Veterans Affairs Committee on Feb. 13th, 2018

[Gary Walbourne]

None whatsoever.

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

Okay. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Neil Ellis]

That concludes our round today.

Mr. Walbourne, on behalf of the committee, I'd like to thank you, and wish you the best in retirement, unless you decide to come out of retirement and maybe help MPs with our cases in our offices. The office is always open. Thank you.

We'll recess for a couple of minutes, and then we'll come back with another panel.

[The Chair, Liberal, Neil Ellis]

We'll call the meeting back to order.

We have, from the Department of National Defence, Mr. Cantelon, director general, Canadian Forces morale and welfare services.

Welcome back.

We also have Colonel C.D. Harris, director of military family services.

We have a point of order.

[Phil McColeman, Conservative, Brantford—Brant, ON]

I mean no disrespect to the witnesses. Thank you for being here.

I wasn't here last week, but when I read my briefing notes this morning I noted that these witnesses have already testified to this committee on this particular study.

My question to you, Chair, is why are we having repeat witnesses? I notice that another one, in a subsequent meeting, is scheduled to reappear on the subject matter. Can you tell me whether it is a practice that is normal to this committee that we would have the same witnesses back, when we have others who have asked to be part of this program and who are not on our witness list but are people who have made specific requests? Can you enlighten me on this?

[The Chair, Liberal, Neil Ellis]

The process on witnesses is held by the clerk. She organizes the witnesses and puts the schedule through. I'll have the clerk answer that for you.

[The Clerk of the Committee, Ms. Karine Parenteau]

The reason Mr. Cantelon is here again is to talk about the specific issue of family programs. The Minister of National Defence suggested that Mr. Cantelon would be the best representative, the best spokesperson to talk about this specific program. Last time it was on another subject.

[Phil McColeman, Conservative, Brantford—Brant, ON]

Are you saying that this is at the discretion of the Minister of National Defence? Is that what you're saying?

[The Chair, Liberal, Neil Ellis]

No. I think these witnesses, and I'll see who these witnesses are.... I think someone on the committee asked that DND be asked to talk about military family resources. This is who they recommended as the subject expert from the department.

[Phil McColeman, Conservative, Brantford—Brant, ON]

Sir, it is highly unusual for a committee to undertake a study in which we bring the same officials from the same department back. We have a chance as committee members, and it's our right as members of Parliament, to ask any specific questions outside of the single issue you just mentioned today. This committee meeting, in my opinion, is not held on that single issue today. Or are we tasked today to ask questions on that single issue, and is that why they've been asked back to report on this?

[The Chair, Liberal, Neil Ellis]

No, I don't think I would limit or have ever limited a question around this table, being chair for the last two years. Today is about family military resources, but if you wanted to ask them another question, as long as it was on the subject matter we're studying, I don't see there being an issue with it.

[Phil McColeman, Conservative, Brantford—Brant, ON]

This study is about transition; it's not about family service matters. We're not specifically coming here today thinking about family service matters. We're coming prepared to talk about all transition issues. We've had our chance with these witnesses to ask those questions, and now we're put into a position in which we have repeat witnesses—not only this day, but also on a subsequent day, as we've noticed on the witness list. We're getting the same people back to whom we could have asked fulsome questions, including on this particular subject matter, which is what the broader study is. We're not tasked every day to deal with a specific question.

As you can tell from my comments, I'm not very pleased. Again, I mean no disrespect to the minister, if he's the one who said these are the people he wanted to testify, or to the top people at DND for having selected who they want to speak. I would, however, much rather get a broader understanding from the people inside the departments on the issues that are affecting transition in a much wider context, which I believe is what this study is about.

[The Chair, Liberal, Neil Ellis]

Today we have them discussing questions on family resource centres.

Mr. Kitchen.

[Robert Gordon Kitchen, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Chair, I have similar concerns about having the same witnesses. Again, I mean no disrespect to the commodore. I'm sure he can answer these questions; he's done it quite adequately in the past.

My concern is that we're doing the same thing next week with someone who couldn't answer those questions and had to continually defer to giving us responses further along. I wonder why we could not have had this same presentation at the same time by one and then one by the other instead of having them come back and forth.

[The Chair, Liberal, Neil Ellis]

In the sense that we had two hours and we had panels, I can bring that up with the clerk the next time that maybe we can schedule the panel as a two-hour discussion and we'll have more time.

Mr. McColeman.

[Phil McColeman, Conservative, Brantford—Brant, ON]

Through you to the clerk, have you exhausted all of the people on all of the witness lists from the various parties?

[The Clerk]

Not all.

[Phil McColeman, Conservative, Brantford—Brant, ON]

You haven't. So there were options to have different people come to this committee meeting today on the general subject matter. We haven't exhausted the list, you're not at the end of the line, and you don't need to look for repeat witnesses.

[The Chair, Liberal, Neil Ellis]

I think right now—

[The Clerk]

On the list there was the military family services program. It was adopted by the committee. It was one of the names.

[Phil McColeman, Conservative, Brantford—Brant, ON]

This is about transition, not about specific subsets of what transition means. At least my discussions at committee and my discussions at subcommittee have never been about a subset of questions about transition. If we had known that, we might have developed a different witness list about a bunch of other issues that we'd like to see questioned. I can look at the transcripts to make sure, but I never recall us discussing a subset of questions that we were going to focus on at any given committee meeting.

Chair, do you recall that?

[The Chair, Liberal, Neil Ellis]

I would have to have some time to think about that, but the witnesses are here. We can vote on whether we hear them today. I think the witness list was voted on by the committee, and I believe the family resource centres have a lot to do with helping our men and women transition.

[Phil McColeman, Conservative, Brantford—Brant, ON]

Chair, we never discussed or voted on having people come back on a repeat basis.

[The Chair, Liberal, Neil Ellis]

Well, we didn't, and I can say to you that we did not vote not to.

[Phil McColeman, Conservative, Brantford—Brant, ON]

That's fine. If that's the way you're interpreting it, I'll respect that.