Public Accounts Committee on Oct. 15th, 2020

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly Block]

Mr. Longfield, you are next.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

First of all, I'd like to comment on Dean Allison, who was also a really good chair in the short period I interacted with him. He does have a lot to bring back to us in terms of institutional knowledge.

I wonder whether part of this motion could also talk about orientation in general, that the orientation would include a previous chair coming forward to discuss the operation of the committee. We also had some very good orientation from the Clerk's office. We have a lot of new members on the committee, and I found the orientation to be excellent. If we were able to have another orientation session, showing us what the committee does when it's on a good day, what kinds of challenges we might have and how to handle those challenges going forward in a non-partisan way....

I would suggest that part of the motion state that we bring back the previous chairs, and that we have orientation by the department.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly Block]

Mr. Green, do you see that as a friendly amendment to your motion?

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

I know that Mr. Allison was newly elected in the very short period of time that we met, but if my memory serves me correctly, it was actually Mr. Kevin Sorenson and Mr. Shawn Murphy, the past Liberal and Conservative chairs, who had a little bit more time in the chair. Mr. Allison was a very short-lived chair of this committee.

For the record, it's the Canadian Audit & Accountability Foundation that Mr. Longfield was referencing with regard to our initial orientation, which I also found to be an incredibly great start to this. I would welcome that as part of our overall resumption of this committee.

Mr. Christopherson, Mr. Sorenson and Mr. Murphy would be the people who would be in keeping with the motion.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly Block]

Thank you very much, Mr. Green.

I now have Mr. Sorbara.

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Chair, through you to MP Green, can you read the motion from the beginning, or the motion you wish to present, please?

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

I move:

That the Committee re-invite past chairs of the committee, including Shawn Murphy, Kevin Sorenson, Dean Allison and David Christopherson, and invite the Canadian Audit and Accountability Foundation to provide an orientation briefing to members of the committee.

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Thank you.

Chair, through you to Mr. Green, I'm in full support of that motion, along with incorporating the comments that our vice-chair on our side made on the orientation session. I think that's a constructive motion to put forward.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly Block]

Thank you very much.

I'll now go to Mr. Fergus.

[Greg Fergus, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

Madam Chair, I was going to move a similar motion to Mr. Longfield's.

I appreciate Mr. Green's motion. To tell you the truth, I could use a second orientation from the Canadian association. I'm hoping it will stick a little more in my head, because it was a lot of information they provided to us. I say this for the new members: These orientation sessions were fabulous.

In the history of this committee, I don't know over how many Parliaments, it has presented unanimous reports. There have been no dissenting reports from this committee for a long time. I think that's because the committee has had the benefit of this kind of training. We take our fiduciary responsibilities as members of Parliament, not as political representatives but as members of Parliament, seriously to make sure that this committee continues to do great work.

I look forward to voting in favour of this motion and getting that training back.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly Block]

Thank you very much.

I have Mr. Berthold, then Mr. Longfield and Mr. Webber.

Mr. Berthold.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

I would invite Mr. Green to add Mr. Dean Allison to the list of former chairs. A former chair cannot be bypassed simply because the House did not sit long in that session of Parliament. He is a former chair, so I would add him. He will decide for himself whether or not he thinks it is appropriate to come and share his experience. I think it would be disrespectful not to invite Mr. Allison, who has also been a chair of the committee.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Mr. Berthold and I have worked together and often finish each other's sentences, which we should both be afraid of. I think that having Mr. Allison back would be very beneficial.

I would also like to suggest that we do this as a first order of business and that we move this even into the next meeting if possible. If we could put a timeline on the motion, then I would support the motion 100% with the addition of Mr. Allison and with this as the first order of business.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly Block]

Thank you very much, Mr. Longfield.

Mr. Webber.

[Len Webber, Conservative, Calgary Confederation, AB]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I just want to make sure that you can all hear me. We had difficulty in pretesting my microphones. I assume you can hear me fine.

Great. I see that thumbs are up.

I absolutely support the motion with the additions of Mr. Allison and such. As a new member of this committee, I very much look forward to an orientation. I served close to eight long years on the public accounts committee in the province of Alberta, so I'm curious to know how the operations here work and whether there are any differences, which I'm sure there are.

I look forward to learning how you run the operation here.

Thanks.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly Block]

Thank you, Mr. Webber.

Are there any other comments?

Mr. Fergus.

[Greg Fergus, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

I would like to make another proposal, Madam Chair. I hope this is still consistent with the idea of Mr. Green's motion and the proposed amendment. In addition to the foundation and all the past chairs of the committee, can we include the Comptroller General and the Auditor General among those to be invited? We did that at the orientation sessions we had a few months ago, and I think it would be a good idea to do it again.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

I think he's quite right. I'm unclear about the timing. I know the presentation was fairly fulsome. It may need to be broken up into two days, but that is right in keeping with the spirit of our past business, if I recall.

Thank you for the intervention, Mr. Fergus. It's Professor Fergus, and he is looking very professorial, for the record, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly Block]

Thank you very much.

Are there any other comments?

Mr. Berthold.

Mr. Berthold, you are muted.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair. There are far too many buttons you have to press to speak in French and then listen in English afterwards.

I would just like to say that it has been a long time since we last met with the Auditor General and the Comptroller General of Canada. Immediately following my comment, I'm going to move a motion to invite the Auditor General to appear next week to report on the status of reports, deadlines and what has happened since her appointment in June. It is important that we receive her promptly so that we can plan for all of our future work.

I support Mr. Green's motion to have an orientation session where we would have past chairs of the committee and people from the foundation. However, we should not spend our next six meetings doing training; we need to limit ourselves. It is also our responsibility to seek training to serve on this committee.

So I would keep the first draft of Mr. Green's motion, which is to invite past chairs of the committee and the Canadian Audit and Accountability Foundation to provide training.

As for the Auditor General and the Comptroller General, we have a lot of questions for them. I would exclude them from the motion, if Mr. Green agrees, but then I would bring forward another motion to have the new Auditor General come here.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly Block]

Thank you very much, Mr. Berthold.

I believe that we can entertain that motion, or you can at least give us notice of that motion, to invite the Auditor General and the comptroller. That would be something that we deal with after this, after Mr. Green's motion.

I did see Mr. Lawrence's hand up.

Mr. Lawrence.

[Philip Lawrence, Conservative, Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON]

Briefly, I support going forward with Deputy Green's motion, just as a singular. Then we can look at Mr. Berthold's motion with respect to the Auditor General.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly Block]

Is everybody clear on what we are voting on?

[Greg Fergus, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

I would love to hear from Mr. Green.

Madam Chair, I think he had accepted two friendly amendments to his motion. I don't know whether it's one or two. Perhaps Mr. Green could clarify that.

Just as a point of information, perhaps the IT people can make the following clear.

Mr. Berthold, if you have the latest version of Zoom that the House has encouraged us to use, you don't need to signal when you want to speak in French. With this new version, you can use the floor channel and it will work. It wasn't possible with the version we were using in May, but it is possible with the new version. This remains to be confirmed with the information technology people.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Thank you.