Public Accounts Committee on Feb. 8th, 2011

[The Chair, Liberal, Joe Volpe]

I guess if the members on this side of the table are in agreement, we don't even need a vote. But there's a motion on the floor. One motion is not an amendment, as it first started out. It's Mr. Christopherson's motion.

This is the only thing that the committee is considering. It is not considering any other motion. Let me read it for the record: that Mr. D'Amours' motion be stood until after the law clerk, Mr. Robert Walsh, has briefed the committee on its options for further action.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

I believe there should be the word “tabled” in that. I don't want to get into splitting hairs, but it's a motion to table, so the action is to table. I don't know what “stand” means. I don't know that it has a procedural standing.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joe Volpe]

The word “stood” is the procedural word that the clerk offered up.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Is that the actual proper technical term?

It is? Okay, that's good to learn. I've learned, and I appreciate that.

Is it a motion to stand, then, or a motion to table?

It's a motion to stand? Then I “stand” fully corrected.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joe Volpe]

Because Mr. Saxton likes to hear the sound of my voice, I repeat the motion: that Mr. D'Amours' motion be stood until after the law clerk, Mr. Robert Walsh, has briefed the committee on its options for further action

Mr. Saxton.

[Andrew Saxton, Conservative, North Vancouver, BC]

So in other words, Mr. Chair, we're having the law clerk come before the committee. Subsequent to that, we will debate Mr. D'Amours' motion one more time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joe Volpe]

Exactly.

[Andrew Saxton, Conservative, North Vancouver, BC]

Sounds good.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joe Volpe]

Those in favour?

[An hon. member]

Unanimous.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joe Volpe]

(Motion agreed to [See Minutes of Proceedings])

[The Chair, Liberal, Joe Volpe]

That deals with that issue.

I want to repeat: in tomorrow's steering committee, we will be dealing with those issues that are raised by Madame Faille. Madame Faille now has the option--if she so wants, as we indicated a few minutes ago--to raise this as a motion here or to be prepared to do it tomorrow at steering. The option is hers.

[Meili Faille, Bloc, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

I'll table the motion.

The motion is to request documents from the Privy Council, Treasury Board, the Prime Minister's Office and organizations that deal with the commissioner's office, as well as correspondence from the commissioner's office. I believe that it would be important at this point to know what exchanges took place among these organizations and what measures Ms. Ouimet took, if any, regarding this issue.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joe Volpe]

Do you want to write that out?

[Meili Faille, Bloc, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

I could draft the motion and the committee could consider it. If I table it today, will we be able to vote on it today? Would committee members prefer to wait until tomorrow?

[The Chair, Liberal, Joe Volpe]

We are still on the same order of reference, so she does not need to give us notice. We are in the middle of the discussion. She can do this right here, as we have dealt with the other two motions.

So it's sufficient. We can take the specific language from the Hansard. The question is whether the committee supports this motion or not.

Mr. Saxton.

[Andrew Saxton, Conservative, North Vancouver, BC]

Mr. Chair, we have no problem if Madame Faille would like to table the motion today. That's fine. But we would like to reserve voting on it until the next time the committee meets.

[Meili Faille, Bloc, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

Okay.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joe Volpe]

Mr. Kramp.

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

Thank you very much.

Actually, I would much prefer it if Madame Faille were to wait until we get to committee.... Because if we are going to discuss this issue today, I have some serious reservations about this issue, as I think she would recognize, the reason being that I sat on the government operations committee through this process when it was chaired by a member of the opposition, and the unanimous vote was there for Madame Ouimet. I sat on that committee.

As such, now here we are going down a different road whereas, quite frankly, the Auditor General's examination was not on the process, it was not on the vetting, and it was not on the reason: it was on the conduct of the commissioner. We've already had significant testimony to the Auditor General, and as a result of that there is to be a report back to the government operations committee for evaluation. If we now go ahead and interject our investigation, we basically are investigating the government operations committee. Quite frankly, I don't think that is our intent, so we really have....

I could explain this I think a bit more fully, but if we're going to go down that path, I really think that's a significant, significant deviation from the actual discussion of trying to get to the bottom line of where there was malfeasance or misdirection or wrongful activities. But as I mentioned, this is coming back to the government operations committee, and if we're now going to investigate why government operations did or didn't do what they're doing, we're investigating the government operations committee, and not Madame Ouimet. It is my understanding we are to follow the trail that the Auditor General's report recommends. That is our function. We respond to the Auditor General, not to the recommendations of the government operations committee.

We have to be very, very careful here. I ask my colleagues to give that whole ball of wax some serious thought, because it's just not as simple as, well, we need more information on this or that or the next thing. What are our parameters? What are our boundaries? We're really pushing it here because we're walking right into the back door of another committee's operations and basically superseding and investigating them. I don't think that's been done before, at least not to my knowledge, where one committee will....

This is quite a convoluted discussion and argument. Let's leave that for another time, quite frankly.

[Meili Faille, Bloc, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

I agree with Mr. Kramp concerning some of the points he has raised. That said, I also sat on the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates. At this point, given the presentation that was made on how to detect fraud and problems involving the public accounts, this issue comes under our responsibility as well. The considerations in the Auditor General's report are serious. The presentation that was made to the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates indicated that over 50% of fraud and mismanagement in government involves employees and people who deal with the department. In both cases, the Auditor General's report indicates that there were situations that Ms. Ouimet was unable to manage properly.

In some situations, there were improprieties relating to contracts. If taxpayers' money has been misused, that is a matter for the public accounts committee. We need to get to the bottom of things. However, we cannot prevent the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates from summoning Ms. Ouimet and carrying out an operational audit.

I am calling for these documents because the fraud aspect is a serious issue. Protecting disclosures and whistleblowers is important. For Ms. Ouimet to have acted in such a way beginning in 2007, given her long experience in the public service and comments by former colleagues, there must be some background. Since Ms. Ouimet has not appeared before the committee, I believe that we have a duty to look at how the agencies see this situation. There is no doubt that the Privy Council and Treasury Board, for example, are uncomfortable about this report. But there must be some information in the documents that would help us understand a little bit of what happened.

I also agree with Mr. Saxton, who suggested that we discuss this on Thursday. I simply wanted to be sure that I could table my motion today, since we were discussing it. If the committee would like to deal with the motion on Thursday, I would be equally agreeable to that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joe Volpe]

Thank you very much, Ms. Faille.

I will let the debate continue, given that these seem to be quite important points. Mr. Kramp has already pointed out that the committee—

is dealing with the Auditor General's report. It's not investigating another committee. It is dealing with the Auditor General's report on the integrity commission's office, and from it she made certain observations regarding--

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

This is about the officer, not the office.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joe Volpe]

She made certain observations regarding the officer.

This committee has said in the past that one of the reasons it wanted to bring Madame Ouimet forward was to give her an opportunity to defend her own position—because she indicated she disagreed with the Auditor General—in the same forum in which her own competence had been impugned.

Secondly, since there were ramifications to the way the office worked, the whole issue of the architecture of the office and the law that she was to apply would be addressed by her.

That's all this committee wanted to do. There is no limit procedurally, of which I am aware, on this committee's ability to conduct a study as it sees...as long as it's within the parameters of its mandate. We're not studying another committee. The other committee on government operations—and Madame Faille and others have been on the government operations committee—was to review the appointment. We're not here to review the appointment. We're here to deal with the Auditor General's report.

Madame Faille has now used different language again, and she's prepared to present a motion for consideration on Thursday. I indicated that if that's her will, that's great. If it's not, there's nothing to prevent her from asking for it to be considered today. I accept what she said, and so she is giving notice to the committee that she wants that issue dealt with on Thursday, keeping in mind that this is going to be dealt with by steering committee on Wednesday, beforehand, anyway.

Okay? Okay.

Thank you for all of that.

I'm going to suspend for a couple of minutes....

Monsieur D'Amours.

[Jean-Claude D'Amours, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

As you know, I do not speak very often, but I simply wanted clarification about our mandate. In English, it states:

that, under the mandate of standing committees, “Public Accounts shall include, among other matters....”

In French, the words are "comprend notamment." The words "among" and "notamment" do indicate that the wording is not intended to be restrictive.

I would also add as a comment that we should stop using assumptions in our discussion. We are assuming that we want to do a certain thing, but the committee is grown up enough to decide what it wants to do. Earlier, for example, it was being assumed that Ms. Ouimet was on vacation. One wonders whether some committee members are not hoping that she might actually be on vacation or if they are not hoping to force her to go on vacation. I would like us to stop making assumptions and to be allowed to deal with the issues that we feel are appropriate. That is all I have to say.