Veterans Affairs Committee on May 9th, 2006

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

One of the things I'm trying to get right in my mind, then, is whether the motions that have been brought forward by Mrs. Hinton overlap any of these. Is there one in particular?

[Betty Hinton, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

I just want to add to the routine motions of the standing committee.

[Robert Thibault, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

But they're not part of these, I don't think. There's nothing here—

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

In other words, you're not looking to alter any of the standard ones, are you?

[Betty Hinton, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

These are all routine motions as well. I thought we might as well do them all in one fell swoop, but I'm at the will of the committee, whatever you decide.

[Robert Thibault, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

Okay, but the ones I'm suggesting, Betty, are the ones that got first circulated. I think all these do is permit the staff to do their work.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

What if we proceed with the routine ones, and at the next meeting we proceed with the others?

[Betty Hinton, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Sure, that's excellent. If that's how you'd like to proceed, that's fine.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

All right. In that case, I think Mr. Thibault's motion to go ahead with the routine motions is in order. Do we need a seconder for that?

Mr. Rota seconds it. Is there any discussion of that at all? No? Is everyone copacetic?

Next, then, I guess we proceed to the idea of the vote. All those in favour of adopting Mr. Thibault's motion, seconded by Mr. Rota, that we go with the routine motions, please signify.

(Motion agreed to) [See Minutes of Proceedings]

With regard to the motions that have been circulated by Mrs. Hinton, we'll wait, I guess, until the committee meeting on Thursday, if we have one on Thursday.

[Betty Hinton, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

No, we don't have one. I could read it out to you in advance and will give it to you in writing, if you'd like:

(1) That whenever the Main Estimates or the Supplementary Estimates are tabled in the House, the Committee invite the Minister and any relevant Senior Officials of a Department to appear at a meeting of the Committee, which is televised if possible. (2) That whenever a Chapter of a Report of the Auditor General refers to a subject under the mandate of the Committee, the Committee invite the Office of the Auditor General of Canada and any relevant Senior Officials of a Department to appear at a meeting of the Committee, which is televised if possible. (3) This is the same routine motion that all Committees have passed concerning speaking times and rotation, with the only change being the positioning of Liberals and Conservatives: That witnesses be given, at the discretion of the chair, ten minutes to make their opening statement, but during the questioning of the witness, the time allocated to each questioner will be as follows: on the first round of questioning, seven minutes to the representative of each party in the following order: Liberals, Bloc Québécois, NDP, and Conservatives; on the following rounds of questioning, five minutes per party, beginning with the Liberals, the Conservatives, the Bloc Québécois, the Conservatives, the Liberals, the Conservatives, and the Liberals, and in the third round the order would be the same as in the second round, with the NDP being able to ask questions at the end of the round; and that when a minister is in attendance in the first round of questioning, ten minutes be allocated to each of the opposition parties and ten minutes to the Conservative Party; and in a second round, five minutes to each party in the following order: Liberal, Conservative, Bloc Québécois, Conservative, Liberal, Conservative, and Liberal.

In the third round, the order would be the same as in the second round, with the NDP being able to ask questions at the end of the round.

[Robert Thibault, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

Again, I'd like to get these in writing and compare them with what the typical ones are. As for the first one, it seems absolutely to make sense.

[Betty Hinton, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Yes, it's a housekeeping step.

[Brent St. Denis, Liberal, Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON]

I'm generally in favour of the chair having good discretion to balance things out, and if there were clearly consensus in the room that, say, it wasn't Peter's turn but there was nobody else with a hot question at the moment and the chair felt Peter could jump in.... Is it a formula you can't vary from? I'd like a little proviso at the end that the chair have some discretion to manage that scenario in the best interests of the committee as a whole.

[Betty Hinton, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Well, I could answer you partially, if you would allow me to. This is standard procedure, the way things are normally done, but I think that since you're new to the veterans affairs committee, you'll find that in the veterans affairs committee, if past practice is any indication, we are very non-partisan in the issues we are dealing with, and that if no one else has a question, quite often that's exactly what happens. But we didn't put it in a written format last time; it just happened.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

I'd say briefly to that, Mr. St. Denis, that you're kind in terms of affording the chair some discretion on these matters. I think we probably lay these things out mostly for the consideration of opposition parties in terms of their order of precedence and that type of thing, as opposed to a benefit to the government, as it were. I keep mindful of that.

All right. We have that tabled and then we'll have it for consideration at the next....

Mr. Shipley.

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

Mr. Chairman, in terms of the first one, where we would have the invitation to the minister to come, I'm wondering, in terms of this committee getting out of the chute and being able to get the feel, the direction, the agenda of the minister, if it wouldn't be good to have that okayed so that we can get him on the agenda to come to speak earlier rather than later. That's all. I think it's always good to have the minister as soon as we can.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

I had a discussion with the minister, as a matter of fact just before question period today, on that very subject, and he said he's more than willing to come talk about the estimates. I don't know how much news you're going to have in that per se, but he's certainly willing to come and appear.

Mr. Thibault.

[Robert Thibault, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

I have two comments. First, I think the chairman could ask the minister if he has any suggestions to make to the committee. It is standard procedure for the minister to write to the committee to advise it of the issues that should be examined.

Finally, so as to avoid any misunderstanding or so as not to put anyone in an awkward position, I want to make it clear to the committee right now that I will not agree to allowing any unilingual documents to be tabled. Often, people, particularly members, table unilingual motions and documents, and that puts some persons at a disadvantage. Since Parliament is a bilingual institution, I will oppose this practice at all times.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

Yes, I think distribution of documents is actually in there in terms of both official languages. With regard to the consideration of Mrs. Hinton's motions, since it's 48 hours--

[Robert Thibault, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

No, absolutely. That's the normal course; it's for the committee to track. But you will probably see at this committee--like every one I've been on--every now and then you have something that's urgent, something that's pressing, and somebody asks, will we have unanimous consent that we do it? Most of the time it's a good one that you'd like to do, but as a question of principle, because it puts people in embarrassing situations, some people have to object by principle. So I've taken the principle that I object every time. I just want to warn the committee of that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

You're warning us ahead of time. Sure. The only times I've ever seen that to cause an issue sometimes is if you have witnesses who are appearing who weren't aware of that and then they're stalled in terms of their ability to present because they don't have their documents translated. It's a bit of egg on our faces because they don't take well to that.

[Robert Thibault, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

Again, I want to clarify, but I think it's a good time to have these discussions. If the witness is somebody we call for from the general public, I have a different level of expectation from what I have if the witness is an employee of the Government of Canada. If it's DND or if it's Veterans Affairs, I would certainly expect that they would come with translated documents. If it is a member of the public who we've called and they don't have the access to all the translation facilities that our federal government has, then that's a different question.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

I understand.

Mr. Perron.

[Gilles-A. Perron, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Good day, Mr. Chairman. Congratulations on your election. We'll try to work well with you.

For starters, I agree with my colleague Robert on the bilingualism issue. However, I do believe that the clerk has a responsibility, when inviting witnesses to testify, to inform them that their documents must be prepared in both official languages. I don't see a problem with that. It's important to me that we respect the bilingualism principle as well as the 48-hour notice rule for motions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

All right.