[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]
Thursday, September 26, 1996
.1053 
[English]
The Chairman: Colleagues, we are tabling a report by Mrs. Parrish, chair of the subcommittee.
Mrs. Parrish (Mississauga West): I'd like to move the tabling of this report and I'd like to speak to it if I could.
The Chairman: Sure.
Mrs. Parrish: First, I'd like to welcome Diane, our new clerk, and I thank and wish all the best to Stephen Knowles. Apparently he ushered those committees along for twenty years, and it got too exciting for him with the new crew we have so he's moved on to other things. He was a very great help to all of us.
You have four bills and two motions before you. We have a very interesting array. They seem to be getting more interesting the longer we do this. You can see the subject matter of the four bills and the two motions before you, and I move acceptance by the committee.
Motion agreed to
.1055
The Chairman: I understand a membership change is proposed.
Mr. Strahl (Fraser Valley East): I move that Darrel Stinson be replaced by Jack Frazer on the subcommittee on private members' business.
The Chairman: Okay. And who's replacing Mauril? Has there been a decision on that?
Mrs. Parrish: John Loney is.
The Chairman: Do you want to add John Loney?
Mr. Strahl: Yes, I'll add that Mauril Bélanger be replaced by John Loney.
Motion agreed to
The Chairman: Colleagues, the next item on your agenda is the order of reference to study the disposition of the private members' bills at the committee stage and that the subcommittee report its findings to the committee no later than October 29. This is a result of the steering committee that Mrs. Catterall, Mr. Frazer, Monsieur Langlois and I participated in. It was a unanimous recommendation of your steering committee. I bring it forward for your endorsement. Is there a mover for that motion?
Mr. Speaker (Lethbridge): I so move.
Motion agreed to
The Chairman: The next item is a membership change for the subcommittee on business of supply. It involves modifying the membership. Do we have a modification?
A voice: - getting Mrs. Catterall...
The Chairman: Oh, I'm sorry. We'll move to the next one, the schedule of meetings. I'm almost embarrassed to raise this, but I requested that we try to start at 10:30 a.m., and my clerk advised me that it was a bad idea because sometimes statements by ministers can move us beyond 10:30 a.m. Nonetheless, I want the ability to do it, and we need a motion to that effect so that on a day in the House when we didn't have a statement by ministers it would be possible for us to start half an hour earlier. Could I have a motion to that effect?
[Translation]
Mr. Langlois (Bellechasse): I would like to ask the government deputy whip whether that could cause a problem for other committees which are scheduled to meet in this room from 9 to 11 A.M.?
Mr. Boudria (Glengarry - Prescott - Russell): To my knowledge, there are no other committee in this room on Tuesday morning from 9 to 11.
The Clerk of the Committee: Some committees may sit from 9 to 11 A.M. in Room 112-N. However, there would be a problem. From now on, they would only be able to sit from 9 to 10:30. They could not sit from 9 to 11.
Mr. Boudria: Mr. Langlois may have raised a valid point.
[English]
In fact, Mr. Chairman, we may be encroaching half an hour on another time slot, and on several occasions we may not be able to use the time slot in question, from 10:30 to 11 a.m. -
The Chairman: I've been in this room many times at 10:30 or 10:45 and there's nobody here. But you can tell me, is there anybody -
Mr. Boudria: Yes, but it's not that easy. There are days when we have no rooms for our committees. We ship them all over the place, to the Sparks Street Mall, because we don't have room.
The Chairman: The essence of this is not that we're taking it. We want the ability to take it.
Mr. Boudria: That's the same thing. That means nobody else can schedule. What we have is a slot, and the slots are usually -
The Chairman: No. It says ``priority usage will be given'', so in fact... I respectfully disagree with you. I wanted the right... For example, next week if we know on Monday that we need a meeting on Tuesday and there's nothing major going on, there's no statement by ministers, we could start at 10:30 a.m. if nobody else is scheduled. Even if there is someone else scheduled we would have priority.
Our 10:30 meeting starts at eleven anyway. We just want to be able to start half an hour earlier if we want to. That's all. That's all the motion is.
Mrs. Parrish.
Mrs. Parrish: I would like to ask a question of the whip or the clerk who's probably into the scheduling more. Does that mean another committee that would normally use the room for 8:30 to 11 a.m. can no longer ever book this room?
The Clerk: No, they can book the room, but they have to be out of here by 10:30.
Mr. Boudria: The slots are usually 9:30 to 11 a.m. and 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
Mrs. Parrish: Let's say a committee always wanted to book the slot until 11 a.m. in this room. It would be very risky. That means they can never book this room again.
Mr. Boudria: That's not the dangerous thing. With respect, the greater danger is that committees who would want it... Right now we have just started. We've been off for the summer. There's not much legislation. But in three weeks from now, when everyone is going full steam and when the justice committee breaks up into two subcommittees because they have too many pieces of legislation, and when the finance committee breaks in three or whatever, and particularly if the large committees do the same, we run out of rooms.
.1100
If we create a circumstance where they cannot have that slot... And they can't have it if we have priority. You can't schedule witnesses and then cancel because we organized a meeting. Right? Our clerks can advise us on that, but that's my understanding of it, and that being the case...
The Chairman: Look, forget it if it's a problem. I was just trying to be helpful, colleagues.
Mr. Boudria: I know.
The Chairman: Many times our meetings... Particularly with the Jacob thing it was dragging and we were running into some major time problems. So I was just trying to...if we could start at 10:30... And notwithstanding if you don't want to pass the motion, I'm fine. I'm still going to schedule a meeting for 10:30 and I don't care what the clerk or anyone else tells us, if we can have the room, we're going to have the room.
This motion is a formality, as I understand it, because we are the commmittee on procedure and House affairs and we're trying to abide by our own rules. And we're trying to have everybody else abide by their own rules. So we're trying to put -
Mr. Speaker: On a point of order, are you saying that on special occasions when you see a heavy agenda you would give notice to the committee members that we would take a time slot?
The Chairman: That's all it is.
Mr. Speaker: Otherwise our meetings start at 11 a.m.
The Chairman: Actually, no. Mr. Frazer and I talked about it in the steering committee and it wasn't even just for heavy meetings. An hour is tight for procedure and House affairs. It's supposed to be an hour and a half, but oftentimes in this committee... We were all talking about how if we can start half an hour earlier, great, because everybody is...
Mr. Speaker: I do see that scheduling problem, but I just thought on only special occasions it would be up to the discretion of the chair, and with due notice given to all of us, we'd accept it.
The Chairman: Yes, Mr. Whip.
Mr. Boudria: This is a calendar and it explains the time slots. The first slot is 9 a.m. to 11 a.m., the second one 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. May I suggest that if there is an occasion when we have a heavy workload we will just, assuming no one else is using it that day, ask -
The Chairman: Take the 9 a.m. slot.
Mr. Boudria: Take both slots, instead of continuously encroaching half an hour on somebody else's slot in case we need it, which is essentially, I guess -
The Chairman: Well, then, we don't need a motion.
Mr. Boudria: - what the effect of your motion would have been.
The Chairman: Fine. We don't need a motion.
Mr. Boudria: No.
Mr. Speaker: Today we could be finished with this agenda in fifteen minutes.
Mr. Strahl: Yes, and from my perspective, when you start at 10:30 - I've come back now because I've been told that we need a quorum, but I was supposed to be at another committee at eleven - the one advantage is that often we have only fifteen or twenty minutes -
The Chairman: That's why Jack had mentioned it and that's why I was trying to accommodate everybody by trying to do it a little bit earlier, because everybody seems to have two and three committees scheduled.
Look, we'll book two slots if it doesn't screw it up. That was my report on that subject.
As for the subcommittee on business of supply, what are we going to do about it?
The Clerk: Mrs. Catterall is saying that she has no members.
The Chairman: Drop it.
The Clerk: Yes.
The Chairman: Colleagues, we're adjourned.