30
Apr
2010
(Hill)arious 30.04.10
Well hello dawgs.
Hope everything is going swell on this lovely Friday.
Because nothing so (Hill)arious happened in yesterday’s committee meetings, I’m making it short and sweet. Content-wise, these meetings are starting to drag. Yesterday we had NFB, and some dudes from interactive companies who said the same shit about funding high-risk innovative companies, understanding free isn’t always bad (because of video streaming NFB audience has grown 1000%) and giving Canada faster bandwidth. I’m not knocking the witnesses, whose presentations are only boring because I’ve heard the messages before. It’s the Government’s fault: stop holding the freakin’ meetings and draft a GD policy.
Even committee members seemed to be getting restless and were either walking in and out of the room or staring intently at their blackberries.
Two (hill)arious awards go out today: one to a person, one to a thing. The person is the oldest MP, a French-speaking Conservative who wore his Habs jersey to the meeting, and raised the roof when this was pointed out. Awesome. And funny.
The thing is time. The time restrictions on committee meetings are a constant battle for the Chair to navigate and lead to some funny moments. Officially, witnesses are supposed to speak for ten minutes each, followed by five minute question rounds from MPs. Some witnesses blab on for 15 minutes. Some MPs never even get to their questions before the five minutes is up. It’s a constant juggling act in the Chair’s mind on who to shut up and who to let speak. I’d say yesterday, he dropped the ball.
On Tuesday’s meeting, the committee Business, whereby MP’s pass motions to change stuff, was postponed because the Chair opted to let witnesses blab on. That meant yesterday, the last half hour had to be left for Committee Biz. Even still, the Chair let the NFB witness dude wax poetic for a good 12 minutes. By the time the second round of witnesses did their presentations, there was no time for questions, this being the entire point of bringing the witnesses in.
“I’m very sorry,” the Chair said. “But we really have some committee business to get to.”
“Well that was a waste of time,” said the guy from a company called MoboVivo Inc. as he grabbed his jacket to leave after presenting.
Well done Chair. And congratulations “time restrictions.” You are funny.