I'm going to call this meeting of the public safety and national security committee to order. This is our 12th meeting for this Parliament.
Our purpose today is to do a clause-by-clause consideration of Bill C-7, an act to amend the Public Service Labour Relations Act, the Public Service Labour Relations and Employment Board Act and other acts, and to provide for certain other measures, which has been referred to this committee.
I just want to begin by thanking the committee for its diligence in this consideration of the bill. All members from all parties have participated, I think, extremely well. This has been under a very tight timeline, with a Supreme Court decision that required the legislation to come and be passed very quickly in this Parliament, and you've met the challenge so far. We'll see how we do today.
We have heard witnesses and we're now ready to go through the bill clause by clause.
Since this is the first time that this committee, or in fact any committee in this Parliament, has done clause-by-clause consideration of any legislation, and because we have a fair number of new members of Parliament, I thought I'd just take a few minutes to explain how this process works and how we actually consider a bill so that you can have it in your head as we go. I apologize to the veterans on the committee who have been through this many times before.
As the name indicates, this is really an examination of all the clauses in the order in which they appear in the bill. I'll be calling each clause successively, and each clause—there are just over 70 clauses—is subject to debate and then a vote, so we'll be voting as we go through, and then there will be a final vote on the bill itself. If there are amendments to the clause in question, I'll recognize the members who have proposed them—and we have received some amendments—and they can explain them.
Also, we have guests, witnesses who have been invited today for their expertise, to help us particularly with those amendments. I will be giving them an opportunity to speak at the time amendments are proposed so that they can help clarify any issues, and members can question them.
I also want to recognize that any MPs who are here and at the table will be recognized by the chair to speak. That includes, on either side of the table, obviously the voting members of the committee, meaning those who are the members here representing their parties, but anybody who is here can also ask a question for clarification or to further the understanding of the committee.
When no further members wish to intervene on a particular amendment, the amendment will be voted on. Amendments will be considered in the order in which they appear in the package each member has received from the clerk. If there are amendments that are consequential to each other, they will be voted on together. There may be one exception to that, but we'll get to that.
In addition to having to be drafted properly in a legal sense, amendments must also be procedurally admissible. I could be called upon to rule amendments inadmissible if they go against the principle of the bill or beyond the scope of the bill, both of which were adopted by the House when it agreed to the bill at second reading, or if they offend the financial prerogative of the crown.
Also, if you wish to eliminate a clause of the bill altogether, that's not an amendment. Rather, the proper course of action at committee is to vote against that clause when the time comes, not to propose an amendment to it. If you choose to vote against a clause, I will simply call the clause and then you can vote yea or nay.
We'll go slowly today, maybe a little bit more slowly than we will the second or third or fourth bill that comes here. I want you all to feel very free to stop me in the process if you're not understanding either the process or the substance of what we are doing.
If you decide not to vote on a clause and say that you want to consider it later, we can hold it till the end of the meeting. I may seek permission and unanimous consent to group some clauses together if there have been no amendments to them. We'll see how we're doing on that as we go.
As I told you earlier, the committee will go through the package of amendments in the order in which they appear and vote on them one at a time, unless we decide that they should be voted on together. Amendments have been given a number—in the top right-hand corner of the pages—that indicates which party they came from. There's no need for a seconder in order to move an amendment.
Once an amendment has been moved, you will need unanimous consent to withdraw that amendment. Obviously we have amendments that came in by the deadline. That doesn't mean that other amendments are not eligible in the course of deliberation today. You can propose other amendments as we go. We always prefer it if they're in writing, and if they're in writing it would be preferred for them to be in both official languages. However, a verbal amendment would also be in order.
During the debate on each amendment, subamendments are allowed. You can move them. Subamendments do not require the approval of the mover. There's no such thing as a friendly amendment, by the way.
We'll follow the strict rules of procedure with regard to subamendments. A subamendment will be considered first and it will be voted on, then we will vote on the amendment if it's still standing, and then we will vote on the clause itself. Another subamendment may be moved, or the committee may consider the main amendment and vote on it.
Once every clause has been voted on, we will then vote on the title and the bill itself. If the amendments are adopted, an order to reprint the bill will be required. I will be asking you for that permission so that the House has a proper copy to use at report stage.
Finally, you will have to ask me to report the bill to the House, and I'll ask for your permission to do that. The report contains only the text of the adopted amendments as well as an indication of any deleted clauses.
Are there any questions about our procedures before we begin?
It's a smarter-than-average committee, so I'm pretty hopeful as we go through this.
Again, thank you.
I also want to thank staff who are serving the members through this process. Your work has also been really good as we've been doing it, so thank you for doing all of that.
We're set to begin.
This is consideration of Bill C-7, An Act to amend the Public Service Labour Relations Act, the Public Service Labour Relations and Employment Board Act and other Acts and to provide for certain other measures.
We're now going to consider the first clause.
Right now we have no amendments that have been received for clauses 1 through 32. What I'd like to do is see if there is unanimous consent to present clauses 1 through 32 and to see if we can vote on them together. I would need unanimous consent to do that.
(On clauses 1-32)
