Procedure and House Affairs Committee on April 9th, 2024

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

There is no debate. You challenged the chair.

I'll call the question.

[Eric Duncan, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

I did the first time, and you didn't call the question, so now you're—

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

We just called the question.

Let's go.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

You didn't ask for a challenge—

[Eric Duncan, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

I did the first time and then she—

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

You just said those words. I heard them clearly. The question has been called.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

I thought you said you disagreed with her. You never challenged the ruling.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

Let's vote.

(Ruling of the chair sustained: yeas 7; nays 4)

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

I'm not sure what's happening, but we have a three-hour meeting today, possibly, or up to.

I'm going to ask members if you need a break. I'll give you guys a five-minute break, but this is not the tone and temperament I'm going to continue with when we've asked witnesses to come.

Mr. Duncan, are we okay to proceed with why we're here? Now that you've had everything done that you needed, can we at least focus and let the guests or witnesses provide the information that they're here to provide?

[Eric Duncan, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

I'm just stunned at this, Madam Chair, about how it's absolutely....

Mr. Carrière, in your office as chief of protocol for official visits, if there are other parts or other events that you host, how do you vet a guest list for other things that you might have within your office for the events that you have?

[Sébastien Carrière]

Thank you for the question.

Indeed, there are completely separate processes depending on where the event is. I like to say just half-jokingly that I'm the chief of protocol of Canada everywhere except here, with the possible exception of the PM's corridor upstairs.

The parliamentary guest list was completely separate from us.

Sometimes we feed into those. They'll ask us who to invite from the diplomatic corps to one address or another or to liaise with the visiting delegation on who from the delegation should be invited if not everybody can be invited. However, at no point—

[Eric Duncan, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

Can I ask this? In general, for an event that you're responsible for and would have a guest list where you sent invitations out.... Apparently, in theory, without saying something specific, for another event where you'd be responsible for the guest list, can you tell me what your office does, then, to vet a guest list that you're responsible for?

[Sébastien Carrière]

We don't vet guest lists, Madam Chair. What we do is we get them from the client.

The client would be, in this case, either the PMO or one of the ministers' offices. They send us a list. Often it's in waves. If you're having a reception or a state dinner, you'll do a first wave of invitations. Then, depending on the response rate, a second wave, a third wave, a fourth wave....

We don't vet the guests—

[Eric Duncan, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

For any of the events that you do, for any events you host and would be primarily responsible for, somebody—an organization—provides names. You would automatically—through the Prime Minister's Office or through both, the director of protocol through the Prime Minister—just invite them no matter what.

[Sébastien Carrière]

We get the list from the PMO. We wouldn't accept lists from—

[Eric Duncan, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

Ms. Kennedy, in the example there, in your office, what do you do for vetting on any events or lists that come out from the Prime Minister's Office?

[Christine Kennedy]

I would just say that the foreign and defence policy secretariat very much focuses on policy support to our Prime Minister as he does his international engagements. In the event that we receive invitations and lists for events, what we normally do is just a cursory review of that list. Our lens is very much on the gender representation of those who would be in attendance. We also ensure that the organizations, if they are on that list, are appropriately invited.

[Eric Duncan, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

Again, if the Prime Minister is sending an invitation to a Canadian—to anybody—for any event, you're telling me that if some organization provided a list of 15 names for who should attend event X, Y or Z as an official visit or in the diplomatic community, you just take those names and automatically send them out, in the Prime Minister's name, inviting them to a special event. There's no vetting that's done from a security perspective.

Mr. Carrière, you've said that you're just provided a list and you send it out, but the list comes from the Prime Minister's Office.

I'm asking the Prime Minister's office, PCO, what you do for the vetting of those lists before you provide them to be sent out. They're in the Prime Minister's name on behalf of the Prime Minister, and you're telling me that if some group says, “Here are 15 people we want to invite”, you just copy and paste it to be sent out and don't do any vetting of the list?

[Christine Kennedy]

The PCO does not play a role in sending out invitations. At the request of the Prime Minister's Office, we sometimes request that Global Affairs Canada pull together and collate a list. When it is returned to us, we do that cursory review. However, we do not have the responsibility to issue invitations.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

Thank you for that clear, concise answer.

Mr. Duguid, you have six minutes.

[Terry Duguid, Liberal, Winnipeg South, MB]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I want to thank our witnesses for appearing today, for their service to our country and for the important functions that they carry out.

I believe this meeting is televised, so it's an opportunity for Canadians to learn about the protocol process and an opportunity to shed light on this unfortunate incident, which I think has wide agreement around the table.

Just so it sinks in to all listening, can you please outline—and this is probably to our GAC friends—in the context of an official visit to Canada by a foreign head of state or other senior dignitary, how your office engages with a myriad of players? There are a lot of fingers in this pie, such as the Office of the Secretary to the Governor General, the Prime Minister's Office, the Privy Council Office and, very importantly, the Speaker of the House of Commons. In this case, it was his office because my understanding is that Mr. Hunka was invited by the Speaker. It's my understanding that you played no role in vetting names coming from the Speaker's office.

Can you describe how those players interact with your good offices—particularly that reference to the Speaker's office, which issued the invitation to Mr. Hunka for which the Speaker has taken responsibility?

[Sébastien Carrière]

Madam Chair, it's a pretty fluid process in terms of organizing visits. There are several categories of visits. We have state visits, official visits, working visits and private visits. I can get into the details of those if you're interested.

Essentially, a state visit would be hosted by the Governor General. Official and working visits would be invited by the Prime Minister. A private visit is just a head of state visiting family or a private visit to Canada with no interaction with our leadership.

Visits are often initiated through the course of bilateral meetings, a summit, an incoming visit or diplomatic exchanges. The visit itself, the dates of the visit and the type of visit will be confirmed through extensive consultations, as appropriate, with Rideau Hall, the Prime Minister's Office, the PCO, geographic divisions within Global Affairs, and the two embassies or high commissions.

My bureau has three divisions. One does visits, one does events and the other manages the diplomatic corps. The visits and the events divisions are the two key implicated divisions. They will start providing logistical and protocol coordination in close collaboration with Rideau Hall, the PMO, the PCO, GAC, the RCMP and so on. This is where the Parliament piece comes in. If there's a parliamentary component to it, we will liaise with parliamentary protocol.

To be clear on the Speaker's office, we have no direct relationship with the Speaker's office. If there are any issues regarding an address to Parliament, it would be dealt with by us through parliamentary protocol. We'll define the standards of treatment, what we do, the arrival, who's going to be greeting and every little detail with the visiting delegation. We'll have an advance visit to go through all the sites with them, including here. We would come here, and then parliamentary protocol would host us and the visiting advance delegation. We would go around and walk through all the sites and so on.

That's sort of what we do. We oversee the budgets and approve the expenses, and then report on them at a later date. The events team will be in charge of organizing any events that are related to the visit.

[Terry Duguid, Liberal, Winnipeg South, MB]

Thank you for that protocol 101, which I think we've all benefited from.

Ms. Kennedy, the PCO is essentially the public service that serves the Prime Minister. I'll just repeat, in order to make it clear to our viewers, that the PCO, serving the Prime Minister, has no role in vetting or dealing with lists of invitees coming from the Speaker's office. Is that correct?

[Christine Kennedy]

Yes, that's correct. We do not have any direct relationship or engagement with the Speaker's office when it comes to addresses to Parliament.

[Terry Duguid, Liberal, Winnipeg South, MB]

Okay.

I would and I think the committee would appreciate your thoughts—because we want our international visits to go well in the future—and your recommendations on how we can prevent unfortunate incidents like this from happening in the future. We would appreciate any thoughts you have.

My time is up. I have 20 seconds, Madam Chair, but I will give them back to you.

Thank you.