Information & Ethics Committee on April 23rd, 2021

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

Thank you, Mr. Sorbara.

I will just remind committee members that the only way we can proceed to vote on anything is if we dispose of this motion first, so if the intent is to get that done before the end of the meeting, this motion has to be disposed of before we can move on to anything else.

Mr. Carrie, we'll turn to you.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank my Liberal colleague. I think he's sincere that he'd like to see if we can get moving forward. I would like to point out that only the Liberals are opposing this motion and only the Liberals are filibustering it. There's one way we could break this logjam. We could go right into a vote.

I can agree with the member that, ultimately, the minister should be held accountable, but if we look back at the original motion, the Prime Minister was able to come, and he refused that as well.

If we're looking at this issue, we've had ministers of the Crown tell other individuals to defy an order of the House. I think what Mr. Fortin put together here is not only factual but quite reasonable for us to report back to the House.

I do want to thank my Liberal colleague Mr. Sorbara, because I think I have a solution. He brought up two specific points with the motion he was having challenges with. One was why should we report this back to the House. I could tell him quite clearly that we should because there was an order of the House, and it needs to be reported back to the House because that was the order.

The other thing he said was that he saw no evidence that a minister told an individual not to come before this House. Mr. Chair, maybe we would could send it over to our Liberal colleagues. I know Mr. Fergus said a similar thing. I actually have the letter from Minister Fortier right in front of me. The second-last line, before “Yours sincerely”—and I'm going to quote her letter so my Liberal colleagues can hear it—reads:

Accordingly, Mr. Ben Chin has been instructed to not appear before the committee. In his place, I will attend the meeting on behalf of the government on Thursday, 8 April 2021.

There we have it, right there. As the Liberals are percolating, and I think everybody on this committee is percolating, Mr. Chair, now that I've actually answered those two questions for the Liberals, if you poll the committee not only will you get the Conservatives, the NDP and the Bloc in agreement to report this very factual motion back to the House, but now that I've answered his two questions, I think we will be able to get unanimous consent for that.

I'm not going to get into other comments I could get into right now, but, Mr. Chair, if you could do that, I think I've answered both his questions quite clearly. If that's what he was asking us to do, we've resolved the issue.

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

Again, I'll poll committee members. I'm still getting at least a couple of members saying they're not prepared to move to a vote.

I'll go to the next person on the list.

Ms. Lattanzio.

[Patricia Lattanzio, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I, too, as a member of this committee, understand that my colleagues want to cut this speech, this debate, short.

However, as parliamentarians, we all have the right to express ourselves and give our opinion on every issue and every motion. So I'm taking the opportunity this morning to speak to Mr. Fortin's motion.

I have a couple of points I'd like to share with my colleagues. This morning and since last week, some of us have been saying that this motion is simple and that we have other priorities. We are being very wasteful. We agree that the motion is simple precisely because it is simply not accurate.

So I'm going to give you my thoughts and my perspective. Simply put, this motion does not report the facts, as my colleagues have already said. It states that an order was issued by the House for individuals to come and testify, and that a certain decision was made. My colleague whom I see in front of me has spoken to me about this as well. This is the wording of point 5:

The Committee noted that Minister Pablo Rodriguez appeared on March 29, 2021, instead of Rick Theis, after having ordered him not to appear before the Committee, as mentioned in his letter to the Chair received by Committee members on March 28, 2021;

The very wording of the motion emphasizes that Minister Pablo Rodriguez allegedly asked the witness Rick Theis not to appear. The wording of this paragraph misleads the members because we have no proof of what is being claimed. Even if we did, and I'm not saying we do, the letter from Minister Rodriguez, which my colleague Mr. Fortin quoted earlier, states this:

Accordingly, Mr. Rick Theis, Director of Policy to the Prime Minister, has been instructed to not appear before the Committee.

I draw your attention to the next sentence:

In his place, I will attend the meeting on behalf of the government on Monday, March 29th.

So there was never a failure to appear, as my colleague has argued in very technical jargon before the committee. My colleagues have clearly explained to you that the witnesses who were called are employees and they're not responsible for reporting on the actions of ministers. So ministers can come and testify before committees.

Second, in his motion, Mr. Fortin states that if the three witnesses named in the motion do not appear, the Prime Minister can appear for them. Once again, the Prime Minister, being a minister, also has the option of delegating his representation to other ministers. The cabinet is responsible for decisions made by the ministers.

So we can see that there was no failure to appear. I understand my colleagues' insistence that the three witnesses appear, but it's simply not true that there was a failure to appear. I insist on that. It's crystal clear.

Two ministers took the time to respond to the request and come forward to testify about the facts of the case.

I'm going to make an analogy. When we sue a business, what do we do if we want to hear testimony? We can subpoena employees, but at the end of the day, who is accountable? It's the manager, the person in charge, the president of the company, Mr. Chair. They are responsible for their employees' actions. They must appear, whether before an administrative tribunal, a court or committees, to relate the facts on the subject of the dispute.

I am using the analogy to show my colleagues that we must be reasonable. This is the same process that was followed before this committee. What did we do, Mr. Chair? We have the audacity to say that we're not satisfied with the process.

The same is true of point 6. I will repeat the wording of that point:

The Committee noted that Minister Mona Fortier also ordered witnesses Amitpal Singh and Ben Chin not to appear before the Committee, as mentioned in her letters to the Chair dated March 30 and April 7, 2021.

I am referring to the two letters from Minister Fortier, dated March 30 and April 7. In them, she concludes that “Accordingly, Mr. Amitpal Singh has been instructed to not appear before the committee.” Once again, I emphasize, she continues as follows: “I will attend the meeting on behalf of the government on Wednesday, 31 March 2021.”

In her April 7 letter about the witness Ben Chin, the honourable Ms. Fortier once again states: “Accordingly, Mr. Ben Chin has been instructed to not appear before the committee. In his place, I will attend the meeting on behalf of the government on Thursday, 8 April 2021.”

Before we even try to figure out what happened when we had the two ministers before us, I'd like to—

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

I'm recognizing Mr. Carrie on a point of order.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I was just listening to the translation. It appears that the member is saying that Minister Fortier did not instruct Mr. Chin to come, but then she read from Minister Fortier's letter that actually said, in the translation, exactly what the letter says: that he was instructed not to come. So—

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

That sounds a lot like a point of debate. It doesn't sound like a point of order.

Was there another intervention there?

Not seeing it, we'll turn back to Ms. Lattanzio.

[Patricia Lattanzio, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I am just reading how the letters are worded, colleague.

Before I even get back to what happened in committee regarding the testimony of the two ministers, I'd like to digress for a moment to answer the following question. What led us to this motion from Mr. Fortin?

Remember that in testimony before the committee, there was actually an exchange of messages between Ben Chin and WE Charity that took place on LinkedIn. The question that came up was whether or not Mr. Chin had responded to the message that was sent. The thought was that there had to be information and that we needed to dig around, go deeper, explore the issue and make inquiries to find out what had occurred.

I remember very well what I said at the time. Some members had said it as well. I mentioned that we had received 5,000 pages of documents over the summer about what had happened with WE Charity. If we had bothered to look at the documents, we would have seen that there was no correspondence following the message sent through LinkedIn, as I mentioned earlier.

Let's back up a bit. We found that there had been only one message, and no further communication after that. Minister Pablo Rodriguez did tell us that. At the end of the minister's testimony, our colleague Elizabeth May had even concluded by saying that, had she learned this information in the House, the outcome might have been different.

We have an obligation to report the facts as they are and the responsibility to act with transparency. I would be hard pressed to relate facts that did not occur as stated in the motion, because that appearance before the committee took place.

In all honesty, I must tell you that I didn't attend the committee meeting on March 31, but I was present on March 29 and April 8. I did, however, look at the minutes to see what happened on March 31. We had taken a long time to decide whether we would hear the testimony of Minister Pablo Rodriguez. I don't know how much time we spent on that, but we even debated whether we would hear him. We ended up hearing his testimony.

Then the committee came back to the issue of the other two witnesses. This surprised me a little, because in the discussion between committee members and the witness Ben Chin, I was under the impression that Ben Chin was the only one involved.

How did the other two witnesses' names get added to the motion? I still have no idea. I am talking about Amitpal Singh and—

I am sorry, Mr. Chair. I am getting lost in my papers.

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

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

Mr. Fergus, you have a point of order.

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

I believe my colleague is looking for the name Rick Theis.

[Patricia Lattanzio, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

Yes, that's right. It's not like that name has never come up before.

How did those two witnesses end up on the list? I am surprised, but that is what the House asked for. They were added to the list further to testimony provided before the committee in relation to a single witness, Ben Chin.

In summer 2020, a news conference was held about everything that had happened in the WE Charity matter. I am going to quickly go over what happened. In March, the matter was reopened and a motion was introduced in the House to obtain information. People wanted that information so badly that they subpoenaed witnesses to appear before the committee.

There is no point repeating the ministerial accountability argument and the fact that, according to House tradition, ministers appear in relation to all matters pertaining to decision-making and accountability. However, employees are always left out.

I want to refer back to the minutes of the March 31 meeting. At the very end of that meeting, our colleague Mr. Barrett spoke, and I don't know how long that went on. I unfortunately only have the English version, but here's what he said:

“That being said, while I believe that we need to examine the motion that Monsieur Fortin has put forward, I move that the meeting be adjourned.”

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

There is a motion to adjourn the meeting, colleagues, and that is not a debatable motion, and so—

[Patricia Lattanzio, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

I know that—

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

Pardon me, Ms. Lattanzio, were you moving a motion to adjourn the meeting?

[Patricia Lattanzio, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

No.

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

Okay.

[Patricia Lattanzio, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

No. I'm citing from the minutes of the meeting of March 31. So, I'm just citing our colleague, sorry, I'm not—

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

Very good.

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

I have a point of order, Chair, just while we have that—

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

I am recognizing a point of order by Mr. Barrett.

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

Chair, I'm looking for your guidance. Is it in order for members to read back transcripts of previous meetings?

I'm just not sure that it's a standard practice of ours to be quoting other members of the committee back to each other.

I'm just looking to see if that's consistent with the rules in the House of Commons Procedure and Practice.

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

I think I'll allow it as long as it's not repetition of the same. It is in some respects repetition but not at the same meeting of the same points, so I'll allow it.

As a reminder to all colleagues, especially those who have intervened, Mr. Dong has indicated that he would like an opportunity to speak, and he hasn't yet.

Ms. Lattanzio, I know that you probably have a few things left to complete but you do have colleagues who are desperately waiting to get on the record as well.

[Patricia Lattanzio, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

I understand that, Mr. Chair, but I'd like to seize the opportunity to speak on this issue as I've not had—

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

On a point of order, Mr. Dong.