Proceedings of the Standing Committee on
Rules, Procedures and the Rights of Parliament
Issue 5 - Evidence - Meeting of October 18, 2005
OTTAWA, Tuesday, October 18, 2005
The Standing Committee on Rules, Procedures and the Rights of Parliament met this day at 9:34 a.m. pursuant to its mandate under rule 86(1)(f) of the Rules of the Senate to consider the printing of an updated copy of the Rules of the Senate; and to consider a draft report.
Senator David P. Smith (Chairman) in the chair.
[English]
The Chairman: Honourable senators, the first part of this meeting will be on the record and then we will be moving in camera to talk about work from here. We may even get a few things done.
We will start by turning the floor over to Gary O'Brien, who has coordinated the report that has been prepared by the table and which basically implements the changes that are necessary flowing from the adoption of the code of conduct for senators, and because of that, we need to table it. Before we do so, it is fair to say that we all understand the gist of it, but we will have a précis by Mr. O'Brien and an opportunity to ask questions.
Gary O'Brien, Deputy Clerk and Principal Clerk, Senate of Canada: Honourable senators, the last reprint of the rules was tabled in the Senate on October 26, 2004. Since that date, the following amendments were adopted by the Senate to the Rules of the Senate.
On May 11 of this year, your committee presented its third report recommending eight amendments to the Senate rules that incorporated procedural consequences as required by the conflict of interest code. These included the scope of the Speaker's authority, declaration of a private interest, the report of the Leader of the Government concerning the membership of the committee on the conflict of interest for senators, the mandates and procedures of the conflict of interest committee and the procedure for adopting a report of the conflict of interest committee dealing with the conduct of an individual senator. These amendments were agreed to on May 18.
On June 9, your committee presented its fourth report recommending that rule 96 be amended by adding that “Except with leave of its members present, a committee cannot dispense with clause-by-clause consideration of a bill.” This amendment was agreed to by the Senate on June 14.
[Translation]
All of these changes appear in the new version of the Standing Orders. The table of contents and the index have been updated in both official languages to reflect the changes.
[English]
In addition, in order to make any changes necessary to properly incorporate these amendments into the Rules of the Senate, the table was authorized to correct errors and two amendments were cleaned up. The first was in rule 85(4), where there was a typographical mistake. It should have read (2.1) as opposed to 2(1). Unfortunately, this typographical error was not found until the third report had been adopted by the Senate.
In the French version of rule 97(6), the word “presenter” was replaced by the word “proposer” as the more accurate word in French.
Therefore, honourable senators, we recommend that the Rules of the Senate be reprinted to incorporate these amendments and that the chair of the committee be authorized to table the reprints in the Senate.
The Chairman: Do any members of the committee have questions of Mr. O'Brien? I think it is pretty straightforward. Could I have a motion?
Senator Robichaud: I so move.
The Chairman: All in favour?
Hon. Senators: Agreed.
The Chairman: Carried.
Thank you very much, Mr. O'Brien. Your presence here is very positive. We invite you to attend all meetings and have the same positive impact.
At this point, we will move in camera.
The committee continued in camera.