FAIT Committee Meeting

STANDING COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS AND INTERNATIONAL TRADE

COMITÉ PERMANENT DES AFFAIRES ÉTRANGÈRES ET DU COMMERCE INTERNATIONAL

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Wednesday, October 8, 1997

• 1538

[English]

The Clerk of the Committee: Good afternoon, honourable members.

I see a quorum. In accordance with Standing Order 106(1), your first order of business is to elect a chair. I'm ready to receive motions to that effect.

[Translation]

Mr. Sauvageau.

Mr. Benoît Sauvageau (Repentigny, BQ): I move that Mr. Bill Graham be elected chair of the committee.

[English]

The Clerk: Is there a seconder? Mr. Bélair.

[Translation]

Mr. Sauvageau, seconded by Mr. Bélair, moves that Bill Graham do take the chair of the committee.

(Motion agreed to)

[English]

The Chairman (Mr. Bill Graham (Toronto Centre—Rosedale, Lib.)): Thank you very much. I appreciate the confidence shown in me by the committee in electing me chair again. I will do my best to be the servant of all the members of the committee and ensure that the business of our committee is conducted with speed, decorum and efficiency, such as we have shown in the past.

Our next order of business is to elect vice-chairs. I am open for nominations for vice-chair. Mr. Speller.

• 1540

Mr. Bob Speller (Haldimand—Norfolk—Brant, Lib.): Mr. Graham, I would like to nominate Bob Mills as vice-chair.

Mr. Réginald Bélair (Timmins—James Bay, Lib.): He's not here. Does that change anything?

The Chairman: No, that's all right. Madame Beaumier is not here either, but she will be nominated as well.

(Motion agreed to)

The Chairman: I declare Mr. Mills elected vice-chair.

Is there any nomination for the government vice-chair? Mr. Gallaway.

Mr. Roger Gallaway (Sarnia—Lambton, Lib.): I'll nominate Colleen Beaumier.

(Motion agreed to)

The Chairman: The next order of business is the formation of the steering committee. The motion as presently constituted will require that it be amended by agreement, or I would recommend that.

At least on the government side, it has been agreed that the representative from the government side on the steering committee will be Mr. Speller, rather than our vice-chair. We will therefore have to change the terms of the motion to read that the chair, the opposition vice-chair, the parliamentary secretary, and a representative of each of the government, of the Bloc Québécois, etc., would be on the steering committee.

Mr. Brison.

Mr. Scott Brison (Kings—Hants, PC): Is it a four-member committee?

The Chairman: No, it will be a seven-member committee.

Mr. Scott Brison: So it will have representation from each party.

The Chairman: Each opposition party will have one representative, to be selected from that party. For the Reform Party, it would be the vice-chair, Mr. Mills. There will also be three government members.

Would someone accept the amendment as proposed?

[Translation]

The motion, Mr. Sauvageau, calls for only the vice-chair from the opposition party, that is Mr. Mills, to sit on the steering committee rather that the two vice-chairs. We further propose that Mr. Speller represent our party instead of Mrs. Beaumier. The committee would therefore have two representatives from the government side.

[English]

Is it agreed?

Some hon. members: Agreed.

The Chairman: Do we have agreement to retain the research staff as proposed in paragraph 4?

Some hon. members: Agreed.

[Translation]

The Chairman: Will we hold meetings in the absence of a quorum? Is everyone agreed on this?

[English]

Some hon. members: Agreed.

[Translation]

The Chairman: Questioning of witnesses.

[English]

Some hon. members: Agreed.

The Chairman: I might make a very brief introductory comment about this. You've noticed that we have changed it to five minutes from ten, as was the practice in the previous committee of the last House. With the number of opposition parties that we have, it would be impractical to go ten minutes. We would have one person and would never get anything else done. So we're all agreed, or almost everybody has agreed to that.

An hon. member: Is it standard?

The Chairman: Yes, we are now standard. If everybody has agreed, we would accept that. Do I have agreement on paragraph 6?

Some hon. members: Agreed.

The Chairman: Witness expenses.

Some hon. members: Agreed.

[Translation]

The Chairman: Working lunches.

[English]

Some hon. members: Agreed.

[Translation]

The Chairman: Since Mr. Bergeron has been requesting it for three years, we'll have apple juice from Quebec. At times, it will come from Nova Scotia, and at other times, from Quebec.

[English]

Mr. Bob Speller: What about Ontario? We have apple juice.

The Chairman: Apples?

Mr. Bob Speller: I have Norfolk apples in my riding.

The Chairman: We're concerned that there might be some tobacco slipped into the apple juice in some people's ridings, Mr. Speller.

An hon. member: Do we need to send it to someone from the agricultural committee?

The Chairman: Could I just draw your attention to some other articles of business that are not on this list? Some of the members who are hold-overs from the last committee may recall that we adopted the Arctic report prior to closure of the House last time. As a result, both that and the child labour report have become caducs, if I can use the French expression, and we will have to decide whether we wish to reintroduce them into the House or you can instruct me as your chair to write to the government asking them to provide a response to them in any event.

• 1545

I think the Arctic report particularly is going to be very useful for us because the minister informs me the subject matter of this year's forum, which you know takes place in February, will be our northern relation, the Arctic. Therefore the Arctic report we did last year will serve as the basis for the forums that will be held across the country. So that's going to be very helpful for us.

Mr. Bob Speller: Mr. Chair, when did we table the Arctic report?

The Chairman: I tabled it one day before the House rose, before the election.

Mr. Bob Speller: Oh, yes.

The Chairman: So we presented it to the House. It's been tabled. We can retable it, or I think the ministers agree that if we write them and say we'd like a government response, that would be satisfactory.

Mr. Ted McWhinney (Vancouver Quadra, Lib.): So that's enough to activate it legally and agreeable to the House.

The Chairman: I'd like everybody to remember that in previous sessions we always had the issue of visiting deputations, which come here regularly. While I know it's a burden on members' time, it's part of this committee that we do meet with visiting parliamentarians. In order to not make it too much of a burden on the time, the last time we agreed to split ourselves into two groups so we had what we called the A and the B teams and then we did not have to come each time. If that's agreeable to the members, I'd suggest we ask the clerk to divide the committee into two. I would chair one group and the vice-chair would chair the other. Then we wouldn't have to attend each session.

It's obvious that if you hear of a delegation coming that you want to hear or want to engage with, by all means you're welcome. But it means you don't have to come if it's not your sort of duty day. Is that all right?

All members will get the notice of all visitors.

[Translation]

Mrs. Maud Debien (Laval-Est, BQ): Could you clarify something for me? Earlier on, you referred to the Arctic report. Are we going to proceed in the same way in the case of the report on child labour?

The Chairman: Yes, in exactly the same way.

Mrs. Maud Debien: I see.

The Chairman: Instead of having us retable these reports in the House, I've written a letter to the government on behalf of the committee.

Mrs. Maud Debien: Pertaining to both reports?

The Chairman: I've asked the government to formally respond to these two reports.

Mrs. Maud Debien: I see.

Mr. Benoît Sauvageau: Excellent.

The Chairman: If there is a problem, we can always retable the reports. If the government refuses... According to my sources, the government is quite prepared to respond to these two reports.

[English]

Mr. Bob Speller: You can't just table it in the House.

The Chairman: We could retable it. The committee here would have to revote it.

Mr. Bob Speller: Okay, revote it. But I thought you were just going to send a letter.

The Chairman: I'm just going to send a letter at the moment, if you like. To retable it in the House, the committee would have to readopt it as a report and decide whether this committee wanted to approve of what was contained in those reports. So to avoid that, it would be better to write the letter.

Mr. Bob Speller: Just write the letter.

[Translation]

Mr. Benoît Sauvageau: I don't know if this is the right time to bring this up, but I would like to know if the steering committee will be the one to set our agenda and select our topics of discussion, or whether in fact the committee can make some suggestions.

The Chairman: We can always make suggestions. I was about to suggest that the steering committee start by looking at the proposals. I am in a position to advise the members of the committee somewhat on the kind of work that we will be doing. I have here a list of topics that I was just about to share with you. The subcommittee on agenda and procedure can take them up further.

[English]

But, for example, Mr. Mills has suggested to me that the committee might want to spend more time dealing with current issues, and Mr. Speller also has indicated we should be focusing on issues of direct relevance to Canadians.

You will recall that the minister wrote us a letter about nuclear disarmament. I think we'll have to decide whether that is a matter we still want to pursue. It ties into the work on land mines; it ties into chemical weapons. It's something we may wish to pursue.

There is the unfinished matter of the Hong Kong veterans, which you will recall is something that is still out there. I think I will at least propose that we as a committee have a moral obligation to take that up along the lines of the letter you instructed me to write.

[Translation]

Mr. Benoît Sauvageau: I agree.

[English]

The Chairman: So we will be once again called upon to look at that.

• 1550

You've probably seen that the Minister of International Trade has indicated he will be referring to this committee the question of the multilateral investment agreement.

At that point I just want to interject to say we will have to make a decision in the steering committee and bring it back to this committee as to whether we want to have subcommittees to consider these items or whether we want the whole committee to consider them. My own recommendation would be that we either need to have two subcommittees like we did before, in terms of a trade subcommittee and a sustainable development or human rights subcommittee—whatever you want to call it—which could then sit on various items as they come up, or we'll have to form functional ad hoc subcommittees, in which case I would suggest the MAI would be something where people interested in trade issues would sit and other people could do other things.

Bear in mind always that all work of subcommittees is referred back to the whole committee for approval or non-approval.

The third item we will have to be concerned with is the question of our troops in the former Yugoslavia. I have already had a chance to speak with several of the representatives of the opposition. Mr. Turp isn't here, but I spoke to him the other day, as well as Mr. Brison and Mr. Mills.

The present proposition is that four members of this committee and four members of the defence committee will travel to the former Yugoslavia and report back. We will then have a debate in this committee about whether to renew our troop dispositions in the former Yugoslavia.

This means we will have to travel prior to the middle of November because this decision will have to be taken at the end of November by the cabinet. The present plan is that we would travel in the week of the break and that we would leave here on November 8.

I think the problem from the opposition point of view is that of the four opposition parties, obviously eight opposition members won't be going, only four. It will be two from the defence committee and two from this committee. Presumably you will sort out among yourselves who is going, whether, say, Mr. Brison will go as this committee or whether our colleague in the defence committee will go, etc.

For the moment, let's just leave it.

[Translation]

You can settle that amongst yourselves, but we would like to know within the week the make-up of this committee so that we can organize the trip to Yugoslavia. The arrangements will be complex in many respects, including from a military standpoint.

[English]

We had the question of Nigeria in the last House. We have UN reform. There is a whole host of issues we may want to look at and we'll have to deal with the question of the estimates, program review, etc.

Mr. Bob Speller: Just on your last point, I would suggest maybe you give it to the whips. That's what they do; they negotiate these things among themselves.

The Chairman: Yes, exactly. That's what I'm saying: they're whips and they'll settle it among themselves and we'll settle on our people ourselves.

[Translation]

Mr. Benoît Sauvageau: Mr. Chairman, I listened as you reviewed the list of topics and I was interested to hear you mention the unfinished business of compensation for Canadian POWs in Hong Kong. I do hope that we will not wait too long before dealing with this as well.

Secondly, I would recommend that the multilateral agreement on investment or MAI between OECD countries be examined not by the subcommittee on international trade, but rather by the parent committee. The final round of negotiations is slated to begin in January and the signing of the agreement is scheduled for April. I propose that you ask the steering committee to give this matter priority consideration, if at all possible, in light of the time frame involved.

The Chairman: I fully agree with you. The minister has in fact informed me that serious negotiations will be undertaken in January. Therefore, if this committee wants to have any valuable input, it will have to consider this matter before Christmas. The answer then is yes.

All we need to decide now is if the full committee or a subcommittee will conduct this review. You're proposing that it be the full committee.

Mr. Benoît Sauvageau: Yes, the full committee.

The Chairman: I see. And that this be the first matter it attends to.

• 1555

Mr. Benoît Sauvageau: Perhaps I could mention at this time the discussions in Quebec City in conjunction with the Parliamentary Conference of the Americas or COPA which was attended by us and by a number of Liberals. Parliamentarians throughout the Americas agreed that they should be consulted more frequently when multilateral agreements were being drawn up. This could serve as a good example of parliamentary consultation. That's why I think it's important to assign this study to the parent committee rather than to a subcommittee, considering how important we believe subcommittees are.

The Chairman: I understand. We are planning to travel to the former Yugoslavia during the week of November 8. The following week, that is on November 17 and 18, we will hold discussions for two days and come to a decision well before the Cabinet meeting. Agreed?

That's all I had to say.

[English]

Anybody else? Are there any other objections, observations, or suggestions?

Mr. Scott Brison: Mr. Chairman, just to confirm, you'll be contacting our whip, or the whips, relative to the November 8 trip to the former Yugoslavia?

The Chairman: Yes. You might go to speak to them now, because I find the sooner you get these discussions going, the better. This place always takes longer to get things done.

Mr. Scott Brison: I'm learning.

The Chairman: The clerk informs me that we do have an official request to meet with the secretary general and ambassadors of the North Atlantic Council, who represent the 16 NATO countries, on Wednesday, October 29, at 3.15 p.m. I would imagine we're obliged to do that. We would probably have the full committee. That would be with the defence committee as well.

Mr. Scott Brison: Mr. Chairman, as for the discussion we had prior to the meeting about the World Food Summit delegation, do you want to do anything with that? Just bring it to the attention—

[Translation]

The Chairman: Mr. Sauvageau, has Mr. David MacDonald been in touch with you?

Mr. Benoît Sauvageau: Regarding which subject?

[English]

The Chairman: Last year this committee heard witnesses about World Food Day. We had a hearing on World Food Day. Mr. David MacDonald phoned to ask the clerk if we would be willing to hear representations again, because that actually takes place during the week of the break. In fact, he asked us if we would be willing to have a meeting tomorrow at 10 a.m.

This is on very short notice. I said to him that if he phoned all the representatives of all the parties, and they agreed, then we would constitute a small number of people and come for it. However, if he can't get everybody's consent, I don't think it's fair of me to just lay on a committee meeting with less than—

Mr. Bob Speller: That's as long as it's not a regular committee meeting. You're just meeting to hear witnesses, that's all.

The Chairman: We could make it an informal meeting. It will be in the television room.

[Translation]

Do you have a problem with this?

Mr. Benoît Sauvageau: No, I haven't received any information at all about this and heaven knows how efficient our means of communication are.

The Chairman: Mr. MacDonald was supposed to telephone you. Therefore, I haven't the slightest idea of what happened. Perhaps he got in touch with Mr. Turp.

[English]

The Chairman: Why don't I do this, then? We will hear witnesses not as a constituted formal committee, but as an informal matter. If members are free to come even for twenty minutes or so, I think it would be helpful, just because World Food Day is an important event. This will be on television. CPAC will televise the overall event. I recommend, then, that we should at least have some members there to hear it.

Mr. Scott Brison: White shirts, no geometric ties.

• 1600

The Chairman: Mr. Speller will be there representing his agricultural constituency.

Is that it? Are there any other things?

Mrs. Jean Augustine (Etobicoke—Lakeshore, Lib.): I'll take this opportunity to congratulate you. As a new member of the committee, I look forward to working with you.

The Chairman: Thank you, Ms. Augustine, that's very kind of you. I trust you will not live to regret those words.

Mrs. Jean Augustine: Well, I think we'll speak again.

The Chairman: We did all right last time. Thank you.

I'd like to welcome, on behalf of the members of the committee who served before, the new members of the committee. This committee, in the last Parliament, produced three unanimous reports. The only reports that were unanimous in the last House were produced by this committee. We produced three of them in the course of that. We produced lots of reports in which there were dissenting opinions, but we did manage to produce three reports in which there were none.

So I think it shows that this committee is able to work for the best interests of Canadians in terms of foreign affairs in a collaborative way. We're going to have some big decisions to make about troop dispositions. If we get into looking at foreign aid and some of the things we had to do before, then I think a collaborative approach is a way in which this committee works well.

So I look forward to working with you, and I appreciate very much being re-elected chair.

This session is adjourned until tomorrow morning at 10 o'clock.