The committee met at 1312 in committee room 1.

STANDING ORDERS REVIEW

SUBCOMMITTEE REPORT

The Chair (Mr. Garfield Dunlop): We’ll call this meeting to order. Thank you very much for your patience here. We were having some lunch and we got together to talk about some potential dates, because that’s the whole reason for the meeting today. Maybe, Lisa, I’ll ask you to just explain what we’ve come up with so far.

Ms. Lisa MacLeod: As a result of the programming motion in the House, we’ve been asked to sit on a few days this summer. In addition, we’ve been authorized to travel within Ontario.

As a result of that, your subcommittee met and has suggested that the committee meet in Toronto on July 3, 4, 24 and 25, as well as travel to the city of Ottawa, the nation’s capital, following AMO, to possibly meet with members of the House of Commons, the Senate, members of the diplomatic corps from Commonwealth nations, as well as the Carleton University school of public administration and governance, and a possible think tank.

I would move that the subcommittee report be adopted as read.

The Chair (Mr. Garfield Dunlop): Jeff?

Mr. Jeff Leal: I’ll just agree with it.

Ms. Lisa MacLeod: Thank you, because this is part yours, right?

The Chair (Mr. Garfield Dunlop): Any questions on this? We’ve tried to work it out for everybody—it looks like June is almost impossible for people, because of school graduations and their own kids in school—

Ms. Lisa MacLeod: So just for members, if they want to write these down again: July 3, 4, 24 and 25. That’s two days at the beginning of July, two days at the end of July, to meet in Toronto, and then following the AMO conference in Ottawa, the committee will meet—

The Chair (Mr. Garfield Dunlop): In Ottawa.

Ms. Lisa MacLeod: —in the nation’s capital.

Mr. Jonah Schein: What are the dates for Ottawa?

Ms. Lisa MacLeod: AMO is the 21st and 22nd. We’re going to just nail down a date. I know that a majority of members, particularly outside of Toronto, attend that, and that’s why we decided to piggyback that.

Mr. Gilles Bisson: You guys did that just to mess me up.

The Chair (Mr. Garfield Dunlop): Likely the Wednesday and the Thursday.

Mrs. Laura Albanese: Wednesday and Thursday, so that would be—sorry, when is AMO again?

The Chair (Mr. Garfield Dunlop): AMO begins on Sunday the 19th and finishes on Wednesday the 22nd. We were thinking of possibly Wednesday the 22nd, and the 23rd of August.

Interjection.

The Chair (Mr. Garfield Dunlop): Gilles, we just ran by those dates.

Mr. Gilles Bisson: Yes.

The Chair (Mr. Garfield Dunlop): August 22 and 23 in Ottawa. Have you got a problem with that?

Mr. Jonah Schein: For me the July dates work fine. I haven’t heard a fixed August date and I’m not sure—that time period is not hopeful for me but I’d have to hear a fixed date.

The Chair (Mr. Garfield Dunlop): Right.

Mr. Gilles Bisson: I think unfortunately where we’re going to be at is that we’re not going to be able to accommodate everybody, so we’ve got to pick dates. So you’re looking for August 23 and 24.

The Chair (Mr. Garfield Dunlop): We’ve talked to the committee about July 3 and 4—

Mr. Gilles Bisson: No, no, I’m talking about the August date.

The Chair (Mr. Garfield Dunlop): Okay, so just August now.

Mr. Gilles Bisson: What are the dates you’re looking at?

The Chair (Mr. Garfield Dunlop): The 22nd and 23rd.

Mr. Gilles Bisson: AMO is what date again?

The Chair (Mr. Garfield Dunlop): It starts on the 19th and finishes on the morning of the 22nd. So the morning and afternoon of the 22nd, and the next day as well if we need it.

Mr. Gilles Bisson: We have a caucus retreat on the 23rd. So you are available on the 23rd for other reasons.

Interjection.

Mr. Gilles Bisson: Can I double-check this?

The Chair (Mr. Garfield Dunlop): Okay. At least we’ve got the four days decided in July.

Interjections.

Mr. Gilles Bisson: Well, where are you canoeing? We can go and meet you.

Mr. Jonah Schein: I’m not telling—

Mr. Gilles Bisson: Well, if it’s in Ontario we can travel.

Interjection.

Mr. Gilles Bisson: If it’s in Ontario we can meet up with him. He’s canoeing those dates; we can go meet with him.

The Chair (Mr. Garfield Dunlop): Jeff?

Mr. Jeff Leal: Garfield, do we need a motion to allow us to sit in August?

The Chair (Mr. Garfield Dunlop): No, I don’t think so.

Ms. Lisa MacLeod: The programming motion doesn’t allow us to sit in Toronto in the month of August but it does allow us to travel within the province in the month of August.

The Clerk of the Assembly (Ms. Deborah Deller): With the unanimous consent of the subcommittee.

Ms. Lisa MacLeod: Which was unanimous.

Mr. Jeff Leal: My team over here just had a question.

Ms. Lisa MacLeod: Don’t answer them.

Mr. Jeff Leal: I answer to Eddie and Paul every day.

The Chair (Mr. Garfield Dunlop): So we’re fine on that?

Interjections.

The Chair (Mr. Garfield Dunlop): Actually, Gilles, we don’t necessarily have to have the August dates today. As long as we can tie down the July dates, we can leave it at that.

Mr. Gilles Bisson: For the July dates I’m fine.

The Chair (Mr. Garfield Dunlop): So we’re okay with the July dates that we’ve mentioned. So committee, if I could just ask just to make sure we’ve got full approval on July 3 and 4 here in Toronto, and July 24 and 25 in Toronto as well, and we’ll get the fine details wrapped up later on on the August dates, which would be in Ottawa.

Mr. Gilles Bisson: We’ll just go by a subcommittee decision on the August dates.

Mr. Jeff Leal: Lisa’s organizing a garden party with the Governor General, right, when we’re in Ottawa in August?

Ms. Lisa MacLeod: I’ll see what I can do.

Interjections.

The Chair (Mr. Garfield Dunlop): Guys, are we in favour of the July dates for sure? I’m really happy if we can get that done.

Ms. Lisa MacLeod: Me too.

The Chair (Mr. Garfield Dunlop): All in favour of that, then? Everybody in favour? Okay. Anybody opposed to that? No opposition. Okay, that’s carried.

We’ll decide the August dates at a later date when we get some confirmation from the third party.

Deborah, did you have anything you’d like to add to this today?

The Clerk of the Assembly (Ms. Deborah Deller): I don’t think so. I think today was just trying to get dates.

The Chair (Mr. Garfield Dunlop): Okay.

Mrs. Laura Albanese: Should we block off the whole day for those dates?

Mr. Gilles Bisson: That’s a separate issue—

The Chair (Mr. Garfield Dunlop): I was suggesting from 9:30 to 2:30, something like that, 9:30 to 3. You need some kind of a break in there and I think it’s a lot to ask people to go the whole day, so we do two days in a row like that. So let’s say 9:30 to 3 o’clock each day, with a break.

Jeff, did you have something else?

Mr. Jeff Leal: No, no, just agreeing with you, Mr. Chair.

The Chair (Mr. Garfield Dunlop): Gilles, did you have anything else?

Mr. Gilles Bisson: The other thing that we talked about at subcommittee was the need to start thinking about who we want to come and meet with us on those dates in July. It would be a good idea if members could, this weekend, try to start going through their binders in order to hone in on who you’d like to meet. A couple that I thought of was it would be interesting to meet with somebody out of the Saskatchewan Legislature to look at their timetable motion or whatever you call it, standing order. If there’s anybody in particular, I would like to see Claude DesRosiers as one who I’m thinking of.

If members could start thinking about—I don’t want to do four days of hearings, just so we’re all clear, but I think it’s helpful to meet with a few people, maybe two or three or four, whatever we figure the magic number is per day or whatever, so that we can hear from some people who have some good insights on standing orders. I don’t want to hear from the general public because this is really inside baseball kind of stuff. We should start thinking about who we want so that the clerk can start working out a schedule of how these people are going to come in and meet with us for the Toronto hearing dates. Anybody in Ottawa, let’s not worry about that. We can do that when we go to Ottawa in August.

My recommendation would be that if anybody has any recommendations about who they would like to meet with, to have somebody in the Toronto hearing dates, they should pass it on to their subcommittee members, and then the subcommittee members can meet and we can finalize whatever we’ve got to do so the clerk has the time to organize what needs to be done.

The Chair (Mr. Garfield Dunlop): Gilles, would you be thinking of people like former Speakers, former Clerks?

Mr. Gilles Bisson: I don’t want to have an—

The Chair (Mr. Garfield Dunlop): The Clerk?

Mr. Gilles Bisson: Let me tip my hand: I don’t want to have extensive hearings on standing order changes, but I think there are some people we would like to hear from. Claude DesRosiers: The only reason I raise him is because he’s worked in the federal and provincial Houses. I think he’s the only who has done that, from what I can—

Interjection.

Mr. Gilles Bisson: Here, yes. So it would be kind of interesting. He understands the history of our rules, understands the history of their rules. He’d be an interesting person to talk to.

The Clerk of the Assembly (Ms. Deborah Deller): He also worked for the McGrath commission.

Mr. Gilles Bisson: Oh, I didn’t even know that. Oh, wow. Even better.

Saskatchewan: I wouldn’t mind talking to a member of the Saskatchewan opposition party, government party and a clerk so we can talk about that timetable issue that they’ve got. There may be some others that people have. I don’t know. I’m just raising it.

The Chair (Mr. Garfield Dunlop): Jeff?

Mr. Jeff Leal: I would be inclined to invite Sean Conway to come, just because of his incredible knowledge of history in the province of Ontario, particularly knowledge of the Ontario Legislature; plus he has done some incredible research for some other jurisdictions, and I think we’d all appreciate his insight. He has been through minority governments, Conservative governments, NDP and Liberal governments, on both sides of the House. Of course, as we all know, he has a passionate interest in the affairs of the House.

Ms. Lisa MacLeod: Chair, there was one part, because we didn’t have the subcommittee report written down, that I think is important. It was raised by Mr. Bisson in subcommittee and supported by the others. It’s that each political party or each political caucus, when we travel to Ottawa, would have the ability to bring one staff member from that caucus with the committee. Does that need to be voted on again?

The Chair (Mr. Garfield Dunlop): Do you want to move that, then?

Ms. Lisa MacLeod: I move, as a result of the subcommittee discussion with Mr. Bisson and Mr. Leal, that each political caucus that is represented in the committee be able to take one staff member, paid for by the committee, to Ottawa during the committee meetings there.

The Chair (Mr. Garfield Dunlop): You’ve all heard that. Any discussion? All those in favour of that? It gets carried.

Ms. Lisa MacLeod: Uh-oh, they’re trying to figure out who wants to go on the trip now.

Interjections.

Ms. Lisa MacLeod: I’m just teasing.

The Chair (Mr. Garfield Dunlop): There are a couple of things to throw in your binders, folks, and thank you very much for your attention today. That’s it.

The meeting is adjourned.

The committee adjourned at 1324.

CONTENTS

Wednesday 13 June 2012

Standing orders review M-189

Subcommittee report M-189

STANDING COMMITTEE ON THE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY

Chair / Président

Mr. Garfield Dunlop (Simcoe North / Simcoe-Nord PC)

Vice-Chair / Vice-Présidente

Ms. Lisa MacLeod (Nepean–Carleton PC)

Mrs. Laura Albanese (York South–Weston / York-Sud–Weston L)

Mr. Bas Balkissoon (Scarborough–Rouge River L)

Mr. Gilles Bisson (Timmins–James Bay / Timmins–Baie James ND)

Mrs. Donna H. Cansfield (Etobicoke Centre / Etobicoke-Centre L)

Mr. Steve Clark (Leeds–Grenville PC)

Mr. Garfield Dunlop (Simcoe North / Simcoe-Nord PC)

Mr. Jeff Leal (Peterborough L)

Ms. Lisa MacLeod (Nepean–Carleton PC)

Mr. Jonah Schein (Davenport ND)

Substitutions / Membres remplaçants

Mr. Grant Crack (Glengarry–Prescott–Russell L)

Mr. Bill Mauro (Thunder Bay–Atikokan L)

Also taking part / Autres participants et participantes

Ms. Deborah Deller, Clerk of the Assembly

Clerk / Greffier

Mr. Trevor Day

Staff / Personnel

Mr. Peter Sibenik, procedural clerk,
Journals and Procedural Research Branch