Public Safety Committee on Dec. 7th, 2007

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Shall the committee order a reprint of the bill?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Mr. MacKenzie, you were wondering if we could introduce it into the House this afternoon. Do you still wish to pursue that? How do we handle that at committee? Is that possible?

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

Mr. Chair, I would ask, if it's at all possible, that the legislative clerk and the clerk have it ready to present to the House. I appreciate that it's a very difficult request, if it can be done. But you've already done superhuman stuff to get us to this point, so we well understand.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Is it okay with the committee, if it's possible?

This is only if it's possible. If it looks even probable but....

[Sue Barnes, Liberal, London West, ON]

Maybe the legal counsel or the clerk could explain. There are processes after we've done amendments; different people inside government have to clean up the bill and all the typos. She knows what I'm talking about.

[Roy Cullen, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Not inside the government, inside the caucus.

[Sue Barnes, Liberal, London West, ON]

Inside the Parliament.

[The Clerk of the Committee, Mr. Roger Préfontaine]

For a reprint, yes.

[Sue Barnes, Liberal, London West, ON]

Yes, presumably there's editing and stuff. There are different sections.

As soon as possible I think is what we'd like.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Would you mind just making a comment, please?

[Joann Garbig, Procedural Clerk]

It happens in-house. What I could explain is that once the committee has completed its work on the bill, if there have been amendments from the floor or slight modifications that the committee has made, we need to process those, have them translated as necessary. Any amendments that were adopted by the committee have to be assembled in the report. Sometimes we have these electronically in our system already and it's fairly straightforward to just plug them into the report. Other times we have to create the amendment. All this takes some time, which is why I'm a bit hesitant about guaranteeing that the report can be ready at noon today.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Yes, Mr. MacKenzie.

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

I'd just like to say on behalf of the government side how much we appreciate the work that the chair and the officers here have done, and also the members opposite. This has been a very difficult situation for everybody, to deal with this in such a short period of time, and I just can't express enough how much we appreciate the cooperation we've received around the table from everyone. Certainly we hope that we won't see these kinds of things come before us in this manner in the future.

Thank you very much.

[Ujjal Dosanjh, Liberal, Vancouver South, BC]

It's exciting.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

This is. This is Parliament at work. As the chair, I want to express my appreciation as well.

I want to thank all of our witnesses who have come.

Monsieur Ménard.

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

I agree with everything, except for one aspect.

I find it bizarre to say that amendments to expand the reasons for an appeal and the process to be followed are outside the scope of the bill. They were within the scope of the laws we considered. Therefore, I want to express my dissent with the recommendations that were made. I am looking forward to seeing the judicial decisions that will be made on this.

[Ujjal Dosanjh, Liberal, Vancouver South, BC]

May I add our thanks from the opposition to all the officials, the House, and the government.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Thank you all very much. It's been great working together.

This meeting stands adjourned.