Veterans Affairs Committee on Nov. 23rd, 2020

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie—Innisfil, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I do appreciate your reaching out to me earlier today to discuss this.

I think what we need to do as a committee is perhaps leave it at the discretion of the chair and the clerk in terms of the number of witnesses we're getting in.

If we know, for example, that there are going to be continuous votes on Monday after QP, then we limit, like we did today. We had three today. In some cases, we may have two. Monday would be the option for those days. Secondly, if we are to get into a greater number of witnesses, Wednesday would work better for that if we are able to extend for half an hour in the event that one or more questions from members are desired beyond the 5:30 point, to be fair to the witnesses and to be fair to the members as well.

We have some pretty important work ahead of us, as we discussed last week. Wednesday may be a little more appropriate day to do that. That's my suggestion, Mr. Chair. Unless anybody has any further discussion on it, that will be our position on this.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

MP Desilets, you have the floor.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

We have votes on Monday and Wednesday. One-and-a-half-hour meetings make no sense for our committee. With all due respect to my colleagues, I would not want to cut into the witnesses' time. When we know a bit in advance that we may go to a vote, I wish we could extend that day's meeting by half an hour.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

I will reiterate that on Monday we do not have the option to extend the meeting. On Wednesday, we absolutely have the option to extend the meeting. That's the gamble we have.

Yes, Mr. Brassard, we only had three witnesses today, but we actually had four scheduled. One had an emergency and had to back out at the last minute.

The clerk is looking at these, of course, and the clerk and I can sit down and take a look. Coming up, I believe we have five witnesses for Wednesday. We were already leaning towards Wednesday as being a higher-volume day for us because we have that latitude. We can definitely do that, Mr. Brassard, and keep that in mind moving forward.

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie—Innisfil, ON]

Yes, Mr. Chair, just to clarify, I think we have votes tomorrow. We don't have any votes scheduled on Wednesday at this point, so we may be in a better position on Wednesday to deal with the five witnesses. We also only have a couple of weeks left in this session.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

That's right, and they'll rotate it.

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie—Innisfil, ON]

Right, so that's why I said to keep it at your discretion and the discretion of the clerk to have a limited number of witnesses on Monday, if possible, and then we can extend it on Wednesday, if we need to, going forward. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Yes, absolutely. I appreciate that.

Like I said, I just wanted to make sure that it was clear for everybody on this committee that it's not my desire to cut us short. We absolutely have that hard stop in about 30 seconds.

I see that MP Wagantall has a quick 30-second question.

[Cathay Wagantall, Conservative, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

No, it's not a question. I think we've come to a decision here. I encourage us to accept that and adjourn the meeting.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Fantastic. Not seeing any objections to that, I thank all of you for your work today. I appreciate it, folks. Have a good evening.

The meeting is adjourned