Canadian Heritage Committee on April 18th, 2024

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Kevin Waugh]

Please wrap up.

[Humera Jabir]

These cases, which take decades, also require many interim steps, all of which need to be negotiated and dealt with in the courts. They are [Inaudible—Editor] litigation.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Kevin Waugh]

Thank you, Ms. Jabir.

Thank you very much to our guests today.

We need unanimous consent to continue.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

On a point of order, according to the daily resource capacity report, if CHPC is delayed or suspended for any reason, it may continue beyond six o'clock until it reaches two hours of meeting time or 6:30, whichever is earlier.

I would ask the chair to suspend the meeting and make every effort to find the necessary resources.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Kevin Waugh]

According to the clerk, the resources are there to go until 6:30.

We could do that. That would be the two hours.

[Patricia Lattanzio, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

Mr. Chair, we all know that there is an important vote to get to. I'm going to move to adjourn this meeting.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Kevin Waugh]

Mr. Coteau, go ahead.

[Michael Coteau, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

I thought you needed unanimous consent to go forward. .

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Kevin Waugh]

We do, to keep going now before the vote.

I guess we don't have that, but we do have resources here until 6:30, meaning we could come back at 6:00.

[Michael Coteau, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

But if you don't have unanimous consent, that's it. It's done. It's a done deal.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Kevin Waugh]

Do we want to go to 6:30?

[Voices]

[Inaudible—Editor]

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Kevin Waugh]

We don't have that consent.

Is it the will to suspend and come back at 6:00? I would do that.

[Michael Coteau, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

I've seen so many times that if there isn't unanimous consent, we don't come back. I've seen that with many members here. I think we should stick to what you originally asked for, unanimous consent, even before our last two speakers. We said we would agree to let the last two speakers go and then we would finish. That was the agreement we made.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Kevin Waugh]

Mr. Champoux, go ahead.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

I would like to clarify one point.

During the preceding discussion, we had agreed to continue the committee meeting while the vote was being called. We never talked about ending it after the vote.

The committee may very well decide to come back after the vote, and that is what I would like to see.

I think the issue being considered is a very interesting one and I still have questions to ask the witnesses.

I propose that we go and vote and come back after.

We never agreed to interrupt or adjourn the meeting. We agreed to continue the round of questions while the vote was being called.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Kevin Waugh]

Then is the majority opinion to come back?

We could continue at six o'clock, after the vote, or at 6:05, and then we could go to 6:30. We could just suspend.

[Taleeb Noormohamed, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

You don't have unanimous consent, Mr. Chair.

If you want to change the way the committee has functioned, which the actual chair has done as a courtesy to members when we've said we don't have unanimous consent to continue past a certain time—some of us have child care obligations and other things we need to get to—that's fine, and we can start playing that game as well, but this is not a game, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Ashton has her hand up. We agreed to something I thought we understood, which was that we would let this round go and then we would move on.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Kevin Waugh]

Ms. Ashton, go ahead.

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill—Keewatinook Aski, MB]

I also thought unanimous consent didn't exist for carrying on. I will also say that this whole meeting has been pretty disjointed with various technical issues, etc., so I'm not sure what we'll get by carrying on, given what we have seen for the last hour and a half, so I also support adjourning at this time.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Kevin Waugh]

We need a majority to bring everyone back, according to the clerk. Is there a vote on this, quickly? Could we have a show of hands?

[Michael Coteau, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

On a point of order, Mr. Chair, we've sat on this committee for a long time. Every single time we've had to have unanimous consent in order to go past a certain official ending time. That has been the rule since the beginning. I've been on this committee for two years. You originally asked for unanimous consent. You didn't get it. Now, for some reason, we're switching to a vote.

I think you should stick to your original decision to ask for unanimous consent to extend past six o'clock. You're not going to get that, and therefore the meeting is done.

[Taleeb Noormohamed, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

Further to that, Mr. Chair, it is not the prerogative of the committee to delay members from attending the House to vote.

You no longer have a majority of members who are prepared to come back. There are five of us on this side, plus Ms. Ashton. That's your majority, Mr. Chair.

I would strongly recommend that we try not to play games with the tone of this committee. It's already been a problem. We're trying to do our best to work together.

When Ms. Fry has been the chair, every time there has been a move from any member of any party to say that we don't want to go past that time, everyone's respected it.

Why do we want to change it today? I don't know.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Kevin Waugh]

Well, we've only had one round. Usually we're well into the second round, so that's why I'm asking. I've been on this committee for eight years, and this is the first time we've only done one round.

[Taleeb Noormohamed, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

I can think of at least three meetings where people decided they were going to delay things while we had witnesses waiting to deal with online harms, and we had to ensure that we had the ability to deal properly with people who were coming forward with traumas.

You can't all of a sudden decide that you want to change how the game is played.