Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Social Affairs, Science and Technology

Issue 23 - Evidence, February 3, 1999

OTTAWA, Wednesday, February 3, 1999

The Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology met this day at 3:45 p.m. to elect a Deputy Chairman and to consider future business of the committee.

Senator Lowell Murray (Chairman) in the Chair.

[English]

The Chairman: Order, please, honourable senators.

First of all, let me introduce to you our new clerk, Ms Cathy Piccinin, who will be known to some, perhaps many of you, for her work on various other committees, and most recently the Special Joint Committee on Child Custody and Access. She arrives from that committee with high recommendations. I am sure that she will make a valuable contribution to our work. We have already worked closely together on the planning of our program for the coming weeks.

I must tell you that, while that is the good news, the bad news is that we have lost Nadine Huggins, who had been our clerk for some time. She has left the Senate to the greener and very challenging pastures of the Canadian Human Rights Commission. She left with our appreciation and good wishes, which I expressed to her on behalf of all the members of the committee and which I wish to record publicly now. She was not only a highly competent clerk, she was engaged, as few are, in the substance of our work. For that, I believe we are all very grateful.

The second, and rather sad, duty we have today is to record the death of our esteemed deputy chairman, Senator Peter Bosa. Some of us, yesterday and today, paid tribute to Senator Bosa in the Senate. He died, as you know, in December. In recent months, he had not been able to give the time and effort that he always gave to parliamentary matters, and he had not been able to give that time and effort to this committee. However, I was most delighted, as a friend of 35 years, when he was chosen as deputy chairman. I valued his advice and his cooperation very highly. Again, I wish to record publicly our sadness at his passing and the sense of loss that we all feel.

It remains for us now to elect a new deputy chairman for this committee, and for that purposes I open the floor for nominations.

Senator Cools: Before I place a nomination before us, perhaps I should join Senator Murray in his very kind remarks about Senator Bosa and add to those remarks my own personal, and I believe those of many of my colleagues, condolences and sympathy to Senator Bosa's wife and family. I wish to place on the record our appreciation of his contribution to this committee and, of course, to express all the love and sympathy that can possibly be expressed when a colleague passes.

As we can see, the issue before us immediately is the election of deputy chairman. I would also wish to say that it gives me enormous pleasure to place in nomination the name of Senator Butts for the position. I believe, especially in your case, Senator Murray, being from Nova Scotia, Senator Butts needs no introduction and that her qualifications need very little embellishment. I place her name before us in the hopes that many members of this committee will agree with me that she is a good candidate for the job.

[Translation]

Senator Lavoie-Roux: I too would like to pay tribute to Senator Bosa. It was indeed a pleasure to work with him, particularly since he was nonpartisan, examined issues objectively and made a special contribution to committee work.

I second the nomination of Senator Butts to the position of vice-chair of this committee.

[English]

The Chairman: That is fine.

Senator Butts, shall I presume that you agree to having your name placed in nomination in this way?

Senator Butts: Yes, I do agree.

The Chairman: Although I am an Ontario senator and Senator Butts is a Cape Breton senator, I am sure we can overcome our cultural differences.

If there are no further nominations, I take it to be the unanimous wish of the committee that Senator Butts be our deputy chairman. Thank you, Senator Butts, for agreeing to take on this responsibility.

We will recess for two minutes, and then we will continue this meeting in camera, which means that only the senators, our researcher, our clerk and the translators need stay. It is not necessary, unless senators insist, to keep a verbatim record of the in camera meeting.

Senator Lavoie-Roux: One thing I forgot to say is that you paid tribute to our former clerk. If senators are willing to accept a motion of thanks and recognition for her work, we could do that and send it to her.

The Chairman: We would be very happy to do that.

Senator Cools: That is a very generous and thoughtful idea, and I support it totally.

The committee continued in camera.