Special Committee on Cooperatives Committee on July 24th, 2012

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

A point of order, Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Blake Richards]

A point of order, Mr. Allen.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

What you're telling us, Chair—and I'm sorry we're going to get into these conversations at the end, but this happens every now and again—is that you've decided the agenda. I know of no meeting between the parties that said how we would construct an agenda. We don't actually have a subcommittee to set the agenda up.

I've received now that all the way until Thursday, all committee business is in camera. I have no memory of consultations that said we've agreed to that.

Quite frankly, Chair, in reading the minutes of the last meeting, you simply gavelled the other meeting closed and went straight to in camera.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

You weren't even here.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

No, but I read the minutes. It was pretty easy. I read the minutes—

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

You read that he gavelled it closed.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

—and he closed the meeting. It was simple. That's why we get printed minutes. It said “In camera”, and it's actually got the time on it.

You should read it, Pierre.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

I was there.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

It actually had the timeline. He gavelled it closed, and then said, “The in camera session now has started.” That's what the last minutes say.

How did we get an agenda that says we must go in camera when we don't have an agreement that we were going to do that? If we don't have an agreement, Chair, I would suggest that the motion is absolutely in order, since the committee decides how it wants to conduct its business, not the chair of the committee unilaterally deciding how the committee conducts its business.

The committee decided on the question rotation, the amount of time. We did that by a vote. That's how we decided upon that.

We decided upon the witness list by the committee saying “Put your witness list in.” We then saw selections, by the chair and the clerk helping put things together, which is normal practice.

What I'm saying to you now, Chair, is that we don't have agreement on an in camera session for committee business. We need to have that agreement or not. Since we have now asked for it not to be in camera, I think you're compelled, quite frankly, to have a vote.

Now, whichever way the vote goes will make that determination, because you don't have agreement for an in camera session.

[The Chair, Conservative, Blake Richards]

I'll allow Mr. Lemieux on the same point of order.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Sure, Chair.

It has been the precedent of this committee to do committee business in camera. Once you're in camera, you can raise that kind of motion to move us out of camera. That's the way it would normally be done. In a sense, whether or not a motion is allowed is actually the chair's jurisdiction. A motion was deposited. The chair decides whether it's allowable or not allowable. If you don't like it, you can challenge the chair. But it's not the committee that decides whether or not a motion is allowable or not allowable; it's the chair who decides that.

We have committee business at the end. Our method of operation has been to have committee business in camera. Oftentimes we're talking about all sorts of different things. We normally do that in camera, so there it is at the end of the meeting.

[The Chair, Conservative, Blake Richards]

Okay.

Mr. Harris, on that point as well?

[Dan Harris, NDP, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

On that point of order, I'd like to challenge that assertion from Mr. Lemieux.

To go back to the minutes of our very first meeting, we started with committee business in public. It was started in public—

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

It moved in camera within ten seconds.

[Dan Harris, NDP, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

—and then was moved in camera because that was the decision of the committee. That's how it's supposed to work. It not a decision of the chair. The committee decides whether to go in camera or not. Otherwise, by default, we're supposed to be in public.

Since I'm not going to get the vote on this, I'm going to have to challenge the chair on this issue and have a recorded vote on whether we should have a vote now about going in camera or not.

I apologize to the witnesses.

[The Chair, Conservative, Blake Richards]

Okay.

The chair has been challenged, so I will now turn it over to the clerk to conduct a vote on that.

[The Clerk of the Committee, Mr. Paul Cardegna]

The questions is, shall the ruling of the chair be sustained?

[Dan Harris, NDP, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

Can you repeat the ruling of the chair before we vote on it, please?

[The Clerk]

My understanding is the ruling of the chair was that the motion of Mr. Harris be ruled out of order because the motion pertains to committee business and not to the subject at hand.

The question now is shall the ruling of the chair be sustained?

(Ruling of the chair sustained: yeas 6; nays 5)

[The Chair, Conservative, Blake Richards]

The ruling has been sustained. We'll move back to the questioning.

I believe, Mr. Harris, you still had one minute and 56 seconds remaining in your time.

[Dan Harris, NDP, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

Thank you very much.

I think we see some foreshadowing of perhaps how a future vote in camera might go, as to whether this meeting will go back in public or not. We feel that in a democracy you want to shed light as much as possible. It's incredibly important with many of the decisions committees make—particularly pertaining to motions like Monsieur Bélanger's, about when this committee is going to report back to Parliament—that those debates should take place in public, and that members of the committee and of all sides of the House should then be accountable for the actions they take.

We've seen a disturbing trend and pattern with this government, where time and time again members seek to throw a cloak over top of committee business. That's what we are doing here, frankly, to ensure that they save themselves some embarrassment for taking decisions that would be unpopular and that Canadians would view in a negative light. I mean things like ramming through a special committee on cooperatives that doesn't have to report back to Parliament until the end of November and that would have the opportunity to go to the international summit in Quebec City in October and to participate in that and to gain all manner of best practices, as has been mentioned.

Cooperatives are about sharing those best practices, about mentoring new cooperatives, and we should be looking across the world to get better co-ops and understandings so we can foster the cooperative industries and agriculture co-ops and all sectors of co-ops in Canada. I think it's absolutely disgraceful that we're not going to be in Quebec City as a committee. Certainly on this side of the House we'll be attending as MPs and as stakeholders and interested parties.

I'll have to leave it at that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Blake Richards]

Your time—

[Dan Harris, NDP, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

Thank you so much for your time and for your patience this afternoon.

[The Chair, Conservative, Blake Richards]

I will give my thanks as well to the witnesses for your patience. Unfortunately, we did use up some of the time we could have been using for questioning you, but we'll use the time we do have remaining.

I will turn the floor now to Mr. Lemieux for five minutes.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Thank you very much, Chair.

I don't know if anyone has seen The Incredibles, but I think Mr. Harris was monologuing. I didn't hear a question in all of that.

I'll go back to the cooperatives, because I think that's why we're all here. It's for the cooperatives, for you to talk to the committee, and I think for Canadians to listen in, particularly because this meeting is televised.

I wanted to follow up on a question regarding the role of provinces, because I think provinces have an important role to play in terms of being able to add what I would call regional flexibility. I often look at it on the agricultural side, and the federal government is there to provide what I would call a level playing field. We shouldn't be favouring, for example, on the agricultural side, a farmer in Saskatchewan to the disadvantage of a farmer in Nova Scotia. We should be levelling the playing field.

But I know that farmers also seek what they call flexibility in programming, because programming doesn't fit well for everybody under every circumstance. I often say that's where the province comes in, because the Province of Nova Scotia or the Province of Prince Edward Island understands P.E.I. or Nova Scotia. They know how best to configure their programs to provide that flexibility for what's actually happening within their province.

So I'd just like to pursue that a little bit in terms of what you see as the role of your respective provinces in supporting co-ops that are actually imbedded within their provincial economy and that are playing an active role, as you mentioned, sort of in jobs, the provision of services, and the provision of financial strength, financial services. We've heard some comments that Quebec is very involved in that regard and other provinces less so. So I'm wondering if you could fill in the committee a bit more on how you would see provincial responsibility lending a hand to cooperatives within their jurisdiction.

I'll start with you, Mr. Whiting.