JURI Committee Meeting

STANDING COMMITTEE ON JUSTICE AND HUMAN RIGHTS

COMITÉ PERMANENT DE LA JUSTICE ET DES DROITS DE LA PERSONNE

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Thursday, May 28, 1998

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[English]

The Chair (Ms. Shaughnessy Cohen (Windsor—St. Clair, Lib.)): Order.

Today we are meeting on the following request signed by Mr. Ramsay, Mr. Breitkreuz, Mr. Forseth, and Mr. Peter MacKay:

Pursuant to Standing Order 106(3), a meeting of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights shall be convened within ten sitting days for the purpose of examining the concerns raised in the following letters sent to the Department of Justice: (a) Letter dated April 23, 1998 to the Justice Minister from the User Group on Firearms (copy attached), (b) Letter dated March 30, 1998 to the Justice Minister from the Canadian Police Association (copy attached), and (c) Letter dated July 21, 1997 to the Deputy Minister of Justice from the office of the RCMP Commissioner, J.P.R. Murray (copy attached).

This has been signed by the members I have already mentioned. This is on Mr. Breitkreuz's letterhead.

Mr. Breitkreuz, do you have a motion?

Mr. Garry Breitkreuz (Yorkton—Melville, Ref.): Yes, Madam Chairman. I would like to move the motion at the end of some of my remarks, if that is all right.

The Chair: Technically, we need a motion on the table.

Mr. Garry Breitkreuz: I move that we have the User Group on Firearms, the Commissioner of the RCMP, and the Canadian Police Association appear before this committee.

The Chair: May I just ask a couple of things to help the committee? Do you have some idea of how much time this would take?

Mr. Garry Breitkreuz: Before the committee?

The Chair: Yes.

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Mr. Garry Breitkreuz: I think the RCMP and the Canadian Police Association could be grouped into one meeting. The User Group on Firearms would probably have to be a separate meeting, just because of the nature of the concerns they raise.

The Chair: So you're looking for two meetings, an hour and a half each?

Mr. Garry Breitkreuz: I think that would probably address the situation, yes. Maybe we could do it the last week that Parliament is sitting. I don't know whether we can fit it in before then.

The Chair: All right. Just as a point of information so that everybody knows where we're going, the steering committee met yesterday, and assuming that the week of the 15th is the last week of Parliament, we would have victims' hearings on the 15th and 16th and then we would need—Phil, you help me with this—meetings on the afternoon of the 17th and at least the morning of the 18th to give instructions to you.

Mr. Philip Rosen (Committee Researcher): Yes, Madam Chair, that's correct.

Mr. Garry Breitkreuz: So you're looking at the afternoon of the 17th.

The Chair: Yes. That's not yet set in stone. I would assume, given that we have all agreed that the issue of victims is our priority here, we are still in agreement that we want to deal with that so that our staff can be drafting the report over the break. When we get back, we can do the final report. That's what the steering committee is going to recommend to the committee. I think that's what we have already agreed to anyway.

Go ahead, Mr. Breitkreuz.

Mr. Garry Breitkreuz: Thank you, Madam Chair. I appreciate the time I have been given here to outline some of my concerns.

I circulated a package of material a couple of weeks ago to everybody on the justice committee. I hope you have had a chance to look at it and review it. In it was a letter from the User Group on Firearms that the Minister of Justice put in place a couple of years ago to work on the implementation of the registration system. There was also a letter from the Canadian Police Association to the Minister of Justice and a letter from the Commissioner of the RCMP to the Deputy Minister of Justice. If you have had time to review those letters, you'll probably have a fairly good idea of why I am bringing that up today.

In that package of material, I also included eleven articles, editorials, columns, and newspaper clippings that comment on the issues that were raised in these three letters. So it gives you a bit of an idea of why they are significant. The issues raised in these three letters are of concern to each one of us on this committee, every member of the justice committee. Regardless of the views you hold on the merits of the gun control in general or the registration of firearms in particular, they are important concerns that are raised.

If the gun registration system is to have any hope of being effective, as its proponents argue, then we must agree with the nine members of the User Group on Firearms who say—and I'd like to quote from that letter—“This 50% error factor will quickly destroy the system...”.

I would like to ask the User Group on Firearms, when they come before the committee, how they arrived at the prediction of a 50% error rate and how they propose that this error rate could be improved.

I would like to ask the Commissioner of the RCMP what the error rate is in the current restricted firearm registration system and what error rate he and his officers are prepared to live with in the new system as it is now designed.

I would like to ask the User Group on Firearms how the design of the new series of licensing and registration forms will undermine compliance and discuss the remedies they propose. They talk about this in their letter.

I would like to ask the Commissioner of the RCMP what compliance rate they have achieved with the restricted firearm registration system and with the registration of rifles and shotguns that the RCMP implemented during World War II. I would also like to ask him what compliance rate they need for the registration system to be effective at improving public safety and officer safety.

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Thirty percent of responsible firearms owners have told pollsters that they do not intend to register their firearms. I would like to ask the Commissioner of the RCMP how he intends to enforce a law when more than a million gun owners are prepared to disobey it and more than five million firearms will remain unregistered because of their non-compliance.

I would also like to ask the User Group on Firearms about their concerns about the government's plans to confiscate banned firearms from legitimate firearm dealers without compensation.

I would like to ask the User Group on Firearms about their concerns regarding legitimate firearm dealers being driven out of business, their prediction that this will lead to an increase in the sale of firearms in the black market, and what solutions they would propose.

In 1997 a senior official in the Canadian Firearms Centre reported a 30% drop in the sale of firearms in the first four months of the year. I would like to ask these experts in the Canadian Firearms Centre how much sales have dropped in the last year, and their predictions for black market activity.

When the RCMP commissioner appears before the committee, I would also like to ask him how big the black market is for firearms now and how he will deal with the increased enforcement pressures the new black market activity would bring.

I would also like to ask the Commissioner of the RCMP why he is now satisfied with the justice department's report regarding the number of firearms involved in crime when the justice department officials and the parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Justice are still saying that his statistical analysis of the RCMP's own firearms data is wrong.

I would like to ask front-line police officers of the Canadian Police Association their expert opinion on all the concerns raised in their letter to the minister and the letters from the User Group on Firearms and the Commissioner of the RCMP.

Lastly, once the members of the justice committee have listened to all this expert testimony from the User Group on Firearms and the Commissioner of the RCMP and the Canadian Police Association, I think it would be in order that we would ask the Minister of Justice and her officials to appear before the committee at some point to explain how these concerns will be addressed and rectified.

The Chair: That's not part of the present motion.

Mr. Garry Breitkreuz: No. I think it would follow logically. I don't know at what point we would do that.

I hope you get a feeling for the seriousness of the issue I raise. I think it is imperative that the committee look at these questions in quite a bit of depth.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

The Chair: Thanks.

Did you want to add anything, Jack?

Mr. Jack Ramsay (Crowfoot, Ref.): Nothing other than that I would like to thank the chair and the members of the committee for their patience this morning in allowing a quorum to form.

I would only add that when matters like this come up, raising questions in the minds of at least some of the members of the committee and members of Parliament, I think the committee is one of the few avenues members have to address those issues. I think this is the proper forum to do that if the majority of members on this committee feel it is appropriate to do so.

The Chair: Thanks, Jack.

Do you want to add anything, sir?

Mr. Roy Bailey (Souris—Moose Mountain, Ref.): Madam Chair, I would like to add that it might be of interest that I did a tally about the number of letters I have received on the different subjects. While Bill C-68 is vintage now—it was last year—I have had more requests in the last two months on the topic under discussion than I had under the one that came second, which is hepatitis C. What I am saying is that this is still a very, very big issue.

The Chair: In some parts of the country.

Mr. Roy Bailey: In the part of the country I am familiar with, it is now number one again.

The Chair: Monsieur Marceau, did you want to add anything? Did you have anything to say?

Mr. Richard Marceau (Charlesbourg, BQ): No.

The Chair: Good. Who wants to start over here? Derek Lee.

Mr. Derek Lee (Scarborough—Rouge River, Lib.): Madam Chair, I want to thank the members opposite for noting that the implementation of the new firearms provisions of the code and the Firearms Act are high profile and a matter of concern in some parts of the country. It would not appear that in the riding I represent it is a matter of significant high profile, but I accept that in some parts of the country it is.

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I also accept that the whole issue is one this committee should, in the public interest, be keeping its eye on. It's a new initiative, a major issue. It has a whole lot to do with public safety. It has a whole lot to do with a whole lot of other things that are important to Canadians. I accept that premise.

Mr. Breitkreuz referred to an error rate. Forgive me for not preparing 100% for this, but was this the error rate in documentation that was anticipated under the new firearms registration provisions?

Mr. Garry Breitkreuz: Yes, the error rate that the user group said would occur because of the way the forms and so on were structured.

Mr. Derek Lee: Okay. This is a suggestion by the user group that there would be a materially high error rate, which might undermine the system. That is the suggestion by the user group: that the forms then in existence and maybe still in existence would induce or lead to an error rate.

We all accept that there is going to be an error rate in the system. Human beings are not perfect. It's either going to be less than 1% or greater than 1%. This group thinks it could be as high as 50%.

What I am having difficulty with is that while I accept that it's an important issue—this committee and the House have previously spent tons of time on this—I am not sure that on the Richter scale at this point in time it warrants the committee imposing on our already existing priorities and getting right down to this bundle of issues.

The way Mr. Breitkreuz has introduced it, in my view, virtually covers the whole ambit of issues raised by Bill C-68, plus the firearms regulations, and the roll-out of those things—practical considerations, civil liberties considerations in this country. While they are there, I personally don't feel the need to walk through all those again at this point as a bundled-up group of issues. In fact I'm pretty tired. The whole thing exhausted me over the two or three years we dealt with it.

Members may want to address the issue of priority. I personally don't see—to use Mr. Breitkreuz's term—the imperative nature of the need to look at these things now. I am certainly prepared to accept that as we move along into the next year the implementation of the firearms regulations may cause us to have a look at how it's going, but the policy decision of implementation has already been made. The statute has been done. The regulations have been put in place. Modifications to the proposed regulations were made. The committee has looked at the whole regime. I think we ought to give it a chance to move down the road.

I am not convinced that it is priority enough to have us stop what we are doing now, or even interrupt what we are doing to get into the bundled group of issues.

Mr. Garry Breitkreuz: May I briefly reply to that?

The Chair: Yes, please.

Mr. Garry Breitkreuz: It is imperative that we look at it now because these are supposed to come into place October 1, 1998. We would not have received these letters if there weren't some huge concerns about this, especially by the user group.

I realize this committee has a huge workload, but if in fact this is a matter of public safety, it should be looked at by the committee. It's a point of debate regarding whether the registration system is a matter of public safety, but if we're going to put something in place and have it up and working by October 1 and there are huge concerns here, I think we as a committee have an obligation. That's why it's a priority. October 1 is coming upon us, and we can't leave it over the summer.

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The Chair: Thank you. Anybody else? Jack.

Mr. Jack Ramsay: I would add that for a matter of three hours.... I know our schedule. When it comes to scheduling, you know what kind of schedule we had last time around, Derek. It was a lot heavier than this one. But for a matter of three hours, we could at least give members of Parliament some basis to respond to the many, many letters and e-mails and so on that are coming in to us as a result of their concern over these three areas.

There is nothing better than for us to be able to simply say that these people appeared, and here is a copy of their testimony before the committee on these issues, and simply send it back out to them if possible to quiet concerns that are being raised.

For the matter of three hours, I think we would be able to direct at least the primary considerations as contained within the motion. It would give us the means to respond to these concerns. Otherwise, we allow the concerns to continue to manifest and grow. I think that's wrong, if we have an implement with which we might be able to alleviate those concerns, whereby every member of Parliament who does receive letters of concern can say that the user group appeared before the committee and explained their rationale for estimating that there would be a 50% error rate. Why are they saying that? I don't know why they're saying that. We need to know why they're saying that, whether it's justified or unjustified.

I think it is incumbent that we attempt to place in the hands of the members of Parliament the means to respond to letters of concern being raised over not just the user group issue, but the other two as well. For a matter of three hours, why not do it? What harm will it do, other than cut into our...? The good it will do we think will offset the fact that we might have to work a little bit longer or maybe cut down on some other area. I think this is important. If we are going to negate this motion and simply allow things to proceed as they are simply because we don't have time to look at it, I find that unacceptable.

Mr. Garry Breitkreuz: Madam Chair, there is one other point. We have to look at who is raising those concerns. It's the head of the Canadian Police Association. The user group is saying that the black market in smuggling will increase.

The Chair: It's the Canadian Police Association staff person who is raising these concerns. Mr. Newark is not the head of the Canadian Police Association; Neal Jessop from Windsor is.

Mr. Garry Breitkreuz: Okay.

Mr. Jack Ramsay: But he speaks for that group.

Mr. Garry Breitkreuz: Yes, he is the spokesperson.

The user group is saying—if you have read the information I disseminated—that the black market and smuggling will increase because of this. That ought to be a great concern for us. How can we not as a committee deal with this?

The Chair: Okay. Mr. Maloney and then Eleni Bakopanos.

Mr. John Maloney (Erie—Lincoln, Lib.): Madam Chair, I'm just going to comment.

The letter that sort of raised all these fears originally was the letter from Mr. Murray of the RCMP saying that there's a big discrepancy in the statistics on violent crime figures, saying it's 73, as opposed to 623. That is a big discrepancy. But in my own mind, I wonder what the definition of a violent crime is. I don't know how serious this is. As far as murder goes, maybe there are 73 murders in Canada a year. Then we go on to suicides. There are probably 1,000 or 1,200 suicides. Then we go on to the use of firearms in a crime, whether it's robbing a Mac's Milk....

In my own simple little mind, this figure of 73, as a simple definition of violent crime, cannot be accurate. In my opinion, that destroys the credibility or even the concern.

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On the firearms forms, I have looked at the forms, and I cannot go along. They are long in some cases, but I don't know whether they are unnecessarily long, given that what we really want to do is keep firearms out of the hands of people who really shouldn't have firearms. But complicated and burdensome—I don't find them any more complicated and burdensome than perhaps an application for a passport, and these are filled out constantly by people who aren't necessarily Harvard scholars, etc.

I take issue with their position, from just looking at it. Perhaps it would be interesting to know why, yes; but just for a matter of interest, 50% error rate, I can't see how that could happen in those forms, just the barebones looking at it.

I don't think it's necessarily the issue they are trying to make it out to be. Then I balance that with what has already been said about priorities in our workload. To me, it just doesn't round into a high-priority item.

Mr. Garry Breitkreuz: Madam Chair—

The Chair: I want to make sure I get everybody in.

Mr. Garry Breitkreuz: I just wanted to reply.

The Chair: Keep a note of it; you'll get a chance.

John McKay.

Mr. John McKay (Scarborough East, Lib.): Madam Chair, the first issue is whether this is a matter of concern to the constituents of Scarborough East. I would say unequivocally that this is a non-issue to the people of Scarborough East. It was a non-issue during the election campaign, and it continues to be a non-issue. There was an enormous amount of support for the initiative of this legislation.

The second thing is the issue of the discrepancy in the figures. Mr. Breitkreuz may well have a point that there is a discrepancy in terms of the evidence. I was not here at the time and therefore was not exposed to that evidence.

The question then becomes, if the discrepancy was known, would that have significantly affected the decision to pass the legislation or the regulations. I would submit that it probably would not have.

The next question is would it impair the implementation of the program on October 1. That's the only one that would give me any pause for concern. But in my view, the discrepancy in the figures themselves would not impair the program.

Therefore, in my view it's not an issue of priorities. It's not an issue of priority for my riding, not an issue of priority for my constituents. I don't see that there's a real basis to push something else aside in order to be able to deal with this issue.

The Chair: Eleni, do you have anything to say?

Ms. Eleni Bakopanos (Ahuntsic, Lib.): Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'm not going to repeat what has already been said, but I just want to comment on what Mr. Ramsay said concerning three hours more of debate. I think we have had many, many hours of debate, as Mr. Lee said. I would like to say the same thing.

Certainly in Quebec, this is not an issue, to my knowledge. Mr. Marceau can speak for the opposition on this issue, but in my riding I have had not a single letter on this.

I think we have to begin with the premise that there is a difference of opinion from the very beginning: you favour or you don't favour this whole process. I venture to say that the official opposition was against this legislation from the very beginning.

I don't think that studying the figures, which have already been answered to by the minister in the House of Commons, by myself, as Mr. Breitkreuz said, and we have tabled a letter in the House of Commons also, which members of this committee have had, and the RCMP has answered, and we answered also in terms of discrepancies.... I do not believe that it should be a priority of this committee at the moment, because it has been on the record and we have answered some of the concerns the members have had.

The Chair: Garry, I will let you sum up.

Mr. Garry Breitkreuz: In reply to some of the comments that have been made, I am not an expert on registration. For us to sit here and make comments about whether this is a complex form or whether it is not a complex form.... If the user group is saying we are going to have a 50% error rate at a minimum on this, we had better listen to them, and not sit around here and say there's not a problem.

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You're talking about whether it's an issue to your constituents and so on. I wonder how much they even know about this issue. The first thing that comes to my mind is the debt and deficit. Were people aware of it when they first started? After it became a huge problem, after the smuggling of tobacco became a huge problem, we realized we made a mistake in some areas.

If the smuggling and the black market is going to increase, if the whole registration system is going to involve spending hundreds of millions of dollars and later on we are going to discover that this is a huge bureaucratic boondoggle and we were warned about this, we have to accept responsibility for that, because we are sweeping it under the rug here. I don't think in good conscience we can do that. We have to accept that we are responsible.

It's our job as the official opposition to make sure that the government is being held accountable. I know you can outvote us and you can shove this thing away and not look at it again and say it's just a matter of debate. It's not, ladies and gentlemen, a matter of debate. These are the experts who are blowing the whistle on this thing. I wouldn't have received this letter if it were not a concern.

Mr. Jack Ramsay: May I...?

The Chair: Jack, go ahead.

Mr. Jack Ramsay: With respect to the parliamentary secretary, we are not asking for further debate. We are asking for information. The only people who can provide the rationale for the estimated 50% error rate are the people who made that estimation. That is the User Group on Firearms.

We do have a responsibility. With respect to Mr. McKay's comments, this committee and the members of it do not have a responsibility just to our own constituency; we have a responsibility to everyone across this country who will be affected by any law, particularly if the law happens to be defective.

Mr. John McKay: I raised that in response to your comment that this was the number one issue on which you get correspondence. I'm giving you the response that it is a non-issue where I come from.

Mr. Jack Ramsay: Okay. By the same token, you recognize the responsibility that we as a committee have to all Canadians who will be affected by the law.

Mr. John McKay: I understand that.

Mr. Jack Ramsay: Then I take your comments in good faith.

The other point I would like to make—and it is a concern—is I would like to have the officials here who can answer the questions in the document that used the questionable figures provided by the RCMP.

On page 11, chart number three, there is no question that there is an exaggeration of the number of firearms used in the commission of crimes, because the officials have so far admitted that it may be misleading. The title should not have been as it was, “Firearms involved in the commission of an offence”, because many were not; they were simply picked up as a result of someone being arrested, and a firearm was not used. That should be clarified so that we can answer.

Mr. McKay, you may not have to answer letters, because you're not getting any, but we are, and other members are. It is going to affect three million to six million Canadians, so it is an enormous issue.

If we are going to spend the money to get a registration system, we should, regardless of our position and our opposition to it, ensure that it is going to be a good system, that the police are going to be able to rely on it, and it is going to bring the kind of safety the government has indicated it will bring.

If there are problems in it, then we should be looking at that. It's not in the legislation. We have dealt with the legislation, and that's water under the bridge. But now that we're going to administer it and we're getting these warnings, certainly we should be looking at those.

A matter of three hours, to bring the people who have raised these concerns and have them placed on the spot for all members of this committee to ask them questions, I think is well worth it. Certainly we would be discharging the responsibility I think we have as a committee to the people of Canada.

The Chair: Thanks, Jack.

I was going to give Garry the final word, but now I have others. Derek.

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Mr. Derek Lee: I believe that Mr. Breitkreuz's motion—and this is a bad analogy—uses a kind of shotgun approach to the bundle of issues here.

Mr. John McKay: That's a pun.

Mr. Derek Lee: I'm surprised by Mr. McKay's prompt reaction here.

Mr. John McKay: Why, because your jokes are usually so obscure?

Mr. Derek Lee: Very bad. You rarely get a snicker.

In any event, they break down into two parts. I didn't expect today that we would be dealing with the user group bundle of issues.

On the RCMP and Department of Justice statistics issue, we have had explanations in the House and in this committee. I don't think we need to beat a dead horse here. If colleagues around the table want to rehash that one, we can do that right here. We don't need any more information on that. We know what the reason was. We all understand it. And if anybody doesn't, we can take it up right here. We don't need witnesses. We know what happened there.

It was a no-fault—if I can use the term—different methodology problem, where the gathering of statistics was not originally targeted to produce the kind of statistic that group number two wanted to use. Yet they used the larger statistic. I don't have a problem with that. That is not worth my time or this committee's time. I am happy to discuss it out in the hall or right here around the table.

The second set of issues is the user group set of issues; that is, the implementation of the Firearms Act and the Criminal Code provisions. I have a lot of time for Canadians who have had a piece of hardware in their home for 50 or 100 years and now the government is imposing a regulatory regime on that. I do have a lot of time. And I'm confident that with just a basic amount of goodwill, the system is going to operate okay. It's not necessarily without wrinkles.

No matter what we do this month or next month, the regulatory regime proposed for this is going to be implemented, warts and all. One group believes there are no warts and another group will believe it's filled with warts. There will be a time when we may wish to look at it. And it's something this committee should care about, because it affects thousands and thousands of Canadians who are being asked to comply with a law that we have passed. I have time for that. But I question whether we should be the clearing house for all of these issues. There will be many more than we are even aware of today. As the system is implemented, there will be others that will come up.

I question whether we should be the forum. Why would we interpose ourselves in the middle and be the clearing house for this stuff? The user group is out there. They have signalled that they see some wrinkles. They have offered their views to the justice minister. There is a working group within the Department of Justice overseeing the implementation of the firearms regulations. I can only assume they are aware of this. They will do their best to respond.

I have no problem with this committee or members of the committee individually—I don't know how the committee wants to deal with it—assuring themselves, writing to the justice minister asking them to make sure that the matter is raised and the user group letter of April 23 is appropriately addressed by the firearms group in the Department of Justice. That at least shows response on our part.

I would like to see the people who are good at firearms regulations implementation work at it. That includes the user group advisers, the consultative groups that are out there, the Department of Justice officials who are overseeing it, the provincial officials who are involved in it.

We can't add to that mix. It's too late to reinvent the wheel here. I'm not ready to get back into firearms regulations two. If there are jagged edges that impact on Canadians in a way that nobody ever intended, I have lots of time for that. I would be happy to look at that in the fall.

The Chair: Mr. Bailey.

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Mr. Roy Bailey: As a side issue to what Mr. Lee has stated, one of the biggest concerns as it relates directly to the registration is that there is a growing feeling, no matter where I have gone—and I am sure my colleagues admit this—that somehow this registration is going to be selective and it isn't going to be national by any means. With that in mind, there is a growing resistance, because they say that certain people will be targeted and other people in certain areas will be left totally alone when it comes to registration.

If there is even any element of truth to what I have just said, then the whole thing of registration becomes void. It is not meaningful.

The Chair: Garry, I'm giving you the last word.

Mr. Garry Breitkreuz: Thank you, Madam Chair. I have to respond to Mr. Lee's comments.

I don't want to go through my whole presentation. Maybe it wasn't abundantly clear why the Commissioner of the RCMP should come, but he needs to have an opportunity to respond. We need to know what his response is to the user groups's concerns that were raised. There were six concerns raised within their letter. He needs to have the opportunity, and we need to hear that.

I realize that there is a tremendous faith in the system, that it's going to run and there will be just a few jagged edges. These are more than just a few jagged edges. This whole system is flawed. It is not going to work. We shouldn't have to wait until after October 1 to discover this, because it has already been clearly indicated that there are major concerns with this. I think that's why we need to look at it.

I hope it's clear why all of these people should come before the committee. I don't want to go over the whole of the introductory remarks I made, but it is essential.

I appeal to the members of the committee to see how serious these concerns are.

Thank you.

The Chair: Thanks.

Mr. Garry Breitkreuz: Could I have a recorded vote, Madam Chair?

The Chair: Sure.

(Motion negatived: yeas 3; nays 6)

Ms. Eleni Bakopanos: Does that include the two motions presented by Mr. Ramsay also?

The Chair: No. We haven't dealt with those yet.

Ms. Eleni Bakopanos: They're based on the same issues, if I understand.

The Chair: Yes.

Ms. Eleni Bakopanos: Will we not deal with them today?

The Chair: We dealt with them at the steering committee yesterday and we were going to bring them back to the committee. I didn't put them on the agenda today. I suppose if it is the will of the committee, we could do that.

Ms. Eleni Bakopanos: We have had 48 hours' notice. We have dealt with them in the steering committee. Considering that they are directly attached to the same motion that we just defeated, I would like to deal with them, unless there are other objections.

The Chair: Jack, do you want to speak to your motions?

Mr. Jack Ramsay: No, because we didn't come here prepared to deal with the motions today.

Ms. Eleni Bakopanos: They're exactly the same motion, Jack.

Mr. Jack Ramsay: No, they're not. They're quite different.

Ms. Eleni Bakopanos: If you want to waste more time of the committee on the same issue, that's fine. We'll deal with that at another time.

The Chair: We need unanimous consent. We'll put it at the end of the agenda on the next meeting so that we can deal with it. We need unanimous consent to change the agenda today.

The meeting is adjourned.