Public Accounts Committee on Nov. 28th, 2023

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Good morning, everyone.

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 87 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Public Accounts.

Hold on a moment please, Mr. McCauley.

The committee is meeting today to discuss committee business.

Go ahead, Mr. McCauley. You have the floor.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Thanks, Chair.

I'd just like to table my motion that I put on notice last week. I understand the NDP has already submitted some lengthy amendments. I'm wondering if perhaps we could distribute that to everyone and then take time reading it.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Why don't you just take the 30 seconds—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Sure.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

—that you need to read your motion. Everyone has had it for a few days.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Sure.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

It will give the Canadians who are watching an awareness of what's happening.

I'll turn to Ms. Ashton right after that.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

To both Canadians who are watching on CPAC right now, thanks for tuning in.

The motion is to have a study of GC Strategies, a value-for-money study, on the $54 million spent on ArriveCAN. It's mostly specifically around the contractors, GC Strategies, which received the bulk of the contracts. They then turned around without doing any work on the ArriveCAN app itself, added their 15% to 30%—which turned out to be about $11 million of taxpayers' money—and then subcontracted the work out to other companies, including very large companies like BDO, which then turned around and re-subbed the subcontracted contracts for the ArriveCAN app, adding even more money for work not done.

It's just a simple study. I think we owe Canadians a value-for-money study on ArriveCAN and GC Strategies.

Thanks very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you.

I will note that you're wishing to call the cast of Ben-Hur to committee. We'll see what members think of that.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

We asked for Ben-Hur, but apparently he's dead, so we've taken the cast.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Yes, I said the cast.

I will turn now to Ms. Ashton.

Welcome, and thank you for joining us today. You have the floor, please.

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill—Keewatinook Aski, MB]

Thank you very much.

I believe that the text has been or is being circulated. I'll read out the full language of the text. It is that given the fact that:

GC Strategies, a two‐person company that does not perform any actual work but exclusively subcontracts contracts they acquire, has received $59 million in taxpayer dollars from 2017 to present; and

decades of unchecked spending on outsourcing—which accelerated in 2006—has cost Canadians tens of billions of dollars while creating a shadow public service that works alongside the real public service—but without the same hiring practices or transparency requirements; and,

despite government promises to reduce outside contract spending, the recently released supplementary estimates (C) show an increase in contract and services spending of $1.2 billion

That the committee initiate a two-meeting investigation concerning the value for money the Government has obtained through contracting GC Strategies – and through the practice of contracting and sub‐contracting since 2006 ‐ and that the committee report its findings and recommendations to the House.

To facilitate its investigation, pursuant to Standing Order 108(1), the committee order the production of all contracts with the Government of Canada from 2006 to 2022 in an unredacted format.

The witness list include the following:

1. All GC Strategies employees (Kristian Firth and Darren Anthony)

2. And any other witnesses that the committee deems fit to call.

As many of you know, I am here to replace my colleague, MP Blake Desjarlais, who is very keen to expand on this and further discuss it. Obviously we share members' outrage that this waste of Canadians' money is happening and this disrespect of the public services is occurring.

I do, however, want to make sure that my colleague Blake Desjarlais has the chance to speak to this more fully when he is back, so I therefore move to adjourn debate.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Just one second, please.

I will call the question on that, please.

(Motion agreed to: yeas 6; nays 4)

The decision to adjourn discussion on this motion and its amendment has passed.

You will note that the clerk has tabled two documents for you to consider when we next review this.

The first is a clean copy of what Mr. McCauley's motion would look like if these amendments were accepted. The second copy is a “track changes” one, just so you'll be able to see very quickly what Ms. Ashton and Mr. Desjarlais are proposing we consider.

Thank you very much, Ms. Ashton.

I have a list here.

Mr. McCauley, you had asked to be recognized, but I suspect that has been dealt with now. If it has, I'll turn to Mr. Stewart. Do you wish to take the floor, Mr. McCauley? The floor is yours.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Unfortunately, it has been dealt with. It's disappointing that we've adjourned debate, but that's life.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

That is democracy in action.

I will now turn to Mr. Stewart. You have the floor, sir.

[Jake Stewart, Conservative, Miramichi—Grand Lake, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to move a motion:

That the committee call on the Auditor General of Canada to audit the National Capital Commission’s $8 million dollar Barn project.

Mr. Chair, we have now heard officials at the Treasury Board and Public Works tell us that the National Capital Commission would answer all the questions from all members of the committee. We did learn from them that the National Capital Commission is a Crown corporation with a lot of flexibility on how they manage projects, and they do not have to follow the same procurement rules governing federal departments.

We heard from Tobi Nussbaum, the NCC CEO, who said that the Auditor General has not raised any concerns in audits over the past five years.

We then heard from the Auditor General, who said that they did not audit this specific project. She said that any financial transactions would have been checked to see if they were valid, but the auditor has not done a performance audit to see if the project delivered value for the $8 million of taxpayers' money.

Also, the NCC has now come back to me asking which of the more than 30 questions we asked the Treasury Board, Public Works and NCC we want them to answer, which of course is all of them. At this point, Mr. Chair, we now have more questions but no answers. Canadians need the expertise of the Office of the Auditor General to examine this $8-million expenditure.

As a note, the communications at the NCC is quite interesting, considering they have to hire additional comms persons to deal with a barn project.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you, Mr. Stewart.

Ms. Khalid, you have the floor, please.

[Iqra Khalid, Liberal, Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON]

I'm sorry. I thought it was Ms. Shanahan first.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Pardon me. I did not see that, but I am more than happy to hear from Ms. Shanahan. I'll turn to Ms. Khalid afterwards.

Pardon me, Ms. Shanahan. The floor is yours.

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

Thank you very—

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Okay. I'm sorry. I actually jumped not one.... I was so excited to see Ms. Khalid here today. Hold on. I actually did have Mr. McCauley first, then Ms. Shanahan, whom I neglected, and then Ms. Khalid.

Then it will be Mrs. Vignola's turn.

Mr. McCauley, you have the floor. I apologize. I will have a cup of coffee now.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

If I were you, I would skip over me as well, Chair. Don't worry.

Thanks, Chair, for that.

I want to thank my colleague for bringing this motion forward. I think this is an important motion and it's an important issue that we should study.

There are a couple of things I wanted to highlight that are not included.

The annual corporate report from the NCC clearly states that they are blaming Parliament for not appropriating enough money for the NCC to properly maintain the buildings. At the same time they are claiming that Parliament is cutting their appropriations for maintenance, they are spending $8 million of taxpayers' dollars on a luxury barn on the Governor General's property.

We saw in this meeting the NCC come and, I think, less than honestly try to deflect and claim coverage for their spending by using the Auditor General's audits.

Now, it's very clear that the Auditor General doesn't audit luxury barns; she audits the overall books. I thought it was rather disingenuous for the NCC to quote the Auditor General 12 times, or bring her name in, to deflect from their actions.

Getting back to the luxury barn, we heard it was $8.1 million for a relatively small barn. I went looking on Realtor.ca. In Edmonton's River Valley, I saw a house at about $5 million. It's $3 million less than the barn, including buying the property on the River Valley near where Daryl Katz, who owns the Oilers, lives.

It has an eight-car underground garage. The luxury barn has an underground. It costs a lot more to build down. Having built hotels, I know that. The house has an eight-car underground garage, a 30-foot indoor waterfall, six bathrooms and what looks to be about half an acre on the River Valley. It's one of the most expensive properties in Edmonton, and it's still $3 million less than building a luxury barn that we didn't have to buy land for—we already own the land.

Here we have a house with a massive garage, prime real estate and a 30-foot indoor waterfall, and we could actually buy almost two of those for the price the NCC paid to put up a luxury barn.

I think when we have record numbers of Canadians accessing food banks and we have people struggling with mortgage rates, spending $8.1 million on a luxury barn needs to be looked into so that we can put a stop to this practice.

Thanks, Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you.

Mrs. Shanahan, I apologize again. The floor is now yours.

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

Thank you very much, Chair.

I recall the testimony we heard and many of the questions that were asked at the time of both the Auditor General and the officials from the NCC. The thing that was most concerning to me, and I think to other members here on the committee, was the issue of deferred maintenance and how putting off work for years, and even decades, adds to the cost of a project. Indeed, at different times it was with the objective of being what I would call penny-wise, pound foolish that projects were put off.

We all know what has happened to the costs of construction, costs during the pandemic and so on. That's where we find ourselves today, but it's not just with the storage facility that was discussed at Rideau Hall, which serves other buildings as well; it's other heritage properties, such as Stornoway, the residence of the official opposition leader, and other heritage buildings.

I propose an amendment to this motion. Once amended, it would read, “That the committee request that the Auditor General of Canada investigate the long-term financial impact of deferring maintenance on federal heritage buildings such as 24 Sussex Drive and Stornoway.”

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

I'll come to you in one second, Mr. Nater.

Thank you, Mrs. Shanahan.

I just want to make sure that the clerk or someone captured that amendment.

Is there any chance you have something in writing or in an email?

That's perfect, then.

First I'll hear the point of order on the amendment to the motion.