Agriculture committee  Mr. Chair, I'd like to make it clear that in no way am I questioning the ethics of the producers or the processors, nor their responsibility. I know they take that responsibility very seriously, and of course it does make good business sense that they do so. In fact, I'd like

Subcommittee on Neurological Disease committee   for coming. I'm going to suspend for one minute so that we can clear the room and go into our committee business, or allow you to move back. Thank you.

Government Operations committee   to get a clear understanding of one thing. You went to a fundraiser attended by Mr. Paradis. Did the idea that it was important to be there to discuss the problems that you had experienced with regard to the contract come from you, or did someone tell you to go so that you would have

Agriculture committee  Mr. Chair, I just want to make clear that it was Mr. Richards who proposed the amendment. I'm looking at the original motion, and I see where your amendment would come in. I have here that with your amendment, everything after “and amend” in the initial motion would be gone

Agriculture committee  It's such a complicated motion. You were right, Chair, that either you study it or you don't study it. It's clear. The way it's amended, whoever studies it, the committee or the government, it's another study; it takes time. Then there will be recommendations, and in a year

Agriculture committee  I think “take action” is pretty clear.

Agriculture committee  Just to respond to that, all I've done is to take the suggestion you made, Frank, that we have the government study, and then at the end I've added “and take the necessary action”. So I've made very clear in there that the government will take a look at what needs to be done

Agriculture committee  Sure. I already read the amendment asking for a study. Is everybody clear on it? Does anybody want me to read it again?

Agriculture committee  Mr. Richards, so I'm clear, Mr. Valeriote doesn't have an amendment--

Agriculture committee   to the necessary legislation. It's clear, I support the motion, but if you wanted to add the words, “that the government consult all stakeholders and conduct a study and amend the necessary legislation”, I would be content with that. Failing that, I have no intent of our doing a study. We've

Government Operations committee   senior public servants do? I don't see anywhere, in any law, where those lines are very clear. It's a wide open situation in terms of being involved and then denying that the involvement was improper or that this amounts to something the minister is responsible for if the staff did

Agriculture committee   that actually undermines the credibility of the motion. If you're not going to look into the facts, then the motion is a half-baked motion. So, again, Mr. Chair, and I want to be very clear on this, we support the intent of the motion; it's the wording of the motion. To be fair

Agriculture committee   content to have that amendment, but I think that having the review serves two purposes: one, it will allow us to make recommendations to the minister; and two, it sends a clear message to the railway industry that they're in our sights, they're on our radar, and that unfair treatment

Agriculture committee   with CN and CP, but on these issues, we can't just take them and say okay.... Otherwise, we might as well vote on all of this stuff, and we can clear our whole schedule up. If we already know all the answers to everything, we don't need to listen to the farmers' point of view

Government Operations committee  Well, that's absolutely consistent with what we've heard from the department. The assistant deputy minister has made it absolutely clear that any decision as it relates to the contracting of the work on West Block was undertaken within the department and was undertaken at his