Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'm growing very concerned because I remember the last round of filibusters that sucked up the equivalent of 20 meetings. That's something I've never, ever seen before in my parliamentary career, where that much time of a committee that is supposed to do serious investigations could be so monkey wrenched.
I'm very concerned that we're in that situation again. It was a little over a week, maybe two weeks, that we met and all agreed that we were going to extend the Pornhub study by one meeting with witnesses, and then to report it to the House. In the middle of that meeting, Ms. Shanahan shut down the opportunity for those witnesses to speak by claiming she wanted many more witnesses. Now, Mr. Sorbara's saying how many more witnesses he wants to bring.
They're sending a message that they want to drag that study out, and I think they want to drag it out because it has become clear that the Liberal government is not interested in applying the legal codes that exist regarding Pornhub. I think that if we report that to the House, it will be problematic for the Attorney General, so they'll drag that out.
Regarding the WE study, I think we need to get this done. My Conservative colleague now wants to bring in Elder Marques. I have no interest in hearing from Elder Marques, but I feel I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place, between the Liberals who want to drag one study out that we had all agreed should be done and my Conservative colleagues who want to continue to drag the WE study out.
We had all agreed that we were going to make a priority of the issue of facial recognition technology. I've pretty much given up on that as something my government colleagues are interested in following up because, with 12 meetings left, do they really want to report to the House the findings on the WE scandal? I don't think so. Do they really want us to report on the Pornhub study based on the evidence that we have? Apparently not. They want to drag that out as much as they can, so we're in a tough situation.
I would tell my colleagues that there's another issue that we have to look at. We spent months trying to get answers from the top executives at WE so that we could finish this study, and some of those answers were from Victor Li. As we now learn, according to his lawyer, it wasn't really Victor Li who actually answered those questions; it was the WE Charity that wrote those answers.
I don't know if my colleagues have bothered to read those answers that were recently given, but they're highly problematic. It really raises questions about the credibility of parliamentary committees if you have witnesses simply saying that it's none of our business how their financial dealings went and that they don't have to give us those answers.
This was about a $516 million deal with the Canadian people. It's a pretty straightforward thing that Parliament has a right to know. What due diligence was done? What was the capacity of this organization?
I see on the Canada summer student service grant that Victor Li's signature is on the agreement. Some of the questions were as follow.
What financial information was requested by the Government of Canada in their decision-making process for WE to be awarded the Canada summer service grant?
“I do not know”, he wrote.
What assurance did WE give the Government of Canada that it could handle the financial load of this fund?
“I do not know,” he wrote.
What payment software was in place for WE to pay students through the funds earned through the CSSG?
He wrote, “Our primary system was a national payroll provider.” He doesn't even say which one. “Our secondary service was working with one of Canada's largest financial institutions to deliver the funds.” He doesn't say who it is.
This is not a joke. We're talking about half a billion to a billion dollars of taxpayers' money.
What was the system that they were using? Who was their partner? We don't know.
Your signature is on the service contract to the Canada summer student service grant. Why was the contract retroactive to May 5?
He says, “I was not personally involved with the negotiations.”
What assurances were you given from May 5 onwards expenses would be covered though no contract was signed?
Again, he says, “I was not personally involved,” but the issue here is that according to WE's lawyer, “Because he”—Mr. Li—“is unable to review or access the company records, he asked WE Charity to help answer the committee's questions.”
Are we to believe that the WE Charity executive doesn't know who authorized the spending of money on May 5 when there was no contract signed?
I will be returning to this issue when we have the final documents all presented, but I think it's highly problematic for our committee, regardless of your political stripe, that you could be given such disregard in the answers on WE's corporate ownership.
Why were we asking these questions? We were asking questions about corporate ownership of WE because we wanted to be able to know how the money flows. That's a pretty straightforward question to ask. We still don't know.
One of the questions was, who is the registered owner of Araveli For Mamas corporation? He wrote, “I do not know.” That would be a WE executive saying they do not know. We have documents saying that this corporation was owned by Marc Kielburger. It's one of their flagship operations—a flagship operation selling bracelets—which they say is empowering women. If it's private company of Marc Kielburger, well, that certainly raises questions.
How many of the other WE companies are private or partly owned by the brothers or family members? He says that's outside the committee's mandate and refuses to answer. I think that's highly problematic. First of all, why are the WE executives deciding what's within our mandate to ask in terms of due diligence and funding? This is why we had to ask them back a couple of times. We were dealing with a signed agreement that would have given them $500 and some million in the first round, and maybe upwards of $900 million. We have a right, as parliamentarians, to know how the money flows, and to be told they don't know who runs these corporations, or they're not going to tell us, is not on in my books, not when we're dealing with a supposed charity that raises money in our kids' schools.
Again, Mr. Chair, I'm going to be returning to this, but I'm asking my colleagues to start reading up on these documents, because I think this is something we need to address. Regardless of what else happens at this committee, we need to be able to have a sense of whether we got clear and honest answers or whether we got played. As a parliamentarian, I don't like my committee time to be wasted by witnesses who are not going to give us answers.
We asked for a list of the schools that were built, because their lawyer wrote to us and said that WE built 1,500 schools. I believe they built 1,500 schools. I had no reason to doubt that, but then questions were raised. Questions were raised about donor manipulation. It would have been the best, simplest option for them to shut down all that concern by simply showing us the list: “Here are the 1,500 schools we built.” By the way, 1,500 schools is the equivalent of one school every five days for 20-some years. That's an incredible machine for building schools, yet they can't tell us where the schools are. I find that extraordinary.
If you're raising money, if you're out there and you're on the ground doing this, you would know where those schools are, yet they tell us that it would take too much time to find out.
I've spoken with people who are in the field working in international development. You know where your projects are; you have to know where your projects are. So on this question of the 1,500 schools, where are they? Who built them? Were they built? We know that some schools were built, and I'm not doubting that some schools were built. I'm not doubting that some really good work was done. I am questioning why a parliamentary committee can be told, “It would be too hard to find out where all our schools are.”
They said it would take them months. Well, we gave Mr. Li well over a month—a month and a half—to come up with this. The question of schools was well over four months in the public eye. I would think that if your business model is based on telling people that you build schools, you would have been able to supply that answer to Parliament right away. Instead we are told they can't tell us.
I'm going to be returning to this matter once we've seen all the documents. I want to make sure we know what's in every document and whether or not we were given the straight answers. I'm asking my colleagues to consider this as something bigger than our partisan interests. This is about the role of Parliament to get answers and to be able to report to Parliament.
With that, I would say that I think Mr. Fergus' motion is problematic, but I'm willing to vote on it. I'm asking my colleagues to stop these filibusters and let's get down to business. We have the WE report to finish. We have to [Technical difficulty--Editor].