Status of Women Committee on June 7th, 2010

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you. That's a very good idea, Ms. Mathyssen, that people submit times when they know they have a wedding or they're going to be out of the country, or whatever, as much as possible, to facilitate members to come on these trips.

That would be a good idea, if you could all just send it off to the clerk as soon as possible. We have to get this done in a timely manner. We want to start putting this to bed, because I have to take it to the liaison committee and give them their stuff.

Is there any more discussion?

All right. That's basically it.

Did you have anything you wanted to present on where we're going?

[The Clerk of the Committee, Ms. Julia Lockhart]

No, I'll have that on Wednesday.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Okay.

I just want to tell you that, as you had seen in some of the things we discussed the last time, we are looking at the prairies, obviously, and northern Ontario as a block. That would be Winnipeg, Thunder Bay, and Sioux Lookout, as well as Meadow Lake in Saskatchewan, and maybe Poundmaker's Lodge, although that's more west.

We can flip it around, but we still have to go to Vancouver as well, to Penticton, Williams Lake, Port Hardy or Port McNeill, Whitehorse, Yellowknife, and maybe Rankin Inlet.

Those are the two pieces of travel left to do. We would have completed the rest of it and will just have two chunks of travel to do.

Monsieur Desnoyers.

[Luc Desnoyers, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Madam Chair, I received a document asking us to be in Montreal on June 10. We will be in Montreal, that is for sure. We will leave Ottawa in the morning in our vehicle. So we will not need a chartered bus. Montreal is our city, and Quebec is our region. I will not be in Quebec City, because I will be in Vancouver, but I will be in Montreal.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Madame Demers, did you want to say something?

[Nicole Demers, Bloc, Laval, QC]

Madam Chair, we are not coming back to Ottawa. We will stay in Montreal. We are going to Quebec City and coming back to Montreal. So it would be absurd to take a bus.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

The bus will be chartered anyway, so we'll pay for it whether it's full or empty. That's the bottom line.

Much of the support staff that comes along with us, the interpreters, etc., do have to come back to Ottawa because they live here. So it doesn't matter; the bus will be coming back. If people want to make their own arrangements to come back from Quebec City and go home, wherever their home is, it's up to them.

We're trying to leave on June 10, which is Thursday, at 7:30 in the morning; and then on June 11, we will be going directly from Montreal. The reason we're not staying overnight in Montreal but we're staying overnight in Quebec City is that the Grand Prix will be going on in Montreal and there is not a bed available. We're going to have to just take over that evening and drive off. It's a two-and-a-half-hour drive, not far, and kind of pretty country, so that will be fine. It's not winter.

So that's that.

On Wednesday, we will have a proposal for you for summer travel. You will, in the interim, hopefully have sent off the times you cannot at all be available to travel for the summer, so that we can start planning.

Thank you very much.

Does someone want to move that the meeting adjourn?

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

I so move.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you, Ms. Brown.

The meeting is adjourned.