Information & Ethics Committee on July 29th, 2020

Evidence of meeting #9 for Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics in the 43rd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was family.

A video is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

Committee Business

MPs speaking

Also speaking

1:25 p.m.

Conservative

Michael Barrett Conservative Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON

As members, we have an obligation to be a check against the power in the executive. That's our job. That's our job.

I imply that there has been no offer made to any of you in exchange for your defence of the government today. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that you don't have to do it.

What you do have to do, for Canadians, is exercise your role to ensure that there's transparency and accountability. Immediate family, to the best of your knowledge, yes or no? It's basically a yes or no question to “disclose whether they had knowledge of personal relationships between those listed and WE”. That is what that sentence says. That's a yes or no question. It continues: “Additionally, the letter should require that all Members of Cabinet disclose whether they, their families or their relatives have connections to WE”. It doesn't ask what those connections are.

These are eminently reasonable amendments to a well-intentioned motion that is consistent with the study this committee is undertaking. It's absolutely in the public interest that this go forward. Not supporting this motion is to be complicit in a cover-up. That's what we're faced with here.

Canadians have heard your point. You believe the motion was too broad. Mr. Fortin has proposed very reasonable amendments to tighten it up. I think they're very appropriate and will support them. I hope that the members opposite will support them and that we can get to voting on the main motion.

The meeting is to adjourn at two. It would be unfortunate to have to carry this motion into a third meeting. Have the courage of your convictions. If you don't like it, vote it down. If you think that it should be amended, if you think there are changes warranted, make the amendment. Let's not just fill the speakers list for the sake of running out the clock. Everyone has important things to do.

It's Mr. Angus's daughter's birthday. My gift to Mr. Angus is that I am going to encourage everyone to move forward expeditiously with this motion and vote for it. I obviously hope that you vote in favour of it, but if not, stand up and be counted. That's show business.

1:30 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Rachael Thomas

Mr. Fergus, and then Mr. Kurek, will speak.

1:30 p.m.

Liberal

Greg Fergus Liberal Hull—Aylmer, QC

Madam Chair, usually, I think most people, if they were to describe me, would consider me a pretty mild and a pretty even-keeled fellow, but I have to admit that I find the most recent statements by my honourable colleague across the way, frankly, insulting and I also find them presumptuous and wrong-headed, and I don't say that lightly.

How dare that member ascribe to me what my intentions are, that I or other members here want to go to cabinet? You don't know.

You can speak for yourself and you did. Good for you. You want to be in cabinet? I don't care.

Madam Chair, I've always felt—and I've been mocked by the member opposite before—and I mentioned how much I'm a student of Parliament and I love the parliamentary tradition we have. I've followed it from a very young age. To me the highest honour I have was the one that I got on October 19, 2015, when I became the member of Parliament for Hull—Aylmer, to represent the community in which I have lived for almost 30 years.

So I hope the member will stick to his knitting and not choose to try to speak for other people, and I also find it particularly rich—in an ironic sense—criticisms of he would says is talking out the clock when it was the very same member for two full meetings of this committee—

1:30 p.m.

Conservative

Michael Barrett Conservative Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON

During your last cover-up.

1:30 p.m.

Liberal

Greg Fergus Liberal Hull—Aylmer, QC

—who talked out the clock because he wasn't able to get his way on a motion he was introducing.

1:30 p.m.

Conservative

Michael Barrett Conservative Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON

What was the motion?

1:30 p.m.

Liberal

Greg Fergus Liberal Hull—Aylmer, QC

And Madam Chair, it's very rich that he would make that accusation of other people who, I think, for a lot more substantive reasons and one that seems to be convincing other people, and even he, to be willing to try to put some barriers on a motion that is so wide and large.

So Madam Chair, I think again that he should speak to the issues and not try to put words in other people's mouths.

He also indicates that he's looking.... He criticizes people for trying to fix a mistake that his colleague introduced. When I think, if somebody had given some thought, given consideration—let me correct myself—given more consideration to the issue, they would have come to the point of saying this is just too big and too wide, and it's a bit of a fishing expedition. And if the motion were presented on its own merits, it would have failed at this committee.

So Madam Chair, I find it to be important that when we are here, we try to stick to the issues, we try to address those concerns, and not try to assume or mock people's backgrounds or the issues they raise or the families they may have, in an attempt perhaps to cover up for the things they didn't do so correctly or with due diligence, and that would have received more support from people around this table. I hope this is the only time, Madam Chair, that I will ever have to make such a personal intervention. Thank you.

1:35 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Rachael Thomas

Mr. Fergus, thank you.

Mr. Kurek, and that finishes my speaking list.

1:35 p.m.

Conservative

Michael Barrett Conservative Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON

Chair.

1:35 p.m.

Conservative

Damien Kurek Conservative Battle River—Crowfoot, AB

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

To the amendment, I appreciate my Bloc colleague's amendment, because that has been, I think, the conversation of this debate thus far. I'm not speaking with regard to the debate on the amendment, but rather to the debate on the motion. Largely, according to the members of the government and the NDP, it's too broad, so I appreciate that my Bloc colleague would take action to solve the problem.

Certainly I will be supporting it. I think and I believe that it is the role of committees to work together and to come up with solutions when there's disagreement. We can make a collaborative effort to ensure that the job gets done.

I will make a comment. This was prior to being elected. Being a student of politics and passionate about our democratic institutions, when I would hear of friends or family visiting, or now when I invite constituents to come visit in Ottawa, I tell them very clearly, “You need to come and check out question period. It's fun. It's back and forth”, especially since we're from probably the most Conservative riding in the country. There's a lot of fun to be had when it comes to the jabs and whatnot that are traded back and forth in question period, but I always tell them, “Don't simply go to question period if you're not able to stop in for a few minutes and listen to committee”, because that's where a lot of the substantive work of Parliament gets done.

My Bloc colleague put that into action by proposing an amendment, which, if I am to take the members opposite at their word, addresses the concerns they brought forward regarding this motion. I appreciate that, and I plan to support it.

I would make one note, Madam Chair. I've heard numerous times from members opposite that this committee's.... I've heard a lot about the committee mandate. Conveniently, the last paragraph of that mandate is often omitted from the conversations we have had over the last number of weeks, which is unfortunate. We need to look at the mandate in its entirety.

Time and time again we have members opposite suggest that we let the Ethics Commissioner do his job, and then we invite the Ethics Commissioner to the committee. I'm in a hundred per cent agreement with that. However, I was appalled—although that's a strong word—that when we brought forward a motion to do just that back in, I believe, the beginning of February, the members opposite voted against having the Ethics Commissioner come to testify regarding the “Trudeau II Report”.

It is incredibly unfortunate that.... In fact, I look forward to being able to bring up the number of times that the members opposite have simply suggested that it's this committee's job to bring the Ethics Commissioner back to sit in that chair to testify, because that's simply not what happened.

We have an opportunity here to shed light on, to open the doors on, the issues of a scandal that is rocking the confidence that Canadians need to have in their government. Until we can shed light in the darkness, so to speak, I think there are further questions that need to be asked about anybody who wouldn't participate in that process.

I thank the Bloc member for his amendment, and I will certainly support that. Again, I encourage all members to look at this as a solution to the challenges they had with the initial motion. Hopefully, we can, in an expeditious manner, move forward to shed light where light needs to be shed.