:
Are there any other motions?
[Translation]
Is it the pleasure of the committee to adopt the motion?
Some hon. members: Agreed.
(Motion agreed to)
The Clerk: I declare Mr. Rajotte duly elected chair of the committee.
[English]
Before inviting Mr. Rajotte to take the chair, if the committee wishes we will now proceed to the election of the vice-chairs.
[Translation]
Pursuant to Standing Order 106(2), the first vice-chair must be a member of the official opposition.
[English]
I am now prepared to receive motions for the first vice-chair.
Mr. Saxton.
:
First of all, I want to thank Ms. Nash for nominating me, and for her kind words. I want to thank all of you for electing me again as chair of this committee, a role and responsibility I treasure. I enjoyed it very much in the last session and look forward to it in this session as well.
[Translation]
I want to congratulate the vice-chairs, Ms. Nash and Mr. Brison.
[English]
They worked very well in the last committee as the two vice-chairs. I look forward to that again.
We should also extend a welcome back to those members who were on the committee last session and who are here again. I know some of them are in the House or have other duties.
We have a couple of substitutes here today. Welcome to our committee.
We have two permanent members who are new, Mr. Saxton and Mr. Keddy. Welcome to you.
We've had a very productive working relationship on this committee. I look forward to that again.
Welcome. I'm sure you all had a good summer and enjoyed the prorogation equally on all sides, and—
Mr. Scott Brison: It gave us more time to campaign in Nova Scotia.
The Chair: Okay. We won't get into that and the party scene.
I do want to first invite the analysts to take their seats. We will welcome the analysts to the table.
Perhaps, especially for the new members, we could have the analysts introduce themselves to the committee. I know the returning members know them very well, but perhaps we could ask them to introduce themselves to the committee.
Colleagues, we have a very busy fall agenda, so I am proposing that we get right into the planning and do this as an organization meeting. We have some topics. I'm going to go through the orders that were dealt with in the House. We will deal with routine motions, and then I'm proposing that we discuss future business.
You should all have the documents in front of you, as well as the motions and the proposed calendar.
I will just go right into the orders from the House. Does everyone have these documents?
An hon. member: No.
The Chair: Let's allow them to be distributed then.
You should have routine motions and you should have a proposed calendar.
With respect to orders from the House, first of all, on October 21, the House adopted a motion requesting that the committee table a report on income inequality no later than December 11, 2013. This is the issue we were dealing with in the last session. This enables the committee to have more time. So we will have to table that report on December 11.
Second, the House has adopted a motion authorizing the committee to table its pre-budget consultation report no later than December 11, 2013, instead of November 29. Again, this will give the committee more time to deal with this issue.
Third, the House has adopted a motion re-establishing all evidence received by the committee in relation to these studies, income inequality and pre-budget consultations, from the 41-1 session in the 41-2 session. This means that we can use the material from that session in preparing our reports in this session.
Fourth, the committee will therefore not have to vote on motions to re-establish documentation received for these studies. That was done in the House, and it's helpful for this committee.
We will now move to routine motions, questioning of witnesses and other motions. Go to the routine motions of the working document for finance committee members. You have in front of you the first ones that were adopted in the last session. We have motions on the service of analysts from the Library of Parliament, the subcommittee on agenda and procedure, reduced quorum, and distribution of documents.
Ms. Nash.
:
We can deal with them in groups. We'll deal with it right to the questioning of witnesses. My understanding is those are exactly the same as the last session.
Do we want to adopt all of those until the questioning of witnesses?
Could I have someone move that? Mr. Hoback.
(Motion agreed to [See Minutes of Proceedings])
The Chair: We have other motions.
If you turn to page 3, we have PBO and private members' bills. This is the costing of private members' bills. We have the Parliamentary Budget Office and economic and fiscal outlook. We have the annual update on tax change recommendations by Finance Canada. I think all members wanted that one last time. There's the tabling of motions outside the normal finance committee schedule. This was in the last session as well, to ensure that because we do have extra time, the committee adds that the chair not receive any motions outside of regular finance committee time.
Those were all in the last session as well. Could I get someone to move those motions? Mr. Van Kesteren.
(Motions agreed to [See Minutes of Proceedings])
The Chair: We have a new motion. We put all of our briefs on the finance committee website. I think we were the first parliamentary committee in Canada to do so. We put all briefs on our website, being the open and transparent committee that we are. The motion is that briefs received by the committee and related to its studies be published on the finance committee website.
Could I have a mover?
Do you have a question on that, Mr. Brison?
:
Does someone want to move that motion? Mr. Aspin will.
(Motion agreed to [See Minutes of Proceedings])
The Chair: The next one deals with pre-budget consultations hearings. This is a new draft motion. It's shorter than the last one. As you will recall, the last one asked that briefs be prepared a certain number of days before witnesses had to appear.
My recommendation is that we adopt the shorter one. Because of a shortened time period, I don't know if it's fair to ask witnesses who are going to present to the committee to do so. Many of them obviously have submitted briefs online. My understanding is those briefs will be online today. The briefs we received in the summer will be on the finance committee website today. I wanted to shorten this because of the timelines. If someone did not do a brief and members of the committee wanted to invite someone who did not do one, it would be too tight of a timeline.
It's the exact same subject areas in this motion as in last session's motion. Are there any questions? It is moved by Ms. Nash.
(Motion agreed to [See Minutes of Proceedings])
The Chair: Thank you.
I've dealt with routine motions, questioning of witnesses, and other motions.
Are there any other motions I need to deal with?
Mr. Saxton.
:
Thanks very much, Chair, and congratulations, by the way, on your unanimous re-election. It was a tough race, but you made it.
I'm not on this committee, but it obviously affects other committees. I don't understand. This is obviously a fairly fundamental change to the way things are done.
I understand the rationale, but I'm just wondering, Andrew, why it would not be possible, in the spirit of cooperation, to leave this until next meeting so that the folks in my party could have a chance to coordinate a discussion on this approach, because it affects not only this committee but other committees. In the relative scheme of things, we're here for a long time. One more day probably wouldn't make much difference.
My question is whether it would be possible just to say that we can consider this. We were kind of caught off guard here. I didn't know of this, and I'm sure nobody here knew of this motion before. Would it not be possible to say that we'll just defer it, give it some thought, and bring it back at the next sitting of this committee? To me, that would demonstrate that at least there is this idea that we can cooperate in the name of getting some good business done, and not start off with the approach that this is thrown at us and now we have to make this quick decision. It just doesn't make that much sense to me.
As a substitute here on this committee, I want to make that comment on the record.
Thank you.
:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
As a newcomer to this committee I'm trying to be fair in my assessment of all the motions, but I think the motion addresses a long-standing inequality, quite frankly, that has been in existence.
All of us who belong to bona fide political parties with 20 members in the House are able to have a chair on a committee, to have our voices heard on a committee, and to be involved in debate on all subjects. Since I've been here, which is now for 16 years—Scott and I were elected at the same time—there has never been an ability for an independent or someone who represents a small party of three, four, five, or even ten members, to bring an amendment to committee. Therefore, the only choice they have is to bring those amendments to the report stage of the bill. We end up in long voting sessions, taking a lot of time from all parties, when I think, quite frankly, a lot of that could be handled at the committee level.
It is, quite frankly, a question of fairness and a question of equality. The point being made is to recognize that independents and other members still have rights as members of Parliament. We may not agree with the amendments they propose, but at least they have an opportunity to present them and have reasonable debate over them.
:
It's my recollection that this issue came to light when we were dealing with Bill . As members of this committee who were members of the last committee will recall, Bill C-60 was one of these large omnibus budget implementation acts that included not only finance measures but a whole range of other measures that were all bound up in one bill. As with the latest BIA, it was a catch-all of many different changes and concerns, all bound up in one very large bill. As with the current BIA, it was pushed through. We had time allocations; we had severe time restrictions on our ability to study that bill. It makes it extremely difficult for members of the committee and other members in the House to be able to study and have input into changes that quite frankly should not just be the purview of the finance committee. We see changes to the navigable waters act, changes to the Indian Act, changes that will affect the RCMP, national security, and a whole range of issues in this latest bill. We even have some Supreme Court appointments thrown into the latest BIA.
This makes it extremely difficult for members to grapple with these bills. I think that is the fundamental problem we're facing. This method of throwing all of the government's agenda into one bill and then restricting the amount of debate and the amount of time members have to learn what's in the bill, to be able to discuss and debate it, is at the root of this issue.
I question whether this particular issue of independent members has been a concern in the House going back a number of years. It first came to this committee—again, if my recollection is correct—with the omnibus BIA, Bill C-60. To me, the fundamental problem is not the role of independent members; it is the nature of these omnibus budget bills. I think that's what we should be taking a look at.
With our past experience, it's been extremely difficult for members of this committee, let alone other members in the House, to even know the contents of these bills and be able to give adequate input and suggestions and to have discussion on this kind of bill. We've said this many times: it's not a good way of developing legislation.
What we do notice is that mistakes get made, and the government has to go back and correct those mistakes in subsequent BIAs, which they are doing in this one—correcting some past mistakes. One of the mistakes affected my community directly. It pertained to credit unions. We have a number of credit unions in the riding of Parkdale—High Park. I know some of you from out west have many, many credit unions in your communities. They were beside themselves that their taxes would be double what the banks were paying because of a mistake that was made in the last BIA. Now that it's been discovered and highlighted, the government is trying to correct that in this BIA.
The haste with which laws are being passed and the number of laws that are being thrown into one overarching bill are, in essence, what is causing the problem. I can say very concretely that for credit unions, for example, that had year-end reporting in the period between the adoption of Bill and the correction of this measure, there has been considerable stress and anxiety, because they have to budget and plan for that doubling of their tax. Even if the government intended to increase their taxes to match those of the banks, which we disagreed with, inadvertently, in its haste, it doubled the amount of tax they would pay to even more than what the banks are paying.
We think if there is a problem and we want to correct that problem, we should be looking at the very nature of these omnibus budget bills. There are a great many changes that have nothing to do with budgets or finance that are thrown into these bills.
I can tell you that when the finance committee ends up dealing with massive changes to the navigable waters act, which has nothing to do with finance, there's a serious problem with the way we are crafting legislation in this country. It doesn't make for good legislation. It doesn't make for good democratic process.
I believe at heart that what my colleague opposite, Mr. Saxton, wants to do with his motion is to improve the democratic process. I think he's addressing the wrong problem in order to do that. The fundamental problem is these omnibus budget bills.
Canadians as a whole are very uncomfortable with how legislation is being made. The measures that are being adopted lead to mistakes and do not lead to the best outcome.
I've said this before, but I will take the opportunity to say it again. If the government wants to make changes, say, to the navigable waters act or to the Indian Act or to the National Research Council, or on other environmental measures, it has a majority. The normal practice would be to introduce bills that pertain to each subject; they would go to the appropriate parliamentary committee, the members of which would have the expertise and the experience and would have worked in those specific fields, and they would have the opportunity to examine, discuss, debate, amend, and adopt bills in those areas.
Frankly, the practice of bringing omnibus bills to this committee and then parcelling some parts out to other committees for them to review with very little time—sometimes they get one meeting—and then bringing those sections of the bill back to finance, where ultimately we vote on them, has not been a great practice. What happens is that those who know about the subject—whether it be the environment or the National Research Council or labour legislation—the MPs who actually know about those areas and who may have questions and who hear witnesses and debate those issue, are not ultimately the ones who get to vote at committee on those bills. I think that's a real problem.
Fundamentally, it's the issue of omnibus budget bills that has created this problem.
Now, in our experience here at the finance committee, the Conservatives proposed something very similar to this motion to deal with Bill , and we did oppose it at the time. We didn't think it was the right way to go because it would deny a long-standing practice for independent members who don't sit on the committee to take their amendments to the House.
Perhaps the intention of the government was to try to reach out and offer them the opportunity to participate in committees that they don't sit on. I'll assume that it was a positive intent the government had, but what we found at the last budget implementation act we dealt with was that when these independent members tried to bring amendments to the committee, they had extremely little time to be able to present their amendments. It was—
:
I was talking about our experience under Bill , and our experience with this kind of motion.
If the members who were on the committee at that time remember, it was a process where parts of the bill were sent out to other committees. Some other members examined the bill in those committees. Then it came back to this committee. We dealt with any amendments, and this is where all the votes took place.
Independent members had the opportunity to make a very brief comment. I think they had a maximum of maybe two minutes allotted to be able to present any amendments they had, but they didn't even have the right to vote on their own amendments. That, to me, seems fundamentally wrong. Surely one of the fundamental rights of a member of Parliament who is sent to Ottawa is the right to vote, and their vote represents their constituency. This motion would take away the right of independent members to vote, to be able to have an impact on the decision of their own motions. I think that is a problem. I don't think that's satisfactory.
I'm a little concerned that this kind of motion was kind of sprung on us here at the committee. It would be a fundamental change to the rules of the way this House operates.
Here we are debating this. It would impact the rights of those independent members of Parliament. What's their crime? Their only crime is that they don't belong to a political party that has enough seats in the House to have official party status. They are still elected by their constituents. They still represent their communities. Every single member of Parliament, whether they are in an officially recognized party or not, has exactly the same rights as others when it comes to that vote and representing their communities.
What I see this motion doing is it's taking away their right to vote. I don't think that makes any sense. I'm concerned that this is something the government is proposing, apparently, in all or in most committees. It would fundamentally change the way we work here. It seems to me to miss the nature of the problem. To me, the nature of the problem is that the government—