I'll speak to and read the first motion. It is:
That the committee invite the acting minister of Veterans Affairs to appear on the Supplementary Estimates (B) on February 25 or 27, 2019.
This is the 25th, so obviously, we know that our agenda today does not include the interim minister coming in as a witness to discuss the estimates, which is the financial appropriations for Veterans Affairs for those of you who are listening in. They amount to $323 million in the supplementary estimates that are requested by Veterans Affairs Canada. This money would be spent on veterans' benefits and they need the scrutiny of this committee, and through this committee to the floor of the House, before they are read into the record as having been deemed approved, which would be this Friday.
I mentioned that this was urgent, when we brought it up during the last committee meeting and asked for the committee to pass what's called a unanimous consent motion for us to be able to table this then, to be able to speak to it and then invite the minister. That did not happen. We were in open session, so it wasn't a closed-door meeting. It wasn't an in camera meeting, but the Liberal members, who have the majority on this committee, all voted in favour of not moving forward with unanimous consent. In fact, that was a barrier to this committee dealing with the spending of government on veterans, essentially saying, “No, we don't need to scrutinize and we don't need to call the chief minister for veterans affairs”.
I might back up a bit first, because I really should give the chronology, so that everyone has the right context here.
When the previous minister, Jody Wilson-Raybould, was in her position, after having been changed from the Attorney General's role to the role of veterans affairs, which was a much discussed issue today on the floor of the House of Commons because many considered it a demotion, with most in the media wondering why she would be demoted. It's been thoroughly talked about publicly that she was removed from her position as Attorney General because of the SNC-Lavalin affair, which was totally relevant today on the floor of the House of Commons.
However, the defence of the government has been to just put up the government House leader and say today, on multiple occasions, that this government does not interfere or put up barriers to the work of committees. However, last week, we had the barrier to the convention that we would hear from the minister, whoever that might be at the time, on the appropriations and spending of government. Now they will not be able to come to committee on a timetable that will meet the requirement for this committee to have scrutiny and have input. We were turned down.
We were told, sanctimoniously I might say, over and over again, that somehow the government was going to do business differently, especially business at committee, and not be obstructionist to opposition members when we wanted to follow the conventions of the committee, yet they did that in our last committee meeting. They basically stopped the committee from moving forward with an invitation to the minister to come and be asked questions about the spending of government for veterans. That's what happened. Those are the facts.
Then today, we get this unbelievable repeated line that somehow it's the opposition who are the ones who are responsible for the dysfunction of committee work. The dysfunction occurs when government members, who have the majority, decide to take the route that this committee took. As I shouted across to the minister, she should come to veterans affairs and watch the committee and watch what they did last week.
The issue, going back, is the fact that we had a new minister put into this position, Jody Wilson-Raybould. In January, she took over as minister. In fact, I remember, on social media, watching her transition into the role. She was meeting with veterans within her community, but she also was meeting with the members inside Veterans Affairs Canada and the bureaucracy in Charlottetown.
Frankly, as I said to her personally, both in writing and in person, I was so looking forward to working with her because she is a person of incredible integrity and incredible background, with huge qualifications to take on this role. I was very much looking forward to her and she was very receptive to working....
In fact, I took to her an issue that I considered to be a very non-partisan issue. It was an issue that was brought to me over the holidays by a veteran who wanted to be sure that every World War II veteran who served in the liberation of the Netherlands—and in those days, during World War II, it was Holland—had received the medal that the Netherlands came out with to specifically honour Canadian veterans. His father-in-law, who had recently passed away, had not received the medal. When this veteran found that out, he wanted to make it his project to find out who had received it, which families had and which families had not. He wanted to make sure that every family, whether it was going to the family of a deceased veteran or whether the veteran was still living—and by the way, there are very few of them still living—properly got the medal of the serving veteran.
I thought that this is a great way to start what I would almost call an icebreaker, something for me to suggest to the minister. I went to Jody Wilson-Raybould and said to her, “Here is the situation. Would you like to work on it together so that we can advance this in a very non-partisan way?” She told me verbally, as we met, that, yes, she'd be very interested. I was very much looking forward to that and, in fact, expressed my regrets, as well, because we know what happened.
The story goes on that Jody Wilson-Raybould decided that she was going to resign from her post as veterans affairs minister the day that the Prime Minister tried to vindicate himself on the SNC-Lavalin case by saying that her presence in cabinet speaks volumes and tells the story, really. Then, hours later, she resigned.
With regard to that resignation, we know that she had the best interests of veterans at heart, and the reason for her resignation wasn't about veterans. In fact, she said some very gracious things during the short period of time that she was the minister. In fact, that's when she visited because she had promised—even after she was removed from her position.