SMEM Committee Meeting

SUB-COMMITTEE ON PRIVATE MEMBERS' BUSINESS OF THE STANDING COMMITTEE ON PROCEDURE AND HOUSE AFFAIRS

SOUS-COMITÉ DES AFFAIRES ÉMANANT DES DÉPUTÉS DU COMITÉ PERMANENT DE LA PROCÉDURE ET DES AFFAIRES DE LA CHAMBRE

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Wednesday, February 23, 2000

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[English]

The Chair (Mr. Larry McCormick (Hastings—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, Lib.): I'd like to call this meeting to order. This is a very historic opportunity we have on this Bill S-14. I will call on James to perhaps brief us on a touch of history and on where it's coming from.

Or do I defer to Mr. Johnston on that because Mr. Johnston is sponsoring it?

Dale, would you like to brief us?

Mr. Dale Johnston (Wetaskiwin, Ref.): Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

I was handed this bill by Senator Nick Taylor, who had taken it from Senator Walter Twinn. This bill has been in the works since 1995 and probably would have cleared the House of Commons by now had it not been for the untimely death of Senator Twinn.

The main thrust of the bill is to modify the long title of the French version. It gives the Board of Elders of the Moravian Church a name and moves certain restrictions on the board's investment powers. At the moment, the investment restriction on the board is $500,000. That's a modification from some time ago, when it was $50,000. The recommendation is that it now be lifted entirely, that it have no restrictions whatsoever.

I guess what I'm asking of the committee is to waive the necessity of having to re-advertise this. Because of certain events that have taken place, not the least of which was the death of Walter Twinn, and a certain lack of communication, not on the part of the Moravian Church in any way, this bill has been held up. Of course the advertising that was required of this bill has been done, and because of the cost to this non-profit society—they have to raise all their funds the hard way—we would ask that the need to re-advertise be waived.

I think it's a fairly significant, Mr. Chairman, that that requirement was waived in order for this bill to pass the Senate. What we're asking for here is a similar waiver.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Johnston.

This is a little different and I'm your new chair, so if I may, I'm going to ask how we should proceed.

Are there any questions from around the table?

Miss Deborah Grey (Edmonton North, Ref.): Dale, you said that they are allowed to have real estate property of $500,000 now, right?

Mr. Dale Johnston: That's correct.

Miss Deborah Grey: This is not going to up that ceiling but remove that ceiling completely, so that they can become huge property owners if the folks put enough in the collection plates. They could just invest to any amount...?

Mr. Dale Johnston: That's the request. At the moment, the Moravian Church in Canada does have around 4,000 members. As for the idea behind this, I think the rationale would be that rather than having to come back to Parliament at various intervals and have that number adjusted, the idea is just to simply remove it altogether.

Miss Deborah Grey: Thanks.

Then maybe I could ask this of Jamie, just because he knows a lot about this. If there were another church in the country, for instance, that had charitable status, etc., and they were were having problems with Revenue Canada or CCRA, would they be able to come here, go through the same process, and get a waiver?

Mr. James Robertson (Committee Researcher): It would depend on whether the church was federally incorporated by an act of Parliament.

Miss Deborah Grey: Okay.

Mr. James Robertson: I think the churches that were established back in the 19th century tended to incorporate by act of Parliament because back then it was quite an accepted way to do it.

Nowadays, because of the delays encountered by the Moravian Church—these problems that are encountered—most churches avoid doing it that way, I think. They tend to incorporate under general non-profit or not-for-profit legislation, in which case they would comply with whatever requirements are in place at the federal or provincial levels for changing their letters patent.

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If another church were federally incorporated by an act of Parliament, depending on what their statute or act currently provides, they could apply to Parliament to remove that or to increase that, but the fact that Parliament adopts this act does not mean that Parliament must adopt a similar amendment from any other church. This is not a precedent that would be binding on Parliament in the future.

Miss Deborah Grey: Or the reverse of that...because I have a church that I've been working with and they've been having all kinds of problems with investment properties. They haven't been impressed with their treatment from Revenue Canada or the new CCRA. They say it has been a nightmare, in fact.

Mr. James Robertson: Unfortunately, I don't think this amendment would protect this church from problems with Revenue Canada if they were to encounter them. All this does is to remove the legal impediment to the church owning more than $500,000.

Miss Deborah Grey: Okay.

Mr. Dale Johnston: If I can just very briefly speak to this, in some ways this is like a rezoning application, in that it has to be advertised. These people have advertised in the Canada Gazette, the Alberta Gazette, and, in this case, The Edmonton Journal, on all the required occasions.

The similarity with the rezoning is that if anyone were to object to this advertising, that would complicate this. I think it's pretty significant that when it was advertised the last time there were no people who spoke in opposition to it. There was no opposition.

This advertising was all done originally in about 1993, I believe it was, so what we're asking is the waiver of the necessity to advertise again.

The Chair: I believe Joe has a question.

Mr. Joe Jordan (Leeds—Grenville, Lib.): I'm just wondering if—and this is just for my own curiosity, because I fully support the waiver—the original amounts were just arbitrary figures that they would have put into their corporation documents.

Mr. Dale Johnston: I'm not an authority on that, but I think they were arbitrary amounts, because the first amount placed was $50,000, and the next amount, when it was amended in the 1950s, in 1952, as a matter of fact, went to $500,000. That sounds to me like it's just an arbitrary amount.

It's a bit similar to the restrictions that used to be put on the Hutterite landowners, in that their land had to adjoin: they couldn't skip over two or three properties and buy another piece of land. If they were to buy a piece of land, it had to adjoin.

Mr. Joe Jordan: Do we need a vote? Is that what we're looking for—a motion?

The Chair: Do we have unanimous support? We need the motion to adopt the report.

Mr. Joe Jordan: So moved.

(Motion agreed to)

The Chair: You also have in front of you a draft memo to the members of Parliament concerning the next draw. Perhaps we should—

Mr. Dale Johnston: Mr. Chairman—

The Chair: Sorry, Mr. Johnston.

Mr. Dale Johnston: —just for clarification, I believe there were actually three motions. Have we dealt with all three of those motions?

My understanding is that there were three motions here. Did Mr. Chairman's motion deal with all three?

Mr. James Robertson: The motion was to adopt the draft report, so all three of them are included.

Mr. Dale Johnston: Thank you.

The Chair: That's fine to clarify that, because clarity seems to be the word.

On this other consideration, the next item of business, number 2, as I say, perhaps I or we should have done this a little earlier, because there's such a huge backlog of private members' bills. I don't know whether you've had an opportunity to look over this, but we thought we would provide information—I would defer to the clerk—just so people would realize why there's no draw happening at the moment and that it may take a little time.

Miss Deborah Grey: We were asked that in caucus this morning.

The Clerk of the Committee: I get many phone calls about it also.

By the way, the vote—the bells we hear—is to proceed to Orders of the Day.

The Chair: Every day—

Mr. Joe Jordan: Is it a half-hour bell?

The Clerk: Yes.

The Chair: Yes, it is whipped.

Mr. James Robertson: The only change we would make on this besides the fact that it would go out under the subcommittee letterhead rather than the Library of Parliament letterhead is that we might delete the last sentence of the first paragraph. We had originally thought that the next draw would be in early April, but Bibiane's calculations indicate that it may now take place at the end of March.

The problem with giving a specific date is that if we say it too early, people get concerned if we are delayed, and if we say it too late, people are taken by surprise. We won't put it in the memo, but it should be at the end of March or in early April—in case any of your colleagues ask you.

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The Chair: If I may, this is sort of related to this item, Deborah: one of your colleagues, one of our colleagues, and many on our side didn't understand this 100 signatures, which is being looked at as proposed changes now and so on. When I heard about this, I went over to Maurice and said, you know.... And he can take it either way he wants—any member can—as to whether they should deposit sooner or later or whatever, so I've tried to just inform them when they were curious.

Joe.

Mr. Joe Jordan: I've been giving this a lot of thought. The problem that I think we caused for ourselves is that with the best intentions we changed the rules for private members' business—and I'm a big supporter of private members' business—but unless we can somehow get more hours dedicated to it.... Because when we prorogued, generally—rightly, wrongly, whatever—we would have wiped the slate clean and started again, and then you say that's the luck of the draw, blah, blah, blah. But when we carried over those 8 or 10 and then got another 15, we put ourselves in a position whereby it's not really fair to the members to get their hopes up or to raise their expectations.

I think the message, Larry, that we need to give back to the procedure and House affairs committee is that in light of the changes.... I mean, we made a little change in the middle and now we're feeling the ripple effects of that on either end.

We did kind of go through a procedure where we heard witnesses on private members' business. I think the solution is to somehow get more hours dedicated to it in order to get the bills through more quickly, because without that we're backed up over Chicago. People ask me, and I say that if we draw a bill in March we'll be lucky to hear it in the fall. That's realistically where we're at now.

The Chair: Michelle.

Mrs. Michelle Dockrill (Bras d'Or—Cape Breton, NDP): I agree with Joe. I think the position we've put ourselves in is that we'll forever play catch-up, knowing full well that we're not going to be able to catch up.

Miss Deborah Grey: And it seems to me that prorogue doesn't really mean what prorogue used to mean. That has been a little catch-all for a few years now too; it doesn't mean anything any more.

The Chair: I'll ask James to explain how the committee of the whole is looking at this.

Mr. James Robertson: There are two things. First of all, I think the changes that were brought in a few years ago were intended, although perhaps it wasn't actually said that they would be done and see how they work.... Perhaps now is the time to review whether they're working or whether they've created unanticipated implications.

The other thing is that the procedure and House affairs committee will be undertaking a review of procedure over the next few months, including the Standing Orders. This subcommittee may wish to make some recommendations regarding private members' business.

There are other things. One of the issues that I think is a problem is that some members, for reasons of their own, keep asking for exchanges. By asking for an exchange, their item never comes up for debate but it also continues to take up a spot rather than allowing another one to be drawn. Now, they may be doing that for extraneous reasons, but unfortunately it has implications for all of the other members.

Mr. Joe Jordan: But even as an interim measure, if the House just could devote some extra hours to clear the backlog.... It's not fair to somebody who has gone through this, has had their bill drawn, has come before us, and has made the point. We've said it's votable and then it just sits there.

Miss Deborah Grey: Even if you did that for just one semester....

Mr. Joe Jordan: Yes, until they come up with a longer-term solution.

Mr. James Robertson: The time between when the bill is declared votable and when it comes to a vote is far too long. It's not so bad at the beginning of a session because you know it's going to come up eventually, but if it happens near the end of the session, chances are you won't even get to a vote.

Mr. Joe Jordan: Yes.

Miss Deborah Grey: Also, we could maybe do something like, “You can exchange three times, and after that, sorry.”

An hon. member: Yes.

The Chair: Members of the subcommittee might have some thoughts. Perhaps when we meet again we could come up some recommendations, along with what our researchers might—

Mr. James Robertson: We'll put together some ideas that have been raised in the past and some other suggestions. We'll have that for the next meeting, which will probably be after the next draw. We can then decide if the subcommittee wants to pursue this further.

Mr. Joe Jordan: We're moving in a good direction. I think we've dramatically improved the criteria in terms of the leeway that we'll allow, and we're getting some good bills. There are some very good bills out there, and there are good debates on them. I'd hate to.... If we don't change things, for the ones we draw in March some of them probably will never see the light of day, because it will be more than a year before their position is up. I don't think it's fair to people, to put them through that.

Miss Deborah Grey: Yes. It's just a waste.

The Chair: As someone said here, we can make that recommendation, at least for the time being for this session.

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Mr. Joe Jordan: We're looking for a little short-term help.

[Translation]

The Chair: Good day, Mr. Laurin.

Mr. René Laurin (Joliette, BQ): Good afternoon.

[English]

The Chair: We did have a quorum. I spoke to the regular member from your party today, who notified us that he would not be here. It's a very historic housekeeping duty that we did today. We passed this on to the procedure and House affairs committee, so actually, I think our meeting is finished.

[Translation]

Mr. René Laurin: Mr. Chairman, I'm here to support the committee in this endeavour. I would be very happy to have you add my name to the list of members who support the action undertaken by way of Bill S-14. If possible, I would like the record to indicate that the Bloc Qubécois representative supports this initiative.

The Chair: Fine.

[English]

That is on record, and you are here.

I'm the new chair here, but may I ask whether you—we can put it on the record, I believe, whether it's official or not—support approving to adopt this amendment?

[Translation]

Mr. René Laurin: What amendment was that?

[English]

What was the amendment?

The Chair: James, would you like to just...?

This gentleman here certainly knows it better than I do.

Mr. René Laurin: Yes.

[Translation]

Yes.

[English]

The Chair: Okay.

Is there any other business at this moment?

The meeting's adjourned.