Evidence of meeting #32 for Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics in the 40th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was subamendment.

A recording is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Elizabeth Denham  Assistant Privacy Commissioner , Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
Carman Baggaley  Senior Policy Advisor, Legal Services, Policy and Parliamentary Affairs Branch, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
Daniel Caron  Legal Counsel, Legal Services, Policy and Parliamentary Affairs Branch, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada

11:30 a.m.

Conservative

Pierre Poilievre Conservative Nepean—Carleton, ON

What about my subamendment?

11:30 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Paul Szabo

Would you like to move that subamendment again?

11:30 a.m.

Conservative

Pierre Poilievre Conservative Nepean—Carleton, ON

Yes.

11:30 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Paul Szabo

We have an amendment to Mr. Siksay's motion. Mr. Poilievre is going to remind us of his amendment. We'll consider it to be a compound amendment.

11:30 a.m.

Conservative

Pierre Poilievre Conservative Nepean—Carleton, ON

It removes the word “Conservative” before “members of Parliament”. It replaces the words “members of Parliament” with “public office holders past and present”. After “logo of the Conservative Party”, I would replace the adjective “Conservative” with the adjectives “any political”.

On that last point I would reiterate that it does not exclude the possibility of looking at the Conservative Party logo on cheques. It does not subtract anything from the motion. It only adds to the motion by broadening the discussion to any political party that may have used this.

If there are representatives here who believe that their parties have never put their logos on a cheque, then they will be delighted to vote for my amendment, because they would not have to worry about their logos being a matter of discussion. I'm sure that we will be able to adopt those amendments unanimously in that case.

Thank you.

11:30 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Paul Szabo

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

11:30 a.m.

NDP

Bill Siksay NDP Burnaby—Douglas, BC

Mr. Chair, I'm concerned that the subamendment includes something that's already in the amendment. It's the phrase about public office holders. That's just confusing.

I think if it is limited to dealing with the issue of the specific mention of the Conservative Party, it would be in order, but when you put in the phrase about public office holders, you confuse it all. That's not amending the amendment, because it's already in the amendment.

11:30 a.m.

Conservative

Pierre Poilievre Conservative Nepean—Carleton, ON

Can you read the amendment unchanged, as it would read?

11:30 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Paul Szabo

The amendment...?

11:35 a.m.

Conservative

Pierre Poilievre Conservative Nepean—Carleton, ON

Yes.

11:35 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Paul Szabo

Since nobody has submitted these things....

Mr. Siksay's amendment was, after the words “partisan use”, to put in the words “and attribution”, and after the words “members of Parliament”, to add the phrase “who are public office holders”.

11:35 a.m.

Conservative

Pierre Poilievre Conservative Nepean—Carleton, ON

My subamendment would just remove the word “Conservative” and before “public office holders” would put the three words “past and present”, so that you would have: “members of Parliament who are past or present public office holders”.

I think we understand that the other part of my amendment replaces “Conservative” with “any political party”. That's the other part of the subamendment.

11:35 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Paul Szabo

Bear with me. Part of this is amending the amendment, and some part of it is amending the main motion, because the last part is not in the amendment.

11:35 a.m.

Conservative

Pierre Poilievre Conservative Nepean—Carleton, ON

You can subamend by adding.

11:35 a.m.

Bloc

Luc Desnoyers Bloc Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC

Mr. Chairman, you can't change the meaning of a motion. You can amend the motion with respect to the number of persons or times, but you can't change the meaning of the main motion.

11:35 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Paul Szabo

I'm going to accept the subamendment, because the intent is clear.

When you get into compound amendments, it's only to save us a little bit of the time spent having several debates and several votes. But I'm not going to accept any more compound ones after this. There will be no more compounds.

We have a subamendment by Mr. Poilievre, and I'll accept it, that we are going to drop the first reference to the word “Conservative” before “members of Parliament”. After “public office holders” in the amendment, we are going to put “past or present”. In the last area, of reference to “logo of the”, it will read “logo of any political party” instead of “logo of the Conservative Party”. That is the subamendment by Mr. Poilievre.

We will entertain any debate, if anybody needs it, but I would put the question.

Mr. Wrzesnewskyj.

11:35 a.m.

Liberal

Borys Wrzesnewskyj Liberal Etobicoke Centre, ON

Thank you, Chair.

What we are dealing with here is a $4 billion infrastructure fund announced in Budget 2009 and with cheque presentations as this is being rolled out. It's continuously being rolled out, so we're dealing with a current and ongoing situation.

I can understand our colleague Mr. Poilievre's interest in going back in history. Perhaps the Library of Parliament can be helpful, going back to the times of Sir John A. Macdonald and going through government after government, but I really don't think that the public is interested in a historical lesson. Perhaps it's time for him, if he has such an interest, to privately study this; he has the resources, through the Library of Parliament. I'm sure there are historians who have looked into these issues of previous prime ministers and what they have conducted.

We have a serious issue at hand and before us at the present time: a $4 billion infrastructure fund that's being pushed out the door. We're not talking, as I said, about problems that may arise because of the speed with which this is being done. That's for a later time, for the public accounts committee to take a look at. It's a pattern of abuse of an ongoing, unprecedented $4 billion infrastructure program; this is what needs to be looked at. This is what Canadians expect us to do at the present time, not go back into history. We are to do work that's of current relevance.

I will not be supporting the subamendment.

11:40 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Paul Szabo

Thank you.

Mr. Poilievre.

11:40 a.m.

Conservative

Pierre Poilievre Conservative Nepean—Carleton, ON

Mr. Wrzesnewskyj says that we're only studying today—the here and now—and that we ought never to look into the history of what public office holders in the previous Liberal governments have done, because that's history, and history should simply be forgotten. While I remark upon the convenient nature of that argument from a Liberal standpoint, I'll assume that it is made dispassionately and therefore will proceed to dismantle it in an equally dispassionate manner.

If we are speaking only about the here and now, then the discussions around the Conservative Party are also history. They are more recent, but they are also history. I believe the most prominent example that has been put in the newspapers was from this summer or earlier, so it's in the past as well. We're not going to be debating what somebody is going to do with their cheque this afternoon; we're discussing what has been done and what we can learn from what has been done.

If the nature of this study is really to analyze the ethics of the way public office holders make announcements, then we ought not to be simply pointing the finger at one party but ought to examine how public office holders have done it throughout time. We study things that have gone back into history for years. Mr. Wrzesnewskyj was instrumental in the public accounts committee in igniting a study on the RCMP and its activities. Almost everything that we studied was from history, from the past. Thank goodness we did that. To credit Mr. Wrzesnewskyj for his work on that, we learned a lot of valuable things. We looked back over the Mounties' activities under two successive governments, not just under one.

To suggest that we can't do that in this situation is erroneous. I would encourage all members.... Some might argue that none of the other parties has ever done anything improper in the way they have presented cheques and that therefore a study of their activities would be futile. I would suggest that if that is the case, then my amendment is like a belt and suspenders, and that it's better for the motion to be a little wider, to capture any potential information that is relevant to the debate, than too constrictive, so that it becomes nothing more than a narrowly targeted partisan tool.

In the interest of having a broad and an open study on the subject, I would ask that members vote to make this motion non-partisan, so that all public office holders, regardless of their political stripe, be subjected to the same committee scrutiny.

Thank you.

11:40 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Paul Szabo

Madam Block, please.

October 22nd, 2009 / 11:40 a.m.

Conservative

Kelly Block Conservative Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar, SK

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

My comments will completely support what my colleague has just said. For the member across the way to suggest that this motion was intended to address the stimulus fund is a bit of a stretch, I think, because it's not mentioned. It talks about funds; it wasn't specific to the stimulus fund that was implemented through the action plan.

Neither do I think that this is truly the spirit of what this committee is intended to do. We have the ethics commissioner, who is already doing a study specific to complaints that have been received on the matter of which he speaks. If this committee wants to honour what we were established to do, it would be to look at this issue in a broader context such as my colleague has indicated.

Thank you.

11:45 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Paul Szabo

Mr. Wrzesnewskyj.

11:45 a.m.

Liberal

Borys Wrzesnewskyj Liberal Etobicoke Centre, ON

I'd like to thank Mr. Poilievre for his compliments on the RCMP pension insurance scandal, which we looked at in the public accounts committee. It was a specific scandal, involving the pension insurance funds, that was ongoing for a period of time. That's why it entailed our looking back to a certain point in time. We didn't look at everything going on within the RCMP and at other scandals, etc., but at that specific situation, and were able to draw conclusions from that particular investigation. That's what we're hoping to do here. That's what Canadians expect us to do here.

We had a $4 billion infrastructure fund announced in Budget 2009 that's been referenced in the debates around this motion from the beginning. Everyone knows what we're looking at here: it's the ongoing $4 billion infrastructure fund. It's good that we've had the opportunity to catch this as it's being rolled out, so this pattern of abuse will come to an end. The onus is upon us to do this expeditiously at this time. Of course, as I said before, we could go back in history and look at all of the previous governments—Conservative, Liberal, etc.—in time. That's not the intention of this particular motion. It's quite clear, from what's happened this last week, what we'd like to look at and what Canadians expect us to do. It deals with the $4 billion infrastructure fund announced in 2009.

11:45 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Paul Szabo

There's a point of order from Mr. Rickford.

11:45 a.m.

Conservative

Greg Rickford Conservative Kenora, ON

It's a clarification point of order.