Public Safety Committee on Dec. 13th, 2022

[Taleeb Noormohamed, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

Thank you.

If I am correct, we are now debating the amended amendment, which was Madame Michaud's original—

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Madame Michaud's motion has been proposed to be amended by Ms. Dancho's amendment, which has been modified by Mr. MacGregor. We are speaking to Ms. Dancho's amendment, as modified by Mr. MacGregor's subamendment.

If anybody is confused, it's me. That's why we have clerks and analysts here.

[Taleeb Noormohamed, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

Okay.

It's a short motion. Can somebody read out the correct language so that we know what the heck we're talking about? We've had lots of good discussions today. I just want to make sure we don't waste time talking about something that's not—

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Okay. I will do so.

The amendment as it stands, the one we're discussing right now, is as follows:

That the committee temporarily suspend the clause-by-clause study of Bill C-21 and that it allocate eight consecutive meetings to study the effects of amendments G-4 and G-46 and that these meetings include committee travel across Canada, as soon as possible, to rural, northern and indigenous communities to hear from impacted individuals.

That is the result of Ms. Dancho's amendment as modified by Mr. MacGregor.

Do you have any further—

[Taleeb Noormohamed, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

I do. I have many thoughts and many questions.

As I understand it now, we are proposing eight meetings, with no clear definition, in terms of this particular motion, of how much travel we are prepared to do. That's not on this page. Basically, right now, effectively, we could travel for all eight meetings. In theory we could.

I'm not even—

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

I have a point of order, Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Go ahead, Ms. Damoff, on a point of order.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

I'm sorry to interrupt my wonderful colleague.

Could the clerk explain to us, please, when travel is allowed to happen and whether this “urgent matters” travel actually exists? I think we need an explanation on that. It's 5:19 p.m. now. Could he please explain when travel would be possible and if urgent matters travel actually exists?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

I would invite the clerk to do so. However, I have been advised that this would have to be settled by...I forget which committee, which probably won't meet again until February. As a practical matter, we probably can't travel until at least April.

Mr. Clerk, go ahead.

[The Clerk of the Committee, Mr. Simon Larouche]

The standard procedure for a committee to travel is that it has to go through a process to submit the travel purpose to the subcommittee on the committee's budget. Afterwards, it has to go back a second time, after the purpose, to present the budget for this travel. Then it has to be adopted in the House. The House has to authorize the trips.

Usually, this process takes several weeks. We have already passed the deadlines for the next months' trips. If the committee would like to travel, according to the normal procedure, it would be for travel starting next April. That's the standard procedure.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you, Mr. Clerk.

Mr. Noormohamed has the floor. Then we have Ms. Damoff, Madame Michaud, Mr. Badawey and Ms. Dancho. I'm fearful that we're not going to get through this list. I suspect that we're going to have to suspend this meeting until Thursday, at the end of the day.

Mr. Noormohamed, you have the floor still.

[Taleeb Noormohamed, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

Before I get into it, I want to clarify something with the clerk.

If we're saying that we cannot actually travel until April, are we then saying that we are literally going to be sitting in abeyance until such time as we are able to travel and complete whatever these meetings are supposed to complete? If that's the case, then what is the committee going to do between now and then? I think it's a question that would help me consider how I'm going to vote on this.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

That's a very good question.

My expectation is that if we are required to travel, we would not be able to resume clause-by-clause until after we have made at least one trip. That would, I guess, put us into the territory of hearing testimony on Bill C-20 and potentially finishing the Russia study, should we need to fill in some time. It's kind of a mushy area. I'm not exactly sure where we're going to go with that.

That was a point of clarification. Do you still want—

[Taleeb Noormohamed, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

Yes, I do. Thank you.

I'm struggling with the idea that we would now do eight meetings with an unlimited potential amount of travel, which may or may not begin until April, with then three weeks left to potentially—if we are satisfied with the consultations that we will have had on one amendment—try to figure out how, over the course of the next three weeks of the session, we're going to pass critically important gun legislation that I believe very strongly the majority of Canadians want us to get done.

I think we are all in agreement that it's important to get some more consultation and try to address a lot of the challenges, a lot of the issues, a lot of the concerns that have been raised. Nobody is disputing that point. But to say that we now want to effectively hold up.... How we got here is a different conversation for a different day. How we get to a solution is, I think, what Canadians are looking for here.

The idea that we would now sit, effectively, unable to move this legislation, at the very least until we return from whatever travel in April, and then try to spend three weeks to do this.... I just don't understand how we, in good conscience, can actually go back to our constituents and say that because we decided we wanted to go on trips, we're going to hold this legislation back until April at the earliest.

I am not saying that we shouldn't consult with communities in the north, in Atlantic Canada, in British Columbia, but we have learned over the last two years—my goodness, we managed to conduct Parliament virtually—that there are ways to try to do this in a way that is actually efficient and gets to where I think people want to go, which is to have heard voices and to be able to deal with misinformation—yes, I'm going to use the word “misinformation”—which, as Mr. MacGregor has rightly noted, is out there. I think it addresses some of the gaps perhaps in how people might have wanted this to have gone differently.

The fact that we would say, let's not get this over the finish line, in whatever form that ends up being, with everybody's input.... I've said this many times: There is no monopoly on good ideas. I have said this to every single one of my colleagues on this committee. I am open to hearing different ways of doing things. We are all open to that. The minister said this. The Prime Minister said this.

Let's get past the fact that there may be a difference of opinion as to how we got to where we are today. I don't know how we can say we're going stop all work completely until we have managed to do trips. Travel is important. Looking people in the eye is important, absolutely. But we've managed to do it for two and a half years. We've managed to consult with people in ways that use technology.

I am really quite worried about what we do when we go back, regardless of what party we belong to, and how we can go back in good conscience and say, look, we decided we weren't going to have active debate on anything past clause 4 of this bill until the entire year has run out and then maybe we'll take it back up again.

Canadians demanded of us that we pass gun legislation. The NDP, the Bloc—

[Kristina Michaud, Bloc, Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

I raise a point of order, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Madame Michaud, go ahead on a point of order.

[Kristina Michaud, Bloc, Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

I have a question about the clerk’s clarification. Travel seems like a complicated process. We have four minutes left to make a decision, and it seems that there’s a consensus to hold eight meetings.

Suppose we pass the motion, but without the travel component. During our first meeting after the holidays, it will be possible to propose adding travel to our eight meetings. For example, the Conservative Party could present a motion for the committee to hold consultations throughout the country for a week.

Today, however, we could simply decide to hold eight meetings. It seems like there’s a consensus on that. Would it be possible to proceed that way?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

The amendment before us specifies travel.

But I think we are out of time. I'm going to suspend until Thursday. We can resume from where we left off.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair.

If the House rises tomorrow, how does that work for Thursday?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

We're allowed to carry on.

The only thing that messes it up is prorogation and dissolution.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Sorry, I have another point of order.

Perhaps all committee members will be very excited to meet on Thursday. That's completely fine, if I'm off base here. Perhaps, given that the China committee was usually at this slot coming up, and I think that was the reason we couldn't go late during this committee's slotted time....

What I'm saying is, I believe the resources are available if we want to go a little longer just to round this up. If committee members are very excited to meet after the House rises tomorrow, I will be there. It's just a suggestion.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

I was hoping to go home myself.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

We have five or 10 minutes left with the resources that are available to us.

Mr. Noormohamed, go ahead.

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

I have a point of order, Chair.