Evidence of meeting #16 for Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics in the 43rd Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was palantir.
A video is available from Parliament.
3:05 p.m.
Partner, Blumberg Segal LLP
No, it was not $543 million that WE Charity, if they did the program, would have got to keep, but the amount—
3:05 p.m.
Liberal
Nathaniel Erskine-Smith Liberal Beaches—East York, ON
It might be that I misheard, or it's possible you misspoke, but either way....
You are right, though, that parliamentary committees often are not the most efficient, but in fairness, parliamentary committees in this case received thousands of documents. I reviewed some of the emails and correspondence between officials. Did you review those same emails and correspondence between officials before your testimony today?
3:05 p.m.
Partner, Blumberg Segal LLP
I was never provided with those documents. If you want to provide me with documents, I'm happy to look at them.
3:05 p.m.
Liberal
Nathaniel Erskine-Smith Liberal Beaches—East York, ON
I wasn't provided with them either, but I did read the news and the emails that are public.
3:05 p.m.
Partner, Blumberg Segal LLP
Oh, absolutely; I've read excerpts and things such as that.
3:05 p.m.
Liberal
Nathaniel Erskine-Smith Liberal Beaches—East York, ON
In those excerpts from public officials I think you would have seen, or I hope you saw, the witness testimony in these proceedings before testifying yourself. Certainly you saw representatives from ESDC say in their own words that it was their recommendation and they did in fact think this organization was best placed to deliver the program.
3:05 p.m.
Partner, Blumberg Segal LLP
I have seen that, and I also believe that there was a little issue that some disclosure wasn't provided to some of the committees about certain meetings.
However, the point is that I agree. That is what ESDC is saying, and if that is correct, there's a bigger problem that will not be solved by Mr. Morneau leaving. We have a problem of ESDC's due diligence capacity not being at the standard that it needs to be.
3:05 p.m.
Liberal
Nathaniel Erskine-Smith Liberal Beaches—East York, ON
Have you spoken to anyone who was engaged to work in this program?
3:05 p.m.
Partner, Blumberg Segal LLP
I don't know what you mean by “engaged to work in the program”.
3:05 p.m.
Liberal
Nathaniel Erskine-Smith Liberal Beaches—East York, ON
There were lots of teachers engaged to work in this program. I have spoken to a number of them. Have you?
3:05 p.m.
Partner, Blumberg Segal LLP
I have spoken to teachers who have done certain things, but no, I haven't spoken to specific teachers who were engaged in this program.
3:05 p.m.
Liberal
Nathaniel Erskine-Smith Liberal Beaches—East York, ON
Can you name another organization in this country that was so very connected with, say, the Toronto District School Board, school boards in Saskatchewan and school boards in Alberta as a matter of engaging young people to encourage young people to actively participate in this program?
Name—I don't know—say, two charities that have such an engagement with the school boards.
3:05 p.m.
Partner, Blumberg Segal LLP
I could guess, but first of all, the question is not really correct, because we're not trying to get high school students to get this grant. In my understanding, this was really geared towards university students; otherwise, you could have got kindergarten teachers to get involved as well.
The fact is, look at groups such as the United Way—
3:05 p.m.
Liberal
3:05 p.m.
Partner, Blumberg Segal LLP
—or the YWCA and YMCA. Lots of different organizations have tremendous capacity in Canada to do tremendous work.
In fact, I think you should be asking ESDC this question, because they have actually contracted—
3:05 p.m.
Liberal
Nathaniel Erskine-Smith Liberal Beaches—East York, ON
My last question is this. Recently I read the Bastarache report, “Broken Dreams, Broken Lives”. It talks about a toxic work culture in the RCMP and calls for an independent commission of inquiry into the future of the RCMP, and it is an incredibly serious ask.
You are coming before this committee, and for a program that never got off the ground—the dollars never ultimately were delivered, there is no money in the end that is going to be expended by this federal government and there was an apology and significant thousands of documents of disclosure—you are calling for a similar public inquiry. I just—
3:05 p.m.
Partner, Blumberg Segal LLP
Absolutely. Mr. Erskine-Smith, I think you've been one of the most forthright Liberals I've seen talking about this issue, but I'll tell you, first of all, that so much of this information could be provided in about one day by the Liberal Party, the government and WE Charity.
For example, I don't know, but have you reviewed ME to WE's financial statements? That is a very big, important issue in terms of where money is going. I haven't, and I don't think they're public. This could be disclosed in five minutes.
If you want to know why we need a public inquiry, it's because certain parties are not providing the information that can so easily be provided—
3:05 p.m.
Partner, Blumberg Segal LLP
—if they wanted to provide it. That's the only reason we need it. Provide the information by tomorrow and there won't be a problem.
3:05 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative David Sweet
—Mr. Blumberg.
Our last questioner now is Madame Gaudreau for two and a half minutes.
3:05 p.m.
Bloc
Marie-Hélène Gaudreau Bloc Laurentides—Labelle, QC
I understand what you are saying about the need to continue the oversight and to always keep the need for integrity in mind. In a few weeks, we are going to be receiving the report from the commissioner, who is currently following our meeting. So you should know that all your comments are very useful, especially when you constantly bring up the need for a public inquiry or say that we have to change our entire thinking, although we may not go so far as to question the finances of one party.
In Quebec, as we very well know, this has been reduced in order to avoid the perception of a conflict of interest. Conflict of interest can apply to gifts or to benefits. A benefit may also not materialize until later. Just now, I was listening to Mr. Scott, who had a lot to say. I did not let him speak.
When you offer something for free, you are expecting something in return. Actually, with technology, as we know very well, if you are not buying a product, you are the product. If you have not seen the Netflix film called The Social Dilemma, I recommend that you watch it. I watched it with my children and they asked me where we were all heading. That's why control measures are an absolute necessity.
I now have the names of countries, I have proposals. I really have everything I need to tell all my colleagues that this is urgent. We understand that there are many factors that we are not able to prove and we are still in the process of finding out who is right and who is wrong.
Let me give you the floor, Mr. Blumberg, because I don't believe you had finished just now when we were talking about countries. You were saying that Canada is far from the top of the class in terms of doing things well.
3:10 p.m.
Partner, Blumberg Segal LLP
Right. In terms of charity transparency, if you take a look at a site in America called GuideStar, you will see that GuideStar has the Form 990s for each of the American 501(c)(3)s that have to file there. You can see that sometimes it's 100 pages, 200 pages of material. It's a lot of material. There are lots of questions.
Our Canadian charity return is about nine pages, and most charities are filling in about two or three pages' worth of stuff, which is very little. In the end, I think that I'm doing it because I think that it's good for the charity sector to have more questions. I'll give you an example: There are no questions on volunteering, which is very important.
The T3010 gives too much preference to financial aspects. It makes big charities, in terms of budgets, look big, but a little charity with $100,000 and 1,000 volunteers can be a very important charity. I think that it'll be a fairer form if we ask more questions, even if they're voluntary questions or they're done on alternate years or whatever to keep the burden in check. The amount of time it takes to put in the Form 990, I understand, is about 10 times longer than it takes to put in the T3010.
3:10 p.m.
Partner, Blumberg Segal LLP
I'm not saying we should follow the Americans; I'm saying we should look and see what others are doing and learn from it.
3:10 p.m.
Conservative