Public Accounts Committee on Feb. 16th, 2016

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

I will use my presence here. I'm new to the committee and I would like to understand what the advantage or disadvantage of going first is for the party in power or the opposition party. You have the same number of minutes, so you are not negatively affected in terms of that.

I believe the usual practice in the House of Commons is to have the opposition party speak first. However, it seems that the practice should not apply in this committee.

Like Mrs. Shanahan, what I want is to work in harmony with everyone around the table to advance the issues and do a good job.

I'm asking this question just to understand better and to help us make a decision.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Mr. Poilievre, I'm sure you can read the crowd here. It's a bit of a trade-off, because originally, their motion would have given Conservatives the lead for six minutes, right? I think what has to be determined is time or order.

Mr. Christopherson.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Chair, earlier one of the things I stood on was fair is fair, and I appreciate that the government listened and made an amendment and went to the PROC model. Again, in fairness, there was an agreement reached by all the parties. As much as normally the opposition parties have a common interest and a common enemy, if you will, and we tend to support one another, in this instance, I am not able to support my colleague's motion.

Under normal circumstances I would, and his arguments are correct.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Do you mean the amendment?

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

The amendment, yes.

I am saying why, because it leaves a few people scratching their heads as to why wouldn't you support that and it's because there were three pieces that moved. We moved from six minutes to seven. We broke up the government having control of the floor back to back for 12 minutes. In exchange, to break that up, the official opposition agreed to let go of the desired lead-off position.

If it's the PROC package in its entirety that's before us, it would be dishonourable of me and totally inconsistent not to support that here when that was my opening comment, that I want the PROC template. I understand my colleague's point of view. He is making the right policy arguments, but in this case a deal is a deal is a deal and fair is fair and I'll be supporting the motion to adopt the PROC model.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Are there any other comments?

Madame Mendès.

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—Saint-Lambert, QC]

My only comment is in terms of the order of who speaks.

The issue here is not whether speaking first benefits the government party or the opposition party. In fact, this is an agreement that was concluded in other committees. So we are not the only ones who will change the order. All the committees will follow this model, according to which the government party will ask questions first.

I don't really agree that the first round of questions sets the tone in the committee. This is not my first experience, and I know that the tone can change a lot over the course of questioning.

As Mr. Christopherson just said, this is a matter of fairness. We agreed to change the infamous 12 back-to-back minutes. I think it is completely fair to maintain the model of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs as proposed. So the NDP would have 3 minutes instead of 2 minutes in the second round, for a total of 51 minutes of speaking time.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

All right.

Mr. Poilievre, as it stands, you have brought forward an amendment. Do you want that amendment to stand? We can vote on the amendment first.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

I understand that I do have the support of Mr. Godin.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

I'm still in this fight.

No, I think we'll bring it to a vote.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Are you withdrawing your amendment, or do you want the vote on the amendment?

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Just vote on the amendment.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Okay. We'll call the vote on Mr. Poilievre's amendment.

I'm going to ask our clerk to read the the motion as amended.

[The Clerk]

The motion would read that witnesses be given 10 minutes to make their opening statements, and that during the questioning of witnesses the time allocated to each questioner be as follows: for the first round of questioning, seven minutes to a representative of each party in the following order: Conservative, Liberal, NDP, Liberal; for the second round, five minutes be allocated in the following order: Conservative, Liberal, Conservative, Liberal, followed by NDP, three minutes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

All right.

(Amendment negatived)

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Now to Madame Mendès' motion. Clerk, if you would please read that motion.

Unless you want to read your motion....

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—Saint-Lambert, QC]

I can read it, if you like.

I propose that all witnesses be given 10 minutes for their opening statement and that the questions be asked in the following order. In the first round, the order will be: Liberal Party, seven minutes; Conservative Party, seven minutes; NDP, seven minutes; and Liberal Party, seven minutes. In the second round, the order will be: Conservative Party, five minutes; Liberal Party, five minutes; Conservative Party, five minutes; Liberal Party, five minutes; and NDP, three minutes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

All right.

Mr. Christopherson.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

I wanted to mention that we could keep an eye on the 10-minute thing and at least be open to the idea of revisiting it, if we find out that it is eating up too much time. I won't go for an amendment or anything, but we're going to have to keep that in the back of our minds. It may become a problem. If it doesn't, wonderful, but if it does maybe we could at least acknowledge that we said, “Hey, in that circumstance we may revisit it.”

That's all, Chair, thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

My experience is that they love to come with prepared remarks, so they'll have them prepared. If we get too many at a time, as Mr. Christopherson said, we're going to have to cut that back. If there are one or two witnesses, then a 10-minute time slot works.

Mr. Christopherson.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Building on that, if we're comfortable, notionally at least, we should let the steering committee know if there's going to be group, that nobody's going to stand on a point of order and say, “Hey, it's not 10 minutes,” and that when we have five of them we can say, “Hey, you have five minutes instead of 10”, so that the steering committee would have that latitude. It comes as a recommendation anyway and can only be approved with the committee's support.

Thanks, Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you.

Any other discussion on the motion?

(Motion agreed to)

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

All right, so that part of it is complete.

The next motion is:

That the Clerk of the Committee be authorized to distribute to the members of the Committee only documents that are available in both official languages.

Mr. Arya.

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

I so move.

(Motion agreed to)