Information & Ethics Committee on Aug. 21st, 2019

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Zimmer]

Thank you, Mr. Kent.

Ms. Ramsey, go ahead.

[Tracey Ramsey, NDP, Essex, ON]

I just want to pick up on a lot of things said by my colleagues here, many of which I agree with.

I would like to talk a little bit about the importance of having Minister Morneau and Ben Chin appear before the committee. This is something that we attempted to do at the justice committee. Of course, we were unable to, and I really reject Mr. MacKinnon's characterization of those meetings as being comprehensive or that we had enough testimony at the justice committee. Nothing could be further from the truth. There were multiple attempts made to have many other people come before the committee, because, quite frankly, we still have only a part of the story. I believe I even heard a reference made on the other side today to Ms. Wilson-Raybould saying she didn't have anything else to say. That was because what she had said was within the scope of what she was allowed to say. She certainly has more to say, and I think we all accept that now.

I would also like to echo my colleague and say that the Prime Minister owes an apology to Ms. Wilson-Raybould, to Ms. Philpott and to Canadians. The Prime Minister has repeatedly stood up and said he's never understood this as being some type of political interference, yet when we look at the report by the Ethics Commissioner, we see that starting back in mid-August 2018. Ben Chin was going to Jessica Prince, and right away she was saying to him that it could be perceived as improper political interference. Therefore, at the very beginning of this, someone was laying out that this could be perceived as political interference.

Now, I don't believe that Mr. Chin was operating on his own behalf, that he just decided to go over to speak to the Attorney General's staff. I believe he was under the direction of the minister he works for, Mr. Morneau. If we could hear from Mr. Chin, I anticipate that being one of the questions. What was the direction given to him in those conversations that happened with Jessica Prince? In mid-August 2018, we already have two staff people having a conversation about potential political interference. Then we move on and as we go through the story, we see that on September 19 Jody Wilson-Raybould went to Mr. Morneau in the House and told him quite clearly that his staff needed to stop contacting her office on the matter because they were undermining the fundamental tenets of democracy and prosecutorial independence.

Here's Minister Morneau again involved in the story, who, again, was being told directly about political interference. Are you telling me that the Minister of Finance, when being told by the Attorney General and Minister of Justice that he is potentially even touching that line, does not go to talk to the Prime Minister? This is what we need to know. We need to know and understand what was said at that cabinet table, because clearly there are a lot of players, and potentially they did notify the Prime Minister and say, “Listen, you're getting very close to something dangerous here; you have to stop what you're doing.” Are you telling me that no one at that cabinet table, including Mr. Morneau, whose fingerprints and those of his staff are all over this report, notified the Prime Minister that what he was doing was wrong? I cannot comprehend that happening.

For the Prime Minister to repeatedly stand up and say that he doesn't believe he did this, that he doesn't know what this would be interpreted as, whatever it is he's trying to say, is incomprehensible. Quite frankly, it is incomprehensible for him to say that he accepts the report and some kind of responsibility but doesn't understand this, when clearly there were many people within the circle who were aware of this and had an obligation and responsibility to go to the Prime Minister and tell him.

Then we get to November 2018. On November 20, the PCO sent a memo telling him not to meet with Mr. Bruce or any representative from SNC to discuss the case in order to avoid public perception of political interference. Again, he's notified, this time by the PCO. It appears as though there were people trying to inform him. I hope they were, because it's their obligation and they should be doing that, and yet he's ignoring that. There's another reference to it on November 22. Again, PMO staffers were involved—Bouchard and Marques. Are you telling me they were all just out there operating independently and not reporting back to the Prime Minister, not reporting back to the minister, and that the Minister of Finance isn't reporting back to the Prime Minister of Canada? These are some serious systemic problems.

I know we don't have the answer, because now we're not going to be able to have the Ethics Commissioner come before us. I would implore us to listen to and hear from all of these players. We need to hear from Minister Morneau.

I'll leave my comments at that.

I think there's such a strong argument. I don't understand how the Minister of Finance in our country is pretending that he doesn't remember. He's directing his staff to do things that they're apparently not telling him about or having conversations with him about. There are many questions.

One of the questions we have for the Ethics Commissioner is whether or not he thinks Mr. Morneau acted improperly. Canadians have a right to know, and this committee should pursue that effort.

I'll leave my comments at that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Zimmer]

Thank you, Ms. Ramsey.

Next up we have Mr. Angus.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Thank you.

I want to address a few things. First, I want to remind my colleague Mr. Erskine-Smith that actually we are an investigative body here. We have subpoenaed evidence, we've issued summonses, and we've seized documents. We have been more than willing at this committee to use the force we have, but the fundamental job we have is to have the officers of Parliament report to us, and today the Liberals voted not to allow the Ethics Commissioner to present his report.

One of the other officers of Parliament who report to us is the lobbying commissioner. We've had very little relationship with Madame Bélanger, the new commissioner, but the previous commissioner, Karen Shepherd, was an extraordinary force for accountability, and I'm hoping Madame Bélanger will do the same thing. I have written to her because I am very concerned.

Something we've raised numerous times as the New Democratic Party is the problem with the difference between the conflict of interest obligations and the Lobbying Act. How is it possible that the Prime Minister can be found to be privately furthering the interests of a corporation, yet that corporation is not found to have been improperly lobbying or vice versa? We've had situations where the Lobbying Act has been ruled against individual lobbyists but not against the public office holder.

I really think it's important for Madame Bélanger to investigate, given that we have not been able to get answers from Mr. Dion because the Liberals have obstructed his speaking. However, the pattern of intense lobbying that involved writing an actual law while they were the defendant is very concerning. The Lobbying Act is clear. You cannot put a public office holder in a conflict of interest or in a compromised position, and that's what was being done, right down to the statement that they needed the power “from the center” to put that pressure on to force Ms. Wilson-Raybould to change her mind. The issue of lobbying is something that we really need to deal with.

I want to go to Ms. May's point about the international implications. I think this is very important, and I'm really glad that she framed it in this manner. The idea that this was about Canadian jobs and Canadian pensions is ridiculous when we see the pattern of corruption and bribery charges that have been brought against SNC-Lavalin in jurisdiction after jurisdiction. To be barred by the World Bank, you have to be pretty bad. We're dealing with a lot of jurisdictions where the rule of law is very tepid, to say the least. The allegations that have come out of Libya are shocking, and Canada has to have international credibility that we believe in the rule of law. To that end, we now know that the OECD anti-bribery unit is putting the Trudeau government on watch because they've seen how this government has attempted to shut down the SNC-Lavalin investigation.

I agree with Ms. May that what we're looking at here is not about the jobs of individual Canadians, because the construction work has to be done. They are bidding on projects that many companies are bidding on in Canada. This is certainly going to be about some very powerful people, going back 20 years at least, who are very tied to both the Liberals and the previous Conservative government.

Do I mention Arthur Porter here? Here was a man who ended his days in a Panamanian jail. He was given a position by former prime minister Harper to oversee CSIS. That's the power of these people. In terms of Arthur Porter's involvement with the McGill hospital scandal, those court cases still have to come, but the international implications of Canada's shutting down an investigation into one of their own companies, which has been found to be involved in corruption and bribery internationally, make Canada a country that is not credible on the international rule of law. That is what the OECD anti-bribery unit has announced. It's why they are investigating.

What we are witnessing today is the obstruction of a committee, forbidding an officer of Parliament from doing his job, which is to report to a committee on a finding of guilt against a prime minister of Canada for furthering the interests of a corporation facing corruption and bribery charges. This is a company that has been barred around the world because of its repeated violations. This is very serious, and we can see the power they have.

It is the corrosive power of the one per cent to be able to call the Prime Minister's Office to say, “We want you to write us a law.” It is the corrosive power of the one per cent to get a former Supreme Court justice as their lawyer, and then to have him call another Supreme Court justice to say, “We need your help. Give us legal advice.” They were undermining the Attorney General of this country.

I don't know if I need to point it out, but Mr. Iacobucci, of whom I think Mr. Wernick said that he was no shrinking violet.... They wanted to please him. They wanted to keep him happy, yet he is representing a defendant against the Government of Canada and he has also been chosen by the Liberal government to be the key point person on the Trans Mountain consultations.

How can you be so incestuous with the powerful and the rich that you could have someone who is fighting Canada in court also calling the Prime Minister's Office saying, “Hey, I want you to change the law so I don't have to go to court, and by the way, I will be your voice in negotiations with one of the most important factors”, which is the first nation consultations on the pipeline expansion.

Clearly, if this goes to court, a lot of very politically powerful people are implicated. That's what the Prime Minister was concerned about, because if the Prime Minister was concerned about people's jobs, he would have done something for the Sears workers. He did nothing. He would have done something for the auto workers in Oshawa. He did nothing. However, when it came to the rich and powerful who were connected to SNC, who have been found in many jurisdictions to be involved in some reprehensible behaviour.... Building torture prisons for Gadhafi and making money out of that is not acceptable. There are international implications.

This is why I want the Prime Minister to come to explain why he was so apprised, from the get-go, of passing this law. It is not just something that's going to get shut down in the short term because the Liberals have to get to an election. This is going to be a stench that hangs over Canada's international reputation if SNC is allowed to have that much power to interfere in the independence of the prosecution system of this country.

We have to have the rule of law. We have to be able to show it because we are a country that is involved around the world and we cannot be seen, in any manner, to be favouring our own corporations over the rule of law and their obligations to meet the highest standards of ethics and legality around the world, whether it's in Montreal at the McGill hospital, in Bangladesh or in Libya. All corporations must have respect for the rule of law, and the Prime Minister must have respect for the rule of law.

What we've seen here, and what we are seeing today, is that they don't have respect for the rule of law. To them, it's about helping the rich and powerful. That is the corrosive power of the one per cent, and that's what has to be called out.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Zimmer]

Thank you, Mr. Angus.

We have Ms. Raitt, and then Mr. Weir.

Ms. Raitt, go ahead.

[Lisa Raitt, Conservative, Milton, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Very briefly, I wanted to follow up on a point from Mr. Erskine-Smith in his very first intervention, regarding improperly furthering private interests. I do so because we're not going to hear from the Ethics Commissioner to defend his report, so I thought I'd step into his shoes for a quick two minutes.

The Ethics Commissioner, on page 45, for those who care, does go into a deep understanding and a deep dive on what is improperly furthering private interests. What may be of interest to the committee is that the former ethics commissioner Mary Dawson in fact wrote a paper and gave a number of speeches with respect to whether or not there had been improper furthering of private interests. I would just like to read this into the record, because this is the important part.

It is agreed by the Ethics Commissioner, and I think by a number of people around the table, that indeed the conduct of the Prime Minister was improper in the way he tried to further the interest. I do believe it's also agreed in plain that the private interest of SNC-Lavalin is very evident as well. They stood to receive a huge gain should they be successful in getting the criminal charges diverted in another direction. That's why they put so much effort into it.

Therefore, we know that it was improper. We know that there was a private interest involved. The question comes down to how we can do anything as politicians if we're not allowed to stand up for the public interest. I would just read this to the committee, because I think Mary Dawson did it well when she talked about this fact:

We have had several cases focussing on the general prohibition, found in both the Act and the Members’ Code, against improperly furthering the private interests of someone who may not be a friend or relative. The qualifier “improperly” reflects that fact that Members and public office holders routinely and legitimately further the private interests of particular groups or individuals through the formulation and implementation of public policy. Politicians, in particular, should be able to voice their support for fellow politicians and particular political agendas, and should not be restricted from doing so on the grounds that it may incidentally result in furthering particular private interests.

However, this is a very different situation because the focus of the action in question was really only ever on the private interests of SNC-Lavalin. The improper steps that the Prime Minister took in four different instances, which the Ethics Commissioner enunciates in his report, and the number of times political considerations came into the motivation for seeking to make the Attorney General change her mind clearly show that it was improper. It fails the test of improper. It is clearly within the realm of private interest, and the Ethics Commissioner I'm sure would be able to explain, as I have, that it is not about whether or not a politician can lobby on behalf of their company, or a situation. What it comes down to is whether or not you do it in a proper manner, and this clearly was improper.

That is the crux and the nub of the entire report. The Ethics Commissioner found that the Prime Minister broke the law because he improperly furthered the private interests of SNC-Lavalin and attempted to get them diverted from a criminal case into a different stream that would be more beneficial for them financially and, I would expect, reputationally too.

Thank you for that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Zimmer]

Thank you, Ms. Raitt.

Mr. Weir.

[Erin Weir, Independent, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Thanks very much.

Since we seem to have entered a bit of a broader discussion of the SNC-Lavalin case, I just want to make the point that I think it would have been far preferable had there been a more robust investigation and prosecution of the specific executives involved in alleged wrongdoing, rather than being left in this scenario of prosecuting the company as a whole, which inevitably will have negative consequences for people who had no involvement at all in the wrongdoing.

Whether or not members of the committee believe the figure of 9,000 jobs, I don't think anyone would dispute that going after the company as a whole is going to have negative consequences for a lot of people who are totally blameless in this thing. I do think one of the key take-aways from the SNC-Lavalin controversy is that we should have much more effective prosecution of the individual corporate executives who are involved in wrongdoing, rather than relying on the legal fiction of corporate personhood to prosecute whole enterprises.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Zimmer]

Thank you, Mr. Weir, for that.

I have no other people on the speakers list.

Are we ready—

[Peter Kent, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

A recorded vote, please.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Zimmer]

We'll have a recorded vote.

(Motion negatived: nays 6; yeas 3)

Ms. Raitt, do you have a comment?

[Lisa Raitt, Conservative, Milton, ON]

I have a quick motion, Mr. Chair, if I may.

I assume it will be disposed of very quickly, but I thought I'd give it a shot nonetheless.

Given the fact that we're not going to hear from the Ethics Commissioner, and given the fact that we do have this book that is out there from Aaron Wherry called Promise and Peril that seems to indicate the Prime Minister has breached cabinet confidentiality, I move:

That the Committee request Aaron Wherry, author of “Promise and Peril”, a biography of Justin Trudeau, table all recordings, notes and other materials that he collected during his interviews of the Prime Minister that relate to materials that fall outside of the Order in Council—

[Steven MacKinnon, Liberal, Gatineau, QC]

Point of order.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Zimmer]

Ms. Raitt, there's a point of order.

[Steven MacKinnon, Liberal, Gatineau, QC]

Do we have notice of this motion?

[Lisa Raitt, Conservative, Milton, ON]

We don't need it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Zimmer]

Mr. MacKinnon, it's one of those things in committee. It's nice to do, but it's not required that she give notice of her motion.

The motion has come up on the floor today. She is therefore in order to present that motion.

[Steven MacKinnon, Liberal, Gatineau, QC]

Is it in French too?

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Zimmer]

Ms. Raitt, do you have it in French?

[Lisa Raitt, Conservative, Milton, ON]

I do not.

I ask the indulgence of the committee to still introduce it.

[Steven MacKinnon, Liberal, Gatineau, QC]

No, they—

[Peter Kent, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

It's always accepted. Well, you're a stranger.

[Lisa Raitt, Conservative, Milton, ON]

It will be translated simultaneously as I read it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Zimmer]

To be in order as well it's not required that it be in French. She is completely in order to present her motion as she is stating.

Continue on.

Is this a point of order, Mr. Angus?

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

No.