CONTENTS
Thursday 2 November 1995
Election of Chair
Election of Vice-Chair
Appointment of subcommittee
Briefing
STANDING COMMITTEE ON GENERAL GOVERNMENT
*Chair / Président: Carroll, Jack (Chatham-Kent PC)
*Vice-Chair / Vice-Président: Maves, Bart (Niagara Falls PC)
*Danford, Harry (Hastings-Peterborough PC)
*Flaherty, Jim (Durham Centre PC)
Grandmaître, Bernard (Ottawa East/-Est L)
*Hardeman, Ernie (Oxford PC)
Kells, Morley (Etobicoke-Lakeshore PC)
*Marchese, Rosario (Fort York ND)
Pupatello, Sandra (Windsor-Sandwich L)
*Sergio, Mario (Yorkview L)
Stewart, R. Gary (Peterborough PC)
Tascona, Joseph N. (Simcoe Centre PC)
*Wood, Len (Cochrane North/-Nord ND)
*Young, Terence H. (Halton Centre PC)
*In attendance / présents
Clerk / Greffière: Grannum, Tonia
Staff / Personnel: Richmond, Jerry, research officer, Legislative Research Service
The committee met at 1710 in committee room 1.
ELECTION OF CHAIR
Clerk of the Committee (Ms Tonia Grannum): Gentlemen, it's my duty to call upon you to elect the Chair. Are there any nominations?
Mr Terence H. Young (Halton Centre): I'd like to nominate Jack Carroll as Chair of the committee and Bart Maves as Vice-Chair.
Clerk of the Committee: We're just doing Chair right now. Are there any further nominations? Seeing no further nominations, I declare Mr Carroll elected as Chair of the general government committee.
ELECTION OF VICE-CHAIR
The Chair (Mr Jack Carroll): All right, honourable members, may I have names for the election of Vice-Chair.
Mr Young: I'd like to nominate Bart Maves as Vice-Chair.
The Chair: Bart Maves is nominated for Vice-Chair. Are there any further nominations? If not, there being no further nominations, I declare the nominations closed and Mr Bart Maves elected Vice-Chair.
I understand that Mr Flaherty has a motion.
APPOINTMENT OF SUBCOMMITTEE
Mr Jim Flaherty (Durham Centre): 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 Carroll, Mr Hardeman, Mr Sergio, Mr Marchese; 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? Motion carried.
That's about the end of the agenda. I call for any other business.
BRIEFING
Clerk of the Committee: The researcher and I have a briefing that we could go through. Did anybody want to do that today? Is that fine? Okay.
I'm just going to go over the powers of the Chair in a standing committee. They are essentially the same as that of the Speaker in the House. The Chair maintains order and decorum and decides all questions of order and procedure.
The decision of a Chair is not debatable and is only subject to appeal by a majority of members. That is in the form of a motion directing a decision by the Speaker on the Chair's ruling, and that is covered under standing order 120.
Normally the Chair doesn't vote, as some members are aware, just that in the case of a tie the Chair would vote. He'd cast the deciding vote, and that is to maintain the status quo. The Chair also does not usually take part in committee business, but he does have the right to secure the progress of the committee and make sure the committee is proceeding in order.
The role of the clerk of the committee, that's myself, is that of an impartial servant of the House. I'm assigned to work with the committee of the House and I'm the principal adviser of rules and procedures for this committee. I work in main contact with the Chair, but any questions that the committee has, they can contact my office, and either myself, or if I'm not available, my assistant, who's actually sitting in the room, Monica Marshall, would get the information to me so I can contact you and give you information.
The committees have various methods of having work assigned to them. We all know of a bill being designated to the committee. If that occurs, then we'd set our subcommittee meeting and perform organization to discuss how we're going to deal with the bill.
A matter can also be designated under the 125 designation, and that is, each caucus in one calendar year can designate a matter to be discussed by the committee for up to 12 hours in the committee. The subcommittee on committee business would then look at the details on who's going to be heard and how we're going to proceed with that 12 hours of the designated matter in committee.
The ministries that are found under general government -- this is the old list of ministries that came into effect in 1989. It will have to be changed because of the realignment of the committee structure, but I just wanted to let you know just so you'd get a broad idea. We've got Management Board of Cabinet under the old list; Citizenship; Culture and Communications; Housing; Intergovernmental Affairs; Municipal Affairs; native affairs; women's issues; francophone affairs; the Premier's office and the cabinet office. But keep in mind the realignment because of the new ministries.
We can also deal with subjects under standing order 108, and that is when the committee usually agrees. They'd have to agree on dealing with an issue, and they determine the time etc. But that's under agreement.
I think that's about it. I'll let Jerry Richmond go over his role as our researcher. He's the researcher on the committee.
Mr Jerry Richmond: Thank you, Tonia. Mr Chair, Vice-Chair, members, some of you I know from previous parliaments, some of you I recognize from the last few weeks in terms of meetings we've had with individual members, and some of you I recognize from research reports that we in legislative research have prepared for you. I'm obviously here from legislative research and I'll just speak very briefly to give you some sense of our role.
Those of you who've become familiar with us in terms of serving you as individual members would know of our individual research function to you as MPPs. We also serve committees in a non-partisan capacity, in providing research support to the committee in terms of the matters before the committee. From my experience, committees may deal with bills -- and you'll become very familiar with this -- where they may hear public deputants speaking to the bill, or they may deal with other public policy issues, whereupon the committee prepares a report.
Very briefly, our major functions:
Normally when a bill is before the committee -- and those of you who were here prior to the election would know of this, like you, Mr Turnbull -- we prepare summaries of the deputations. They are usually related to the various sections of the bill and they give a sense of what the various witnesses have said for or against or whatever they may say in relation to the bill. That summary is designed to assist the committee during its deliberations and ultimate clause-by-clause consideration of the bill.
When the committee is dealing with a substantive public policy issue, and the issues can be from A to Z, we would assist the committee in the drafting of your report, which would eventually be tabled in the House.
Along the way, we also provide miscellaneous research support to the committee. We work under the direction of the Chair and we work very closely with the clerk, and often we have an unofficial liaison role with the ministries, with ministry staff who are often before the committee to provide technical briefings.
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In terms of research support, through the Chair or through any of you as individual members, we can be asked to provide research analyses of issues related to the topic before the committee. Some examples I can think of -- let's say we were dealing with, just hypothetically, workers' compensation. One issue might be and one research request -- and this has come up in the past -- may be, let's say, to analyse the WCB provisions in some other province or state and assemble information on that and table it before the committee as a matter of comparison. I'm just using that as an example.
These individual research requests can originate from you, Mr Chair, or from the individual members, or the individual members can come to us privately. There may be an issue that possibly you, Mr Marchese, as a member of the committee, or any other member might personally be interested in. You can come to us privately and we would conduct research as an individual research request for any of the members of the committee. Really, we're here to serve you in the best capacity that we can.
Other situations I can recall: Sometimes the committee may want us, on behalf of the committee, to seek out technical information or statistics from the ministry involved that's before the committee. We would do that on your behalf, possibly meet with ministry officials. Often the ministries when they're before the committee would have technical people here each day, and often they're available to brief you, but sometimes technical questions come up and we would, on your behalf, assist in the obtaining of the appropriate information.
I hope that gives you some sense of it. There are many other research queries. I could list examples from A to Z, but very briefly I hope that's given you some sense of the work that we do. We're here to serve you. I don't know whether there are any questions, but I look forward to working with you.
I should just add, I understand you're doing Bill 8 and I myself will not be working with you on that. One of our specialists in employment equity or job quotas, whatever the term is these days, will be working with you on that matter, if that is in fact --
Mr Rosario Marchese (Fort York): Who's working on that? Who's the researcher?
Mr Richmond: I'm not 100% sure, but it'll be one of our people, who I'm sure you know, who has more technical expertise in that topic than I do.
I don't know if there are any questions. Otherwise I thank you for the opportunity.
The Chair: Thanks, Jerry. Any questions for either Jerry or Tonia?
Mr Ernie Hardeman (Oxford): I'm just wondering, Tonia, you mentioned earlier about the Chair's vote. Could I get that again?
Clerk of the Committee: The Chair would only cast a vote if he has to cast a vote in deciding a tie, and in casting a deciding vote, he's usually casting the vote to maintain the status quo. So that would be further debate on a bill or further debate on any issue. If we were going to vote to report a bill to the House, as opposed to continuing debate on that bill, he would vote to continue debate on that bill.
Mr Hardeman: So the reality is that the Chair doesn't vote, only that the negative vote is always lost, or the tie vote is always lost, because the Chair is being told how to vote?
Clerk of the Committee: No. There are guidelines for the Chair in voting, and that would be to maintain the status quo on whatever issue we're dealing with, on any amendment, to maintain the status quo so that there is further debate. That's the guideline.
Mr Hardeman: Thank you.
Mr Mario Sergio (Yorkview): The Chair, I understand, never votes to create a tie.
Clerk of the Committee: No. Only in the case of a tie.
The Chair: To break a tie, not to create one.
Mr Sergio: I understand, but there are situations when it could be one vote difference and a Chair may vote to create a tie. I hope that is not the case.
The Chair: No, the rules, as I understand --
Mr Sergio: That's fine.
Mr Marchese: I'm assuming that the members might be organizing some meetings to talk about rules and procedures in committee.
If they haven't organized that, it's probably useful for the members to go through that. I'm not sure, I suspect Tonia or others would be very interested in organizing some discussion around rules and procedures of committee. It would be very useful to the members.
The Chair: We did have a meeting, Mr Marchese.
Mr Young: We've had a couple, actually.
The Chair: We've actually had two meetings so we're not totally up to speed, but we're off the launching pad anyway.
Mr Young: On an administrative issue, would it be possible to get a sheet made up with all the members of the committee with telephone numbers and also our researcher etc? That would be very handy to have.
Clerk of the Committee: Okay.
Mr Sergio: How much in advance will we have the necessary information or agendas?
Clerk of the Committee: Usually you receive it the Friday before a Thursday meeting, because if we're in a Thursday meeting and I'm aware that we're going to be meeting the following Thursday, then we work on that basis. So the Friday we would be doing all the notices, sending them out to your offices and in the House. So if you don't receive a notice, we're not meeting. If you have any questions about that, just call my office.
The Chair: As it stands now, we know we will be meeting the first Thursday.
Clerk of the Committee: So we're going to be meeting November 16, the next meeting?
The Chair: Right.
Mr Marchese: That's what I wanted to speak to. Is that under other business?
Clerk of the Committee: No, just the briefing was.
Mr Marchese: Because I wanted to be clear about that. Are we informing the public that there are going to be discussions that will begin November 16?
Clerk of the Committee: No. It's all hypothetical because the bill hasn't yet been referred to committee, so we'd need to have our subcommittee meeting to decide what we're going to do.
Mr Marchese: That's what I needed to raise with you. I'm assuming that once this is passed tonight, which I presume will be the case, the subcommittee will then meet quickly next week some time early in order to give plenty of notice to people who would want to come and make submissions to the committee. Is that correct?
Clerk of the Committee: The Chair would advise me, then I'd notify the committee.
The Chair: We have to have a subcommittee meeting before we can do anything else. Can we have a subcommittee on a conference call, or it would have to be a physical meeting?
Clerk of the Committee: No, you can have a conference call.
Mr Marchese: We could, Mr Chair, but I would recommend that we have one early next week so that we can be clear about what we're going to do. Once having done that, then we can move to our business.
The Chair: I think since it is constituency week, if we can arrange on Monday a conference call for the subcommittee so that we can set about the --
Mr Marchese: Sure. I wouldn't mind leaving my telephone number so that people would have that, and the various members of the subcommittee should provide you with their numbers.
The Chair: If that's acceptable, since we're all going to be back in our ridings, we could set up a time and advise everyone of that. Any other questions? No other business?
Mr Marchese: I move adjournment, Mr Chairman.
The Chair: I just want to make one comment. I know this was really called at quick notice and I appreciate everybody's cooperation in getting together. It helps to move the agenda along, so thank you very much to everybody. The meeting is adjourned.
The committee adjourned at 1728.