Public Accounts Committee on Jan. 25th, 2024

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

I'm sorry, Ms. Khalid.

Mr. McCauley, what's your point of order?

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

I think we were discussing Mr. Genuis's motion, not Mr. Hayes's attendance at this meeting.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Again, I'll let Ms. Khalid continue, and then we'll hear from other members.

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

Thanks, Chair.

I just want to highlight some of the points that Mr. Johns made as well with respect to Mr. Genuis's motion.

One is that it seems to be a little disingenuous to present it in various committees, knowing that being a visiting member of a committee and table-dropping a motion—

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

I'm just going to stop you. Every time you say something is disingenuous, you are impugning the chair. That is fine. You're not crossing the line. My job is to oversee the government. This is an opposition-run committee. I will call a meeting when I think it is worthwhile. If you don't like it, you can take action. To suggest that I'm being disingenuous by calling a meeting is out of bounds.

Mr. Genuis, like all members, is entitled to bring forward any motion he likes that is relevant on the day of the meeting. He has done so. If you're implying that we're in cahoots, you are wrong. I called this meeting on the information that I received from Mr. McCauley regarding the thousands of pages of documents.

Referring back, you are right. The Auditor General said the exact same thing at that October 12 meeting, and guess what? This committee found out something that we did not previously know—that information had been withheld from the OAG by the department about a police investigation. That was relevant. Number two, the OAG actually delayed the release of the report so they could go back to review the documents.

This committee is doing its job by overseeing the government. It will continue to do so. If you're going to keep calling my actions disingenuous for doing my job, I'm going to find you out of line.

It's back to you, Ms. Khalid. You're welcome to address the motion or my behaviour, but do so directly, without impugning my motives.

Thank you.

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

Thank you, Chair, for your clarification, but I will respectfully say that it is not your job to hold the government to account. It is this committee's job.

The point that I was trying to make earlier is that we have been able to build consensus. We worked together on a motion and figured out the language. We have been finding ways, at least on our side, to build that consensus and to do the job of this committee.

What I'm trying to say here, Chair, is that neither was this meeting an emergency, nor was this motion an emergency. We have seen it showing up in other committees, as Mr. Johns pointed out. What I am trying to say is that none of the members, on our side at least, were consulted on this at all, even though we have shown good faith, time and time again, in trying to find ways to work together to do the job of this committee.

No one member is a representative of this committee, Chair, and I respectfully submit that to you.

I would hope that, going forward, we would continue to act in good faith on the consensus that we're trying to build here on holding the government to account, ensuring that we're not wasting public servants' time as they try to do their jobs and that we're not interfering in the work of the OAG, etc.

I will leave it there, Chair, but I hope that we can continue to find better ways to work together, rather than having meetings that are completely unscheduled and without consulting all members of the committee.

Thanks, Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you very much.

Ms. Shanahan, you have the floor.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I will continue along the same lines as my colleague. That fact that we seem to be here to call attention to a committee meeting, one which will be held with the Auditor General at some point, is a waste of this committee’s time and resources, in my opinion.

It’s common knowledge that members of different parties, except for the Conservative Party, have to attend caucuses and other meetings this week.

However, without anyone being consulted, except for I don’t know who, we find ourselves having to attend this meeting. This is a waste…

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Wait one second, please, Ms. Shanahan.

Mr. Johns, you have the floor.

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

Thank you.

I think this will help Ms. Shanahan, too.

It's a point of clarification that Mr. MacDonald and Mr. Utano—and this is directly related to this motion—were not whistle-blowers. They didn't report any misconduct. They didn't raise any alarms. They were implicated in misconduct—

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Mr. Johns, I'll get back to you. This is not a point of order.

You are down on the list again.

I have on the speaking list Ms. Shanahan, Mr. Brock, Madame Sinclair-Desgagné, Mr. Genuis, and after that, you, Mr. Johns. You will then have a chance to rebut this.

Thank you.

Ms. Shanahan, you have the floor again.

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

I want it on the record, especially for my fellow citizens who are very familiar with the work we do here at the Standing Committee on Public Accounts. If they have that much respect for the work we do, it is because they know our work at this committee is consensus-based.

In the past, Conservative chairs of this committee always favoured consensus. I am thinking of Mr. Sorensen, for example.

Here's what we are seeing now: we're facing off like adversaries, as though we were in court before a judge. Furthermore, Conservative members are proposing that we do work already being done elsewhere. There’s the real waste.

We know full well what they are trying to do right now. They claim the Liberals don’t want to discuss this very important subject. However, that is completely false. This is a very important subject and we are always ready to work on it together. We cooperate with members of this committee when it comes to the Auditor General’s work.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Go ahead, Mr. McCauley, on a point of order.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Thank you.

Unless we voted on this and I missed it somehow, we are debating the motion.

It would be nice if somebody actually got to debating the motion at hand.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

That's fair enough.

As you know, I allow for latitude, and members are expressing themselves. There is some irritation with having a meeting outside of the parliamentary calendar, and members are entitled to feel that way.

We're at work here, so I'll turn back to Ms. Shanahan.

I think you were concluding, but maybe you were not. I'm certainly not pulling the mic from you, so it's back to you.

Again, I'm going to remind everyone that we have a nice speaking list.

Mr. Genuis, go ahead on a point of order, and then I'm going back to Ms. Shanahan.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

To speed things up, given what's being said, would there be unanimous consent of the committee to proceed to a vote on this motion? We would be ready to do that if there was unanimous consent.

It's a request for unanimous consent. Is there agreement?

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

I can tell there is no agreement.

Ms. Shanahan, we'll go back to you. Go ahead, please.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

You can request it, and you see it on points of order.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Ms. Shanahan has the floor.

Please proceed.

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

Thank you very much. I was just wrapping up.

I especially want the Canadian public to understand that the committee is looking into the ArriveCAN application issue, that we are working with the Auditor General, and that this meeting is nothing but a sideshow. We know all about the Conservative Party’s objective.

I know other members want to speak too, and I look forward to hearing what my colleague from the Bloc Québécois has to say.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Brock now has the floor.

We'll then hear from the Bloc members.

[Larry Brock, Conservative, Brantford—Brant, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I think it's important that we go back to the actual motion that was introduced, probably 45 minutes ago, which reads, “The committee report to the House its grave concern about apparent reprisals against witnesses following their testimony on the ArriveCAN app.” That is the motion.

What we have heard from the Liberals and the NDP is anything but the importance and urgency of this particular matter. The House needs to have this matter before it so that all parliamentarians have a chance to speak to it.

Ms. Shanahan uses comments about urgency, how important this is and how we want to telegraph to Canadians that we're taking this seriously—we take our jobs seriously. However, she's forgotten exactly what happened on October 12 when the Auditor General appeared. After the entire Liberal bench was embarrassed, as well as the NDP, the Auditor General....

Ms. Shanahan, you can laugh all you want, but Canadians are watching me. They're watching you laugh at me, and it's not a good look.

You, your party and the NDP deliberately shut down the ability of the Auditor General to answer questions for a two-hour period.

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

On a point of order, Mr. Chair, I am being spoken to directly, so I would like to respond to that.

There was no shutting down going on. We were proceeding with this work

properly.

If Mr. Brock doesn't like the timing of it, I'm sorry. I can't help him there.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

That is a very good reminder that points should be referred through the chair.

I appreciate your understanding, Mr. Brock. It's back to you.

[Larry Brock, Conservative, Brantford—Brant, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

She can remind Canadians of what she did, but the fact of the matter remains that neither the government nor CBSA informed the Auditor General, who was then starting an investigation, that the RCMP were involved. That was an absolute embarrassment. The Auditor General confirmed that she read about it and knew about it only after reading the article in The Globe and Mail.

I was the one who asked that question, Mr. Chair. The moment I concluded my round—this was the first round of questioning to the Auditor General—the first member of the Liberal bench who had the floor moved to adjourn. I believe it was Ms. Khalid who moved to adjourn. They had the votes to adjourn the meeting, thereby wasting the ability of the Auditor General to shed light on the full parameters of this ArriveCAN audit. Now, over the course of several months—and this is the genesis of the wording in motion number 2—we have had direct evidence that two senior members of the CBSA—Mr. MacDonald, a former director general of the CBSA, and Mr. Antonio Utano, another former senior executive of the CBSA—testified, not under oath but knowing that they were there to tell the truth. They pointed fingers and identified the president, Ms. O'Gorman, and the past president, Mr. Ossowski, as well as Mr. Kristian Firth and other members of the IT companies that were associated with not only the ArriveCAN issue but also the issue involving another IT company—Botler AI—as having deliberately misled the government operations committee. They informed the committee that they had evidence to produce to the committee to confirm their findings and that it wasn't just a he-said-she-said thing, or he-said-he-said depending on the witnesses involved and the players involved. They actually had witnesses who could come to committee to support the findings of both Mr. MacDonald and Mr. Utano that our committee, this national government committee, was deliberately misled by the CBSA. That is something the Auditor General should be concerned about.

Whether that's enough for them to alter their report is an issue for another day. That could be an issue following the release of the report to Parliament. It's incumbent upon members of this committee to inform the Auditor General what has transpired. They testified on November 7, 2023. In exchange for that testimony, they both received letters from their new respective employers—Canada Revenue Agency for Mr. Utano and Health Canada for Mr. MacDonald —saying that they were now suspended due to allegations of misconduct.

Now, allegations of misconduct that Mr. Hayes would certainly be aware of were brought to the attention of the CBSA in November 2022. Ms. O'Gorman testified a number of times, Mr. Chair, at committee that she took that very seriously, so much so that she did an internal review, found that there was a prima facie case, and referred the matter to the RCMP for a full investigation in November 2022.

Interestingly enough, which goes to the heart of this motion, it would appear that the findings in support of the suspension without pay for MacDonald and Utano were made only after they testified truthfully and pointed fingers about CBSA officials lying to committee. That is a reprisal.

What sort of message are we as members allowing the federal public service, the professional federal public service...? We often hear that phrase from the Prime Minister and his cabinet and members of the Liberal bench, that they take pride in and respect the professional federal public service. That these shenanigans are happening right now with the professional federal public service is disgusting. It ought not to happen. We owe it to Canadians, we owe it to the Auditor General and we owe it to all parliamentarians to shed as much light on this as possible.

Mr. MacDonald and Mr. Utano are both on medical leave, supported by documentation from their respective doctors as to what personal health toll their coming forward has had on them—the accusations and the death threats from the Canadian public that they have received. It is concerning. They also have the spectre of being under investigation by the RCMP. Both testified very emotionally and rawly about the real impact and the effects this is having.

What about those witnesses? What about those witnesses who they said will come to committee and support and corroborate the kinds of shenanigans the CBSA has been involved in at taxpayers' expense? What kind of message does that send to the other professional federal public servants? Will they want to come forward? Can they expect a suspension letter as a result of coming forward?

These are serious concerns. Mr. Johns should be all over these serious concerns and want to vote in favour of this motion, because it strikes at the heart of his argument.

Let's talk about how unusual this is. We had the former clerk of the Privy Council, Michael Wernick, chime in. He was quoted as saying that the public finger-pointing by senior public servants is highly unusual. Given his tenure as a professional federal public servant, he said, “I cannot recall any other instance of such public disagreement. It is an outlier.” He said that suspensions without pay are also rare and went on as follows:

It is a very strong measure to suspend without pay while a process is under way and no conclusions have been reached. Usually disciplinary measures follow an investigation being completed and suspension with pay is more common in the early stages.

Lastly, because this has never been communicated to this committee, he said: “It is also a very strong measure to suspend or permanently revoke a security clearance.” That's exactly what has happened to both Mr. MacDonald and Mr. Utano. Mr. Wernick says this is “tantamount to removing someone from that job and any other job that requires that level of clearance. It is not a common occurrence.”

If my Liberal colleagues want to remember the words of the Prime Minister in 2015 about doing government differently, about sunny ways—that Canadians can expect the most open, transparent and accountable government this country has ever seen—they will vote in favour of this motion, as will I.

Thank you, Chair.