Public Accounts Committee on Feb. 1st, 2011

[The Chair, Liberal, Joe Volpe]

I'm sorry. Go ahead.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you.

I'm just a little bit concerned and would appreciate the thoughts of you and other members. But February 8--today is February 1--is one week from today. Nothing is going to be received today, so it's going to be less than a week.

If my note-taking is correct, we made phone calls and left messages on the tenth and thirteenth of December. On December 16 we sent registered mail giving her until January 14 just to get back to us. And here we are suggesting something less than a week to actually arrange one's affairs to be here. That's assuming someone wants to.

I'm just concerned that someone could make a reasonable argument that if they don't finally get contacted until Wednesday or Thursday--“gee, I can't make February 8”--that opens up an opportunity to.... Let's just say that if one wanted to be obstructionist in terms of coming here, you could plant a whole lot of roadblocks in the way.

All of that is to say I'm wondering if we shouldn't.... I heard what you said, Chair, about what we have planned. My thought was that first date after that, which is about two and a half weeks. I take Mr. Kramp's point that not only do we always have to be taking care of people's rights, but there's a bit of Caesar's wife here, and we have to be seen to be fair-minded. I'm just concerned that this may not look fair to have such a tight timeframe on a summons. But that could be just me. I'm thinking we might want to go for that other date, but....

[The Chair, Liberal, Joe Volpe]

Okay. I appreciate your intervention there, Mr. Christopherson. As I indicated earlier, in order to make this official we have to put a date. So we've put down the very first date we have available. I gave you an indication of the schedule. When we get a response we'll be able to make an adjustment, but if we start to pick the ideal date today for the bailiff logistics individual to get back to us, we could be playing with the calendar for a long time.

Madame Ouimet may not be available on the eighth, but we have at least given our logistics and bailiff people an opportunity to work on that schedule. This isn't the time for somebody to be personal or partisan. I don't think anybody around this table is going to be so rigid as to say the bailiff just gets hold of her on Sunday and we want her here. I don't know where she's going to be—let's suppose he does. Can we make an adjustment? I think I can come back to the committee and say, “Colleagues, we finally have Madame Ouimet. It will be on this day that best suits everybody, what say you?”

I don't want you to go away from this discussion thinking we're going to nail somebody on the eighth and all of us are going to be here on the eighth. We're all going to be here on the eighth, but Madame Ouimet will be given the opportunity, once we locate her, and I don't know whether that's going to happen by then. That's why I said to Mr. Saxton that I'm hoping to be able to give you some kind of report on Thursday. Maybe then we can make some adjustments.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

As long as we build in some flexibility and fairness, that's fine.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joe Volpe]

The only thing set in stone is that we're going to move ahead. That's what I hear around the table.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

I'm good.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joe Volpe]

Mr. Young.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

I just want to express my agreement with Mr. Christopherson. It's such a short notice. It gives somebody the opportunity to say they can't possibly make it. If you made it the 15th or 22nd it would prevent that from happening.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joe Volpe]

Thank you, Mr. Young.

As I said, I'm not going to call for a vote. I'm taking this as consensus that the committee agrees that I should present this motion for the summons.

Okay, thank you very much. That's item number one.

Item number two is that, in respect of the same issue, the clerk and I, I guess through the analysts, have received submissions from parties interested in intervening on this matter. As you know, we also contacted the Clerk of the Privy Council prior to Christmas with respect to his availability. I gave you an indication then that the clerk said he'd be prepared to come, but he could not come on those days because of his commitments to cabinet and the briefings to the Prime Minister. We all agreed that was fair.

We have contacted the clerk's office again, and there is an inclination to appear, but not until much later in the month. That inclination I thought was very positive. Somebody wants to help the committee understand the dynamics between that individual and the mandate, which is what we're dealing with.

Others have come forward. Some of you I think have talked to them. They tried to talk to me, and I wouldn't talk to them. They're the people from FAIR, Federal Accountability Initiative for Reform, which is the organization that deals with bureaucrats and how they deal within the bureaucracy. I said, “Whatever you have may be of interest, but I won't speak to you. I will raise the fact that you may be interested in giving the committee a perspective.” So I leave that out for you.

The previous Clerk of the Privy Council, Mr. Kevin Lynch, who is actually the one who issued the appointment, may be available, and an individual who is responsible for human resources at the PCO may be available. The reason I say “may be available” is that I'm inferring from the disposition of the current Clerk of the Privy Council that there is an inclination among our senior bureaucrats to appear before the committee if they are asked to. I would not speak to them until I had given you this indication that we have such people who are interested.

So the second item on our agenda would be whether there is disposition on the part of the committee to enlarge the number of people who might appear on this issue. Otherwise, we stay with Madame Ouimet and the Auditor General.

Mr. Saxton.

[Andrew Saxton, Conservative, North Vancouver, BC]

Mr. Chair, maybe it's premature to answer that question. Maybe we need to first see if we can get Madame Ouimet, and, based on that success or “unsuccess”--if it is successful she comes in, and we learn from her--we can decide, based on her testimony, whether we need to bring in more witnesses on this subject.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joe Volpe]

Okay.

Mr. Bains.

[Navdeep Bains, Liberal, Mississauga—Brampton South, ON]

Before you spoke, Chair, I was actually thinking along the lines that we need, obviously, not only to bring Madame Ouimet here, but also to look at other relevant witnesses and determine who those may be. It might not be ideal to do that here. Maybe the steering committee can look at this, determine possible relevant witnesses, and see who needs to be invited, and then start to try to plan that accordingly. That way we avoid beforehand some of the challenges of the timing of bringing these witnesses.

So if we know, we can predetermine who those witnesses may be relevant to her mandate and what she said and what the AG said in her report. Then after, hopefully, she comes, we'll be in a better position to follow up with the other witnesses. I think those can best be determined in the steering committee, where that list of witnesses can be examined. It could be one or two or three departments. I don't know. It all depends on what the steering committee decides. But I think that needs to be examined properly to determine who else we need to invite as a witness.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joe Volpe]

Thank you, Mr. Bains.

Mr. Christopherson.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thanks, Chair.

You said that there was a request from an organization called FAIR. Were there other requests, or were they all attached to that same organization?

[The Chair, Liberal, Joe Volpe]

At the time, I asked whether some of these people were associated or not. I didn't get the answer right away, Mr. Christopherson, and I put it over to one side and said it didn't matter at this stage of the game, because I wanted to bring it to the committee. I think Mr. Bains has made a good point, as has Mr. Saxton. It's something the steering committee can do. But I thought I would alert the whole committee about it anyway.

There is Canadians For Accountability. Mr. Allan Cutler is the president. There is a fellow named Pierre Martel.

He is a former Executive Director of Public Sector Integrity Canada.

There is the Federal Accountability Initiative for Reform. That's FAIR. There is somebody called Chris Hughes, as an individual. We don't have any more information on him, do we?

Taking into account what Mr. Saxton has said and what Mr. Bains has indicated, we can probably discuss this in even greater detail. By that time I can ask the clerk to get us more detail.

Do it in the steering committee, and then we can go from there. If the steering committee decides to do X, as opposed to Y, we can report to the larger committee. At least now you know. I think everybody should know where we're headed on it, because it is new information.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Again, just to provide some parameters for the steering committee, my recollection is that we, as a matter of routine, don't normally go to intervenor status. We're always focusing on natural justice. It's not a courtroom, per se. Especially when we're dealing with group rights, and it's an accountability issue--and ultimately all accountability leads back to the public--it would seem to me that the steering committee would want to look at these as potential exceptions. And recognize that when we set precedent, we have to live with it down the road.

I think that within that context, this may be one of those occasions when it would be very helpful to our work. I agree with you that it's a detail that needs to be threshed out at steering committee and then a recommendation would come back here.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joe Volpe]

It won't get out of the steering committee.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Of course not.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joe Volpe]

That was a mea culpa, I think.

Go ahead, Mr. Kramp.

[Daryl Kramp, Conservative, Prince Edward—Hastings, ON]

This is unusual, but I'm taking a different opinion from that of my honourable colleague across the hall.

The intervenors can probably add a significant amount of interest and/or information that certainly might be helpful to Parliament. My concern, of course, is whether their testimony is relevant to the discussion right now with regard to the alleged failings of Madame Ouimet and/or others. Or is it simply a matter for operations of the government? My argument would be that if the suggestion is that it is operations of government, then I don't think these intervenors should be at the public accounts committee. But they should have the availability of appearing before government operations; that's where they would belong.

However, if their testimony were related to this particular instance of the allegations against Madame Ouimet, then it would be a whole different situation. I think we need to make that clear so that we don't end up doing another committee's work while following along one path. If the information would come forward at steering committee, we would give that a thought. To me, it's really difficult to go forward and decide what we need for witnesses until we know which direction we're going with Madame Ouimet. Once we have that kind of testimony, we will really know if we need to go down that path. I wouldn't want to prejudge and suggest that we need to bring in witnesses like that, when quite frankly they might belong at another committee. They might belong at ours. Once we hear the testimony from Madame Ouimet, I think it would really clearly establish the boundaries for that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joe Volpe]

Thank you, Mr. Kramp.

Mr. Young.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I just want to agree with Mr. Kramp. We're supposed to look at operations. This committee looks at getting things done, whether money is well spent, value for the taxpayers' dollar, and if it's not getting done, why it isn't getting done. So let's get the expert in, the person who was inside the organization and can give us advice on that, before we invite people from outside who may be making value judgments on a broader range of things that might be valuable in a different sense.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joe Volpe]

Thank you.

I'm just going to take all of those observations as seedlings into the terrain, so when the steering committee deals with this it will already be seized with some of the perceptions around the table and deal with them accordingly and report back to the full committee as per whatever discussion will come out of that.

All right, I want to thank you very much for your cooperation, and we will proceed. We have a steering committee tomorrow to finalize some of the things we need to do for Thursday and Tuesday, so we will have that committee meeting.

I think you've already sent out the notice, right? Those who are on the steering committee will have gotten it and we'll meet you tomorrow. And unless otherwise noted, we will meet here on Thursday at 3:30 and it will, in all likelihood, be one of the three reports that we have in draft form.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Report writing—the committee meeting is report writing?

[The Chair, Liberal, Joe Volpe]

The draft report, sir, yes.

Thank you very much, colleagues.

The meeting is adjourned.