Conservative members of the House of Commons Standing Committee on International Trade, with support from Liberal members of that committee, have decided to cancel hearings the same committee agreed to earlier this year that were to be held this fall in northern Ontario, Quebec, and British Columbia.
“I'm not in favour of travelling,” Conservative MP Helena Guergis said at a committee meeting on Tuesday. Ms. Guergis is the Parliamentary Secretary to International Trade Minister David Emerson. “I think the legislation is here and we need to move forward and talk about the next steps in every way we can, and I've also spoken with the minister and he's happy to come before us again as well.”
Committee members held a discussion on what sorts of issues it ought to tackle this fall.
“I think that with the [enabling] legislation [for the softwood lumber deal] now in the House that we should be changing gears,” said Ms. Guergis. “It's past. We should be looking to the future and having a conversation on what the future of this agreement is going to look like in terms of maybe what the binational council is going to look like, Canada's role in the meritorious issues, and there are various other committees. I'm learning there are other things that we, as a committee, can play a very important role in the next steps in the future for this agreement, and even going beyond what we think will happen after seven to nine years, what we think could happen at that point.”
NDP MP Peter Julian unsuccessfully pushed the committee to continue with the hearings, which were to occur in Vancouver, Thunder Bay, Ont., Saguenay-Lac St. Jean, Que.
“We have a bill that will be coming forward—presumably, if it passes second reading—and it will involve hearings in any event,” Julian said. “So, we're not talking about past business, we're talking about current business. We need to know what the impact is in the Saguenay-Lac St-Jean region. We need to know what the impact is in northwestern Ontario. We need to know what the impact is in British Columbia.
“It's very pertinent, it's very relevant. I think the residents of those areas have already expressed real interest in these hearings. If this committee adopts a motion that cancels those hearings, I think folks in those regions would like to hear about it. I would suggest we just continue given that we have the motion, and given that we have adopted this attempt to go to those three regions, and that we proceed to mesh the hearings on second reading of Bill C-24, assuming it passes second reading, at committee stage with hearings in the region. Rather than having folks, the few [who are] wealthy, come to Ottawa and express their point of view, we go to the region. That's what we should be doing as parliamentarians to hear first-hand what the impact of Bill C-24 will be in those regions.”