Information & Ethics Committee on March 22nd, 2021

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

Mr. Fergus, can you confirm that you've have received it? It has been circulated to all members.

[Greg Fergus, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

I just received it, at 1:47 p.m., in my inbox. Thank you, Mr. Chair and Madam Clerk.

Once again, I did not receive it at my House of Commons email address. I need to resolve this with the IT group, but that is not relevant to our discussion.

So, Mr. Chair, I would ask you to confirm that the motion in question is indeed the following:

That, pursuant to Standing Order 108(3)(h), the Committee requests to receive from the Liberal Government's Privy Council the due diligence report concerning the assignment of the Canada Student Service Grant;

That the document be translated beforehand and that it be submitted to the Clerk of the Committee in both official languages, not later than (5) five days after the adoption of this motion and...

It goes on, but as I understand it, Mr. Chair, the amendment is to remove the next few lines and replace them with the following:

And that, in light of revelations stemming from Craig and Mark Kielburger's testimony of March 15, 2021, the Committee do call for Ben Chin, Rick Theis and Amitpal Singh to appear before the Committee at a date and time determined by the Chair, but no later than one week following the adoption of this motion.

I believe that is precisely the motion we are debating. If you can confirm that for me by nodding your head, Mr. Chair, I will continue my comments.

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

You are correct. It is the email that was circulated most recently, Mr. Fergus.

[Greg Fergus, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would like to add to my comments that a review of the items in this motion reveals several things that leave much to be desired.

When they appeared last Monday, Craig and Marc Kielburger mentioned that, in mid-summer 2020, they had sent a message to Ben Chin through LinkedIn. They testified under oath, I believe. They said it was the only message sent to Mr. Chin and that it was not directly from Mr. Kielburger, but from one of his assistants, his executive assistant, I would imagine. As I recall the testimony, the Kielburgers said that this individual sent the message because it was a LinkedIn request and Mr. Chin simply responded with a short, polite sentence, as people often do in those cases.

If you recall, I had mentioned that I do not have a LinkedIn account myself. That was in response to a comment from an opposition member who said that the testimony regarding the message in question was not credible. He said it was unrealistic that people do not have LinkedIn accounts and that the conversation could not have been as simple as that. If you refer to the transcript of that meeting, you will see that I explained that I found it credible, and indeed quite understandable, that things happened according to the testimony.

Several things concern me about the motion put forward. It asks for information from the “Liberal Government's” Privy Council. I may be a little picky about the wording, but it should be noted that it is the Privy Council “of the Government of Canada”. The Privy Council Office is not a political entity. As you know, we have a professional public service that works for all governments, regardless of political affiliation. Public servants are there to look after the common good of Canadians. That is why I find this motion to be unnecessarily partisan and, by the same token, unduly damaging to the reputation of our public service.

Mr. Chair, you were in the previous government, the Harper government. You have a lot of political experience. I imagine that you see, as I do, that our public servants have done a remarkable, outstanding, non-partisan job to ensure the well-being of Canadians. So you can understand why I find it disturbing that the motion refers to the “Liberal government's” Privy Council, when it is the Privy Council Office of the Government of Canada, whatever that government may be.

I'm pleased, because at least the part of the motion that called for Mr. Shugart to appear before this committee, regardless of his personal circumstances, has been replaced. In fact, I would like to take this opportunity to wish him a speedy recovery, as Mr. Barrett did as well. The man has a long history in our Canadian public service. He has been involved since his youth and has served successive governments well, regardless of their political stripes. I was fortunate to have the opportunity to—

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

Thank you, Mr. Fergus. I'll just remind you to move into the relevance. That portion of the text has been removed, so I'd ask that you move to the motion as amended.

[Greg Fergus, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

All right.

We will now wait for the report to come in. This is a good amendment to the motion.

Now we need to turn to the rest of the motion. Some will say that it is a kind of witch hunt. We want to call certain people to the committee just because some witnesses mentioned their names in passing. For example, actually, last Monday, the Kielburger brothers mentioned Mr. Chin, Mr. Theis and Mr. Singh, and now we want those three people to appear before the committee.

Mr. Chair, in the Harper era, your colleagues worked very hard to prevent political staff from appearing before this committee. I believe that happened during the meetings of the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics. An argument was made—

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

I have a point of order, Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

Please go ahead, Mr. Angus.

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

We do have to leave to go to question period, so are we going to wrap this meeting up and then we'll reconvene on Friday?

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

It's left to committee members to determine what it would look like. Mr. Fergus was reminding me of the time I was in government, and so I'm very familiar with what a filibuster looks like. This is looking very reminiscent of past times, so it doesn't appear that we will get to a vote.

I'll ask committee members: Is there an appetite to move to a vote today? I'm seeing several people saying yes, and the three members on the speaking list saying no.

I'm getting a sense by the question that there's an appetite to adjourn this committee meeting and return to this debate on Friday. Is that sense I'm getting correct?

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

Yes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

I think so. We will move to adjourn, then.

The meeting is adjourned.