Debates of Nov. 21st, 2002

Request for Emergency Debate

[The Speaker]

I undertook to return to the House this afternoon concerning two requests for emergency debate pursuant to Standing Order 52 made by the hon. member for Churchill and the hon. member for South Shore concerning various aspects of the east coast fishery.

The Chair appreciates the importance of the situation and the grave concerns expressed by the hon. members concerning that situation. However, having considered the requests I have concluded they do not meet the exigencies of the Standing Order at this time.

The Chair has notice of a question of privilege from the hon. member for Acadie—Bathurst.

Privilege

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I am rising on a question of privilege on behalf of the hon. member for Windsor—St. Clair because it needs to be raised at the earliest opportunity.

I would like to seek your guidance on events that took place at the Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs, Northern Development and Natural Resources. The member for Windsor--St. Clair was in the process of debating his motion to summon a witness to the committee on Bill C-4. The motion was in order; proper notice was given. He had only spoken a few minutes when the chair interrupted the hon. member and put the question on the motion, even though the hon. member had not finished his intervention.

Several times the hon. member for Windsor—St. Clair raised his objection to this move and refused to yield the floor, but the chair ruled that he could not speak on the motion because the question had been put.

According to Marleau and Montpetit at page 857, in a case such as this, the chair should have either suspended or adjourned the meeting. Instead the vote took place on the motion of the hon. member for Windsor—St. Clair and the meeting continued without the member having the opportunity to express himself on the motion which he had put to the committee.

Mr. Speaker, is there any recourse for the hon. member in this case? I would like to seek your guidance on this.

[Don Boudria, Liberal, Minister of State and Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, no doubt you will want to take this issue under advisement and return to the House later. The events as they have been recounted to me are somewhat different than those presented by the hon. member.

I want to remind you, Mr. Speaker, that the deliberations that went on in committee are not yet before the House. No report has been made to the House and therefore, for that reason alone, it would be out of order.

Additionally, you are no doubt aware, Mr. Speaker, of the decision rendered regarding the chairmanship of a committee in 1992 by Mr. Blenkarn, as the chair of a committee. The chair deemed that debate had gone on sufficiently and the time for voting on an issue was now before the committee.

Furthermore, I am told that the chair of this committee had consultations with the membership of the committee before taking the action that was taken and the action, in fact, reflected the view of the committee at the time it was taken, not that that was a prerequisite. I believe that should be stated as additional support for the action of the chair of the committee.

[Gerald Keddy, Progressive Conservative, South Shore, NS]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member just made an interesting point, but I would like to note that he was not at that committee and I was. The chair overruled the hon. member for Windsor—St. Clair when he clearly had the floor and it was his right to debate his motion as long as he cared to hold the floor.

There cannot be two sets of rules: one for the government and one for the opposition parties. Whether or not we agree with his motion is immaterial. The fact is that he had the right not only to raise the motion but to debate it.

We should wait for your ruling on this, Mr. Speaker. When you have read the books and procedures I am sure you will come down on the side of the hon. member for Windsor—St. Clair.

[Serge Cardin, Bloc, Sherbrooke, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would just like to say that I, too, was present at that committee meeting. I support what the member for South Shore is saying. The member for Windsor—St. Clair did indeed have the floor and he could have kept talking but the committee chair did not allow it.

I hope that the Chair will make the right decision regarding these facts.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Mr. Speaker, with regard to my question of privilege, I had asked that you indicate the procedure to be followed in such a case, based on Marleau and Montpetit.

It is hardly democratic, as far as I am concerned, when a member moves a motion and the government—which has a majority in committee—through the chair, turns aside and says, “I do not want to listen to you”. There were only a few minutes left in the debate. You can check.

As the member said just now, regardless of whether or not one agrees with a motion, one must be polite enough to listen to members in committee and in the House. This was a motion brought forward by the member for Windsor—St. Clair. This is why we are speaking to this question of privilege.

I expect you to make the right decision in this case and give us some guidance for the future.

[Yvan Loubier, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I was present when the Chair of the Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs, Northern Development and Natural Resources acted in the fashion we are complaining about today.

I can tell you that, in the nine years I have been sitting on committees—I was a member of the Standing Committee on Finance before—I have never seen such a dictatorial way of running a committee meeting. We are not given the privilege of speaking. This is contrary to the procedures in the Standing Orders.

This is the first time that I experience working in a committee almost under a reign of terror, being careful not to draw attention to ourselves and being stripped of all our privileges. That is to ensure the proper operation of the committee, according to the Chair.

This has to stop. I agree with my hon. colleagues. You need to intervene to put an end to this dictatorial way of running the committee.

[Bernard Bigras, Bloc, Rosemont—Petite-Patrie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to bring to your attention something that happened this morning, at 8:30 a.m., during the Environment Canada briefing on the unveiling of Canada's plan regarding Kyoto.

[An hon. member]

That is a different matter.

[The Speaker]

Order, please. We are discussing a point of order. Nothing I have heard the hon. member for Rosemont—Petite-Patrie say was about the committee. Our discussion is about the proceedings of this committee.

Do other members wish to speak on this matter? If not, we shall move on. However, I must also make two things clear. As hon. members know, the Speaker is not some kind of appeal court for decisions made by committee chairs. At the same time, of course, there was a problem in this committee this morning.

I will review the transcript of the proceedings of the committee when it is available and come back to the House with a decision on this matter. However I would like to hear some clarification from hon. members who were present as to whether or not there was an appeal from the decision of the chair to the committee and if the committee in fact made a decision, in respect of the chairman's decision, to proceed with putting the question immediately rather than hearing the hon. member for Windsor--St. Clair.

The hon. member for Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot has the floor, no doubt in connection with this matter.

[Yvan Loubier, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I understand you are not there to administer the day to day affairs of committees. You are there, however, and we are very grateful that you are, to protect members' privileges.

The way this committee operates is trampling on our privileges. This morning was not the first instance. We have met three times and the same thing has happened each time. As members of the House of Commons, we are calling upon you, Mr. Speaker, as guardian of our privileges, to intervene and remedy the situation for the future, in order to restore to the committee an atmosphere that will be more propitious to committee work. Without everyone's cooperation, nothing will be accomplished.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the question you have asked. Since the member for Windsor—St. Clair is not here, I was obliged to raise the matter on his behalf.

I would suggest you have a look at the blues to see how the debate went in committee. According to the information I have received, the member objected to the behaviour of the chair during this meeting. The chair ignored him totally and, again according to the information I received, moved to the vote.

The best way to find out what transpired in committee is, therefore, to consult the blues.

[The Speaker]

Very well, that is what I will do.

[Diane Ablonczy, Canadian Alliance, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Mr. Speaker, my office received an e-mail yesterday at 4:56 p.m. The e-mail was marked “importance high” at 4:56 p.m. and referred to a briefing being given by the environment minister with respect to the Kyoto plan or lack of plan, but we will not go there.

This is an important issue for the House. Yet the briefing notice was given at 4:56 p.m. when no member's office would have been able to receive it unless someone was sitting on top of the computer at that time. If the e-mail is sent at 4:56 p.m., sometimes it does not get in for a few minutes.

It gets worse. In addition to the notice of the briefing being sent at 4:56 p.m., the briefing was for 8:30 a.m., when again most members would not have been able to make arrangements to attend, but for those very few who were fortunate enough to have somebody sitting on top of a computer around 5 p.m. last night and fortunate enough to get notice in time to get to an 8:30 a.m. meeting.

What happened? I will tell the House what happened. Government members were in fact meeting with the minister about the Kyoto plan, but the opposition members were shuffled off to some bureaucrats.

Surely it is incumbent upon the government to treat all members of parliament with equity and with fairness. What occurred is clearly unacceptable, both in terms of ignoring proper procedure and giving proper notice and ignoring the parity and equity of members of the House to receive the same information from the minister. There is no reason at all why the minister should exclude opposition members from a briefing that he had with some other members of parliament.

I would ask the Speaker to chastise the government and ask that this not happen again.

[Don Boudria, Liberal, Minister of State and Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, the House leader of the official opposition is a seatmate of the member. She will know that I informed House leaders on Tuesday of this briefing.

Yesterday the minister might have extended an additional courtesy of sending an electronic mail to members on all sides of the House at the same time. Whether he did or not does not change the fact that House leaders were informed Tuesday.

I can endeavour to do what I can to ensure that opposition members speak to each other in the future, but there is a limit as to what the government House leader can do to ensure that opposition members get along better than they do now.

[Bernard Bigras, Bloc, Rosemont—Petite-Patrie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is unusual for me to rise in the House on a point of order.

With respect to the briefing, and how it unfolded, I am not so much opposed to the timing of the notice, but I do find it unusual and ironic that, for a non-partisan plan, a government plan, there were two different briefing rooms. There was one session given to government members and another one for opposition members, as though there were two different messages to be given.

This practice is a good example of the partisan politics surrounding this action plan. What we are asking for is transparency. We expect the minister to clearly outline the elements of the action plan, and that it be done fairly.

Of course, we would have liked to have been given reasonable notice, but more importantly, there should not have been two sessions, one for opposition members and one for government members. This is completely unacceptable.

[John Reynolds, Canadian Alliance, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast, BC]

Mr. Speaker, listening to all the debate on both points of order only indicates why the motion for today and yesterday is so important for changing the rules of the House.

I would like to say to the government House leader that he is partially correct in his comments. We did discuss it at the House leaders meeting. There was a question put to him: would there be a briefing on this issue? He asked his staff member and said, “I am sure there will be and would you check into that?” The next I heard of it was like every other member, by e-mail at 4:56 p.m. yesterday.

The people who gave this briefing to opposition members, who are treated as second class members of Parliament in the House by certain departments of government, told the members who were there that they only heard about giving this briefing around three-thirty or four o'clock yesterday afternoon.

Therefore it was put together in a hurry. That is the government's privilege to do that. However the fact is the officials did not even know they would be giving the briefing until late in the day. If something is that important, I would have thought the minister's office could phone members' offices and say that it was happening at 8:30 in the morning.

My party happened to have a big dinner for its leader last night and most members were gone probably at the five o'clock time. Other members were in committee meetings. Their staff is gone when they get back to the office. This was a very important briefing. There should have been good notice given so that all members could have been there.

I would think that every member of Parliament, no matter on what side of the House they are, should be treated equally. I went through this when I was the critic for fisheries where we were hustled into a room with the public and the Liberal people were in another room. It is not the way parliamentarians should be treated, and it is a good reason why we have this modernization debate.

I hope you look into this issue, Mr.Speaker, and ensure that it does not happen again. Members deserve proper notice. We are all very busy when we are here. The government knows this. When it has bad news, it puts out press releases at five or six o'clock on a Friday afternoon because nobody will read them until a few days later.

Let us get something happening so that members are treated fairly and equitably and ensure sure they are informed properly.

[David Anderson, Liberal, Minister of the Environment]

Mr. Speaker, as it is I who they are criticizing for the notice, first, as soon as we have material that is available, we try to make it available as soon as possible to members on both sides of the House. They are now complaining about the fact that as soon as we had the material available we made it available to them with briefings to boot; not just giving them the document. We could do it differently, but the complaint would then come that we were holding material back and not making it public to members on either side of the House.

It is one of these situations where basically it is pretty easy to criticize one way or the other. We are damned if we do and damned if we do not. However, if the hon. member who is now leaving the chamber would like to have further briefings on this and further information about it, we would be happy to provide that to her.

There are certain practical reasons for getting material in the hands of members as soon as we can. That is a courtesy. It is not in fact treating them with disrespect. If they do not want it, they do not have to come. I do not know whether she came or not. However I do know government members were briefed in much the same time, in fact, I think about a half hour earlier and they had much the same notice.

Were all of them able to get there? Of course not, but that is understood with all the work we do around the House. As the hon. member for West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast has made clear, we have many other demands on our time. I recognize that and it is possible that people would like to have it at a different time. I will be happy, if the hon. member who has raised the complaint would like it, to give her further briefings.

For those who could get there, it is important for her to understand that we gave the briefing just as soon as we could. We did not hold back on documents, which is exactly the type of criticism that she would level had we in fact adopted the very proposal that she has put before us today.

[Loyola Hearn, Progressive Conservative, St. John's West, NL]

Mr. Speaker, I want to make two very brief points. First, our party also received the notice after hours for a meeting before hours. Unless we are provided with extra resources, there is no way we can monitor those times.

Second, I would like to point out that the government House leader did not indicate either time or place for a briefing. He indicated there would be one. I want to ensure that is clear on the record.

[Pierre Brien, Bloc, Témiscamingue, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I think that there were two questions asked of you at the same time, and I would not like to see the second part neglected.

First of all, contrary to what the leader of the government in the House has said, I would point out that the invitation to the Thursday morning briefing was not issued Tuesday, but around 5 p.m. yesterday. That is, the end of the day yesterday. The timing is at issue.

The other point raised by my colleague for Rosemont—Petite-Patrie is of equal concern. How could there be two different briefings, one for opposition MPs and one for government MPs? This does not strike us as a desirable practice, let alone an acceptable one. I would like to see the Chair address the two points: the notice given and the way the sessions were organized differently for two groups of members of this House.

[The Speaker]

The Chair has heard all the arguments from hon. members on this point: the Minister of the Environment, the government House leader, the hon. member for Calgary—Nose Hill who raised the point, the hon. member for West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast, the hon. member for Témiscamingue, the hon. member for Rosemont—Petite-Patrie and the hon. member for St. John's West. I hope I have named everybody who participated. I have considered the matter with some care.

Matters of press conferences or release of documents, the policy initiatives of the government, are not ones that fall within the jurisdiction of the Speaker of the House unless they happen to be made in the House itself.

This was a meeting that was organized, apparently by the Minister of the Environment from what we have heard, to brief hon. members concerning material that was to be tabled in the House, and in fact I understand was tabled this morning. How the government or the minister organizes these briefings is not something that is done in consultation with the Speaker or has anything to do, technically, with the Speaker. The minister could have five meetings. I know for some they have one for the media and some for MPs. For others they might have a meeting in a caucus meeting setting and tell stories in there, of which the Speaker has absolutely no control and does not even get to go and hear.

It is very difficult for the Chair to intervene in a situation where a minister has chosen to have a press conference, or a briefing or a meeting and release material when the Speaker has nothing to do with the organization of that.

If documents are tabled in the House, this must certainly be done in compliance with the Standing Orders. The Chair can enforce this, but not anything that goes on outside the House.

In this case, even if the hon. members have complaints about how this morning's meetings were run, this is not a situation where the Speaker can intervene on their behalf.

The same thing goes for those who are invited to meetings and for the way people are notified of meetings. Whether there is one meeting, or three or four, makes no difference. In my opinion, it is impossible for me to intervene in this case.

I can only say that I think the hon. House leaders, who are the ones who organize these things generally, who work out the way these will happen and who normally discuss these matters, should continue to have discussions. I urge them to cooperate in these discussions so we avoid this kind of conflict both in the House and in our dealings done outside.

Beyond making that recommendation to the hon. members who serve as House leaders in this House and who do such a wonderful job, I am afraid there is little the Chair can do on this point.

The hon. member for Surrey Central also has a point of order. This seems to be a day for points of order, but we will want to go the debate on modernization as obviously this is a matter of interest.

[Gurmant Grewal, Canadian Alliance, Surrey Central, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I request the unanimous consent of the House, which I believe you will get because we have had discussions with all parties, to revert to presenting reports from committees for the purpose of presenting the first report of the Standing Joint Committee on Scrutiny of Regulations.

[The Speaker]

Does the House give its unanimous consent to revert to presenting reports from committees?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

Committees of the House

[Gurmant Grewal, Canadian Alliance, Surrey Central, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the first report of the Standing Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations.