Thank you, Chair.
At first glance, I was inclined to accept Mr. Oliphant's concern about there being a standing order where there has already been a ruling that applied in one circumstance but not for special committees, and the question of whether or not it's appropriate for us to adopt a standing order of the House as a mechanism for calling a meeting, but I'm persuaded that this is really.... Whether it's called a power or a scheduling issue is kind of irrelevant and may be just a matter of argument as opposed to a matter of interpretation. Just because it's in the Standing Orders for committees doesn't mean we can't adopt a similar method of scheduling a meeting as a committee, so I'm open to that.
I should also remind people that I was in favour of our having meetings, despite the fact there was no procedure for doing that other than 106(4), and I would have supported calling a meeting under those circumstances.
I would also point out that the fact that you call a meeting doesn't mean that the four people who signed the document have the say as to what goes on at that meeting. They have to state what the purpose is, so that the meeting is called. However, you could show up for the meeting and then say, “No, we don't want to do that” or “No, we're going to meet, but we're not going to have the meeting. We're not going to meet for two hours now because we're not prepared to deal with this question.”
It turns out that, when we've used this as a party to get something on the table, and we have over the years, particularly in the summer session when there are no committee meetings regularly scheduled, you often end up going to Ottawa for a meeting on the issue, but all that happens is a meeting that says, “No, we're not going to do that” or “We'll schedule it for sometime down the road”. You get to tell the news media what you wanted to talk about, but you don't get to have the meeting about the substance.
That's the context in which I'm saying that this issue as to whether it's a standing order, what the standing order was intending and what the purpose of it was are all matters of debate, and if we can debate it another time.... I'm mindful of what Mr. Fragiskatos said, that surprise motions don't really go over that well in this committee because people aren't prepared to deal with them, which may have given rise to Mr. Oliphant's response to wait and give us a chance to think about it. Perhaps it would be wise to put the debate on this issue off for the next meeting and say, “Okay, let's raise it again the next time so people will have time to think about it.”
If Mr. Oliphant wants to consult parliamentary experts on what the purpose of this is to have his arguments brought forward, that doesn't seem to be an unreasonable thing to do, but I wouldn't say that the.... If the motion in terms of scheduling is in order, and that depends on a ruling of the chair at this meeting, then it's perfectly all right to decide how meetings would be scheduled in the same way that we decide as a committee when we will have our meetings.
We're going to get advice from the House as to when it's possible to have virtual meetings, and it may be that the idea of five days is not reasonable, given that the House can't necessarily find the time, the facilities and all of the virtual accoutrements that we need to have a meeting. That might be something we need to find out first as well. I would be in favour of postponing the discussion, but I don't think we need to have a ruling from someone else outside of the committee as to whether or not we can consider such a motion.