CONTENTS
Thursday 16 November 1995
Election of Chair
Election of Vice-Chair
Appointment of subcommittee
Briefing
STANDING COMMITTEE ON FINANCE AND ECONOMIC AFFAIRS
*Chair / Président: Chudleigh, Ted (Halton North/-Nord PC)
*Vice-Chair / Vice-Président: Hudak, Tim (Niagara South/-Sud PC)
*Arnott, Ted (Wellington PC)
*Brown, Jim (Scarborough West/-Ouest PC)
*Castrilli, Annamarie (Downsview L)
*Ford, Douglas B. (Etobicoke-Humber PC)
*Kwinter, Monte (Wilson Heights L)
*Lankin, Frances (Beaches-Woodbine ND)
*Martiniuk, Gerry (Cambridge PC)
*Phillips, Gerry (Scarborough-Agincourt L)
*Sampson, Rob (Mississauga West/-Ouest PC)
*Silipo, Tony (Dovercourt ND)
*Spina, Joseph (Brampton North/-Nord PC)
*Wettlaufer, Wayne (Kitchener PC)
*In attendance / présents
Clerk / Greffière: Carrozza, Franco
Staff / Personnel: Drummond, Alison, research officer, Legislative Research Service
The committee met at 1007 in room 151.
ELECTION OF CHAIR
Clerk of the Committee (Mr Franco Carrozza): Good morning. My name is Franco Carrozza. I am the clerk of the standing committee on finance and economic affairs. I will be conducting the election of the Chair. I would now open the floor for nominations.
Mr Gerry Phillips (Scarborough-Agincourt): I move Ted Chudleigh.
Clerk of the Committee: Any further nominations? There being no other nomination, I call upon Mr Chudleigh to take the chair as Chairman.
ELECTION OF VICE-CHAIR
The Chair (Mr Ted Chudleigh): I thank my nominator. The next issue of business is the election of a Vice-Chair. Is there a nomination?
Mr Douglas B. Ford (Etobicoke-Humber): Yes, Tim Hudak.
The Chair: There being no further nominations, I declare the nominations closed and Mr Hudak elected as Vice-Chair. Congratulations.
ELECTION OF SUBCOMMITTEE
The Chair: The next issue of business would be the establishment of the subcommittee on committee business. Are there nominations?
Mr Phillips: I move that a subcommittee on committee business be appointed to meet from time to time at the call of the Chair, or at the request of any member thereof, to consider and report to the committee on the business of the committee; that the presence of all members of the subcommittee is necessary to constitute a meeting; and that the subcommittee be composed of the following members: Mr Arnott, Ms Lankin and Mr Phillips, and Mr Chudleigh -- I guess it starts with Mr Chudleigh and then the other ones -- and that any member may designate a substitute member on the subcommittee who is of the same recognized party.
The Chair: All those in favour of the motion? Carried.
BRIEFING
The Chair: The next issue of business might be a briefing by the clerk of the committee on the role of the committee, its staff and also a summary of last year's business so we have an idea of the kinds of issues that will come before the committee.
Clerk of the Committee: I prepared for you and sent to you a briefing report dealing mainly with what the committee did last year, and I've provided for you an update of bills and issues they dealt with.
Basically, the committee works in three areas: legislation from the House; the pre-budget consultation review, and then under its own mandate, which is standing order 106(f), the committee has been able to review certain issues that the committee felt should be of use to the Legislature. Some of these I've written for you. The most popular one was the review of the underground economy. It has done a number of bills, which I have also listed for you.
To bring to your attention, we have a research officer. Her name is Alison Drummond. I will leave her to explain her duties towards the committee.
Ms Alison Drummond: As a rule, one of the major tasks the committee does and would probably do fairly soon is the pre-budget hearings. Ordinarily, what the research service does as part of that process is that if there is a particular issue the committee wants to hear witnesses on but doesn't know, can't name particular witnesses, occasionally we'll do research on, for example, companies in the biotechnology industry that the committee might want to hear from, things like that.
As the hearings are going on, we do a summary of recommendations that have been made by various witnesses that is distributed to members of the committee. We would distribute clippings. If there's coverage of the committee's hearings we would distribute those to members every morning.
If issues arise over the course of hearings, things that are being done in other provinces, similar kinds of things, members can ask through the Chair for information that we would collect. Either I would collect it or somebody else in our office would. That would be distributed to members.
In pre-budget hearings, we would also ordinarily draft a report which the committee would then debate and develop recommendations.
When there is a specific issue the committee is considering, we would ordinarily also provide briefing material before hearings start, so that everybody is starting from some of the same information on that issue and then witnesses would add to that and suggest recommendations on that issue. Again, we would do a summary of hearings if the committee requested that. We would research particular issues that came up over the course of hearings as we always do and would draft a report.
Ordinarily, when the committee considers individuals bills, they don't do a report. They simply do clause-by-clause consideration and then report the bill out. What we do in that case is that when we're summarizing what the committee has heard, we would attach recommendations to the specific clause. Witnesses don't always do that. They'll say, "We like this; we don't like that," but they won't say what clause particularly they're referring to, so we would put things together in a format that's more useful for the committee's clause-by-clause consideration.
That pretty much sums it up, although we're at the disposal of the Chair, of the subcommittee and of the committee, so if there's other work people would like done, we would do that. That's about it.
The Chair: Are there any questions?
Mr Phillips: The two things that are of interest to our caucus over the next little while will be the fiscal statement coming up next week or the following week, and then the pre-budget hearings. Those are the two things, and what you may want to do, Mr Chair, is just discuss it a little bit here and then the subcommittee meet some time in the next few days and you may want to discuss it with the Minister of Finance too, just in terms of any input from them in terms of timing.
I'd like to throw out for a little bit of discussion here that the first thing we think may be useful is to refer the fiscal statement to the committee. We probably will have maybe two or three days before the House adjourns to discuss it. If it comes out next week, we would have three days. If it comes out the following week, we would have two days and then maybe three days or four days in January to discuss it because I think it would be a good chance for the committee, and by the way, the House, I think, will have relatively little time to debate it.
Then the pre-budget hearings: I think all parties have found it useful in the past and I think our party would like to consider perhaps two weeks of pre-budget hearings, maybe two weeks plus a day. Normally what happens is that we do it in January, February or March. Frankly, I think a little bit later rather than earlier is better just because if the federal budget is out, there's more information available. The later you leave it, though, the less opportunity we have to input into our budget so we may want to get some advice from the minister of when he would like our report.
Those are the two things the committee should consider dealing with right away: the fiscal statement with the committee taking our December time up to discuss it, then perhaps three days in the intersession to discuss it in some detail, and then two weeks of pre-budget hearings some time in January, February or March.
Ms Frances Lankin (Beaches-Woodbine): Mr Phillips and I have discussed this, and our caucus is supportive of that approach as well.
I would add that I don't know what the tradition is with respect to the pre-budget consultations, but it would be a preference if we could see the committee travel for those pre-budget consultations. But I would leave that to the general discussion and then to a more specific recommendation at the subcommittee level.
Mr Ted Arnott (Wellington): I thank the members opposite for their contribution. I think this is business that the subcommittee should discuss perhaps early next week, if that's possible, as per Mr Phillips's suggestion.
I'd just like to ask the research officer, in past years when do the pre-budget consultations usually start? What month? How many weeks are they normally, just in past years? Is there any pattern at all and has the committee in the past travelled to various other communities to receive public input in advance of the budget?
Clerk of the Committee: I can answer that question for you, Mr Arnott. The committee's pre-budget consultation begins pretty well now with the work of the subcommittee to discuss all the issues they wish to discuss and the invitations to expert witnesses. They also have discussed travelling in the past. To my recollection, I don't believe it has travelled, but that doesn't really mean anything.
Mr Arnott: Is there normally then a week or two weeks of --
Clerk of the Committee: Yes, there is. As Mr Phillips has suggested, we usually request two weeks in January or early March for the committee to review because this will give us time to prepare and also for the expert witnesses to prepare their estimates or discussion with us. So right now or early next week, as Mr Phillips says, the subcommittee should meet to discuss all of these issues.
The Chair: If I might suggest, immediately following this meeting perhaps we could meet as a subcommittee and make some arrangements for a meeting next week.
Is there any other business to come before the meeting? I would introduce Maureen Murphy, who is our Hansard representative, and also our audio console operator, Teresa Lohan; she won't be with us every time.
If there's no other business to bring before the meeting, we're adjourned.
The committee adjourned at 1019.