[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]
Tuesday, September 24, 1996
.0907 
[English]
The Clerk of the Committee: Honourable members, I see a quorum. In accordance with Standing Orders 106(1) and 106(2), your first item of business is to elect a chair.
[Translation]
I am ready to receive motions to that effect. Mr. Bergeron.
Mr. Bergeron (Verchères): I'd like to nominate Mr. Bill Graham.
The Clerk: Yes. It is moved by Mr. Bergeron, seconded by Mr. Assadourian, that Mr. Graham do take the chair of the committee.
[English]
Is it the pleasure of the committee to adopt this motion?
Motion agreed to
The Clerk: I declare Bill Graham duly elected chair of the committee and invite him to take the chair.
Some hon. members: Hear, hear!
The Chairman: By the power vested in me by the whip, I hereby dissolve the committee.
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
An hon. member: Mr. Graham, congratulations again.
The Chairman: Thank you very much. I appreciate very much the confidence the members have shown in me and I think we have a very interesting work program ahead of us.
The next items on the agenda will be the elections of vice-chairs and then to reconstitute our subcommittees.
I will now entertain motions for vice-chair. Mr. Morrison.
Mr. Morrison (Swift Current - Maple Creek - Assiniboia): I nominate Bob Mills for vice-chair.
The Chairman: Mr. Mills has been nominated.
[Translation]
Mr. Sauvageau (Terrebonne): Stéphane Bergeron.
[English]
The Chairman: Mr. Bergeron is proposed.
If you've been looking at the rules, you'll recall we had this discussion last year, and I'm just citing Beauchesne. You'll recall - and I intend to follow this procedure - that in the process of electing a vice-chairman, the chairman may receive and dispose of only one motion at a time. However, in past practice the rule has been relaxed in this situation to allow other proposed nominations to be presented as notice.
I therefore accept as notice of motion the proposition of Mr. Sauvageau to propose Mr. Bergeron, but in accordance with the rules, I will have to first, as I did last year, pass on the motion of Mr. Morrison for Mr. Mills's nomination as vice-chair.
Yes, Mr. Mills?
Mr. Mills (Red Deer): Could we have a recorded vote, please?
.0910
Motion negatived: nays 10; yeas 2
The Chairman: Second, it's moved by Mr. Sauvageau that Mr. Bergeron be vice-chair. Do I have a seconder for that nomination?
An hon. member: I second it.
Mr. Mills: We'd like a recorded vote, please.
Motion agreed to: yeas 10; nays 2
The Chairman: I declare Mr. Bergeron duly nominated and elected vice-chairman of the committee.
We now have to elect a second vice-chair.
Mr. Flis (Parkdale - High Park): I nominate Mr. English as second vice-chair.
The Chairman: Do I have a seconder for that nomination? Mr. Bergeron.
Are there any notices of motion?
Do you wish to have a polled vote, Mr. Mills?
Mr. Mills: No.
Motion agreed to
The Chairman: I declare Mr. English duly elected vice-chair. Congratulations.
.0913
.0915
The Chairman: We were, as you know, going to adjourn immediately after the formal business of the committee and go into an in camera hearing to be advised by the department as to what the present situation is in Iraq. Unfortunately, the director general for the Middle East was not able to be here today. We have put that to October 3, and will have a meeting on that day.
The other procedural order of business we have is that while it is not necessary to reconstitute our subcommittees, because they exist, there are some changes in memberships to the subcommittees. But because this will require the appointment, hopefully, of some associate members of the committee to those subcommittees, I would like to defer that until our next meeting. We have not yet received from the whips the list of the associate members of our committee.
Mr. Speller (Haldimand - Norfolk): I think that's tomorrow, isn't it?
The Chairman: Yes. These will be done this afternoon.
We have a subcommittee meeting tomorrow. All the present members of the subcommittee are in place. We just have to deal with the changes.
Mr. Speller: Why don't you just change me today so I can go tomorrow?
The Chairman: No, that's already been dealt with, Mr. Speller.
Mr. Speller: Am I already changed?
The Chairman: You're already on the SIMA review committee. You replaced Mr. Assadourian on that. So that's done for the SIMA review. We don't have to do it across the board for the dispute resolution committee. It may be that Mr. Dupuy will have some other dispute resolution issue that's not related to the SIMA review, in which case Mr. Assadourian, I would presume, would continue to deal with that, if it's an issue, as would Mr. MacDonald, etc.
I'm advised by the clerk that at least from the government's side, the only other change that needs to be made would be the fact that Colleen Beaumier is no longer a member of the committee. She's been replaced by Beryl Gaffney.
Mr. English, if you were to consider it appropriate, you might move that Mrs. Gaffney replace Ms Beaumier on the subcommittee on human development.
Mr. English (Kitchener): I so move that Beryl Gaffney replace Colleen Beaumier on the subcommittee on sustainable human development.
Motion agreed to
The Chairman: Were there any other changes, Mr. Mills, from the Reform side?
Mr. Mills: I don't believe so, no.
[Translation]
The Chairman: Mr. Bergeron, are there any changes?
Mr. Bergeron: None so far, Mr. Chairman. Just the status quo.
The Chairman: So for human development, it will still be Ms. Debien and Mr. Sauvageau for trade disputes and yourself...
[English]
Mr. Morrison.
Mr. Morrison: Just to refresh things, could the clerk read out the names of the members of the various subcommittees?
The Clerk: Members of the subcommittee on trade disputes include: Mr. Dupuy, chair; Mr. MacDonald; Mr. Assadourian; Mr. Sauvageau; and Mr. Penson.
Members of the subcommittee on sustainable human development include: John English, chair; Madam Gaffney; John Godfrey; Maud Debien; and Keith Martin.
Members of the subcommittee on IFIs include: Bill Graham, chair; Paddy Torsney; David Iftody; Philippe Paré; and Bob Mills.
The Chairman: There would be one other small observation, that the trade dispute subcommittee has undertaken a special study on the SIMA review, which is a joint committee with finance. That is a specially constituted committee. In that respect, Mr. Speller has replaced Mr. Assadourian on that subcommittee and will do so for the purposes of that review.
.0920
Mr. Morrison: I understand - correct me if I'm wrong - that any member of the Committee of the Whole can attend any of these subcommittee meetings.
The Chairman: Yes. One would encourage you to do so from time to time if you have a moment to go in, because these issues will come back. For example, on the SIMA review, we will have to vote as a committee on their report. So we want to be sort of familiar with what they're doing during the course of the fall. That should come back at us by the end of the fall. It's going to be a very important report, so we want to have some familiarity with it.
The other issue is Bill C-54, amendments to the Foreign Extraterritorial Measures Act. That is now scheduled to come before the committee on Thursday. We are having some trouble getting witnesses.
If I may just say, most Canadians seem to accept that this is an appropriate thing to do. It's not a controversial matter. We do have some witnesses. If members know of some witnesses they feel should or would like to come, please advise us, but I would recommend that on Thursday we not only hear the witnesses but also move to a clause-by-clause and deal with it on Thursday. Would that be satisfactory to members?
Mr. MacDonald (Dartmouth): Mr. Chairman, am I correct in assuming that we will be hearing from the minister on that bill on Thursday morning?
The Chairman: Yes.
Mr. MacDonald: So the minister will be the first witness we hear.
The Chairman: That is correct. Minister Eggleton will be the first witness.
Is it satisfactory that we pass to clause-by-clause? We might as well dispose of the bill. Is that all right?
[Translation]
Mr. Bergeron, could we go on to clause by clause study so that we can dispose of the bill?
Mr. Bergeron: Yes. How much time will we have with the minister, Mr. Chairman?
The Chairman: Forty five minutes.
[English]
Some hon. members: Agreed.
The Chairman: Okay.
Mr. English, did you want to address the issue of the Hungarian foreign minister?
Mr. English: One of our colleagues approached me that the Hungarian foreign minister is here on Thursday and would be interested in appearing before the committee. He could appear early in the morning, but I'm not sure about later. If you're going through clause-by-clause I'm not sure whether you would have time to fit him in.
The Chairman: We wouldn't want people to confuse Mr. Eggleton and the Hungarian minister.
Mr. English: That's true. What time is Mr. Eggleton scheduled for?
The Chairman: He's scheduled for 9 a.m.
Would it be acceptable to members of the committee if we dealt with that rapidly, that the foreign minister of Hungary come before the committee for a half hour or something like that, such as 8:30 a.m.?
Mr. English: I think 8:30 is fine.
The Chairman: Would 8:30 a.m. be acceptable for a very brief meeting with the foreign minister of Hungary? I think that might be interesting.
Some hon. members: Agreed.
The Chairman: Thank you very much for organizing that.
So we'll meet at 8:30 a.m. and then proceed directly to the FEMA bill.
Mr. Flis: On a point of order, Mr. Chairman, I think it's important that if we call the foreign minister for 8:30 a.m. a majority of us show up. It's very embarrassing when we invite someone like this and two people show up. I just toss that out.
The Chairman: Given the fact that we have the other meeting coming right after, I imagine we won't have as much trouble as we sometimes do. But thank you for that reminder, Mr. Flis.
Mr. Assadourian.
Mr. Assadourian (Don Valley North): On a similar subject, I was approached by a Romanian ambassador here that the foreign minister of Romania will be here Friday, October 4. I told him usually the committee doesn't sit on Fridays. If I am wrong, let me know, and I can communicate that to him.
The Chairman: It's very difficult to get a formal quorum of the committee on a Friday morning. We do have the A and B team system. We can examine whether or not we could do something with the foreign minister, but he'd have to just recognize that -
Mr. Assadourian: He's only going to be here for one day, a Friday.
The Chairman: Right. We'll take that as a notice of motion and try to deal with that.
.0925
The other thing I've been asked to draw to your attention was sent to me by the president of the Atlantic Council of Canada. They are organizing their fall conference, which is to be held here in Ottawa on Friday, October 4, 1996.
The Atlantic Council is sort of the civil side of NATO, as I understand it. It is an organization which, while it's an NGO, is a semi-official organization. There's an international Atlantic Council that consists of all the NATO members. In addition, each country has its own membership.
The president of the Atlantic Council of Canada is Professor Robert Spencer, who has appeared before the committee in the past on security issues. He wrote to me and asked that I please tell the members. They would like parliamentarian participation if they can get it. The clerk has conference registration forms that you can get. There seems to be a registration fee, but it is not significant. It's $45, but I don't know whether or not they would just waive that for members of Parliament. But you should know about that meeting.
Well, thank you very much. We will meet again on Thursday at 8:30 a.m., with the Hungarian foreign minister.
We're adjourned.