Thank you, Michael. I appreciate that.
I know what I want to talk about. This is something I found earlier in the public accounts committee. It is a report called “The Power of Committees to Order the Production of Documents and Records”. It's the report of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts from December 2009. It's very interesting. It's quite straightforward in the sense that the power of the committee is greater than many people would think when it comes to demanding papers, and so on and so forth. The power to actually get the evidence is not as strong as some may think, but there certainly is a right to demand it, as in this particular case.
Before you're beginning to think that I'm making the case for the opposition, let me march through this as slowly as I can. I hope you'll stick around. I'll try to do this more quickly than I seem to be. I know it's late; it's certainly late where I am.
It begins, “Pursuant to its mandate, the Standing Committee on Public Accounts periodically holds meetings” for witnesses, questions or subject matter, and so on and so forth.
Okay, here it is: “On 24 March 2009, the Committee heard witnesses from Public Works and Government Services Canada (PWGSC) on the Auditor General’s December 2008 report on Contracting for Professional Services. In the course of the meeting held on the audit report, officials from PWGSC were asked questions relating to the Government Enterprise Network Services (GENS)....”
Let me explain that very quickly. GENS was a former part of the federal government's IT shared services initiative. They were asked to bring forward information; however, they didn't want to. They were dragged into this kicking and screaming, similar to the election of a new Speaker, to a certain degree, except that's kind of fake, while this was real.
In response, the deputy minister of public works—I won't use names, because it's not really germane to the point—stated “that he would undertake to provide the committee with a number of videocassettes”, or audio recordings, “on the industry consultation on GENS. These documents were to be provided by 7 April 2009.”
In a letter, the deputy minister said that public works “would be delivering the requested documents, but on the advice of legal counsel, would do so only in accordance with the Access to Information Act and Privacy Act”.
There was a big to-and-fro about how this was going to work. Essentially, it ends like this: They had done a consultation process with the general public about IT services, but they were not comfortable with releasing some of that information because some people gave it in confidence.
In the ruling here, they said the committees are empowered to do that. They have a right to ask. Other people have a right to deny for reasons that are stated. If the committee feels that the House should look into it, they have to ask them to do that as well, in order to push this through.
Here's what's important, as stated in House of Commons Procedure and Practice by Marleau and Montpetit. They talk about “the power to send for persons and papers, which is accorded to committees”, which includes many powers, of course, as cited here.
The last sentence here in the report, which is quoted from the book, is important. The testimony of this particular report says, “Although the House has not placed any restrictions on the power to send for papers and records, it may not be appropriate to insist on the production of papers in all cases.”
Before my opposition gets excited about the all-encompassing aspect and before they start painting a picture that the committee's power resembles the Death Star, if you catch the Star Wars reference, with a huge tractor beam that sucks in all information, it's also written in there that you can't go crazy with this power.
This is like some wild cash grab to get all the information that you want or need, so they say, “Although the House has not placed any restrictions on the power to send for papers and records, it may not be appropriate to insist on the production of papers in all cases."
Let me put my partisan hat on for just a moment.
Here's what's interesting, and I'm glad you asked. In the supplementary opinion put forward by the government of the day, which were the Conservatives, it says:
CPC members want to highlight that when a committee or the House of Commons calls for persons, papers and records the consideration of the public interest needs to be the first and most important consideration.
I'm sure you would agree, and that's how I'm sure the Conservatives feel right now. What they're doing is, as stated here in their submission, “the first and most important consideration.”
It goes on to say:
The participants in these consultations understood that their participation and comments were to be protected from disclosure by the Privacy Act and therefore may have shared confidential information that they would not otherwise have shared.
The Conservative Party of the day believed that the information that may have been handed over to a committee by private citizens was not right, not fair and not in the spirit of what the production of papers was meant to be.
In other words, it was okay to get information from the Department of Public Works, but there were people involved who had given evidence privately to the government, and the Conservatives felt you'd gone a step too far.
Going back to the original motion, have we built a bridge too far? I would argue that in the spirit of it, yes, I think you have, because of the elements here.
My colleague earlier—I think it was Mr. Housefather—talked about going beyond the non-political actors, going beyond to a place where you shouldn't be going because of the privacy aspect. He talked about siblings and other family members who were going to be subjected to this. I think he brought up a valid point.
I suspect the Conservatives and I could argue this every way to Sunday, and I say that with the deepest respect because I don't want to get into name-calling and so on and so forth. I just think that what encapsulates the spirit of your motion is that it's a bridge too far in this particular case.
I think that what Mr. Shugart has provided in his letter—several letters, actually—does illustrate the great deal of effort to get to the bottom of this. Now I know we—I and the opposition—don't agree on that, but I think it can be.... I just don't want anyone to think that I'm here, as was noted earlier, simply just to defend the boss, as the saying goes. I'm sure people will construe that I am, but nevertheless I do have a genuine concern about what this motion does.
This is going to sound bad, but let me just explain. For the record, Michael, if you spent more time looking at the nuts and bolts of the information that they're looking for, it could be done in a way that doesn't reach out and try to “cash grab" several elements of society. When I first read it, it just seemed like something that went madly off in different directions. It was like a motion that was written and developed by a very large committee of people with differing ideas about how they wanted to establish a fight, as it were.
Michael, I don't mean that disparagingly. Don't get me wrong. Hey, look, I understand—been there, done that. There have been things that I have written and said that when I look back....
I'm glad this is all public. This is great. Now I get to talk about how my days in opposition basically went astray, I guess; I don't know. Nevertheless, it's late and we're still rampant.
I really wanted to put that out there, because it just didn't sit that comfortably with me. If you look at it, I'm not sure.... That's where I look at the to-and-fro of Parliament, when you say one thing on that side of the House and you say this thing on this side of the House. You could be in third place or fourth place or whatever you are in the House, and say something entirely different. I think we have to be honest with ourselves about how we want to argue this in a genuine parliamentary manner and come to terms about how we want to get to a particular subject.
Listen, I get calls. Today was a particularly big day for people calling about their employment insurance and so on and so forth. I will come back to that, but just allow me to build a small arc back to the point I want to make about this particular motion. Yes, we spent a tremendous amount of time going through a lot of programs that flew fast and furiously out the door because we needed to provide the money by which the people could get through this pandemic. CERB started out as employment insurance exceptions. It evolved into CERB, first delivered by Service Canada or the relevant department, and—