Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources
Issue 29 - Evidence - October 4, 2012
OTTAWA, Thursday, October 4, 2012
The Standing Senate Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources met this day at 8:02 a.m. for the election of the chair.
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Lynn Gordon, Clerk of the Committee: Honourable senators, there is a quorum. As clerk of your committee, it is my duty to preside over the election of the chair. I am ready to receive a motion to that effect. Are there any nominations?
Senator Brown: Senator Neufeld.
Ms. Gordon: Thank you.
Are there any other nominations? If not, it is moved by the Honourable Senator Brown that the Honourable Senator Neufeld take the chair of this committee. Is it your pleasure, honourable senators, to adopt the motion?
Hon. Senators: Agreed.
Ms. Gordon: Thank you. I declare the motion carried.
Senator Neufeld, would you like to come and take the chair, please?
Senator Richard Neufeld (Chair) in the chair.
The Chair: Thank you very much, fellow senators, for your quick confidence in me. I appreciate that, and I look forward to the challenges ahead of us and continuing to work together, as we have in the past, in trying to maintain consensus on most things that we discuss.
Senator Angus, who I talked to recently, is doing well and is quite interested and wants to keep abreast of what we are doing. That is great because I think he will be a great person to refer to once in a while to advise us about things that have taken place in the past. He was chair of this committee for quite a while. I am happy about that and I am glad that his health — at least what he tells me — is relatively good and he is still interested in the issue of energy. That is good to know.
Thank you very much for everything.
I would like to do the same as Senator Angus did when he was chair, and that is to introduce everyone. I would also like to ask the deputy chair, Senator Grant Mitchell, if he would come forward and take the chair here beside me that he has occupied for the last while.
Senator Mitchell: Congratulations, and welcome. Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you. Do you have anything to say, Senator Mitchell?
Senator Mitchell: I would simply like to say that I am very happy with your selection as chair. We all work extremely well together. Of course we all miss David, and we will continue to do that, but I have been very pleased to work with you as we have. I am glad to see the committee largely intact. I welcome Senator McInnis and I look forward to some great work in the future.
The Chair: Thank you, senator.
We will start with introductions. Again, I will start on my right with Senator Grant Mitchell from the Province of Alberta. Next to him are, from the parliamentary library, are Marc LeBlanc and Sam Banks, who have been with us for quite a while, which is great. Next is Senator Tom McInnis. Welcome. I understood you are sitting in for Senator Patterson and you are from the great Province of Nova Scotia.
Senator McInnis: Yes.
The Chair: Next is Senator Dan Lang from the territory of the Yukon. It is good to see you are still on the committee, Dan; you bring some continuity.
Then we have Paul Massicotte, representing Quebec. Paul, welcome back. I am glad that you are still on the committee. I look forward to working with you.
On my left is Lynn Gordon, our clerk who has been with this committee since I have been here. She might have been here longer, but at least for the last four years. We are happy about that. That gives us some continuity also.
Next is Judith Seidman, representing Quebec. Judith, it is good to see you here.
Next to her is Janis Johnson from the wonderful Province of Manitoba. It is good to see you here, again some continuity.
Senator John Wallace is from the wonderful Province of New Brunswick. Good to see you here, John. I look forward to working with you.
We also have with us Senator Bert Brown from Alberta. Bert, it is good to see your familiar face here. I look forward to working with you.
It is good to see everyone here.
Senator Massicotte: Chair, now that the politeness is over with, where is the food? I notice there is no food on the other side. Let us make sure this does not happen again, otherwise you will not keep your job.
The Chair: That is an interesting topic that we will have to talk about at some point in time. If you want food, we will have to deal with that. We will deal with it quickly so you do not fade away to nothing.
I would like to do two things. First, we all know that the Now or Never report was released in July after the Senate rose. We still have to table it in the house, and I will do that today. It will be tabled in the right order.
I would encourage as many of you, who would like to, to speak to it. It is a study that took us three years to complete. I think it is a good study. It has some good suggestions in there. We will all have some time to speak to it. I am definitely going to speak to it at some point in time while it is on the Order Paper. I would ask you folks to do the same, if you would, please.
The second thing that we will do discuss terms of reference for the committee. Could you hand those out, please, Lynn? This is the order of reference, not terms of reference.
These terms of reference are no different from what we had before. They were presented in the Senate and adopted by the Senate. They give us the latitude to be able to go out and study the things that we have to study and review the legislation that we are responsible to review. I would like to renew this, and I would like to do that today if it is agreeable to all committee members. not to change it but to leave it as it is. I am in your hands.
Senator Lang: That was going to be my question, whether there were any changes to our previous terms of reference.
The Chair: No, there are no anticipated changes. I think it is pretty general and broad. It has worked for us so far. I see no point in changing it, because if we change it we will then have to have a discussion in the Senate as to why we are changing it. I do not see any reason to change it.
Senator Massicotte: I propose adoption of this order of reference.
Senator Seidman: I second that motion, if you need a seconder.
Ms. Gordon: That is fine.
The Chair: Next we will go in camera and discuss some items that we, as senators, should deal with as we move forward. Do we need a motion to go in camera?
(The committee continued in camera.)