SSIT Committee Meeting

SUB-COMMITTEE ON THE SITTINGS OF THE HOUSE OF THE STANDING COMMITTEE ON PROCEDURE AND HOUSE AFFAIRS

SOUS-COMITÉ DES SÉANCES DE LA CHAMBRE DU COMITÉ PERMANENT DE LA PROCÉDURE ET DES AFFAIRES DE LA CHAMBRE

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Thursday, December 4, 1997

• 1020

[English]

The Chairman (Mr. Bob Kilger (Stormont—Dundas, Lib.)): Pursuant to the order of reference for the committee dated Tuesday, October 28, we are reviewing the sitting schedule of the House of Commons.

[Translation]

We will still be benefitting from Mr. Marleau's and Mr. Montpetit's presence. First, Mr. Marleau will tell us about a new schedule to take into consideration.

Mr. Clerk.

Mr. Robert Marleau (Clerk of the House of Commons): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I don't know if the clerk has circulated to the members of Parliament here present the proposed order of business that I think could be agreed upon.

[English]

If you wish, I will take you through it in terms of what I believe your discussion was last week.

Mr. White came in with the concept of concentrating private members' business on either Monday or Friday or both. Therefore, the week would begin on the Monday with three straight hours of private members' business. I'll explain a couple of variations here.

At the present time in private members' business, a designated item, a bill, comes up for three hours of debate. After the first hour, it is dropped to the bottom of the list and it must make its way up and then again drop to the bottom of the list. With three consecutive hours on the Monday, as an option you could consider that when a private members' business votable item came into that slot, you could have the three straight hours on the bill and dispose of it forthwith that day. It's an option. You could also have three separate hours and roughly keep the rules in place that we have now.

The government orders would then ensue, much like a Monday currently, and we would still end up at 7 p.m. What I have done is picked up the time for members' statements that was allocated on Friday and added five minutes to the period on the four remaining days.

Question period being only 45 minutes, it's hard to divide into four; it would be 12 minutes and 30 seconds. We have made question period 50 minutes on three days and one hour on the Wednesday, so we're picking up exactly the same amount of question time that was available in the previous week.

Tuesday would be largely a government orders day, as you can see, providing from 9 a.m. until 7 p.m. In this particular proposal the government retains much the same amount of time it had for government orders as well, as does private members' business.

Wednesday was the variation that came out of your discussion on Friday. Mr. Blaikie was making a case for alleviating the attendance in the House in favour of committees. Therefore, after the oral question period of one hour, we'd still do routine proceedings. We've built the two hours of adjournment proceedings that occur currently at the end of the day.

We'd probably have to call it something other than adjournment proceedings when they come up in the middle of the day like that, but they could be a follow-up to question period. It's also been known in the past as the bitch period, but I don't think that's quite appropriate for the middle of a Wednesday afternoon. It's no longer the late show if it's at 2 p.m. It was the late show when it used to occur from 10 p.m to 10:30 p.m., as Mr. Blaikie will remember.

Since the issue of deferred divisions is now almost part of the parliamentary culture, it's part of the rules. In the last Parliament and the beginning of this one there was a desire to better manage the voting time. You could designate the 5:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. period on the Wednesday as being voting time. Members in committee would know when there are deferred divisions and they could schedule accordingly the time in committee. That doesn't mean you necessarily would exclude votes on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, but I think that over time you'd find that having a voting period on Wednesday would get more and more concentrated on that one day.

Thursday is largely like Tuesday and Friday and would have the remaining two hours of private members' business between 9 a.m. and 12 p.m., followed by routine proceedings. I believe that in the interests of the government and committees and parliamentary delegations and motions that members can put on the order paper, you would have to provide for routine proceeding items to be coming forward, and maybe all non-debatable ones—introduction of bills but not necessarily motions—so you would not have a surprise debate caused on the Friday. But all of the non-debatable routine proceedings—presenting petitions, introduction of bills, and those kinds of things—could still take place on Friday, providing for the link to the following Monday of the 48-hour notice for anything else.

• 1025

Then, for want of a better word, because not having too much direction from the committee, we still call it l'interpellation, that two-hour period would occur on Friday as an alternative procedure to question period. There you have a range of choices, and if you give me more direction, we can draft accordingly. You could use the Quebec formula, a hybrid formula, or the formula that is well known in our system, which is the “committee of the whole” formula, where the minister can attend with a couple of officials who can give him or her the technical background that he or she requires, and largely not change the rules. You could just call it a “committee of the whole” interpellation. We've had experience with some of those special debates in previous Parliaments, so it wouldn't require a whole lot of change to the rules of the culture.

You would likely want to give the ministries involved notice, whether it's two weeks or one week; whether it's a schedule; or whether in the trial period this winter, if you go with it, you want to pre-designate the principal ministries that would be involved. Those kinds of rules would guarantee notice to both the minister and the intervening parties or members, if you do it on a rotating basis amongst the parties, or whether it's all of the opposition that can attend and participate. Those rules will be tailor-made according to those choices you might make.

By and large, you have the same amount of private members' time; the same amount of oral question time; the same amount of members' statements time, although there you gain five minutes; and the same amount of government time.

I'm happy to take your questions, Mr. Chairman.

The Chairman: Mr. White.

Mr. Randy White (Langley—Abbotsford, Ref.): Thank you, Mr. Marleau.

I'm comparing what you have come up with to my draft from the other day, and it is reasonably close. I'd just like to go over a couple of items here.

I like your idea on Monday, the consecutive three hours for private members' business. Down the road, that would probably help that whole process. On my draft I had private members' business basically all day Friday and I added two hours to Monday, making it seven hours of private members' business. You left the same number of hours in yours for private members' business, so in fact we didn't gain any time. If the report that was tabled in the House last week were adopted, it might strengthen the private members' business, and therefore I think we might see the need to have more time on it.

As for the adjournment proceedings on Wednesday, in my draft I had it on Tuesdays and Thursday mornings. The reason I did that is I think having the late show become an early show gives more opportunity for our members to become intimately involved in that. I think you'd see more action by government members, media, and so on if it were earlier in the day. It almost sets up a tone, to some extent. I'd like to see that earlier.

The difference between my chart and yours would be the alternative to QP on Friday. We would be talking about a different kind of question period. While I like the idea, I would say the reconciliation needs to be between our members as to whether that would be more important to them than more time in private members' business.

On scheduled votes, we were looking at Tuesday, more so even today, I think. You moved it to Wednesday. Why that day?

• 1030

Mr. Robert Marleau: Compared to the three voting periods you had identified in your chart, the two dominant days in the statistics that I tabled on electronic voting are Tuesdays and Wednesdays, with much less voting on Mondays. The reason for that hour there and the adjournment proceedings—and I'll answer both questions in that period—was to try to provide the concept that Mr. Blaikie had brought up of alleviating attendance in the House on the Wednesday afternoon in favour of committees. That was part of the discussion last week. So I tried to account for that in this proposal.

You could easily move it to Tuesday morning and Thursday morning, as an example, in terms of the early show, as you call it. That would be at the expense of government time if you don't add hours to the day, or you would have to fill in government time on the Wednesday afternoon, which doesn't meet Mr. Blaikie's concern or idea.

On private members' business on Monday morning, perhaps I could come back to that first comment you made on whether you had more private members' time in light of private members' demand. One of the problems with the current private members' process is that once you get a number of designated come-to-a-vote bills and they get one hour and they drop it, and then another hour drops and then we select some more...it's going to start now and by February you're going to get a real bulging of items that we can't exchange with members who can't come. The frustration of members really builds, because they want to get back on.

Those of you who served on the previous committee will no doubt have heard of those complaints from members. Those who finally had a draw and had a designated item somehow seemed to hold everybody else back as the third hour kicked in.

Sometimes what happens is that by March in a normal calendar year there's a whole bunch of third hours that do occur and there is a clean-up. Having the designated items on a Monday for three consecutive hours would alleviate that build-up of a bunch of items on the order paper.

Yes, I did not go to the extended hours that you did, because I thought I heard in the discussion not a consensus, but more than one member advocating that we shouldn't necessarily add hours to the day if we were trying to alleviate both committees and the Friday.

Mr. Randy White: Perhaps I can make a final comment, Mr. Chairman.

A matter of concern in committees was the amount of committee work and busy activities that we have during the week. And now we would come up with a longer Tuesday and a Thursday, so to speak. If we did something like that, we should look at certain times of the week or certain days where we do not have committee time going to allow the members to recover the week in their office, to do their paperwork, to make their phone calls and so on. Other than that, I think we're getting closer.

[Translation]

The Chairman: Mr. Bergeron.

Mr. Stéphane Bergeron (Verchères, BQ): Mr. Chairman, first, I would like to congratulate Mr. Marleau and his team for the schedule being proposed to us. I think it takes into account most of the points made by our colleagues around the table as well as the concerns of the political parties that we represent here. There might be a few minor adjustments to be made but I think that it could most certainly be done.

I greatly appreciate the fact that you took into account the discussions we had last week by maintaining the same number of minutes per week for members' statements—we know how precious these members' statements are for our colleagues—as well as for the oral question period. We therefore have the same number of minutes as in the past for members' statements as well as for the question period, and we add to that a new form of direct exchange that we call interpellation for lack of a better word at the moment.

• 1035

However, I have to explain one thing here. Once more, having had the chance to experience that before, and I was talking about it with the Chairman before the Committee started its proceedings, I would simply like to point out that the interpellation closely resembles the committees of the Whole House.

The interpellation not only allows the ministers to surround themselves with officials who can come up with the appropriate answers to questions as they are being asked, but also the members to come to the House with their staff in order to be provided with questions.

Therefore, you can really have an open in-depth debate. As I pointed out last week, this often results in very interesting and enlightening exchanges of views.

As for the way the themes are divided and for the order, I imagine that we could function essentially on the same basis as for the opposition days or according to a similar formula that would respect the order of precedence of the parties in the House as well as their proportional representation in the House. This formula would allow us to identify the themes and the order in which the parties would be able to present their themes.

But there is one thing that I find very important to point out, and that would apply also to the opposition days. If the Reform Party was to inform us of an interpellation with the Minister of Labour, for example, it doesn't mean that the debate would be limited to the Reform Party and the Minister of Labour. All the parties represented in the House would take part in the exchange of views with the Minister, which would make for a very dynamic and enlightening debate.

I think that we should most certainly try to apply this formula, even it means finding a new way of calling it that would be more in keeping with the culture in Ottawa and with the Standing Orders of the House of Commons, while respecting the spirit that underlies the interpellation. In short, it would be like having some sort of a thematic Committee of the Whole, if I may use this expression, where we would not be obliged to proceed item by item, but where we would have to deal with a set of themes or settle an issue with a minister.

We had also thought of setting aside specific periods for the committees on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Unlike Mr. Harvey, I'm not dogmatic about finishing at 7 o'clock. I think that we have to make our presence in Ottawa as cost-effective as possible for the taxpayers. If we were to set aside two hours for the committees every Tuesday and Thursday morning, I would be quite willing to extend accordingly the proceedings of the House on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It is only a suggestion that my colleagues might want to comment upon.

As well, in response to a concern of Mr. White which is very legitimate, I think, if the idea is to slightly extend the private members' business, we could maybe prolong the time taken for private members' business by an hour on Friday and move forward an hour the period set aside for the interpellation, so that we would adjourn at 2 o'clock instead of 1 o'clock.

Adjustments could easily be made to satisfy each one of our colleagues, so that there would be something in it for everybody and the proceedings of the House would be more efficient and more logical, which would allow the members to use their time more efficiently when they are in Ottawa, while satisfying another concern often mentioned to us, that is the need for the members to be more present in their constituencies.

I think that what is being proposed here deals with all concerns that have been expressed so far around this table.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Bergeron.

[English]

Mr. Blaikie.

• 1040

Mr. Bill Blaikie (Winnipeg—Transcona, NDP): I have a couple of comments and questions.

With respect to Monday morning, first of all, with private members' business and the option of doing all three hours on a votable motion all at once, there's an attraction to that, but it seems to me it would also be problematic, because it would mean that for the private member's question you would have to line up a whole lot of speakers for one morning—and not just any morning, but Monday morning. It would seem to me that for bills that would otherwise be debated for three hours, over three separate hours, the likelihood of those debates collapsing on the Monday morning would be greatly enhanced, shall we say.

Going back to the McGrath committee, the idea of separating out the three hours was not necessarily to avoid that problem, although this was certainly thought of. The idea of having the three separate hours was that given that these items were going to be votable, these decisions would not be snap decisions, particularly when it came to legislation. But also with respect to motions, the idea was that members would come to be aware in the same way they are aware of government legislation. We don't have snap decisions taken about government legislation unless of course it's back-to-work legislation.

In the normal course of events there's first reading, second reading, committee stage, and third reading. So the House is not called upon to express itself in any final way until such time as there's been an opportunity to really know what is going on. The worry about having more items votable and then having them votable after only one occasion of debate was that the House would not really have a chance to tune in to what was really going on.

I think that concern is still valid. So I see in this Monday morning thing, if it turned out to be three hours of debate on one particular bill or motion, a double danger: first, that debate might collapse, which would be too bad for the member; and secondly, that there would be a tendency to defeat things because people wouldn't have had a chance to really figure out exactly what was going on or the member in question wouldn't have had the time that does occur over three or four months to build support, to talk to the government, to do the politicking that is necessary sometimes to get a private member's motion or bill through.

So that would be my concern. It may seem on the surface that we're doing private members' business a favour by doing this, but it might turn out to be quite the opposite. And that would be my judgment on this.

So my preference would be, if we go to the Monday morning thing, to leave it as three separate hours and then you have three members who are going to be there on that Monday morning and three members who are organizing the three separate hours to make sure they have speakers. Otherwise for that 10 minutes apiece the particular member is trying to line up 15 or more different speeches on this one particular topic, which might prove a little tough.

I have a couple of other things. Do I take it then that there wouldn't be routine proceedings on Monday and Tuesday and Thursday on this?

Mr. Robert Marleau: No. We didn't indicate it where they normally occurred. We just indicated them where they would have to be added because of major changes.

Mr. Bill Blaikie: Okay. So we would still have routine—

Mr. Robert Marleau: Still have routine proceedings on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays.

Mr. Bill Blaikie: Okay. I was worried about that.

Mr. Robert Marleau: It's a good point.

Mr. Bill Blaikie: It seems to me—and maybe this is obvious and doesn't need to be stated—that if we're going to do away with question period, even though the same amount of minutes are added throughout the week onto Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, that any approval of such a scheme would have to be subject to the government House leaders being able to work out a way of allocating those extra minutes in question period, a way that was agreed on by everybody.

• 1045

We have done what many thought was a difficult thing. We've arrived at a way of allocating questions on the basis of the House schedule now. It would be a shame to throw a monkey wrench into what has worked out to be a rather harmonious thing by simply adding time now without knowing in advance, without working out in advance, just how that extra time would be dealt with.

If it were something we couldn't agree on, or if it became something we fell to fighting about, I think that would be a real shame, because one of the great accomplishments of this Parliament so far has been the way we have adjusted to the five-party reality and the fact that we were able to work something out for question period that was satisfactory to everybody.

That's one of my concerns about the elimination of question period on Friday. Personally, if we're going to be here on Friday anyway, I would just as soon see question period remain. But that's my view of the matter.

One of our members just came back from a parliamentary exchange with the U.K. Apparently there they have a thing called “constituency Fridays”. They don't do anything in Parliament on Friday. Friday is devoted to their constituencies; and they don't have anywhere near as far to go to get to their constituencies, most of them, as many Canadian members of Parliament do.

I'm just wondering whether we aren't trying to overcompensate for the fact that we do need these Fridays, or certainly many members feel they need them, in order to do their constituency work. I don't particularly myself.

Anyway, I'm concerned about the loss of question period on Friday and the possible difficulty of reallocating that time across those four days. I still think creating one occasion on Wednesday afternoon when the House isn't sitting, or when the House isn't doing government orders, to free up people to do committee work without having to worry about the House, is good. It goes a very small way—I don't say this critically—towards symbolically addressing the concern I had, but it still doesn't get over the problem that we have so many things happening all at the same time, and that's still going to be true for a large part of the week.

Mr. Robert Marleau: Mr. Chairman, with your permission, I could comment at this point about what Mr. Blaikie just addressed. It speaks to the comment made by Mr. Bergeron, and by Mr. White, about committee time versus House time, extending the sitting or moving it forward in the morning to allow committee time.

Yes, I agree with Mr. Blaikie, it's a symbolic way of providing time for committees. But one of the fundamental problems we have with the committee system is the lack of meeting space. If you provide designated mornings, let's say, for committee time with no government orders, you're asking the committees to concentrate the work they now spread over Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, into two very intense periods. Quite frankly—I'm going back to my committee clerk days, when I used to have to rush in for the signing book to get a committee room—I know my colleagues, the committee clerks, are still doing that now.

The infrastructure in terms of space for committees is very deficient. Over-concentrating them in one or two periods would make it a nightmare.

• 1050

Mr. Bill Blaikie: I'm not suggesting that, actually.

Mr. Robert Marleau: No, but that's an element I wanted to cover, relating also to what Mr. Bergeron said. Even the Wednesday afternoon as a period freed up from government orders, let's say, means that you have possibly only four hours of meeting time, maximum, in the exact number of rooms we have, which is too few. So there's a structural issue there in terms of providing more time for committees.

Mr. Bill Blaikie: How many committees meet now? To what extent do committees meet now in the evenings?

Mr. Robert Marleau: I don't have those statistics with me, but there are very few. It's exceptional.

Mr. Bill Blaikie: Part of the irony of this is that we're trying to figure out how to not have to be in committee and in the House and everywhere else all at the same time. We've got Monday night, Tuesday night, Thursday night, sitting there, stark raving empty. Nobody is wanting to do committee work in the evenings, which used to be the case and which was the original intention of getting rid of evening sittings—so committees could work in the evenings without having to worry about the House. If there was a way in which we could recover that, we could solve a lot of problems.

In the eyes of some members we might create more problems because they'd have to be here in the evening, but the idea of getting rid of evening sittings was not so that everybody could go home. The idea was actually to free up the evenings for committee work, because when the discussion was being held in the early 1980s about getting rid of evening sittings, the object of the game was to solve the very problem that we're talking about now, the fact that people felt they couldn't be everywhere at the same time. So we said let's get rid of the evening sittings, and in that way the committees can work in the evenings and there's not this conflict.

It didn't work out that way, because as soon as the House shut down in the evenings, the place shut down.

The Chairman: Is there anything else, Bill?

Mr. Bill Blaikie: If one of the problems we're trying to address is how to have less demand for us to be in two places at the same time, I'm wondering—and I guess I'm asking the clerk this—whether there isn't a way, perhaps by proscribing, prohibiting, or whatever, committees from meeting at certain other times during the day, by sort of forcing them to meet in the evenings. I don't know whether that's really possible. In the end people have to be willing to meet in the evening, and I don't know how you could change that culture now.

The Chairman: Mr. Clerk.

Mr. Robert Marleau: Well, yes, you could write standing orders denying the right of committees to sit while the House is sitting at particular times. That's a technical thing, but I think you'd have to have a very close analysis of it.

You're really talking about only Monday night, Tuesday night and Thursday night. Wednesday night sitting was never part of the parliamentary culture. Monday night has always been a low sitting night. It was on Tuesdays and Thursdays in the golden years, if I can call them that, that there were intense committee sittings, usually between 8 p.m and 10 p.m., because that was parallel to when the House was sitting.

The issue again, I think, is partly the meeting room problem. With the number of committees that meet, in numbers of meetings every record from Parliament to Parliament has been exceeded since night sittings were abolished, just the same. It's not that we have fewer committee meetings because they don't meet in the evening.

Mr. Bill Blaikie: No, they're all piled into—

Mr. Robert Marleau: They're all piled into the usual sitting windows.

It would alleviate the problem a little bit if you took advantage of those evenings.

Also, Monday morning is not a heavy sitting morning for committees, for all the reasons that Friday isn't as well to some degree. If you had private members' business exclusively between 9 a.m. and 12 p.m., in whatever formula you decided on, that could be a concentrated committee morning as well, because the attendance in the House is slightly different.

The technique of doing it by standing orders is easy to devise. The actual impact and the infrastructure demand on those rooms is another issue.

The Chairman: Mr. Adams.

• 1055

Mr. Peter Adams (Peterborough, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Chair.

In this last exchange I think I probably got most of the information I wanted. I'll just comment that our regional caucuses tend to meet in a large caucus on Tuesday evening. I would point that out. So it's a heavy evening for us.

I came in, Mr. Marleau, when you were responding to Randy White's question about Wednesday afternoons and committees. I think I've got it now, but in this pattern here, could you just explain to me again what the provision for committees is? I understand the debate that's going on.

Mr. Robert Marleau: Part of the discussion last week—I think mainly the comment came from Mr. Blaikie—was that if there were a way to alleviate a part of a day for members to concentrate on committee business without having to worry about a vote in the House, their duty in the House, and that sort of thing, then he would like to see at least that.

So Wednesday afternoon here is designed so that you would have members' statements for 20 minutes, then 60 minutes for oral questions. This would be followed by the non-debatable items on routine proceedings. Then there would be the equivalent time that's now being given during the course of the week for adjournment proceedings. Call it something else at that point.

If there were none, it would stop earlier. The sitting would be suspended until the scheduled vote period so that committees sitting in the afternoon would know that they were clear to 5.30 p.m. before their scheduled vote, if any. This would take some of the pressure off on one afternoon of having to be in three places at the same time, which is what Mr. Blaikie was saying.

Mr. Peter Adams: Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The Chairman: Mr. Bergeron.

[Translation]

Mr. Stéphane Bergeron: Mr. Chairman, I see that time is flying. The session is nearing its end and if we want to have a pilot project in place rapidly in order to experiment with a new schedule as soon as February, we will have to act quickly.

Judging by the remarks made by my colleagues before, I remain convinced that we can come to an agreement this morning. The way I see things, the object of those three consecutive hours for private members' business on Monday morning would not be to have a three hours debate on a bill or a motion but to dedicate three consecutive hours to private members' business. We could discuss three different items of business on Monday morning.

This is how I see things. If I'm wrong, I would like the clerk to let me know. Otherwise, it responds to the first concern raised by Mr. Blaikie. I understand very well your reservations about the possibility of making time on Tuesdays and Thursdays for the committees.

As for the possibility of having the committees sitting in the evening rather than in the morning, the same problem arises regarding the availability of rooms. I am now putting my whip's hat on. I don't mind having to stay at night for committee meetings. I am here every night until 8, 9 or 10 o'clock anyhow, and sometimes even until midnight. This is why I don't mind if there are committee meetings. But I know for a fact that my members and several other members will prefer to have a million things to do during the day rather than having to stay at night to sit on a committee. It is a problem we have to be sensitive to and which we have to face.

Once more, I am not totally alien to the idea of having the committees sitting at night even if it means that we have to better allocate the time periods reserved for the committees which normally sit on Tuesday morning and afternoon, Thursday morning and afternoon and Wednesday afternoon, and maybe consider the possibility of having some committee meetings in the evening from time to time in order to alleviate the peak periods where we don't have enough rooms.

As for Fridays, personally, I don't wish to see the question period maintained, for two main reasons. The first is the most important to my eyes. If we want to free Fridays from proceedings that require that most members be present, we must eliminate the question period.

I find that Parliament would be very well served by the formula that has been proposed to us because the members would not have less minutes for questions as the time normally allocated to questions on Fridays would be split between the other question periods and because we would also get a new form of question period.

• 1100

What more could the parliamentarians, who are there to control the actions of the government, ask for? They would enjoy the same number of minutes for questions, plus a new question period of two hours to ask in-depth questions to the ministers. I think that the formula proposed is a true innovation, and definitely a plus for Parliament.

Moreover, we would avoid having to have a very large number of members present for nothing. As we all know, Friday's question period is absolutely insipid, Mr. Chairman, insipid because there are few members in the House and insipid because there are no ministers to answer our questions. This is why I do not at all wish Friday's question period to be maintained. I would prefer to have this period divided amongst the other four and to see a new form of direct exchange with the Cabinet being created thanks to the interpellation formula.

If you don't have any objections, Mr. Chairman, and if all my colleagues agree, I would propose that we report on Tuesday to the full committee on the schedule that is being proposed and which, even if some minor little adjustments might still be needed, satisfies on the whole the aspirations, the repeated demands and the concerns of our colleagues of all political parties.

The Chairman: Mr. Bergeron, Mr. White had already requested the floor.

Mr. Stéphane Bergeron: Of course.

The Chairman: We will come back to your motion.

[English]

Mr. White.

Mr. Randy White: I'm not prepared right now to agree unless some of my concerns are at least discussed. I still say that for the adjournment proceedings, the early show should be earlier in the morning, either on a Tuesday and a Thursday or something else.

The Chairman: I'd ask if the Tuesday and Thursday mornings would be more agreeable for what is known as the late show now: an hour Tuesday mornings and Thursday mornings.

Mr. Randy White: Then what would happen Wednesday afternoons?

[Translation]

Mr. Stéphane Bergeron: For my part, I have absolutely no problem with Mr. White's proposal. However, I think that the idea behind the clerk's proposal was to have a less demanding Wednesday afternoon for most members, precisely to free them for committee work. But the same goal could as easily be met if, for example, on Tuesday morning, we would set aside the period from 9 to 10 o'clock for the adjournment proceedings, supposing that the period that we would want to free for committee meetings would then be Tuesday mornings rather than Wednesday afternoons.

[English]

The Chairman: I wonder if Mr. Blaikie would care to comment on that specific issue of the late show being moved to Tuesday and Thursday mornings from what is proposed here as Wednesday afternoons.

Mr. Bill Blaikie: I don't have any problem with that, but I still have a problem with the whole thing.

The Chairman: But that modification is agreeable to you.

Mr. Bill Blaikie: That's not a big deal.

The Chairman: Back to Mr. White.

Mr. Randy White: As for the question about private members' business versus the interpolation, the alternative to QP, we'd have to get some agreement by our caucuses on that, because I would think a lot of the members would prefer longer hours for private members' business as opposed to another form of QP. That's one concern I have, and I really don't have the answer for that one.

I originally thought, when we talked about this alternative to QP, which is basically getting one or two ministers there, that we were talking about keeping statements and questions to the same time during each day, except that on Friday it would be used specifically for one or two ministers. It is a little bit new to me that we are going to expand the whole process from Monday through Thursday and then in addition put in other alternatives to it. So I really want to think about that one.

• 1155

I too have the same concerns that if we do change the number of minutes we put into QP, then we're going to be back at the table negotiating a whole new process here.

That's about it. Other than that, with a little jostling I think we could come up with something.

The Chairman: Mr. Marleau.

Mr. Robert Marleau: By way of clarification, if we move the adjournment proceeding from late show to early show Tuesday and Thursday, it might meet, as Mr. Bergeron said, Mr. Blaikie's wish that this period at least alleviates pressure on committees. But you would have to make up the government time on Wednesday afternoon and have government orders following question period. If you take those hours away in the morning from government hours, you'll have to add them on the Wednesday afternoon.

[Translation]

Mr. Stéphane Bergeron: We would adjourn at 7 o'clock instead of 6:30 as planned. We could go on till 7 o'clock.

[English]

The Chairman: Mr. Blaikie.

Mr. Bill Blaikie: I don't think we're in a position, as a committee, subcommittee, or even as a standing committee, really, to make decisions. Perhaps I'm wrong, but the standing committee could make a recommendation to the House. Whether or not that recommendation is accepted, it seems to me, ultimately would have a lot to do with whether the House leaders, then, were able, prior to it being considered by the House, to arrive at a way of implementing this that would be satisfactory.

So it seems to me that all we can do today...and I'm not even sure we can do that. Like Mr. White, I would much rather be able to go back to my caucus and say okay, this is what has been distilled from these several meetings; what do you think of it? I'm not prepared to agree to change, in such a substantial way, the way the House does business on the basis of the conversations we've had here. I think the caucuses have to be brought into it.

Did the meeting I'm speaking to just end?

Some hon. members: Oh, oh.

The Acting Chairman (Mr. Peter Adams): Had you finished there, Bill?

Mr. Bill Blaikie: I guess so.

Some hon. members: Oh, oh.

The Acting Chairman (Mr. Peter Adams): Our chair was called to the telephone.

Mr. Bill Blaikie: I see.

The Acting Chairman (Mr. Peter Adams): We are very close to the end of this meeting, and I have a conflict of interest—

Mr. Bill Blaikie: Can we please seek some guidance on the process? I don't think things should just happen.

The Acting Chairman (Mr. Peter Adams): Okay. I'm sure we'll have it shortly.

Stéphane Bergeron.

[Translation]

Mr. Stéphane Bergeron: I think that on the basis of Mr. White's comments, we could come to a new formulation of the proposed schedule.

As for the adjournment proceedings, we could hold them Tuesday and Thursday mornings and extend accordingly the time allotted to government business on Wednesday and maybe prolong for an hour private members' business on Friday so as to move forward the interpellation one hour to alleviate Mr. White's concern.

Based on this new schedule, I would propose: that the new schedule be submitted to the consideration of the full committee on Tuesday, that all members then make a presentation to their caucuses on Wednesday and that, following the caucus proceedings, we meet again on Thursday to rule on the formula according to the discussions in caucus the day before.

On Thursday, we might have a better idea of what our colleagues from all parties want. We might then be able to agree on a formula that will please everybody and that will allow us to proceed rapidly with the establishment of a pilot project.

The problem right now has to do with the undisputable and urgent need for our colleagues to be more present in their constituencies. We have an unexpected chance to put into place before February a pilot project that could run, say, until June. If we wait too long, it will be virtually impossible for us to implement a pilot project before next September probably.

• 1110

If we want to proceed quickly, we will need to make the adjustments that we talked about this morning, to submit them to the committee on Tuesday, and to discuss them on Wednesday within our respective caucuses in order to come back on Thursday with the reflections of our colleagues to see if it would not be possible to make last minute changes to the proposal, so that no later than January we can take the necessary measures for the implementation of this pilot project in February.

[English]

The Chairman: I would just make a comment regarding a pilot project. Perhaps the clerk can verify this, but I believe when we come back in early February we'll be here for a four-week period, then we will recess for a week and come back for a second four-week block. I think Mr. Bergeron talked about a pilot from February to June, but there may be opportunities to break it down into shorter periods, if that was the concern and the interest.

What Mr. Bergeron has proposed is obviously a very ambitious schedule. I just did a quick read around the table and I'm not sure if that meets the approval of most parties. It might be a little over-ambitious. I know we don't want to be overly zealous here, but I think we have an interest.

We've moved quite a long way in the past few weeks, but now in terms of process I'm in your hands. I understand caucuses have to be consulted and the House leaders need to have some discussions. I don't think any of us is trying to be careless here and undo what we have done over the past few weeks, and I'm sure that's not the intention of Mr. Bergeron, but on the other hand I think we have to arrive at a process.

Mr. Bill Blaikie: I didn't understand that this committee was trying to meet some deadline and come up with a pilot project before Christmas. This subcommittee is looking at scheduling, and I think it has to take as much time as it needs. If we can come up with a pilot project that can be adopted at the end of the first four weeks after we come back in February from the first break, terrific.

I don't think we should feel pressured to come up with something by next week. We won't have the opportunity to run these things by our caucuses in as meaningful a way as we need to. If we're going to make such significant changes, we need to give the House leaders time. If the committee's close to making a particular recommendation, then the House leaders need to meet to see whether or not there could be agreement on how the questions that would be lost on Friday would be redistributed from Monday to Thursday in the minutes that are being added.

All these things need to be worked out before anybody can agree to this. That's frankly just not possible by Wednesday or Thursday of next week.

The Chairman: I hope I'm not being unfair, Mr. Blaikie and Mr. White, as House leaders for your respective parties, but I wonder whether you feel you have enough information or you've heard enough input to add to your discussions with your House leader colleagues some discussion on the subject matter we've covered over the last few weeks, so we could have that input from that group when we come back from the Christmas recess.

Mr. Randy White: If we had another amended calendar here I would be prepared to go back to my colleagues, tell them how it's progressing and get some input on it, but I wouldn't be prepared to go to a pilot project this fast. I need that input. I want to know the impact of some of these things. I want the opportunity to go back to Mr. Marleau on my own if necessary to ask him how this impacts, and so on and so forth.

• 1115

I would really like the private members' bills time versus this other alternative on Friday explored, because I'm really not sure how the members see which priority is more important. Is private members' more important—an additional hour or two—or is it this other process? I even like Stéphane's proposal of one more hour on Friday for private members' bills. But I'd like to see this all once again, and to have the opportunity to go back to my caucus.

The Chairman: If I read the subcommittee members well, we will take the time to get more information from whatever sources on this Mr. White expressed to the clerk. I certainly want to consult with my own House leader, because obviously interpellation, for instance, would have to be considered extensively by cabinet from the government perspective. I would submit, then, that I would report to the procedure and House affairs committee, would ask for an extension, if you so agree, and that we would come back to these deliberations following the winter break. Did I read the committee well?

Mr. Bill Blaikie: Could you just summarize that one more time for me?

The Chairman: Just that we won't meet again until we come back from the winter recess, which would give us all an opportunity to get additional information from whatever sources we may require.

Mr. Bill Blaikie: Today would be the last meeting.

The Chairman: Today might be the last day. At the full committee of procedure and House affairs I would ask for an extension of the subcommittee's work, and we would come back to the subject matter when we return after the winter recess.

Mr. Bill Blaikie: Agreed.

Mr. Randy White: Could we get Mr. Marleau, then, to give us the next draft of this as soon as possible? I would like the opportunity before we break to talk to some of my colleagues about it.

The Chairman: Certainly. We're not asking the subcommittee to meet next week?

Mr. Randy White: No.

The Chairman: Okay. Mr. Marleau will circulate that new draft.

I do want to thank him and Mr. Montpetit again for their presence today, and their cooperation in our deliberations.

The meeting is adjourned to the call of the chair.