THE COMMITTEE OF SELECTION

MINUTES OF PROCEEDINGS

OTTAWA, Friday, May 1, 2020
(2)

[English]

The Committee of Selection met this day at 10:30 a.m., in room B30, Senate of Canada Building, the chair, the Honourable Yuen Pau Woo, presiding.

Members of the committee present: The Honourable Senators Boehm, Coyle, Dalphond, Plett, Saint-Germain, Verner, P.C. and Woo (7).

Other senator present: The Honourable Senator Munson (1).

Also present: The official reporters of the Senate.

The chair made a statement.

The Honourable Senator Plett raised a point of order that the meeting was not correctly called on the grounds that the Senate is still adjourned, that the deputy chair did not consent and could not attend this meeting, that the Honourable Senator Seidman, a member of the committee, did not receive the notice of meeting, and that the agenda of the meeting as stated on the notice was for the consideration of future business of the committee and not for other items being raised by the chair today.

After debate, the chair ruled that there was no point of order.

RULING BY THE CHAIR

The operational clause is rule 12-18(1), which allows a committee to meet on a day which the Senate is sitting. If there is further doubt about that legitimacy, I would refer you to Appendix 1 of the Rules which defines a sitting day as:

A day on which the Senate sits or is to sit under the Rules or under any orders in force at a particular time.

The second point that was raised is that the deputy chair is not present at this meeting, and therefore this meeting is illegitimate. There is no rule to that effect, and therefore that is an invalid argument, as much as we miss the presence of Senator Stewart Olsen.

On the third point about notification to one member of this committee, I would say that the notice of attendance was circulated to all members. Secondly, strictly speaking, one of the requirements for a meeting to take place is that pursuant to rule 12-15(1), public notice of the meeting must be posted. Public notice for this meeting was posted on April 29, and that is sufficient for the meeting to go ahead.

I would further remind everyone that what we are about to do today is in no way an unanticipated action because it simply implements the deal that was negotiated and agreed on and signed off by the leaders of all the recognized groups and which we adopted and which we, I should say, validated through a motion already adopted in the Senate. The question, colleagues, is not why we are holding this meeting; the question is why we haven’t had this meeting earlier.

So, with that I rule that this point of order out of order and proceed to agenda item 1.

Whereupon, the chair’s ruling was appealed.

The question being put on whether the chair’s ruling shall be sustained, it was adopted on the following vote:

YEAS

The Honourable Senators

Boehm, Coyle, Dalphond, Saint-Germain, Verner and Woo — 6

NAYS

The Honourable Senator

Plett — 1

ABSTENTIONS

NIL

The committee proceeded to the consideration of a draft report, pursuant to rule 12-2(1)(a), and the order of the Senate of March 11, 2020, on its nomination of the Speaker pro tempore.

After debate, it was agreed that the report be adopted and that the chair present the report in the Senate.

The committee proceeded to the consideration of a draft report, pursuant to rule 12-2(2), and the order of the Senate of March 11, 2020, on its nomination of senators to serve on the standing committees and the standing joint committees.

After debate, it was agreed that the report be adopted and that the chair be authorized to present the report in the Senate.

At 11:22 a.m., the committee adjourned to the call of the chair.

ATTEST:

Shaila Anwar

Clerk of the Committee