Evidence of meeting #2 for Status of Women in the 39th Parliament, 2nd session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was motions.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Patricia Davidson Conservative Sarnia—Lambton, ON
I understand that, Madam Chair, and I think as chair you do have the right to move the business along and to see where we're going. It was just that it was stated on behalf of the committee—
Conservative
Patricia Davidson Conservative Sarnia—Lambton, ON
--and I found that rather strange when we hadn't discussed it.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Yasmin Ratansi
No, we hadn't discussed it, but we wanted to in preparation, just in case--
Conservative
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Yasmin Ratansi
Members of the committee, if we were to do the supplementary estimates and departmental performance reports, we would need the coordinator to come--she wants to come--but we could have officials come, because otherwise on Wednesday we will have no witnesses. What is the will of the committee? What would you like to do? The next one, the government response, is we still need ministers. We will need the ministers, because remember we are going into....The trafficking issue is not only trafficking; it's an immigration issue as well. And those are issues we need to be mindful of, considering we're going into the Vancouver Olympics, and we're mindful of it because the world is in such a turmoil. I was just listening to Minister Finley talking about how important it is that we try to protect people who may be illegally trafficked under the guise of refugees. So there are a whole lot of things that are going on.
Ms. Minna, you had some suggestions.
Liberal
Maria Minna Liberal Beaches—East York, ON
Madam Chair, the estimates are here and we do have an obligation to study them and work on them. We tend sometimes to put them off because there's a lot of other work and we're finishing other stuff and then we do them at the very end and we spend very little time on them, which is really unfortunate, because we're not doing our job properly as parliamentarians. We should indeed pay more attention to them and work with them.
At this particular time we have the luxury, in a way, of starting out a new session without having an ongoing piece of work or legislation that we're working on, as we were in other times. I would suggest we work with the supplementary estimates and start dealing with them immediately and get them done with, so that then we can actually move on to some other studies. In the meantime at least we've done the base work on that. As we know, they are always deemed to be passed if they're not done by a certain date. Rather than allowing them to drag on and then fitting them in somewhere once in a while, because they are important to the work that we do and they do have a great deal of impact on everything else, I think we should just get them done.
NDP
Irene Mathyssen NDP London—Fanshawe, ON
And would the minister be present during that meeting? I just want to be sure that we have the minister here to discuss the estimates.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Yasmin Ratansi
We can send the invitation to the minister and it will depend on the minister's schedule.
If I heard Ms. Minna correctly, the estimates are out. We need to review them and we could probably get departmental heads to come. We would start with the departmental heads, and if the minister is available, then we can get the minister.
The last time we waited a long time and the minister wasn't available and then we went to the committee of the whole.
The Clerk
When you're saying “department”, you're talking of the status of women agency. You're not talking of the department under Madam Verner. Okay, I just want to clarify that. So it's the status of women program, the arm's-length agency, whose staff would be coming.
Conservative
Patricia Davidson Conservative Sarnia—Lambton, ON
Thank you, Madam Chair.
I think Madam Bélisle has clarified part of my question. I had the same question on whether we were inviting the minister, because definitely that is how we normally do the supplementaries. We have the minister here and that's our opportunity to discuss things with the minister. I think by all means we need to extend that invitation.
Then the other question I had concerns the coordinator who was referred to, I think, and then other officials. Maybe you could elaborate a little bit more on who the coordinator is. I don't mean the name. Is that the head department person or...?
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Yasmin Ratansi
Clare Beckton is the new coordinator for Status of Women Canada, and she is not available because she's been travelling. But we can get the staff from the agency to come and speak to us on what is going on and give us a status update and departmental performance, etc.
Conservative
Patricia Davidson Conservative Sarnia—Lambton, ON
Will they be able to answer questions?
Didn't we run into this problem before, either at this committee or the other one I sit on, where officials came from the department but they weren't top officials and they really couldn't answer? Was that the health department?
Conservative
Patricia Davidson Conservative Sarnia—Lambton, ON
Yes, health. They couldn't answer any questions, so we wasted....
Remember that, Nicole?
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Yasmin Ratansi
What they have said, Ms. Davidson, is that they were looking to see....
I guess when the question came on whether it was the committee that was asking for them to come, at that time you probably said, no, it was not the committee. Probably the chair made that request to check around. We can now say, if the committee wants, that it is the committee that would like them to come.
There are always times when.... For instance, we had Finance Canada come, and the deputy minister was not there. The financial officers did not know; we needed the deputy minister.
So it is quite possible that they do not have the holistic picture, but if we want to start the ball rolling, we can have the people from the agency and make a request--from the committee--that the agency staff come and give us a status update. It has been a long time now.
Conservative
Conservative
Patricia Davidson Conservative Sarnia—Lambton, ON
Well, whenever we're doing it, I think the minister needs to be invited.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Yasmin Ratansi
We're not saying that we will not invite the minister, but we have to be mindful that the minister might not come.
Conservative
Patricia Davidson Conservative Sarnia—Lambton, ON
I understand that, but we need to extend that invitation.
Liberal
