Evidence of meeting #1 for Public Accounts in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was meeting.
A recording is available from Parliament.
9:10 a.m.
The Clerk of the Committee Ms. Joann Garbig
Honourable members, good morning.
I see a quorum.
We can now proceed to the election of the chair.
Pursuant to Standing Order 106(2), the chair must be a member of the official opposition.
I'm ready to receive motions.
9:10 a.m.
The Clerk
It has been moved by Mr. Lee that Mr. Murphy be elected as chair.
Are there any further motions?
9:10 a.m.
Some hon. members
Agreed.
9:10 a.m.
The Clerk
Is it the pleasure of the committee to adopt the motion?
(Motion agreed to)
I declare the motion carried and Mr. Murphy duly elected chair of the committee.
9:10 a.m.
Some hon. members
Hear, hear!
9:10 a.m.
The Clerk
I'm now prepared to receive motions for first vice-chair.
Pursuant to Standing Order 106(2), the first vice-chair must be a member of the government party.
Ms. Faille, do you have a motion?
9:10 a.m.
The Clerk
Moved by Ms. Faille that Mr. Kramp be elected first vice-chair of the committee.
Are there other motions?
Is it the pleasure of the committee to adopt the motion?
(Motion agreed to)
I declare the motion carried and Mr. Kramp duly elected first vice-chair of the committee.
9:10 a.m.
Some hon. members
Hear, hear!
9:10 a.m.
The Clerk
I'm now prepared to receive motions for second vice-chair.
Pursuant to Standing Order 106(2), the second vice-chair must be a member of an opposition party other than the official opposition.
Is there a motion?
9:10 a.m.
Conservative
9:10 a.m.
The Clerk
It has been moved by Mr. Saxton that Mr. Christopherson be elected as second vice-chair of the committee.
Are there other motions?
Is it the pleasure of the committee to adopt the motion?
(Motion agreed to)
I declare the motion carried and Mr. Christopherson duly elected second vice-chair.
I now invite Mr. Murphy to take the chair.
9:10 a.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Shawn Murphy
Thank you very much, Madam Clerk, for conducting the elections.
Thank you to my mover and to everyone else for the support.
I want to welcome everyone to the Standing Committee on Public Accounts. We do have with us nine returning members, including me, but we have three new members.
To the new members--Josée, Stéphane, Earl--I want to welcome you. I think you will find it a rewarding committee. It is different from any other committee in the House of Commons. We concentrate on the expenditure of public money rather than on policy issues. Of course, most other committees spend all their time dealing with government policy--in other words, why things are being done. We concentrate on how things are being done.
There are a couple of items I would like to deal with. As the clerk has indicated, under the motion that was passed in the House, the routine procedures of the committee were deemed to have been enacted as they were prior to prorogation. You've likely seen that on Wednesday, March 3, 2010, the House of Commons made the following order:
That, for all standing committees, routine motions in effect at the time of prorogation of the previous session be deemed to have been adopted in the current session, provided that committees be empowered to alter or rescind such motions as they deem appropriate.
Accordingly, the routine motions that were in effect at the time of prorogation are reinstated. The clerk will reflect the House order in the minutes of the meeting. The committee can, if it chooses, amend any of these motions.
Finally, for information purposes, the clerk has distributed a copy of the motions to you. I believe the clerk has already done so.
Is that correct, Madam Clerk?
9:10 a.m.
The Clerk
Yes.
9:10 a.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Shawn Murphy
Thank you.
Is there anything further on that?
On the next item of business, I want to give a little bit of background. When the prorogation took place back in December, we had a full agenda ahead of us.
Just for the benefit of the new members, the way the committee generally operates is that the agenda is discussed at the steering committee, which generally meets once a week. The steering committee comes forward with a draft agenda, which is then ratified by the committee as a whole.
Prior to prorogation, the committee had approved four chapters from the fall report of the Auditor General of Canada. We'll circulate the document right now, before we go any further. That will be easier. Unfortunately, the rules of the committee prohibit the circulation of these documents prior to the committee being constituted. I know it is a little cumbersome.
Just so that it flows in chronological order, I'll do it a little differently. The document that you have before you talks about the status of public accounts committee reports. Instead of doing the possible future chapters, I'll go to page 1.
When we hear a report, we generally have a hearing. We spend some time writing a report. The report is then tabled in Parliament. The government then has 120 days to respond to any recommendations we make in the report.
When Parliament was prorogued, we had 12 reports at various stages of completion. Those reports are all listed on page 1. You can see that the first four were actually done and completed. They were adopted in full by this committee; however, there was not sufficient time for them to be translated and tabled in the House of Commons.
The next two were actually before the committee and revised. They were deliberated upon and there were some revisions made by the analysts.
The next six were ready for committee review. The committee had held the hearing, but did not have the actual time to do the report. You can see that there are different stages of the review.
What I would recommend is to deal with these reports separately. I would recommend that the committee bring them back before the committee in the form they were in prior to prorogation, as if prorogation didn't exist, and we would have all 12 before us to deal with as soon as possible.
9:20 a.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Shawn Murphy
It is so moved. Is there any discussion on that? All in favour?
(Motion agreed to)
The motion has passed unanimously.
The clerk has just pointed out a technical issue, but I think we can handle it at the next meeting.
The motion that we've passed brought them all back before the committee. The first four you see on that list have actually been adopted by the committee, but what I propose to do at the first meeting of the committee, which should only take 10 seconds, is adopt them, and then they will be tabled in the House at the first possible date.
The next issue, if you want to thumb over to page 2, is “Possible Future Studies”. You will see paragraph A, “Fall 2009 Report”. That was tabled in the fall and ratified by the general committee. The steering committee agreed to have hearings on chapters 1, 2, 3, and 5. The clerk was in the process of arranging hearings. In fact, the first one would have been on January 26.
I would recommend to the committee that the same decision, made by the steering committee and ratified by the committee, be adopted by this committee so that the clerk can immediately start work on having a hearing by the committee. She can't do anything until this motion is passed.
Given the time constraints, there obviously will not be one next Tuesday, which of course will be devoted to drafting reports. It could be possibly a week from today. If not, hopefully by the following Tuesday, certainly, we would be dealing with one of these chapters.
I should point out that we do not do them in any particular order. We leave that to the clerk, based on the availability of witnesses from the department. Generally speaking, it's not an issue with the Office of the Auditor General. Sometimes we have to change things around to accommodate schedules for the accounting officers from the department or agency.
Is someone prepared to make the motion that we deal with those four chapters, 1, 2, 3 and 5, as are listed on that page?
Mr. Kramp.
9:20 a.m.
Conservative
Daryl Kramp Conservative Prince Edward—Hastings, ON
Mr. Chair, I have no difficulty in doing that. I think that's great. I just have a question. If we still have to finish page 1, how long is it going to take us to get through that before we get into the next one? Are we able to commit to that time period right now? I would suggest that we maybe go through a meeting or two to see if we can get through this and get rid of the ones that have been sitting there, and then just lead right into these.
But as for going ahead and booking new witnesses now, if they come in for these evaluations, are we then going to sideline the other ones that were there before? I don't know. I just ask for thoughts from the committee.
9:20 a.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Shawn Murphy
Do you mean the reports that haven't been written yet? Is that what you're talking about?
9:20 a.m.
Conservative
Daryl Kramp Conservative Prince Edward—Hastings, ON
That's correct. If we're reviewing these reports, how long will it take us to review these? Do we have a solid date on that?
I'd like to see us move into one or two, and then, if we're just going through them, by all means just have the clerk go ahead and prepare to move on to the next studies.
9:20 a.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Shawn Murphy
I don't think anyone can answer that, Mr. Kramp. I've seen us do a report in 15 minutes. I've also seen us take two hours to do one line.
9:20 a.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Shawn Murphy
It's very difficult to know, but generally we've always tried to do a hearing and then a report in a week.
Again, we can see how we get along. It is nice to get going with at least one hearing. I would think the first two meetings would certainly be devoted to drafting reports.
Mr. Lee, you had a comment.
