[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Tuesday, November 21, 1995

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[Translation]

The Chairman: Order, please!

[English]

The question before the committee today is consideration of the third draft of the report of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs in relation to electoral boundaries. The document has been redrafted in accordance with the submissions made by members at the last meeting.

Do members have any other changes or proposals or questions with respect to this document?

Mr. Arseneault.

Mr. Arseneault (Restigouche - Chaleur): Yes, Mr. Chairman. I've reviewed the document, more specifically the New Brunswick section of the document in the proposed final draft under the section dealing with conclusions, page 28.

There are two examples cited there, and the fear I have is that these two examples will take precedence with the commission that would review our report. They would concentrate totally on those two examples in trying to rectify the situation in New Brunswick. I think maybe the committee should not cite any examples in the New Brunswick conclusions. That would allow the commission to review all the submissions made by the MPs, and that way they will do more homework, more legwork, rather than just take the easy way out and correct these two examples.

So I would make that recommendation, if the committee would see fit to accept that. In other words, what I'm doing is generalizing the conclusions a little more rather than specifying these two examples.

The Chairman: Are there any objections?

We'd simply delete all the words after the word ``criterion'' down to the beginning of the next paragraph, where it says ``The Committee believes''. Is that agreed?

Mr. Arseneault: I agree.

Mr. Boudria (Glengarry - Prescott - Russell): Is there a downside to this?

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Mr. Arseneault: What's happened, Mr. Chairman, if I can go further, is that when the MPs appeared here before the subcommittee, some of the MPs gave a general background on their ridings and didn't get into specific situations, and other MPs got into specific situations. The specific situations are cited here as examples.

The fear is that when the commission reviews our document in New Brunswick, they will just try to rectify those two specific situations and say we've done our job, we've made our corrections, and everyone should be happy. It wouldn't be fair for the other members who made the general presentations with regard to their ridings.

I should also cite that the two examples that were given here deal with minority. I know that in my riding the minority is the English language, and the changes that would be made by the proposal of the commission would in fact make that minority group even more of a minority, and that hasn't been cited here. So we haven't balanced the examples here.

I think it's important to note that we would ask the commission to review the five submissions by the MPs and base their changes on the five submissions and the minority report, which was stressed in all of the presentations.

The Chairman: There's also a brief that came in and was circulated to members from the Société des Acadiens et Acadiennes du Nouveau-Brunswick, que j'ai reçu à titre de président. I'm wondering if the intention is to submit that brief with the materials we've heard.

The Clerk of the Committee: It's up to the committee to decide that.

The Chairman: Does the committee wish to include it in the bundle of documents that we send along? It's been circulated to all members.

Mr. Arseneault: I would recommend that.

Mr. Boudria: I'm just wondering something. The members from the Atlantic region probably have viewed that document. Do they think it's a good idea to include it? Has Mr. Arseneault, for instance, viewed the document himself from the Société des Acadiens?

Mr. Arseneault: From what I can recall, the document from the Société des Acadiens deals basically more with New Brunswick, I believe. They sort of go along the lines of the same argument that the minority report put in, and I would suspect that the document specifically would agree with most of the conclusions, not basically the reasons but with the conclusion that there should be only minor changes as opposed to major changes.

The Chairman: I'm advised that the brief was filed by Madame Ringuette-Maltais as part of her presentation, so it's already there and we don't need to include it.

With that change, are there any other comments?

Mr. Ringma (Nanaimo - Cowichan): Should we reiterate that? Can we have Mr. Arseneault give the page number?

The Chairman: It's page 28, and the proposal will put all the words after the word.... Go to the second-last paragraph, which starts with ``While the Members'', and go to the second line, where it says ``interest criterion'', then delete all the words, starting with ``at least'' and the next two pointed paragraphs.

Mr. Arseneault: That would remove the two specific examples.

The Chairman: Then the text would resume at ``The Committee believes that it is relevant''.

Mr. Arseneault: There would be a few editorial changes to correspond to that.

The Chairman: Is that satisfactory? Agreed?

Are there any other proposals for change or suggestions?

Mr. Boudria: Mr. Chairman, at this time do we need to bring this back to the committee or could we just give a date now, have the chair and staff clean it up, do those minor changes, and say we gave the chair the authority to table it any time between now and November 30, having made those changes? We wouldn't have to send it back to this committee.

The Chairman: Is that suggestion from Mr. Boudria agreeable?

Mr. Ringma: I want to discuss it with our House leader, but in his absence I'll go along with the chair.

The Chairman: So you want to defer consideration of this to the next meeting?

Mr. Ringma: Yes, I think so. We'll leave it to you to do any changes the chair wants, editorial changes and such, and we can defer it till the next meeting. That's fine.

Mr. Boudria: So we'll bring it back at the next meeting, which is when? Thursday?

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The Chairman: Now, that's the question.

Mr. Boudria: We have to do this before November 30 and our time is getting awfully close.

Mr. Frazer (Saanich - Gulf Islands): Today is November 21.

The Chairman: If we do it a week from now, on November 28 -

Mr. Boudria: We could table it on November 29.

The Chairman: Yes.

Mr. Boudria: Okay. We have to make sure not to miss next week. We agree right now that if something happens so that we see ourselves really pressed for time, the chair can call a meeting in a hurry.

Mr. Ringma: We can adjourn to the call of the chair.

The Chairman: I want to make this clear. On Thursday I would prefer not to have a meeting of this committee; I would like to have a meeting of the ethics committee in this time slot, because our meeting on Wednesday is not going to take place because of votes in the Senate. We can't get anybody from the Senate to attend the meeting.

I'm just giving that warning since we're all members of that committee. I would prefer to have it meet on Thursday at 11 a.m. I want to discuss future business of that committee and I want to review where we're going in that committee. I think we need a work session like that, and it's hard to get members present for one. But I'm told I can get senators on Thursday morning and I hope I'll get members.

We'll leave it till next Tuesday, then.

I want to indicate that we'll have a witness. The chief electoral officer is coming to speak to us next Tuesday and to bring in his referendum package for the review of that act, which we're obliged to undertake and for which we've struck a subcommittee. He's going to come and give the whole committee the benefit of his views and a package he's put together on the act, which we can then work on in the subcommittee.

Mr. Boudria: We should determine that we agree, then, that if we're going to do that next Tuesday, perhaps we should immediately, at the commencement of the meeting while a full quorum is available, adopt this report on the off chance that we lose quorum later and are not in a position to accept motions. If we don't have a full quorum we can always hear a witness, but we can't always do the motions. So we can do the motion first.

The Chairman: Okay. In that case, I'll declare the meeting adjourned to the call of the chair. I'm giving notice now that we're planning to sit as a code of conduct committee on Thursday at 11 a.m.