of controversial stuff. As was noted earlier, we had a unanimous report on the forestry industry. It was unanimous. I don't think there was even a single recommendation where there was a minority report. That was amazing. It helped people in all ridings.

If we take on an issue like mining, all parties have constituencies with mining interests, and individual members will want to go back and say, “Look, this is what I've done”. We need things for individual members to take back to their ridings to show what they've done. It's something that can work for members in all parties.

I urge the members across the aisle to look to the leadership shown in the human resources committee, the justice committee, the international trade committee, and the immigration committee. Our proposals are not objectionable to your party in those committees. I'm at a loss to understand why an even more generous offer here seems to be objectionable.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you, Mr. Trost.

Mr. Siksay.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Thank you, Chair.

I want to apologize for being one of the delaying factors in this debate this afternoon, but clearly I'm being courted by everyone around the table. It's often a difficult position when you have more than one suitor, but I revel in that position at the same time, Chair.