Thank you, Chair.
I, too, must express my dismay at the motion in front of us. I see that some additional text was written that follows a motion presented retracted earlier. The additional text says, “That pursuant to Standing Order 108(3)(h)(vii) and to the committee's current study to review”—and I stress the word “review”—“the safeguards which are in place to avoid and prevent conflicts of interest and federal government procurement contracting, grant contribution and other expenditures”.
This is a study the committee has agreed to undertake, but this motion goes on to add to the study's motion, with instructions. I'm wondering if they're even in order. I think there are problems. We're asking the chair to “write a letter to each member of cabinet requiring they disclose whether they had knowledge of the personal relationships between those listed and WE”, and there's a list of the WE organizations. There's no framework here. Later the motion says, “prior to the cabinet's decision to award the administration of the Canada student services grant”. What does that timeline look like? What are the dates we're talking about? Where is someone receiving this letter to start? What are they to make of this request?
As my colleague pointed out, later on when we ask about families or relatives and whether they have connections, again, what are we talking about? Who is your family? I don't know if we'll have the opportunity to hear from every member here as to who their family members are, but I have a couple of exes and a number of children—although I will not name them here for their own privacy. In my family, I have eight brothers and sisters. It's hard for me to keep track of who the spouses and partners are and the number of nieces and nephews I have. It's a moving target. Families are fluid today; families are flexible. We love every one of them, but they didn't sign up for this kind of disclosure. Who are the relatives? Going out further in the family line, I can tell you, coming from a good Irish Catholic family, that I have over 65 cousins. I've lost track of the cousins, the first cousins. They are all doing well I'm happy to say; thank goodness for Facebook.
However, it's very concerning that this is the kind of net this committee wishes to throw out there. I don't think that Canadians listening to us would agree that's appropriate for this committee to be doing.
I have many concerns about this resolution, and not the least is that I don't see how it's helpful to the work of this committee. We want to review the safeguards that are in place to avoid and prevent conflicts of interest in “federal government procurement contracting, grant contribution and other expenditures”.
I think that's what Canadians want to understand, which is that this committee is executing its responsibility to make sure that the Ethics Commissioner, the lobbying commissioner, the different independent, non-partisan commissioners we have in place, who have full powers to compel any document, to question any person they deem necessary...to be able to say that they can undertake their job.
Again, I'm very concerned about this motion, and I hope that the other members of this committee will reconsider it.