Public Safety Committee on Oct. 4th, 2023

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Doug Shipley]

Everyone, seeing that it is 4:30 and I am definitely a stickler for punctuality and attendance, I'll call this meeting to order.

First of all, I would like to mention that I will be chairing this meeting today. Mr. McKinnon is unavailable due to very unfortunate circumstances. I've only been vice-chair for one week and I'll be chairing today. It's my first time doing it, so let's all be patient here today. I promise I'll do my best.

Welcome to meeting number 74 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security. We will start by acknowledging that we are meeting on the traditional unceded territory of the Algonquin people.

Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the Standing Orders; therefore, members are attending in person in the room and remotely by using the Zoom application.

I would like to make a few comments for the benefit of the witnesses and members.

Please wait until I recognize you by name before speaking. For those participating by video conference, click on the microphone icon to activate your mike and please mute yourself when you are not speaking. The clerk and I will manage the speaking order as best we can. We appreciate your patience and understanding in this regard.

For interpretation, for those on Zoom, you have the choice at the bottom of your screen of floor, English or French. Those in the room can use the earpiece and select the desired channel.

Although this room is equipped with a powerful audio system, feedback events can occur. These can be extremely harmful to the interpreters and can cause serious injuries. The most common cause of sound feedback is an earpiece worn too close to microphone. We therefore ask all participants to exercise a high degree of caution when handling the earpieces, especially when your microphone or your neighbour's microphone is turned on. In order to prevent incidents and safeguard the hearing health of interpreters, I invite participants to ensure that they speak into the microphone into which their headset is plugged and to avoid manipulating the earbuds by placing them on the table, away from the microphone, when they are not in use.

I will give a reminder that all comments should be addressed through the chair.

With that, we left off last week—and hopefully everyone had a good long weekend—with a debate going on. I will read where we left off to remind everybody, if that's okay. I do have the exact wording here.

The chair said:

That's what we're probably going to have to do, unless we can vote on what we have now.

I think we have to adjourn. We will resume at this point in the debate and begin again on this matter when we resume on Wednesday.

With that understanding, we are adjourned.

We will start off where we were. I'll go to Mr. Lloyd.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

I have a point of order.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Doug Shipley]

Go ahead.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thanks for taking this on as well. I promise to be as well-behaved as possible during this committee.

I just wanted to know who you have on the speaking order.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Doug Shipley]

I've just been informed by the clerk that we don't have an ongoing list from Wednesday.

The opposition had the floor at the time. We're going to continue on from there, as per—

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Now the clerk will be taking a speaking list...?

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Doug Shipley]

Yes.

Go ahead, Mr. Lloyd.

[Dane Lloyd, Conservative, Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Given that we left off on an amendment and that over the time we had to review this over the weekend there have been discussions, I think we will find support for a subamendment, which I will be reading into the record now and which should be distributed to the committee in both official languages.

I'll read it into the record now. It is that the committee hold a three-hour meeting, immediately after the committee's study of Bill C-20, on the rights of crime victims and the security reclassification and transfer of offenders within federal corrections and the transfer of Paul Bernardo from a maximum-security prison to a medium-security prison; and that the committee invite the Minister of Public Safety; the commissioner of Correctional Service Canada, Anne Kelly; the deputy minister, Shawn Tupper; the corrections investigator; the federal victims ombudsperson; representatives of the victims' families, particularly Tim Danson; and officials of the departments of justice and public safety to appear.

I think we've hit on a good compromise here, Mr. Chair. It's always been the Conservative position that we need to have some sort of representation from victims' perspectives or victim representatives' perspectives in order to see this from all angles so that we can ensure that we can at least recommend some changes so that, hopefully, an event like this doesn't happen again.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Doug Shipley]

Thank you, Mr. Lloyd.

The clerk has indicated that he has sent it out in both official languages. Does everybody have that in writing? Can I just confirm with a couple of nods around the table that we do have that, or should I wait a minute?

Now that all—

[Jennifer O'Connell, Liberal, Pickering—Uxbridge, ON]

On a point of order, I'd just like to get clarification that this is actually in order and not just a notice of motion, because when we left off, we adjourned the meeting. Therefore, this would be a motion, not a subamendment.

I'd like to get clarification if this is actually in order, given that we adjourned and now this would be the first time it's introduced, which would require notice because it wasn't part of the meeting before we adjourned.

This meeting was called for Bill C-20. That's what the agenda was put out for, so this isn't a continuation of the last meeting. I just question if this is actually in order without notice.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

On that point of order, Chair, it seems like the member is questioning whether it was in order to resume consideration of debate on the motion, a motion on which I would have some separate points to make. However, once debate has resumed on the motion and debate is under way on the motion, it is, of course, in order for somebody to move an amendment or subamendment to the motion.

There's no requirement to provide notice to amend an item that is on the table and is being debated, and this motion was on the table. You said it was on the table and gave the floor to my colleague, and he used the floor to then move a subamendment. I think that is procedurally pretty clear.

Thanks.

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

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair.

I thank my colleague Mr. Genuis for his clarifications, but I think it's up to the chair to respond to Ms. O'Connell based on the clerk's recommendations.

I just want to know whether we think the committee will debate this for a long time. It must be said that we kept the legislative clerks waiting for two hours last week. Out of respect for them, if the committee intends to debate this for a long time, we should warn them. I imagine they have something better to do than to watch us debate this.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Doug Shipley]

Thank you for those points of order.

I have been instructed by the clerk that it is in order. We will carry on with what's on the floor right now.

We will continue with Mr. Julian.

[Jennifer O'Connell, Liberal, Pickering—Uxbridge, ON]

I'm sorry, but I had indicated to the chair to be second on the list.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Doug Shipley]

I've been given the list by the clerk, and you are next after Mr. Julian.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

This is different from what we've spoken about off-line. I think the intention here, hopefully, is to move forward with Bill C-20. We've now had the witnesses here twice, and we thank them very much for coming. It's time to get to this important legislation.

I think there may be the seed of a solution to the filibuster we saw a few days ago, but one of the things I indicated very clearly was that I felt the Minister of Public Safety should be coming before this committee to discuss both this issue and a range of other issues as well. I actually think the subamendment is less helpful, because what we are actually talking about is a three-hour meeting with so many witnesses that we can't have the ability to question the Minister of Public Safety in the way I certainly would like to see, not only on this issue but on a range of public safety issues.

He's a new minister. I know he's eager to come to committee. There's a whole range of questions we're going to be asking him. I had flagged this and I had thought we had some consensus around this idea that the Minister of Public Safety would be invited with his officials as part of a separate meeting.

For the reasons I just mentioned, I can't really support the subamendment as currently worded. In my opinion, the minister should appear before the committee for two hours, along with department officials, to answer all our questions.

I don't know whether we will be able to agree in the next few minutes, but I agree with Ms. Michaud: We don't want to make the legislative clerks wait again while we discuss this motion rather than doing the clause-by-clause consideration of Bill C‑20. I hope that we can quickly find a solution to adopt wording written to reflect what I had understood, because what's just been presented to the committee doesn't quite do that.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Doug Shipley]

We will go to Ms. O'Connell.

[Jennifer O'Connell, Liberal, Pickering—Uxbridge, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I move that we now proceed to clause-by-clause study of Bill C-20. It's a dilatory motion. There's no debate. We can come back to this later if we have agreement, but we are here for Bill C-20.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Chair, would it be possible to request a brief suspension?

[Jennifer O'Connell, Liberal, Pickering—Uxbridge, ON]

I'm sorry. There's a motion on the floor—

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

I know.

[Jennifer O'Connell, Liberal, Pickering—Uxbridge, ON]

—and there's no debate.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Doug Shipley]

I think we are going to have to go to a vote, from what the clerk is telling me, so we will call the vote.

Are we going to do it verbally?

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Let's have a recorded vote.

(Motion agreed to: yeas 7; nays 3)

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Doug Shipley]

The clerk and I discussed this before we were going to go ahead. If we can just have a short recess, we can get set up for Bill C-20.

Take no more than five minutes, please.