HAFF Committee Meeting

STANDING COMMITTEE ON PROCEDURE AND HOUSE AFFAIRS

COMITÉ PERMANENT DE LA PROCÉDURE ET DES AFFAIRES DE LA CHAMBRE

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Tuesday, December 4, 2001

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[English]

The Chair (Mr. Peter Adams (Peterborough, Lib.)): Colleagues, we'll begin.

The order of the day, as you can see, is the order of reference from the House of Commons of June 12, 2001, instructing the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs to draft changes to the Standing Orders in order to improve procedures for the consideration of private members' business. This is a continuation of the discussion we've had before.

We have with us, not as a witness, but as an adviser or consultant, Marie-Andrée Lajoie. Marie-Andrée, we're grateful to you for being here.

Before we go to that, can I remind you all that this Thursday Mr. Kingsley will be appearing before us. The principal items he's going to address are a continuation of his briefing on the readjustment process for the riding boundaries, and the matter of the use of householders during electoral campaigns. By the way, my intent is to have him address those two things first, because we said we wanted him to address them. But if there's time, we'll proceed to other related matters, including, for example, the very large report on the modernization of the electoral process that we received. That's this Thursday.

Mr. Geoff Regan (Halifax West, Lib.): I have a point of order.

The Chair: Yes.

Mr. Geoff Regan: Congratulations on your new appointment.

Mr. Chair, before we begin, I'd like to move that we rescind the committee's decision to refuse to make Bill S-22 votable. Actually, we'd be saying we rescind the decision not to accept the report of the subcommittee on private members' business making it non-votable. I don't know which I should propose.

The Chair: I think the former would be better, from my point of view. It's focusing on Bill S-22.

[Translation]

Yvon and Michel, do you have a copy of the motion?

[English]

Could you repeat the motion very slowly, please?

Mr. Geoff Regan: I move that the committee rescind its decision to refuse to make Bill S-22 votable.

The Chair: Okay.

We'll go to discussion. Yvon first, then Jay, then Carol.

[Translation]

Mr. Yvon Godin (Acadie—Bathurst, NDP): Mr. Chairman, I have no choice but to oppose this motion. I totally disagree with the premise as it would strip the sub-committee of any credibility. The sub-committee did its work and submitted its findings to the main committee. The facts as they have been presented to us are very clear. A person cannot try to get something through indirectly if it was not accepted through the normal channels. We're talking about a specific case, not about every single motion originating in the Senate. This was a specific motion that had been debated by Parliament and reviewed. I trust our sub-committee. The House leaders, the sub-committee and our committee have all been involved. As I see it, the decision has already been made and I cannot endorse this motion.

[English]

The Chair: Jay Hill.

Mr. Jay Hill (Prince George—Peace River, PC/DR): I'd like to agree with everything my colleague just said, and just add to it that if we're going to vote down the recommendations from the subcommittee now, then why have a bloody subcommittee? We might as well all sit on that. The Liberals can have their bloody majority, and just like in every other fricking committee in the House of Commons, they can vote down every possible amendment or report they don't like with their majority, because that's how their whip or their government or the Prime Minister's Office or whoever tells them to vote. We'll have this one operate exactly the same.

The Chair: Okay.

Carolyn Parrish, Geoff Regan, and Garry Breitkreuz.

Mrs. Carolyn Parrish (Mississauga Centre, Lib.): I have a procedural question. I've asked this question in this committee before, and I've never had an answer.

When I used to run a school board, if we were going to move to rescind a motion, a simple majority did not rescind the motion. You needed two thirds. I want an answer to that before we proceed on this, because I didn't get my answer a year ago.

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If you are moving to rescind, it is not a simple majority. It's going to have to be two-thirds, in my opinion.

The Chair: This is an acceptable motion. You don't need two-thirds under the Standing Orders.

Mrs. Carolyn Parrish: I would like to challenge that, please.

The Chair: We'll follow through on that.

Mrs. Carolyn Parrish: Thank you.

The Chair: Geoff Regan, then Garry Breitkreuz.

Mr. Geoff Regan: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

It seems to me if we're going to retroactively change the rules in midstream, as has happened in this case, we can expect to have great problems when private members' bills go to the Senate side. We can expect to have a lot less cooperation from them if we're not going to show them this courtesy, particularly if we haven't told them we want to change the rules starting now. If you want to change them in the middle of a process, where a bill has already gone through, that doesn't seem to be the way to get the cooperation of the Senate for our bills in the future.

Secondly, it's a bit like shutting the door when you're already halfway through it. It's not a good process. It's just not fair to do that.

The arguments we heard today about our meeting when we passed this motion before were that the bill had already come forward twice. What I didn't know until afterwards was that it didn't come twice during this Parliament. I certainly wasn't a member of the last Parliament, and I don't think it's reasonable to say that because it came forward in a previous Parliament we should assume it's been seen before and dismiss it. I think it ought to be considered on its merits.

But most of all, if we don't offer this courtesy now... If we're going to say to the Senate that if this happens in the future, if we're going to refuse to accept bills of this sort that have come before the House of Commons and been refused, that's fine. But I don't think it's proper, and I don't think we can expect their cooperation if in the middle of the process we cut it off like this.

The Chair: I'm going to go to Garry in a moment, and then to Jay Hill.

Carolyn, all votes in the House of Commons and committee are by simple majority. I thought that was the case.

Garry Breitkreuz.

Mr. Garry Breitkreuz (Yorkton—Melville, Canadian Alliance): What has changed since the last time we made this decision? Geoff has told only part of the story. This has been coming back again and again. It originated in the House of Commons, and it appears to be a way to circumvent our private members' business committee. Sending something that a member of Parliament has come up with to the Senate to get the Senate to deal with it and then send it back to the House of Commons seems to be a circumvention of the way we decide on private members' business.

I don't understand what has changed since the last time we made this decision. If that's in fact the way this bill has come to us, in this roundabout fashion, I don't see how we can approve it. We cannot put our blessing on that kind of circumvention of the process in the House of Commons.

The Chair: Jay Hill.

Mr. Jay Hill: Mr. Chairman, in reply to some of the comments made by Mr. Regan, first of all, to just automatically say that extending a courtesy to the other place is what should guide us in our deliberations to make bills votable is completely absurd.

I think what we're talking about is what Mr. Breitkreuz just referred to, which is the very real possibility that members, in their frustration at having bills made non-votable in this place, are bypassing the process and utilizing a flawed process from the other house. I think that should outweigh a courtesy that we extend to the Senate.

Secondly, I think it's a bit demeaning to suggest that honourable senators cannot understand what is going on here. We are trying to use this particular bill as an example of what we're not going to put up with. To suggest that somehow they're all going to take this as a personal insult and therefore stop all bills that go from our place to theirs I think is ludicrous. Certainly the senators I know can be made to be aware of what the issue is surrounding Bill S-22.

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The Chair: Garry Breitkreuz.

Mr. Garry Breitkreuz: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I really want an answer to my question about what has changed. Is this not a bill whose idea has originated in the House of Commons? Can somebody research this? Can we hold off deciding about this until somebody can give me an answer to that? I don't want to table it, but I want to at least put that off.

The other thing that bothers me is the suggestion that the Senate is somehow going to play hardball with us and delay other legislation we may wish to get through—i.e., private members' business. Is there some way we can bring representatives from the Senate here and begin to talk to them about this?

It looks like we have a confrontation taking place here, and a little bit of dialogue may resolve this. Do the senators realize this has been this way before, and this is not a rejection of a Senate bill, but a rejection of the circumventing of the process of private members' business in the House? That's what I'd really like to see answered by this.

So is it possible to get an answer to both of these? Can we have some dialogue with the senators? Has this not originated in the House of Commons previously?

The Chair: If I can comment on that, we certainly can't require senators to come. We can certainly invite them.

It's Geoff Regan, then Carolyn Parrish.

Mr. Geoff Regan: My colleague Mr. Hill talked about the fact that I mentioned the House extending this courtesy to Senate bills and motions. I think it's important to note that the Senate has always extended the courtesy to the House of Commons of accepting all of the private members' motions and bills that come from the House of Commons. Are we saying it's improper for them to do that on that basis—it's improper for them to say because it's a courtesy that they should accept them? I think that speaks for itself.

In terms of the process, it seems to be clear that first of all, as I said, I did not know a week ago that the two times it had come before the House, for starters, were not during this Parliament.

Secondly, on reflection, it became clear to me that if we were going to have a process... The idea of inviting members from the Senate here to talk to us is fine; to establish a process from here on and perhaps say that if we find... In fact, in terms of what Mr. Breitkreuz was asking, my understanding from Mrs. Parrish is that a bill in the same form had come before the House of Commons, before the subcommittee, a couple of times, and it came in the same form from the Senate this time.

But the point is that we should be considering the process here, and not changing the process in midstream. I think it makes good sense to sit down with the senators—some of them at least—and say “How can we do this to avoid this in the future?” But to say we're going to cut it off halfway doesn't make any sense to me.

The Chair: Carolyn Parrish is next, then Jay Hill and Yvon Godin.

Mrs. Carolyn Parrish: I will not be supporting the reversal of this decision. As chair of the subcommittee, we've struggled over this from the beginning. We've had five draws, with four Senate bills coming through. Each time we've had the argument placed before us, which was at first blush quite reasonable, that it was a tit-for-tat situation: we didn't want them to start blocking ours. But I agree with Jay that to suppose they're going to throw a fit and stop all our bills is demeaning to the Senate. It's demeaning to the people I know there. I don't think they'll behave that way.

We have been more than generous, with three out of four of those draws automatically being declared votable by this committee, not by the private members' subcommittee. We have always felt uncomfortable with it. We have always brought it to this committee, and this committee has made the decision.

So I will not be supporting this. I don't believe they're going to react that way. It's almost like asking, “What have you done for me lately?” Out of four bills, three went through without any discussion. This fourth one we have serious concerns about, and I won't be supporting it.

The Chair: Carolyn, thank you very much.

Jay Hill, Yvon Godin, and then Joe Jordan.

Mr. Jay Hill: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

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Just in rebuttal to Mr. Regan's comment about a sort of reciprocal courtesy, I would expect that if the Senate identified some problem with our process, whereby we were circumventing a system they had in place, and if they made an example of some bill that at least by its presence—by the way it was written or drafted—pointed to that possibility, and they came to this committee and said they weren't going to make a particular bill votable because there was a problem with the process, I would hope that all members, regardless of political persuasion, wouldn't have a problem with the Senate explaining that to us.

So the idea is wrong that just because we have had a reciprocal courtesy in place for years, we will automatically just rubber-stamp it, no matter what happens.

The Chair: I would ask the remaining speakers to be as rapid as possible. Do you realize that our main topic today is supposed to be private members' business?

Yvon Godin, then Joe Jordan, and Geoff Regan. You are the last. Please be brief.

Mr. Yvon Godin: With all respect, it's not our fault if Mr. Regan was not here in the last Parliament. The people who were sitting here took a conscious decision. As far as I am concerned, they had everything in their hands to make a decision. We have to trust our subcommittee, or it doesn't work; it's as simple as that.

It's not fair for the government to come after that and say, “Well, we were not here last year. Sorry. We want to have another vote.” That's not fair to the committee. That's not fair to us. That's why I hope we will support our subcommittee. It's as simple as that.

The Chair: Joe Jordan.

Mr. Joe Jordan (Leeds—Grenville, Lib.): Well, trust in our subcommittee... Every time there's a private member's bill in the House that isn't votable, the last thing the Speaker does is rail against the subcommittee. He essentially calls them all a bunch of Liberal hacks and controlees, and asks the House to make it votable. So let's not switch horses midstream.

Clearly this isn't going to work, and that's fine. But I've just lost a lot of enthusiasm for spending any time on votable private members' business because we're just sticking our finger in the eye of the Senate. I don't blame them at all.

This is a Tory bill; it isn't a government bill. This isn't some conspiracy we're putting forward here. We're just saying if we're going to change the rules or put in place a rule, make sure the ones in the queue have got out. It's the same frustration a private member feels when his bill gets drawn and he finds out it isn't votable. They put so much work into it and all of a sudden, arbitrarily, the door is slammed.

So the frustration that's been expressed at this committee, that I thought was sincere, I now have to reconsider, because I think it's all a bunch of nonsense.

Mr. Jay Hill: Point of order.

The Chair: Point of order.

Mr. Jay Hill: Just for the record, since we're about to, hopefully, discuss private members' business—

The Chair: Is this a point of order?

Mr. Jay Hill: Yes.

I take offence at Mr. Jordan's assertion that this was a Tory bill. It's a private member's bill.

The Chair: That is not a point of order, Jay.

Carry on.

Mr. Joe Jordan: It's sponsored by a Tory senator.

The Chair: Let's leave it.

Mr. Joe Jordan: Okay.

I'm just saying that the notion that we're going to slam the door halfway through is exactly the issue I heard complaints about. It's driving the process that we look at the votability of private members' business.

If the Senate decides that the courtesy of extending votability to private members' business from the House of Commons is going to be re-examined, or they're going to put some kind of evaluation mechanism in there, that's a big step backwards for this whole process.

The Chair: Geoff Regan, briefly, and then I'm going to call the vote.

Mr. Geoff Regan: I agree with what Mr. Jordan has said. However, it appears clear that there's not support for the motion, and I withdraw it.

The Chair: The motion is withdrawn.

We can proceed to our main item of business, which is the matter of making all private members' bills votable.

Colleagues, we left this discussion with a sort of informal agreement on how we would proceed between the official opposition and the government.

Garry Breitkreuz, do you want to begin at that point? You sort of explained to me what was going on. I didn't really understand what it was. If you can do that relatively briefly, perhaps we could go to someone on this side. Then we'll see where we are.

Mr. Garry Breitkreuz: I was hoping there would be a printed proposal that we could discuss, but that has not been prepared.

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Essentially, we would like the committee to approve the guidelines for making private members' business votable. Key to those, at this point, is the whole idea that the private member's bill or motion would come to the House of Commons, and the subcommittee would decide beforehand if it was one hour or three hours. All bills and motions would get two hours. The subcommittee would at some point before they come to the House, after they were drawn, decide whether it was deemed a minor issue and would only have one hour, or that it was a major issue and would have maybe three or four hours. Then when it comes to the House of Commons, it would be debated for the two hours and then be referred to committee before second reading. That was a key proposal that Mr. Jordan brought up. I thought that made a lot of sense.

Then after that, if it was deemed to be a bill, the details of the bill would then be put in place, be drawn up. We would not spend a lot of time drawing up the legislation only to have the House defeat it.

So that's in essence the proposal we were tossing around last time. There seems to be general support for that idea.

I don't know how you're going to proceed with this, Mr. Chairman, in light of the fact that we don't have the printed proposal here. Can we deal with it as an idea that would go forward?

The Chair: Geoff Regan.

Mr. Geoff Regan: Mr. Chairman, thank you.

In fact, I have something in writing. Unfortunately, it has not yet been translated, and therefore I can't hand it out to you. However—and I know this is less than satisfactory—it might be helpful for discussion purposes if I read it into the record and then we can... It may help to discuss it.

Mr. Garry Breitkreuz: Okay. Sure.

The Chair: If we could just pause for one minute, we'll get a copy of it and the translators could have a copy. Then you could read it slowly.

Mr. Geoff Regan: Fine. I'll read it slowly.

The Chair: Is that acceptable, colleagues?

Mr. Geoff Regan: It's very imperfect, and I apologize that it has not yet been translated, but we'll get it translated for the next meeting, obviously.

The Chair: We're going to suspend for one minute.

Marlene Catterall.

Ms. Marlene Catterall (Ottawa West—Nepean, Lib.): Mr. Chair, I hate to be seen as picky, because I know we'd all like to move forward on this issue, but it is against the rules of the House that material be distributed at the committee that is not translated. So I would ask that we not do that.

The Chair: It's not going to be distributed. I had thought of that and I understand. If any colleagues object to the procedure, it's not going to be distributed.

Ms. Marlene Catterall: Okay.

The Chair: I understand we're ready.

Geoff Regan, if you would proceed...

Mr. Geoff Regan: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

That was my point exactly, that I didn't want it distributed, because it isn't translated, and I apologize for that.

The first thing would be a new Standing Order 91.1, which would read as follows:

If, at the time that a Private Member's Public Bill is introduced and read a first time, the Member introducing the bill informs the House that it is his or her intention that the bill be referred to committee before second reading, when the order for consideration of the second reading of said bill is read, the Member shall propose a motion that the bill be forthwith referred to a standing, special or legislative committee. The Speaker shall immediately propose the question to the House and proceedings thereon shall be subject to the following conditions:

(a) the motion shall not be subject to any amendment;

(b) after not more than 180 minutes of debate, the Speaker shall interrupt the debate and the question shall be put and decided without further debate.

The next would be an amendment to Standing Order 92, adding the following paragraph (4):

Notwithstanding section (1) of this Standing Order, every bill which has been placed on the order of precedence and which has been made subject to Standing Order 91.1 and every motion pursuant to Standing Order 68(4)(b) which has been placed on the order of precedence shall be deemed to have been selected and designated a “votable item”.

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Then the amended Standing Order 97.1 would be as follows:

A standing, special or legislative committee to which a Private Member's public bill has been referred after second reading shall in every case, within sixty sitting days from the date of the bill's reference to the committee, either report the bill to the House with or without amendment or present to the House a report containing a recommendation not to proceed further with the bill and giving the reasons therefor or requesting a single extension of thirty sitting days to consider the bill, and giving the reasons therefor. If no bill or report is presented by the end of the sixty sitting days, or the thirty sitting day extension if approved by the House, the bill shall be deemed to have been reported without amendment.

That is the end of the proposal. Is that clear?

The Chair: Okay. Garry, can I ask you, does that... If you describe briefly what it...

Sorry, do you want to comment on that?

Mr. Geoff Regan: I realize it's awfully difficult for us to discuss it at this stage, but I hope, since I have something in front of me, at the very least to put something out there to give you an idea that we have something in mind. The idea here obviously is that you'd have two courses for a private member's bill. One is the present system. The other would be a system whereby you would stand up when you're first introducing it and say you want to choose route B, which would mean that the bill will be referred to committee before second reading and the committee gets to study it.

Of course one challenge we have—

The Chair: Could I just stop you there? When you see the bill, it could be a summary. I heard the last time that it could be a summary of the bill rather than something written out in legalese.

Mr. Garry Breitkreuz: That was our intention.

Mr. Geoff Regan: I think that makes sense. I'm not sure that the wording of this reflects that.

Mr. Garry Breitkreuz: No, I don't think so.

Mr. Geoff Regan: I'm not sure how... We have to look at that some more.

Mr. Garry Breitkreuz: Yes.

Mr. Geoff Regan: I'll make a note of that, okay. I'm just writing the word “summary” on here.

The Chair: But that's why I didn't want to interrupt, I just wanted to...

Mr. Geoff Regan: Because that's a reasonable thing. The challenge, of course, is that committees are busy and there are many private members' bills. There could be a huge number of private members' bills before committees. So the change to 97.1 would account for that by saying that if you choose the present system, then the committee's going to be deemed to report back, if it hasn't reported back by 60 days. But if you choose the new system, that doesn't apply.

Mr. Garry Breitkreuz: I just want to ask a question.

The Chair: I'll go to Jay Hill first and then to Garry.

Mr. Jay Hill: I agree with Mr. Regan that it's extremely difficult for all of us to discuss this in the detail that it needs without having it in front of us.

Recognizing that, I have a question. If I understood what you just said correctly, my concern is that, as you say, with the committees being busy, unless we're going to strike more committees—and I don't know where you're going to find the bodies to put on them, because you did mention special committees or legislative committees as well as the standing committees—basically we could see ourselves in a process where despite the best intentions the 60 days is just used up. Then the committee reports back, and for whatever reason they can dream up, decides not to proceed any further with the bill. We're not any further ahead as far as making that particular bill or more bills votable, because they would recommend that the bill be dropped for any number of reasons.

I'm a bit uncomfortable with that.

Mr. Geoff Regan: Mr. Chairman, I don't think that that is the effect of this proposal. I think the effect is to say that if you follow the present system, then the committee has to report back within 60 days or be deemed to have reported back. But my understanding is that in fact if you follow the new system and have it referred before second reading, that limit does not apply to the committee. So the committee has more time before it has to report back. That's my understanding.

The Chair: Jay, are you okay with that?

Mr. Jay Hill: I'd like to say that I don't necessarily agree with Mr. Regan's interpretation of the mechanism of actually how this would work. But I have to have some other people look at it, when I can get it in writing.

The Chair: Sure.

Okay, it's Garry, then Carolyn, then Paul.

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Mr. Garry Breitkreuz: I appreciate the work you've done on this. I don't know if you would know how this plays out to answer my questions.

What is the difference in practicality between choosing route one or route two? If he chooses route two now, that means it would automatically be deemed votable? How would this then affect the draw? Do just route two bills and motions go into a draw? Are they in the same draw with route one?

One of the suggestions was that in the life of the Parliament, you would have one bill or motion deemed votable. I don't pick up in the Standing Orders that you've related there how you would protect the private members who have not had anything votable from losing their turn in the queue while other ones can have a second one drawn, maybe in route one? How does the draw work with route one and route two?

The Chair: I think it's useful as long as you don't mind if, whenever we can, we go back... Given that we don't have the document in front of us, we'll go back to Geoff.

Do you want to comment on that?

Mr. Geoff Regan: Yes. My understanding is that the reason we have a draw now is to make bills votable. Isn't that right?

Mr. Garry Breitkreuz: No. They just come before Parliament and then they go to committee.

Mr. Geoff Regan: Oh, right. Pardon me.

Mr. Garry Breitkreuz: I'm trying to figure out how this works.

The Chair: Joe Jordan on this point.

Mr. Joe Jordan: The draw is there because there are more bills than space. It's just a mechanism for a non-biased filter. So I would see that when you introduce the bill at first reading, you can indicate which stream you want, for lack of a better word. Then it goes in the draw.

If you've indicated at first reading that you want this issue dealt with and you want a recorded division on this issue, prior to second reading, on whether to refer it to committee, if your bill's drawn, then that automatically happens. The House will vote on your issue. If you indicate when you introduce the bill that it's in bill form and you want to have the subcommittee then determine whether it should be votable or not, the old stream still applies. But it all goes in the same draw.

Mr. Garry Breitkreuz: I have another question. Is there some protection for everybody to get a turn?

Mr. Joe Jordan: I don't think we need that, I really don't. If you look at the number of people who actually use the system, I think random drawing may not be perfect, but it's as fair as you're going to get.

The Chair: It's useful that Carolyn Parrish is next. Carolyn can say what she wants to say and comment on what you've been saying.

By the way, then it's Paul Macklin, and then Joe Jordan is on the list for the general case.

Mrs. Carolyn Parrish: First of all, before I say anything, I want people in this room to understand that I've invested five out of the last eight years in chairing this subcommittee. It becomes exceedingly difficult, because when the system of the private members' subcommittee was first designed, there were only three parties in the House. There were two Liberals on the committee and one from each of the opposition, so it was a balanced committee and nobody had the majority weight.

Right now we have four members of opposition and two Liberals. So the system is onerous. It is difficult to chair, but with the cooperation of the members of the subcommittee, it's working.

Before I say anything else, I want to tell you that with the changes we've made over the last eight years, when it goes to committee it can't be deep-sixed any more. It has to be reported back within 90 days or whatever the rule is. We have done refinements to this system that stop short of making every bill votable.

Having said that, if you pick system one, the opposition is giving whoever is in power the ability to vote no to every private member's bill that ever comes forward from the opposition in the House of Commons. Do you understand that?

Mr. Garry Breitkreuz: No. Repeat that.

Mrs. Carolyn Parrish: I'm a visual learner, so I haven't followed this completely. But if you pick option one, where the whole House votes to go to committee, you are giving the Liberal majority—or some day some other majority—the ability in the House to vote no to every private member's bill that is not generated by (1) a Liberal or whoever is in charge, or (2) a person in favour within the governing power. Do you understand that? The second way is just going back to what we're doing right now.

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As far as I can see, regarding the change to the current standing order, if you don't do that, you're going to plug up the committees so badly that it's going to be a mess. The answer's going to be to hell with it all. You are going to start getting parties whipping along party lines on private members' bills. The system, as complicated as it sounds... Given my years of experience and I hope some credibility, because I was voting against that withdrawn motion, I would say this is not a good proposal. It won't work.

The Chair: Colleagues, I have two people on my list. One is Paul Macklin and one is Joe Jordan. One suggestion I would have is that we hear them and then we adjourn this discussion until next Tuesday, when we would all have the documents. We would have some notes.

Before I do that, though, Marie-Andrée, I might ask you to comment before I actually close the meeting.

Colleagues, is that a reasonable strategy?

Some hon. members: Agreed.

The Chair: Okay.

Paul Macklin, then Joe Jordan.

Mr. Garry Breitkreuz: I just have one question on your comments.

The Chair: Do you want to do it at the end?

Mr. Garry Breitkreuz: I'd like to do it now, because it kind of follows up on what you just said.

The Chair: I'm quite willing to do that. Go ahead.

Are you okay with that, Paul?

Mr. Paul Harold Macklin (Northumberland, Lib.): Sure.

The Chair: You're not going to crucify me when we get outside, or anything like that?

Mr. Garry Breitkreuz: There's been some discussion and some questions have been raised here, and I'm wondering if whatever is introduced next Tuesday could reflect some of the additional comments we've made around the table today.

The Chair: That was my sense. We're going to have the blues.

Mr. Garry Breitkreuz: Oh, okay. You didn't include that.

The Chair: We're going to have this discussion. There'll be notes on that. It won't just be that we'll appear here with the document translated. Marie-Andrée and colleagues may well have given it some thought and so on. My thought is that we'd come back with this in a much more concrete form.

Paul Macklin.

Mr. Paul Harold Macklin: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

The point I wanted to make is basically twofold. One, I wanted to go back and deal with the issue of a summary. I do believe that at some point there was discussion that we wouldn't go through the entire legislative draftsmanship process, but rather we would try to have the bills drawn on the basis of a summary of what the intent of the bill was to be. It does appear that the draft order that has been discussed here today, the amendment to the Standing Orders, would not accomplish that.

There needs to be some work done in that area before next week to deal with that issue, because I think in principle that issue is sound. The fact that one can advance their principle, get the draw, then have it drawn up in a legislative format for a bill is an appropriate way to go, but I think that wouldn't fit into the context of what we have before us.

Second, I wanted to say that maybe we were trying to do too much too fast this week. Although it's quite against my grain—I like to see things go forward—I thought it would be better that we take some time and get a flow chart built into this so we can actually see what we're going to be working with and how it would go forward.

Thank you.

The Chair: I have to get to Garry, but I have a very short comment on that. It seems to me that the next step is to truly get something down about what we're discussing now. I would advise you all that in my experience, if in fact we proceed with it—this has to do with your point about the flow chart—changes to the Standing Orders should not be done casually. I urge you with that. That change and the potential for ramifications elsewhere in the Standing Orders and all that stuff has to be done very carefully.

Garry, very briefly on that, whatever Paul said.

Mr. Garry Breitkreuz: Yes, and what you just said. Those are very wise comments. I do not want us to rush through with something that's not going to work. I completely agree. I'd like to comment on what Mr. Macklin and Ms. Parrish have said.

I think we have to ensure that the amendments that are made at committee agree with the original intent of the bill. I am concerned that the government majority could somehow amend the bill beyond its original principle to the point where the sponsor of the bill couldn't even agree with it. I'm concerned, and there should be some protection here so that doesn't become the scenario.

The Chair: Joe Jordan and then Marie-Andrée Lajoie.

Mr. Joe Jordan: I have just a couple of points.

On the point by Mr. Macklin, there is a proposal that was put together by a former clerk on proposal of a legislative motion. I believe we have it in both languages. If you look at it, I don't think it's exactly what we want to do, but it might be an interesting document for members to have. Essentially, it goes through a ways and means motion route, which I don't think is needed, but it's not a bad document to look at in terms of what form the concept might take. The whole purpose of that was to eliminate the amount of work that goes into making concepts into constitutionally valid bills that then go into a draw and never see the light of day. That's hours and hours of legislative counsel time. That's point one.

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Point two: this idea is just that at this point—it's an idea; this isn't a proposal the government is making. This is something we're looking at, and whatever we decide still has to be voted on by the House. We're a long way from finding a solution to this.

There are a number of issues that are going to be extremely problematic. The issue of how long the committee has may be a way, depending on how that is worded, for the government to kill bills.

From my experience and involvment in private members' business, sometimes we've drawn 18 bills and motions, and 14 of them are for the justice committee. To throw 14 things at the justice committee this fall would have been completely unworkable. We're going to have to be very careful. I think that's the point we're at now.

The Chair: For the record, can I say that the document Joe Jordan was referring to is

[Translation]

the legislative motion of November 1996 calling for a new procedure for private members' business.

[English]

Marie-Andrée Lajoie, would you care to comment on that? You don't have to wind up; I'll wind up. This document, which I notice came from you, will be part of the material we will be considering on Tuesday.

Please proceed.

Ms. Marie-Andrée Lajoie (Principal Clerk, House Proceedings, House of Commons): There are obviously many questions to all of this. I would like to backtrack and perhaps summarize what I have heard in a short time.

We are possibly looking at four tracks, from what I'm understanding. First is a straight regular motion, an order of the House, a resolution or a kind of wish that private members' business would want to put on the floor. Second is the current bill procedure, with the draw and selection or non-selection. A third option would be a bill sent to committee before second reading. So there would be a three-hour debate, if the bill is drawn in the House, and then a vote on whether the bill would be sent to committee, and then the committee study of that. Then there would be possibly a similar procedure like what we have... a report stage and second reading when the bill would come back from the committee, or not. So that's possible.

Then there's the whole question of legislative proposals. That's the one we don't have at all that is going to require a little thinking. It's a little along the lines of what Mr. Marleau was talking about in his document.

I think the main question is this. If we went through a legislative proposal, which can really be just one paragraph on an idea, you can have many variations of that procedure, one of which could be that this is put, and, when drawn, the legislative proposal could be debated for one hour. The vote on it would really be to authorize the member to come with a bill later on, and that is what Mr. Marleau is proposing. So that frees up the committee to a certain extent and then the bill would go through the same process.

A fourth option would be to send the legislative proposal to a committee. Then the committee could report whether a bill should be drawn up, which would have, obviously, some time consideration for a committee.

We'll have a look at all of this, but if you agree, we'll follow those two new tracks: a bill referred to committee before second reading and the legislative proposal.

I have one more point to make. Obviously we will have to look at the question of the language with the Standing Orders slowly and carefully. I want to restate that.

The Chair: I realize you all have to put your minds around the technicalities of those four tracks. Perhaps you could also think out what the next steps are, because I see thinking out this very specialized thing as one thing, and perhaps accepting it, but the other is how it finally fits in with Parliament. I think it's very significant.

Does anyone else want to comment before we finish? Garry.

Mr. Garry Breitkreuz: I want to get a consensus from the committee here if they agree with the three hours. Perhaps we should start with two hours and the committee could perhaps say this is a major issue, so let's go to three. I realize that debate can collapse. If there isn't sufficient material there to debate it for three hours, it will collapse after one or two hours.

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How do the members of the committee feel about that? Should we start with 120 minutes rather than 180 minutes, as was suggested in the original motion?

The Chair: Geoff Regan.

Mr. Geoff Regan: I don't think that when you have debates of these bills that all that often the three hours are taken up or much of the time is taken up with looking at the particular wording of a particular clause or the legalities of the thing or how it's worded. Generally speaking, people want to have a chance to speak to the issue.

Mr. Garry Breitkreuz: Yes, and it would be basic principles that we'd been discussing in that before we refer it to committee. Do we need to go for 180 minutes? Could we get it done in 120 minutes and save House resources and our time?

Mr. Geoff Regan: The report says 180 minutes, but I...

Mr. Garry Breitkreuz: I'm just throwing this out.

The Chair: I'm going to finish this.

Ms. Marie-Andrée Lajoie: I want to bring up a last point on the floor.

The Chair: Yes, please.

Ms. Marie-Andrée Lajoie: It's the question of a transition mechanism that we're going to have to look at, as well, for the business that's already before the House. So that's something else we will want to look at.

The Chair: Marie-Andrée, thank you very much.

Colleagues, thank you all very much. I'm going to adjourn in a moment.

Our meeting Thursday is with Mr. Kingsley. Our meeting next Tuesday is the continuation of this. In both cases, with regard to Mr. Kingsley, I think everybody here has something to say to the Chief Electoral Officer. Perhaps we could prepare our minds, in particular, to his two key items, the change in electoral boundaries and the issue of householders, so we can deal with those expeditiously, and then have our other questions ready. For Tuesday, I would be most grateful if you could look at the blues from today, for example, so that we could proceed in a fairly concrete fashion on Tuesday.

Marie-Andrée, we want to thank you for sitting here so patiently once again.

The meeting is adjourned until Thursday at 11 o'clock in this room.