Official Languages Committee on Nov. 22nd, 2022

[The Chair, Liberal, René Arseneault]

No.

[Joël Godin, Conservative, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

Second, I would like to inform the committee and to officially announce to it that today, November 22, the entire process, that is to say the five points in Mr. Serré's motion, the four points in my amendment and Mr. Beaulieu's final point, will be negatived as a whole.

We will begin another debate after examining all aspects of the matter. We are wasting our time. That's all I wanted to say, and I've been saying it from the start. I hope we have finally understood. However, if I haven't been well understood, I'll shorten that sentence to this: we're wasting our time and the French language is paying the price.

I have no objection to our voting on Mr. Beaulieu's amendment. Then there'll be a domino effect and we'll be wasting our time.

We've wasted six meetings. I'm not talking about dates because the number of meetings is more important to me than dates. We will have wasted six meetings. In the meantime, we've made no progress.

That was triggered by Mr. Serré's motion.

[The Chair, Liberal, René Arseneault]

Thank you, Mr. Godin.

Any further comments?

Barring any additional comments, we will put the third sub-amendment to a vote.

[Joël Godin, Conservative, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

Madam Clerk, to be consistent, I'll vote "yes" to support the sub-amendment of my colleague Mr. Beaulieu.

[The Chair, Liberal, René Arseneault]

(Amendment negatived)

[The Chair, Liberal, René Arseneault]

Now we come back to Mr. Godin's amendments.

As we did for Mr. Beaulieu's sub-amendment, we will proceed point by point so we don't get lost.

Mr. Godin, you were reading the first paragraph: [That] the Minister of Official Languages, the President of the Treasury Board, the Minister of Canadian Heritage and the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, as well as their department officials, be invited to appear for two hours per minister, in separate meetings, no later than Thursday, November 24, 2022.

[Joël Godin, Conservative, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

Mr. Chair, I would like to take another step back. I'm clearly opposed to an unrealistic amendment. However, since we seem to want to dwell on procedure rather than strive for unanimous consent in order to expedite the process, which is unfortunate, I want to go back to the first point of my amendment, which concerns four ministers.

We're begging for two hours of testimony per minister. I would just like to remind you that, for Bill C‑72, the ministers came and testified during the testimony phase and during clause-by-clause consideration. Their testimony totalled 11 hours. However, we're now begging for 4 ministers to come and testify for 8 hours.

I would simply like to remind you that, according to the article by François Larocque, Mark Power and Darius Bossé, Bill C‑13 is one of the 10 longest Canadian government bills in history.

Can we show some seriousness in our efforts?

Can we quickly hear testimony from those ministers so we can give Bill C‑13 even more teeth?

[The Chair, Liberal, René Arseneault]

Thank you, Mr. Godin.

Go ahead, Ms. Ashton.

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill—Keewatinook Aski, MB]

Good afternoon. I'd like to propose a sub-amendment to Mr. Godin's amendment. Before doing so, however, I want to know if we'll be sitting later. I may have missed part of the discussion on the subject.

[The Chair, Liberal, René Arseneault]

I just realized that it's 1:01 p.m. I personally have another 15 minutes at most. We have to have unanimous consent if we want to continue. We can do it. Do we want to continue until 1:15 p.m.?

[Joël Godin, Conservative, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

Mr. Chair, given the lack of openness that I sense on the part of my colleagues opposite, my answer is unfortunately no.

[The Chair, Liberal, René Arseneault]

Mr. Godin, I didn't give you the floor.

Ms. Ashton, keep your sub-amendment in mind. We will have to adjourn because we can't continue.

I therefore bring this meeting to a close, but we will resume exactly where we left off. Agreed?

The meeting is adjourned.