HRPD Committee Meeting

STANDING COMMITTEE ON HUMAN RESOURCES DEVELOPMENT AND THE STATUS OF PERSONS WITH DISABILITIES

COMITÉ PERMANENT DU DÉVELOPPEMENT DES RESSOURCES HUMAINES ET DE LA CONDITION DES PERSONNES HANDICAPÉES

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Wednesday, October 8, 1997

• 1539

[English]

The Clerk of the Committee: I see a quorum.

[Translation]

We have a quorum.

[English]

Pursuant to Standing Orders 106(1) and 106(2), your first item of business is to elect a chairperson.

[Translation]

In accordance with Standing Orders 106(1) and 106(2), our first item of business is the election of a chairperson. I am ready to entertain motions to that effect.

[English]

I will receive a motion to that effect.

Mrs. Bennett.

Mrs. Carolyn Bennett (St. Paul's—Ontario, Lib.): I nominate Reg Alcock as chair of the committee.

The Clerk: It is moved by Ms Bennett and seconded by Madame Chamberlain that Mr. Alcock take the chair of this committee as chairperson.

Motion agreed to

• 1540

The Clerk: Mr. Alcock, would you please take the chair.

The Chairman (Mr. Reg Alcock (Winnipeg South, Lib.)): I have about a 40-minute acceptance speech that I'd like to....

Mr. Dale Johnston (Wetaskiwin, Ref.): No acceptance speech.

The Chairman: Do you want me to table it, Dale?

The first order of business is the election of two vice-chairs for the committee. I open the floor for motions.

Ms Brenda Chamberlain (Guelph—Wellington, Lib.): I'd like to nominate Bonnie Brown for vice-chair.

Mr. Robert D. Nault (Kenora—Rainy River, Lib.): I second that.

The Chairman: Any further nominations? Okay, well then, shall we—

Mr. Nick Discepola (Vaudreuil—Soulanges, Lib.): Mr. Chair, aren't there two vice-chairs?

The Chairman: Yes, there are. Thank you, Nick.

Seeing no further nominations, we don't even need to vote, do we? We just declare that Bonnie Brown is elected vice-chair.

There is a second vice-chair.

Mrs. Diane Ablonczy (Calgary—Nose Hill, Ref.): I would like to nominate Dale Johnston as second vice-chair.

A voice: I second that motion.

The Chairman: Any other nominations? Seeing no others....

Mr. Robert D. Nault: Do we have to vote for him?

The Chairman: Shall we vote for him? All in favour of Dale Johnston as second vice-chair?

Motion agreed to

The Chairman: We will see how far we can get on some of the routine motions. I know we're all going to be called back to the House shortly.

I'll wait while the clerk circulates the motions. Having been through these in detail, we will give you a chance to have a look at them. They're just establishing some of the operating parameters for the committee.

Mr. Robert D. Nault: Mr. Chairman, we're going to have to get a bigger room if we're going to have witnesses come before us.

The Chairman: I will speak to the question of the room once we get through the routine motions.

Mr. Robert D. Nault: Right.

The Chairman: All having had a chance to read the first motion....

Mr. Jean Dubé (Madawaska—Restigouche, PC): What was the question about a subcommittee? I mentioned it in your office yesterday, as regards the first motion, a subcommittee. It could draw confusion when we start having subcommittees. It should be a steering committee.

The Chairman: So you'd like that first motion to be amended to remove the term “subcommittee” and call it the steering committee.

Mr. Jean Dubé: Yes.

The Chairman: Any objection to that?

Mr. Robert D. Nault: Agreed.

The Chairman: Okay.

Does anybody care to move that first motion?

Mr. Nick Discepola: I have an amendment that it read “the Parliamentary Secretary to Human Resources Development”, since there are other parliamentary secretaries on the committee.

The Chairman: Okay.

Mr. Nick Discepola: I would so move, Mr. Chair.

[Translation]

Mr. Paul Crête (Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup—Témiscouata—Les Basques, BQ): I think it's important to specify “et un représentant de chaque autre parti forment le Sous-comité du programme et de la procédure” to make the French version consistent with the English version.

[English]

Mr. Pierre de Savoye (Portneuf, BQ): You get the point. In English you're saying “from each of the other parties”; in French you're saying “from the other parties”. Then you need to say in French

[Translation]

de chaque autre parti,

[English]

just to be exactly identical, from one side or the other.

The Chairman: Why don't we combine those three changes into one amendment to this motion?

Mr. Discepola, you will move all three, will you?

Mr. Nick Discepola: I do, sir.

The Chairman: Is the clerk clear as to what the three are? We change it from the subcommittee to the steering committee; we make sure that the French text has the plural, “partis”—

[Translation]

Mr. Pierre de Savoye: Yes, “autres partis”.

[English]

The Chairman: Each other party.

Mr. Pierre de Savoye: There's a word missing.

The Chairman: The third one was the Parliamentary Secretary for Human Resource Development being identified as the parliamentary secretary on the steering committee. Is that clear?

I believe it was seconded by Mr. Dubé.

All in favour?

• 1545

Motion agreed to

The Chairman: The next motion is simply that committee members retain the services of one or more research officers from the Library of Parliament. It has been noted that unlike other committees, which may have a single research officer, the work of this committee is broad and all-encompassing, and we will be provided with a team of researchers with a couple of very capable researchers at the table throughout all our deliberations.

Mr. Larry McCormick (Hastings—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, Lib.): I so move.

The Chairman: Thank you.

It's seconded by Mr. Crête. Any discussion?

Motion agreed to

The Chairman: Motion three is that the chair be authorized to hold meetings in order to receive evidence when a quorum is not present provided that five members of the committee be present and provided that one member of the opposition be present. There has been some discussion on this motion. I will just explain to new members that this is only for the hearing of evidence. No votes will be taken when the quorum isn't present, but it allows the committee to function. When people have travelled in to get their evidence on the record, it just allows us to sit and hear evidence.

Can we get a mover for this?

Mr. Nault.

Mr. Dale Johnston: I want to amend this.

The Chairman: Let's get it on the floor first.

Mr. Dubé seconds it.

Larry.

Mr. Larry McCormick: Mr. Chairman, perhaps I'm just guessing at opposition to this motion, but let's go back to HRD in the past, when we had hundreds of witnesses. I know we'll never sit into the morning hours and all evening again, but whether it's here or whatever the circumstances are, I would hate to see a witness come and appear and be turned down because we weren't here. I don't think we're doing this for political reasons or for any intent. I just submit to my honourable colleagues that it would be best to host and to make use of the witnesses when they are here. I just want them to consider that.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. McCormick; although that may be a little presumptive at this point.

Mr. Larry McCormick: We just did it yesterday in Agriculture, Dale.

Mr. Dale Johnston: Mr. Chairman, when witnesses appear before this committee and this committee consists of eighteen people and only five members of the committee are here to hear their information.... I agree with Larry that there should be a delegation here to hear the evidence and that it doesn't affect the voting. I'm just saying I think we could have more than the five members. I think the members should be at least a third of the committee, which would be six. I would like to make that my amendment.

The Chairman: You are moving a subamendment asking that the five be increased by one to six, one-third of the committee.

Mr. Dale Johnston: Yes.

The Chairman: Mr. Nault.

Mr. Robert D. Nault: Mr. Chairman, this isn't an unusual size for a committee. There have been other committees in the past with as many members. It has historically always been five, simply because the smaller amount you can get away with.... Obviously people think four is too little, but if you go higher than that and we end up sitting here and we don't get that magic number....

Remember that these people pay a lot of money...of course the Government of Canada pays money to have these people come in and give presentations and give their evidence. To have them sit here—and in the last Parliament when Human Resources Development sat, it happened only on a couple of occasions that we had to wait for members of the opposition to show up—is very embarrassing for us as parliamentarians, never mind whether it's the government or anybody else.

I think the lower the number the better, not the higher, because in fact you're paying and those people have come a long way and spent a lot of time and effort to be here. It will happen very rarely, I'm sure, with a committee as large as this one. But to suggest that you should have a magic number or make it higher...we would end up having it be more likely that we would have someone sitting there, waiting for someone to show up. It doesn't set a very good tone or precedent.

That would be why I think we would stay with the precedent that has been set over the years and five would be the more appropriate number. I don't see why we would want to change it at this point.

Mr. Jean Dubé: How many people sit on this committee? Eighteen. I recommend that we say half of the committee plus one, which is procedure.

• 1550

The Chairman: Mr. Dubé, we're not talking about the number that establishes a quorum. What we're talking about comes out of the practice of committees where, given that everybody is very busy, it's not uncommon to have delays in starting meetings.

We have witnesses who may have travelled from across the country to present their evidence. In the past we've had a practice where, for the purpose of receiving testimony, and receiving testimony only, we've agreed to start with a smaller number. There are no substantive motions, no votes during this process. It's just for the courtesy of starting the meetings on time and to hear the witnesses.

[Translation]

Mr. Paul Crête: To simplify matters, we can conclude that if each party intends to be present, there will in any case be members representing the four opposition parties in addition to government members who would be well-advised to have a few more members on the committee than us. We have to draw a distinction between this notion and that of a quorum. I have no problem with a five-member committee as this is the minimum number required to function. If each party wishes to participate, it is unlikely that we'll ever have a problem achieving a quorum.

We mustn't forget that we may be called upon to serve on other subcommittees apart from the steering committee. For example, some of us here may serve on a subcommittee on the Labour Code and we may not necessarily be available at all times when other issues come up for consideration. Therefore, I think it is appropriate to go with five members and I think all parties would be advised to always have more than the minimum number of members on hand. Even under exceptional circumstances, the committee would still be capable of functioning.

[English]

Mr. Pierre de Savoye: I know this is not the case with this committee, but I've been on other committees where with this number, five, we were stuck because we did not have a sufficient number of members and we had witnesses.

I recall that at the very end of the last session—and I'm doing this with a little smile—I was with Public Accounts and the Auditor General came. We just didn't have a quorum, although all the opposition members were there.

A voice: That would never happen.

Mr. Pierre de Savoye: I know. This committee is not like that.

Actually, the lower this number is to a certain extent the better it is, because that will ensure that the witnesses will be heard and that all members—government and opposition—will make sure they are here to make those auditions worth while.

Mr. Robert D. Nault: Mr. Chairman, I have a sneaking suspicion that five is there because the opposition insisted on it a number of years ago. Now the opposition is insisting it go up. That's a favour to the government.

You can make it ten if you like. Depending on what we're discussing—it may be controversial—we wouldn't have to sit; we would just not come. That's why it's low. I think this is intended for the opposition, to make sure witnesses are heard.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Nault.

Ms Davies.

Ms Libby Davies (Vancouver East, NDP): Chairperson, do we not have the associate members as well who can be called upon if the members cannot attend?

The Chairman: They could be called upon and substituted in, but—

Ms Libby Davies: So if a member cannot be here, we should be calling upon our associate member to hear the evidence—if we're not voting.

The Chairman: That's certainly an option available to everybody.

[Translation]

Mr. Paul Crête: Any member can serve as an alternate.

[English]

The Chairman: If I may, I think practice has shown, even with much smaller committees, that schedules are such, particularly for the smaller parties, that it becomes difficult at times. Maybe you get here a half hour late. Do we keep a witness waiting for that half hour, or the whole list of witnesses waiting? We might be scheduled fairly tightly.

There's nothing subversive about this particular motion. It's just to hear testimony. The testimony is all on the record so that people who aren't here can get a transcript of it, but it's as a courtesy to witnesses more than anything else.

Yes, Mr. Johnston.

Mr. Dale Johnston: I'm not recommending this to provide advantage to either side. I think we owe it to our witnesses to have a substantial number of people here to hear their presentations. These people have taken considerable time and effort, and sometimes expense, to get here and give their evidence. If we can't supply at least a third of our members of a committee of eighteen, then I think we have a problem.

• 1555

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Johnston.

Should we call the question?

An hon. member: Question. On the amendment?

The Chairman: On the amendment.

The intention of the amendment, Mr. Johnston, is to increase the number from five to six. Is that correct? Okay.

Amendment negatived

Motion agreed to

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Johnston.

The next motion is one that we've seen before at committees. It simply authorizes the payment of travel costs and reasonable expenses, according to the government scale, of the expenses of witnesses coming to appear before the committee and limits the number of witnesses to two per organization.

Is that a fair recap of the intent of it?

Mr. Dale Johnston: I have a question, Mr. Chairman. Are we talking about reasonable rates or government rates?

The Chairman: Decency forbids me to answer that question.

Mr. Robert D. Nault: Mr. Chairman, I don't know if I was sleeping when this one passed every other time I've gone to committees. It's my ninth year now and I can't recall having seen this one.

I always thought that in essence it was up to the committee to present to the Board of Internal Economy the interest of the committee as it relates to witnesses.

There are times and occasions when you might expect only one to come, and there may be times when you want three witnesses to come.

I don't recall seeing that we restricted witnesses of a particular group to two. We always left it to the flexibility of the committee, which is responsible for its own work, to decide how we would govern ourselves as it relates to expenses and would submit that budget. So I'm a little bit surprised that this is here.

Is it something new?

The Chairman: In the three committees I've been involved with, this is the one that we always used.

Mr. Robert D. Nault: I must have been sleeping through that one, I guess.

What happens when you want to go to three? I have sat on committees where we have had a round table of three or four people, experts on the same subject matter, on a particular issue. Does this restrict that?

The Chairman: It hasn't in the past. We did round tables on transport, for example, where we had a person from a different organization, or two people from different organizations, coming to the round table. We didn't often have a round table with one organization.

Mr. Pierre de Savoye: Not by organization; by subject.

The Chairman: I'm open to it. This is what we had in HRD when I was here two years ago.

Mr. Robert D. Nault: Let me give you an example of what could occur in our committee, since we have now been given the task of dealing with the disabled.

You may have people in the same group who are disabled and they have a spokesperson and a person who obviously is doing sign language, and someone else who has another disability, and you might need those folks here as part of it. I'm just curious as to why we're doing this.

[Translation]

Mr. Paul Crête: I understand that organizations may send more than two representatives. As the motion now stands, the committee will only reimburse travelling expenses up to a maximum of two representatives. This doesn't stop an organization from sending three, four or five representatives if it deems it appropriate, but this motion limits the reimbursement of expenses to a maximum of two persons. If a group is represented by only one witness, we will cover that person's expenses. If it sends more than two representatives, pursuant to this motion, we will reimburse the expenses of a maximum of two representatives.

Based on the experiences of the Standing Committee on Human Resources Development and the Status of Disabled Persons in past years, perhaps we should make arrangements to reimburse the expenses of three persons. However, we shouldn't encourage organizations to send too many representatives and then find ourselves obliged to cover the expenses of four, five or six persons. If that were to happen, we might exhaust our budget and be unable to pay in six months' time to have a report printed or some other such thing. That's why the motion reads “up to a maximum of two representatives for any one organization”.

I can live with this motion, but if someone were to suggest that the expenses of three representatives be covered, I would not object.

[English]

Ms Brenda Chamberlain: It says in the motion “at the discretion of the Chair”, so that does leave some room and latitude to move if you needed to.

The Chairman: Right, although it invokes a maximum.

I'm told by the clerk that, on the question of the disabled, if a disabled person has travelled with, say, an aide that they need to care for them, that's always been included in the travelling expenses of the individual.

• 1600

This is not rocket science. If we end up with a situation where we have a group for the purposes of doing a proper hearing and they should bring three or four, then we'll pass a motion in advance of that and do it. This just basically allows us to operate.

Motion agreed to

The Chairman: Now we come to a motion I've discussed with a number of you. It promises to be a bit more difficult. As it's stated here, it represents practice in a number of committees. The witness would come and we would usually allocate half an hour for a witness. The witness would make a statement and we would rotate the questioning around the various parties, at about five minutes each.

Now that we have a total of five parties and a committee that has grown in size, if more members than one per party wish to make a comment, this takes us into the area of 45 minutes or an hour per witness. Anybody who has had experience in this committee must shudder at the thought of an hour per witness, because on contentious issues we are talking about huge witness lists.

The motion reflects the activities in the past. There has been some discussion about trying some more flexible ways of dealing with questioning, to try to recognize the fact of the greater diversity on the committee, but to try to hold to a half-hour or 40-minute timeframe.

Mr. Robert D. Nault: Mr. Chairman, any way you want to slice it, the opposition will get the lion's share of the questioning, whether we stay at ten minutes or we go to five. It's a matter of how many witnesses we would like to hear in a particular day or week or on a subject matter. It will be incumbent on the opposition to reflect on the fact that if we leave it the way it is now they will not have much of a witness list when we start preparing one, because we will just not have enough time to sit for months and months on end.

I would propose that we go to five minutes in the opening round, which still gives the opposition plenty of opportunity to voice their opinion, and then leave it at the discretion of the chair to pinpoint those who have an interest in carrying on to go ahead; leave it at that point for the early going and see whether in fact the opposition are pleased with the way the chair governs the meetings. If they are not, we can revisit it to see whether we have to be a little more strict about the process. But if we try to go five minutes and then say that the next round is five, we still end up with the problem of sitting for about an hour per witness. Of course that still gives the government ten whole minutes for the whole hour, which doesn't seem quite fair in the scheme of things, when you think the majority is over on this side. I'd like to see the chair have the discretion and see whether the opposition would look at that favourably, to give it a try, at least, to see whether we can work together in some form of harmony.

Ms Bonnie Brown (Oakville, Lib.): Mr. Chairman, in committees it has been my experience with questioners of either side that they share something. It doesn't matter which side of the table they are on. It seems to me that as politicians we all like to talk too much. Very often the five minutes we're allocated go to three and a half minutes for some preamble and about thirty seconds for the question; the preamble being a speech, the person telling us how they feel about everything, things we're not even interested in. I'm saying it happens on both sides. They waste a lot of time giving speeches. We get a quick question, and then they hope the witness, who is the one we're really supposed to be hearing from, answers with a plain yes or no, or one sentence.

I think we could easily restrict our time. We want to hear from these people from across the country. We could easily restrict our time to three minutes if we made a commitment to each other to get the question out and not to see it as a chance to make a speech.

Ms Libby Davies: Having not been on the committee before, I'm at a disadvantage to know how it actually worked previously. Was it ten minutes that was given to questions, or some other amount?

The Chairman: It differed from time to time, but it was somewhere between five and ten minutes for a first round of questions.

One of the things that has been discussed—and you and I are the only ones who haven't had this conversation—was that we could try something more like what we've done right now, where we would rotate the opening question. On the first witness it might be Reform, the Bloc, the Conservatives and the New Democrats, or vice-versa, and then the government, but having a person, as Bonnie has suggested, propose as tight a question as we can. Then we do like the British House of Commons: we pick up on sups on that question to allow everybody to get in where they're interested, and then move to the next question and to the next group to propose the next.... We keep doing that as long as we have time, to allow people from all the parties to jump in on the salient points.

• 1605

One of the experiences was that group 1 would ask a question because it was sort of a defining question in that witness's presentation. Group 2 would ask the same question with just a slightly different spin, and it became a little bit tedious.

One suggestion is that we'll try to be a little bit more flexible for the first month or so to see how it goes. If it doesn't, then we can come back into a more formal structure of a five-minute presentation or a ten-minute presentation and five minutes per group, and that's it.

Does that make any sense at all?

Albina, I think you have a time constraint. I think it's okay. You can go.

Mr. Robert D. Nault: Mr. Chairman, I didn't catch where you were coming from and I'm trying to get a sense of what you meant.

Are we still all on the same wavelength that the witnesses get ten minutes to start?

The Chairman: Right.

Mr. Robert D. Nault: We're not debating that? The witnesses get ten minutes, and from then you're suggesting it's just a matter of rotating all the different parties. That was what you were talking about there, versus.... I was saying the parties get their five minutes.

The Chairman: Right.

Mr. Robert D. Nault: Then you rotate after that. That was the presentation I made: that everybody gets five minutes based on their party ranking. From there, then you as the chair are flexible enough to go to that kind of process you had with the time that's left.

The Chairman: If we go 10 minutes in the front and five 5 minutes, we're now at 35 minutes, assuming no overages. To give us a little bit of comfort, we'd want another five minutes. People have to get up, leave the chair, come back and sit in the chair—all that kind of stuff. It's going to mean 45-minute or hour blocks as opposed to half-hour blocks.

Mrs. Diane Ablonczy: Mr. Chairman, if you were prepared to take on the challenges that the Speaker of the House has taken on, Bonnie's suggestion is an excellent one. I think sometimes we do like to hear ourselves talk more than necessary. If we were to keep our questions to 45 seconds, or even a minute, which should be ample, and if you were to keep some of the witnesses a little bit more focused—maybe it was because amid all that verbiage they weren't sure what we really wanted to hear, but maybe they too were long-winded—then if someone were to ask a question that one of us found particularly pertinent but wanted an expansion or clarification on, I think we could be flexible enough to let another member jump in.

Probably we should have the rotation with the proviso that we shouldn't feel it incumbent upon us to ask a question just because it happens to be our rotation. We could say, “Mr. Chairman,”—

The Chairman: That's the other thing.

Mrs. Diane Ablonczy:—“I believe all the points that are of particular interest to me have been covered”. So we wouldn't feel we have to take up air time just because it's our turn. We may have something that's of burning interest to a particular party, but if there isn't we could do it more as a group.

[Translation]

Mr. Pierre de Savoye: Your clerk is quite capable of noting the order in which people have requested to speak. You should trust her.

There are indeed more of us here around the table and more parties who expect to have their turn. This will not be easy to coordinate, but I think the motion to allocate five minutes to each party during the first round of questions is reasonable. It would be hard to cut this time. Earlier, someone mentioned three minutes, but three minutes, or 180 seconds, goes by very quickly. I think that five minutes is a more reasonable amount of time.

The rotation you're suggesting also seems reasonable to me. The hard thing, Mr. Chairman, will be restricting the witnesses to ten minutes. As a rule, they arrive with a brief and spend 20 minutes reading it.

• 1610

We'll have to be creative and find a way to read the briefs beforehand and get the witnesses to provide an executive summary. In my view, the problem will be more with the witnesses than with the members, because it is in our interest to see that everything runs smoothly here.

[English]

Mr. Nick Discepola: Maybe it's the mathematician in me, Mr. Chairman, but if you're trying to get it down to 30 minutes you might want to consider 4 minutes for each party and 10 minutes for the witness. That gives you your 30 minutes, and if there's extra time you might want to consider rotating. It's a compromise between the 3 and the 5, but it gets us down to the 30 minutes we're looking for.

Mr. Robert D. Nault: Just to refresh the old members' memories, and for the new members who are here, we normally gave an hour to the witnesses that we thought were of national significance.

The Chairman: That's right.

Mr. Robert D. Nault: Then we usually gave the witnesses that were not as significant—we had to make those tough decisions so we would get a lot of witnesses in—half an hour.

So if we're dealing with the whole issue of an hour for the witnesses who we really want to spend some time with, if we stick to 35 minutes it still gives us a good 25 minutes for the rotation portion that the chair has some flexibility in. I don't see why not 10 and 5, and then if we do have the half hour we can go to 10 and 4 as Nick is suggesting and I think we can get the job done.

Let's just get on with the motion as it states, with the flexibility of the chair, and let's test it, see how we work together. We'll see if we can work it out.

Mr. Dale Johnston: Actually Bob made some of my points.

The other thing I want to point out, though, is that a few minutes ago we were talking about how hard it is to get attendance at the committee and now we're saying that the committee is going to be loaded down with all these people who want to speak. It's going to be either one way or the other.

Mr. Robert D. Nault: Well, I'm the whip, so you know they'll all be here, Dale. Don't worry.

[Translation]

Mr. Paul Crête: Why not try this format for one month to see how it works? If in fact there are problems, we can reconsider our position.

[English]

Mr. Robert D. Nault: Yes, right on.

The Chairman: So, 10 and 5, and obviously we'll go to an hour on some, but that's a 35-minute block per witness then.

Mr. Robert D. Nault: We're just agreeing informally that if it's an hour witness then it's 10 and 5 and if it's half an hour then it's 10 and 4. We'll try it, see how it all goes, and work our way through and give you some flexibility.

Motion agreed to

[Translation]

Mr. Pierre de Savoye: The French version of the motion is atrocious. It should read “que les témoins disposent de dix minutes”, not “que les témoins soient accordés”. It's a matter of showing some respect for my language. Thank you.

[English]

The Chairman: So we will amend the French version to reflect that.

A voice: Yes.

The Chairman: The next one is that should it be required that we work through lunch, the chair, in consultation with the clerk, will make necessary arrangements to provide working lunches.

This does not mean that I cook them; it just means that I order them.

Motion agreed to

The Chairman: The next motion is relative to the distribution of documents. It's fairly straightforward. Are there any questions?

Mr. Robert D. Nault: Just to re-emphasize as we have in the past, we expect and we hope with the staff we have that we will be able to get the translations in advance, that we won't end up going down the road and then all of a sudden if it's all in French or all in English it creates a very difficult situation for members on both sides. We would hope that we would attempt to make sure, even though it allows getting it in just the one language at the time when the witness is giving a presentation, that, if we could get the witnesses to give us their presentation in advance, as often as we possibly could we would get the translation before they appear.

It happens both ways quite regularly. If we have Quebec witnesses and they come just in French and we get it in front of us, for some people who cannot speak French it's pretty tough sledding, and vice versa for the French members when you end up with just English text through and through. It's not very well accepted.

I know what the motion says, but we've always been very vigilant in trying to make sure that we get them in advance if we possibly can.

The Chairman: So are you accepting the motion as is or are you offering an amendment?

Mr. Robert D. Nault: I am accepting the motion as it is. I'm just making a comment.

Motion agreed to

• 1615

The Chairman: There are just a couple of other matters of business.

Mr. Dubé.

Mr. Jean Dubé: Mr. Chairman, when do you think we can get our hands on the briefing book on HRDC for the committee? Do we have a briefing book here?

The Chairman: The clerk informs me that there are two paragraphs remaining to be translated. It'll be in your offices tomorrow.

Mr. Jean Dubé: Thank you very much.

The Chairman: On that question, I have met with our very able researchers and asked that they also think through a process for the next couple of meetings of getting us up to speed on the operations of the department.

We're going to have the Treasury Board group in to walk through the reforms to the estimates process. If there are particular areas that you are interested in, you might make that known to our researchers. We'll try to put on a process that allows people to get a good overview of the department, particularly the areas that may be of legislative interest in this session, just to get us eased into the work of grappling with this huge monster.

I have requested that our permanent meeting room be 237-C, if possible. That's the large meeting room in Centre Block, primarily because of the size of the committee. Even in this room, which is one of the larger committee rooms, we're a little constricted. It's more because we are now a committee on human resources development and the status of disabled. We want to be stable in one room so that we're not always moving around and forcing the disabled community to chase us all over the complex. Second, it's a large room with a marble floor, and it's easier for people in wheelchairs to move in and out. It's a much more accessible building.

I don't think it will take a motion—we have made the request—although I wonder if it would make sense to have a motion to that effect. It is moved and seconded.

Motion agreed to

The Chairman: Thank you.

Mrs. Ablonczy.

Mrs. Diane Ablonczy: Mr. Chairman, I did have a motion to bring forward with respect to information to the committee about order in council appointments. I understand we may deal with this now or later. Whichever is your choice is fine with me.

The Chairman: I can read it for information purposes. Let me read it first.

The motion is that whenever an order in council for appointment or a certificate of nomination for appointment is referred to this committee, the clerk shall obtain and circulate to each member of the committee a copy of the resume of each appointee or nominee.

We already get the notice of the appointment, but we don't necessarily get resumes.

Mrs. Diane Ablonczy: I just felt it would be helpful, Mr. Chairman, when we are answering questions or knowing who is available on these appointments, if we had a little bit of background information. I understand other committees have adopted such a motion.

The Chairman: Mr. Nault.

Mr. Robert D. Nault: Mr. Chairman, before we get into this in a substantive way...this is a very big department. If the member is talking about all the referees and people who are appointed to the Employment Insurance Commission...there are thousands and thousands of appointments. If she's asking for resumes for those, I think we would probably be awash in paper very quickly.

I'd like to have a better understanding of just what she's referring to before we get into the substance of the motion. If the member is referring to high-profile appointments, I don't think we'll have too much difficulty with that. If she's going to go right to the nuts and bolts of every single person who is appointed in every individual constituency as it relates to referees and umpires, that's a big list. This is a very huge department.

I'd like to get a better understanding of what the party and Diane are talking about.

Mrs. Diane Ablonczy: I take the member's point. Obviously that wasn't what I was referring to. It's a good point that there are thousands of these. It would be the high-profile appointments that we might be asked about, or people we might need to deal with as witnesses, or for information. I think it would be helpful.

The Chairman: Would it be appropriate then to table this to give us time to get that information? Perhaps, Bob, you could get that information for members of the committee. Then we could proceed with this motion at the next meeting.

Mrs. Diane Ablonczy: That would be fine with me, Mr. Chairman.

The Chairman: Everybody is in agreement with that?

Is there any other business?

[Translation]

Mr. Paul Crête: For when is our next meeting scheduled?

[English]

When is the next meeting?

• 1620

The Chairman: The next meeting will be at the call of the chair. You can anticipate a meeting on the Tuesday we come back. I will endeavour to get a notice to you as quickly as I possibly can. There is some discussion going on about time.

[Translation]

Mr. Paul Crête: You mentioned to me that the committee would meet from 9 a.m. to 12 noon and we haven't discussed this point today.

[English]

The Chairman: We have had a discussion about changing the timing of the committee meeting from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays to fix those times. It does conflict with some other committee meeting times, so we have to clarify that with the House leadership before we proceed with it.

Do I have a motion that the committee adjourn?

Mr. Dale Johnston: No, we like this too much.

The Chairman: It's a lot of fun.

The meeting is adjourned.