Information & Ethics Committee on July 12th, 2021

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

Thanks very much, Chair.

Let me go back to some of the remarks Ms. Shanahan made. She called this a fake scandal. I wonder where we've heard before the Liberals say that the story in The Globe and Mail is false. Well, of course we know that this came directly from Prime Minister Trudeau when they laid out the case that ultimately saw him found guilty, for a second time, of breaking ethics laws. That's the commentary we get from the Liberals when they say that they don't believe the story, that they don't believe The Globe and Mail reporting. It's as close to calling it fake news as we might get, but they call it a fake scandal. Well, that's certainly their purview.

I mean, I wonder if Mr. Easter, who's quoted in that original article, is getting real bang for his buck with that French-language translation service, if he's really digging deep with that. I wonder if all of the dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens of Liberal members are availing themselves of that. We have seen before that the Liberals will procure the services of a company that is completely unable to fulfill their obligations in the service of French-speaking Canadians. We saw that with the WE scandal. They said there was only one company in the world that could deliver the CSSG for them, and it was this WE group, but they were going to need—

[Steven MacKinnon, Liberal, Gatineau, QC]

I have a point of order.

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

I'm recognizing a point of order.

[Steven MacKinnon, Liberal, Gatineau, QC]

Is this on a point of order? Are we—

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

No, we're on the speaking list. We're on the debate—

[Steven MacKinnon, Liberal, Gatineau, QC]

It's on the amendment.

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

It's on the amendment.

Go ahead, Mr. Barrett.

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

Well, I'm glad that we have Mr. MacKinnon joining our show already in progress. Welcome to the committee, Mr. MacKinnon.

Yes, you may not have had the opportunity to hear all of the outrageous claims that were made by your colleagues on why the WE organization was selected to deliver a program that it couldn't possibly deliver on, which was why the government had to sub out French language services if it were to deliver the CSSG in Quebec. We have a real pattern here. The Liberals say, “Yes, we have this great service provider, but they can only do half the job. They can't serve French language constituents, so we're going to pay somebody else to deliver on that service as well.”

Ms. Shanahan also talked about the committee's ability to handle this matter. The Standing Orders are very clear in subparagraph 108(3)(h)(vii):

the proposing, promoting, monitoring and assessing of initiatives which relate to access to information and privacy across all sectors of Canadian society and to ethical standards relating to public office holders;

Therefore, this study is quite clearly within the mandate of our committee. I'm sure they'd like to talk about lots of other things, such as what Conservatives do, so if we're going to talk about what we do in our offices, I'm glad that we brought it up. I'm happy to tell the members of the committee that in my office we use a program called CivicTrack. We don't use any other software.

I'd be very interested to hear about their data management practices. You've heard mine. You can see that disclosure and you can talk to my staff. In fact, some are here. If we wanted to get this under way today, I'd be happy to have my staff talk to the committee about how we exercise our function and how we are appropriately stewarding taxpayer dollars.

I have a lot of questions about what's happening on the other side of the table. That's why it's so important that we hear from Mr. Pitfield. This amendment that we have from the Liberals is a red herring. They want us to chase this amendment and run out the clock.

We're here to deal with something. We can deal with it very quickly. I would be very happy to support an amendment to the main motion that, as Mr. Boulerice suggested, would see us meet for two hours. Once we've dispensed with this, I'd be pleased to deal with that idea. If the intention is that members want to add all of the parties' data management software and all the independent service providers they use and give the Board of Internal Economy lots of work to do over the summer, I guess it would be up to BOIE if it wanted to take up the task, but let's talk about what this committee can do. This committee, today, can decide to deal with this issue.

I think it's very serious when we have a potential conflict of interest and we have a minister of the Crown directing other members on how to spend their office budgets. Those members have no idea how it works. Let's not fall for any parlour tricks today. Let's instead focus on what we're here to discuss, and that's taxpayer dollars being spent on a contract that's very problematic for the Liberals. Let's deal with that.

Once we've dealt with the amendment that's on the floor, Mr. Chair, I'd be pleased to move an amendment to the motion in support of Mr. Boulerice's suggestion that we deal with this issue expeditiously, potentially even concluding it this week.

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

I'm going to continue down the speaking list. If members don't want to speak to the amendment but would like to speak to something else, just indicate that you no longer desire to speak to it.

Madame Lattanzio, you have the floor.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Formally, I'd like to say hello to my colleagues, whom I haven't seen in person in a while. It feels good to see each and every one of you here today.

I'm not exactly sure why we're here, Mr. Chair. For the past few weeks since the House has—

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

Madame Lattanzio, we are speaking to the amendment. We are discussing the—

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

Yes, I'm going to get to it. I'm speaking to the amendment.

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

It's to the amendment. Okay. Very good.

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

Thank you.

I'm not sure why we are here today, and I'm going to get to the amendment. I think most of us are busy in our constituency offices, meeting our constituents and doing our work. Having sat on this committee, albeit as a new member, I've seen what has transpired in the last year and the witch hunts that have been brought about time and time again. We are essentially using taxpayers' dollars to go on these witch hunts, but even beyond that, we have mandated this committee to conduct investigations that are concurrent with those of other committees. Talk about a waste of time and talk about a waste of taxpayers' money.

We've seen these attempts time and time again from the member from Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes while the government has been focused on delivering the vaccine and helping Canadians recover from this pandemic. However, we are here today. We have met solely in service of the Conservative ambitions many times over the course of the past year, but what clearly makes this time different from the last is the clear-cut fact that this committee doesn't even have the jurisdiction to investigate what Mr. Barrett is bringing forward.

He spoke a few minutes ago, and I heard him, when he quoted our committee mandate in access to information, privacy and ethics, which is subparagraph 108(3)(h)(vii), I believe. I'm going to read it again for the benefit of our members here today. It says:

the proposing, promoting, monitoring and assessing of initiatives which relate to access to information and privacy across all sectors of Canadian society and to ethical standards relating to public office holders

In his motion, he wants to have Mr. Pitfield present here. Mr. Pitfield is not a public office holder, so it has become quite clear what road we are embarking on: This is basically not to fulfill the mandate of this committee but to go yet again on another witch hunt.

Our committees are neither investigative nor judicial bodies. You cannot simply call this committee together and propose on a whim to undertake a political witch hunt because it happens to be a politically self-serving issue of the day. This place is governed by the rules and statutes that were constituted when this place first began sitting as the Parliament of Canada and established the long-running traditions by which we operate today.

The amendment proposed by my colleague—and I won't read it, because she has—is, I think, the appropriate forum for this issue, if there is an issue. Again, the motion states quite clearly, almost makes an allegation, that there is a conflict of interest. It makes that allegation without even having any basis for it. I think the amendment would allow the committee to be able to investigate and do its work, and look at not just the Liberal database but also the CIMS. If we are to be transparent—and in the words of my colleague Dr. Carrie, we need to be transparent—then let's be transparent and let's do it with the other software being used.

Anyone reading this section proposed by my colleague can clearly deduce that the Board of Internal Economy retains complete discretion to determine how members use parliamentary resources. There is no mention here of any other parliamentary committee in that section. In fact, it has long been an accepted fact that the board can handle these types of matters.

I'm a little confused, Mr. Chair, as to why my colleague and his colleagues seem to think that we have the jurisdiction to even investigate this matter. The Board of Internal Economy itself, as we know, is composed of members of all recognized parties, and it is they who set out the rules and regulations by which we conduct ourselves. As to how members discharge the public funds they are entrusted with, the board has compiled the Members' Allowances and Services Manual, which lays out very clearly how we are to conduct ourselves as members in regard to our budgets, and how organizations like our research bureau, the whips' offices and the House leaders' offices should also conduct business with public funds.

The rules and guidelines laid out in the members' services manual are very clear about how we should conduct ourselves in expending public funds. I believe that each and every member in the House, and indeed around this table, strives to ensure that they follow the rules as laid out in the said manual.

When disputes have arisen in the past about the use of funds within our budget, these matters were taken up by the BOIE and handled accordingly. I think we have to ask ourselves, “What is different about this situation, such that we should diverge from past precedence in how these matters are handled?”

The truth is that nothing is different—nothing but the political opportunity that is present for the opposition.

I think we can all agree that we are here today in service to the constituents who elected us to represent them. It is a humbling job—especially when you are first elected, as I am—to know that you are responsible for advancing the best interests of your community in making decisions that will affect your family, friends and neighbours. As members of Parliament, we are required to help anyone in our community, no matter their political affiliation, whether they voted for us or not. Our service to our communities is to blind ourselves to partisan interests, and it should be so.

In our duties as members of Parliament, we are often required to help our constituents access the many resources of the federal government and to triage the issues that arise out of that assistance. I think we can all agree that with roughly, more or less, 70,000 constituents in each of our respective ridings at a minimum, keeping orderly track of casework and requests for assistance is essential to completing our work as members.

All parties here freely admit that we maintain constituent management systems to help us track requests for assistance from constituents and to ensure that we are able to provide all necessary assistance and follow up afterwards to ensure that casework has been handled to the constituents' satisfaction. A constituent management database is there to help us organize case files and track the progress of constituency issues or constituents' issues to ensure that they are followed up and completed properly. It is not out of the ordinary, nor is it inappropriate. It is an expected part of our job as parliamentarians. It is not out of the ordinary for parties to operate their constituent management databases on software similar to their electoral databases. Frankly, it makes sense. Members and staff are already familiar with electoral databases. Basing constituent management databases on the same user experience enables members and staff to quickly access and operate a user-friendly and familiar system.

The important distinction here is the presence of a complete firewall between these databases to ensure that the information collected in an official capacity is not mixed with partisan databases. That's what's important here. Our caucus maintains the highest standards in this regard, as has been noted, and we work with the contractors who manage our databases to ensure that there is no crossover between the two.

We are not the only party that operates this way. Both the NDP and the Conservatives do the same. The NDP openly admitted this on July 9 of last week in a Globe and Mail article that quoted a member who also sits on this committee. It's been a well-known fact for well over 15 years now that the Conservatives' CIMS database operates in a similar capacity as well.

I'd like to quote the member as cited in The Globe and Mail: “I am not sure they are using it in a way that would actually contravene rules. It would have to be established that they are turning constituency data over for political purposes. Every political party has a data wing and a constituency wing.” The member from the NDP also said his party also uses the database provider Populus for political and campaign work, and a different version from the same company for constituency casework. “There is a pretty clear firewall” between the two services, he said.

I find it very disingenuous that all of a sudden the Conservative members of this committee have decided that there is something inappropriate or nefarious with members' tracing casework with constituency and constituents, especially when they do it themselves. Ms. Shanahan has given you an example of how she's been contacted time and time again from an A1 account after a donation that she made many moons ago. Therefore, the question arises as to who's doing what and who's using what database.

I think, Mr. Chair, in the words of my colleague Mr. Carrie this morning, let's be transparent. Let's examine everything, but this committee does not have the mandate to do so. I think it's appropriate that it be sent to BOIE. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

Go ahead, Mr. Fergus.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to start by thanking the member from Montreal for her well-reasoned comments. She made some excellent points.

Certainly, in this day and age, every party on Parliament Hill uses databases so members can manage the work of their constituency and Hill offices, and that's perfectly fine. Having access to such tools means we can serve people effectively. These systems help us track who has contacted us and why, whether it's the first or fifth time we've been in contact, and if the issues are connected. It's perfectly normal.

It's also perfectly normal for every party to use a database for partisan purposes, such as to remember who they have interacted with and in relation to what.

However, there can be no mixing of the data from the two systems. The databases must not communicate with one another. They are required to operate as stand-alone systems—hence, the firewall, which as everyone knows, works without a hitch.

I saw what the NDP member from northern Ontario had to say on the subject. He agreed, saying his party makes sure the two databases operate independently of one another. Our party does pretty much the exact same thing.

This is an issue I'm quite familiar with. In a past life, long before I became a member of Parliament, I was the national director of the Liberal Party of Canada. I was the one who did the research and signed the contract with NGP VAN. I'm very proud of our work on that file. We really brought the Liberal Party into the modern age. Prior to that, all we had were paper-based lists; it was a bit makeshift. We made a decision to enter the 21st century by adopting a highly flexible IT system. Not only does it offer a considerable degree of flexibility, but it also has an excellent track record for ensuring a separation between certain data.

It would be preposterous to have a system without a firewall. If that were the case, the company's reputation would be ruined and no one would do business with it. Use of the system isn't limited to Canada; it's a well-honed system that has long been used in the United States. Personally, I think it's the best system out there, but I imagine the Conservatives would say their system is better than ours.

Mr. Barrett, you mentioned CivicTrack or Softchoice.

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

I'm the only one who uses it.

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

It's only you. I see.

I imagine the Conservative Party of Canada is proud of CIMS, its system, and the NDP is surely proud of its system, Populus. I commend both parties.

What worries me, as Ms. Lattanzio and Mrs. Shanahan have already pointed out, is that this smells of a witch hunt.

Mr. Barrett is acting like he's being entirely reasonable by saying he would support holding just one two-hour meeting with witnesses, but we've heard that line numerous times over the past 15 months. Every time someone appears, they mention another name, and suddenly the committee has to probe further, even if it's not at all relevant. We have to invite someone else, and so it goes.

Forgive me, then, if I'm a bit hesitant to go along with this.

I've been down that rabbit hole before.

Even if you think I'm wrong, Mr. Chair, I know I stand on solid footing when it comes to the role of this committee versus that of the Board of Internal Economy. I won't repeat what my fellow members have already said, since they did a good job of articulating this committee's responsibilities. They also pointed out that another committee is entrusted with examining the spending and activities—past and current—of members and their constituency offices, and that committee is the Board of Internal Economy.

No expense considered to be invalid is authorized without the board's approval. Occasionally, people can make mistakes, and the consequences can be quite serious. The Board of Internal Economy has been known to make some very weighty decisions to reassure Canadians that the spending of parliamentarians, specifically, members of the House of Commons, complies with the rules.

The Parliament of Canada Act is crystal clear about the exclusive authority of the Board of Internal Economy. Subsection 52.6(1) says and I quote:

52.6 (1) The Board has the exclusive authority to determine whether any previous, current or proposed use by a member of the House of Commons of any funds, goods, services or premises made available to that member for the carrying out of parliamentary functions is or was proper, given the discharge of the parliamentary functions of members of the House of Commons, including whether any such use is or was proper having regard to the intent and purpose of the by-laws made under subsection 52.5(1).

That is the body that should be examining this issue.

Mrs. Shanahan's amendment shows that we are prepared to support Mr. Barrett's motion, which, according to him, was prompted by a media report. That is why he feels we should examine the issue. Actually, Mr. Barrett is signalling that it was four news articles. Thank you for correcting me.

I believe the four articles—well, three of them, at least—refer to the systems used by the Liberals, the Conservatives and the NDP. Unfortunately, though, Mr. Barrett's motion pertains solely to one party. Mrs. Shanahan made the point that we should broaden the motion to cover not only what the Liberal members are doing, but also what the members of the official opposition are doing. The issues raised in the news reports are actually of great interest to Canadians.

I hope my fellow members will allow these issues to be referred to the Board of Internal Economy, which, as a committee of the House, could look into everything and report its findings to all members.

I think that's the best way forward. That is why the amendment was moved and why I, personally, will support it.

If we stick to the motion as moved, we will fall into the same trap that we unfortunately fell into before. Mr. Chair, I know you came a long way to be at this meeting in person, and I certainly appreciate the efforts of every committee member to attend this meeting. No one wants to waste time, but we have to tell it like it is. We have to set the record straight, and that's why I feel so strongly about doing things the right way. That means referring the matter to the committee responsible for examining the previous, current and proposed expenditures incurred by members and their offices. The committee with that responsibility is the Board of Internal Economy.

I can well imagine what would happen if we did not support the amendment and the motion was adopted unamended. I can hear it now. I would bet any amount of money that, as soon as the witness mentioned someone's name, members would probably want to invite that person to appear before the committee. It would be a name here, a name there; we would have to keep inviting people and so on. I've seen this show before, and honestly, the reviews weren't good.

It's time to move on. We should be smart about how we use our time and energy—what we focus our efforts on. I think the committee members should really support the amendment and refer this matter to the proper authority.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

Go ahead, Mr. Carrie.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I want to thank colleagues again for coming together to address this extremely important matter, which seems to be getting convoluted again by the Liberals.

Mr. Chair, if we can be very clear here, this is about allegations that a minister of the Crown was directing a contract involving taxpayers' funds to advance the interests of the Liberal Party of Canada and the minister's partisan interests. That's what this is about.

I think everybody around here understands the Board of Internal Economy and what it does, but maybe people listening in don't. The Board of Internal Economy has no jurisdiction to rule on a minister on a conflict of interest. Frankly, it works on consensus building. We know that if the Liberals get their way here, they would just shut it down there, just as they're trying to shut down this committee today.

This is very straightforward, Mr. Chair. As Mr. Barrett said, he is very open to Mr. Boulerice's very reasonable time frame—one meeting, two hours. That doesn't seem to be out of the ordinary. What really bothers me is that we hear the Liberal members saying, “Oh, well, if we hear something that is suspicious here, the opposition is going to want to call another witness”, or this or that. Of course, Mr. Chair. That's our job. That's why Canadians have us here.

We are going into an election campaign. The Liberals are going out this summer. We know they don't want to be here; they want to be out there. They want to be handing out money here, handing out money there, with just big smiles everywhere. They don't want to be talking about corruption and ethical issues again, and a Prime Minister being with Mr. Pitfield, for heaven's sake, who was on that illegal vacation he took. They don't want to talk about that. They don't want Canadians to even be thinking about it.

Mr. Chair, I don't want to talk too long here. I opened up and I explained what this is about. I think I explained what the Liberals are trying to do again, which is to filibuster to keep this issue from getting out. Frankly, the more they push back, the more I'm concerned. I think we do have to make sure that Canadians understand that it's about a conflict of interest by a minister. When these questions are being asked, it's our job as opposition MPs to be very reasonable. We're not asking people to spend the entire summer here, but just two hours to get to some very simple answers. If it's going to be open and transparent, those answers will come quite quickly.

I think, Mr. Chair, we have about 10 minutes left. I think the meeting's going to be talked out. That's all I have to say.

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

Mr. Dong is next.

[Han Dong, Liberal, Don Valley North, ON]

Thank you very much, Chair.

I don't want to spend a lot of time talking. I think Mr. Barrett spoke about eight to 10 minutes, so if you give me a signal at the eight-minute mark, I'll wrap up. I don't want to speak more than the opposition members.

Chair, I've been listening respectfully and carefully to all members of this committee today. I thought what Ms. Shanahan said in her opening remarks, before she moved a motion, was very important: It was about the mandate of this committee. If we are talking about questioning the integrity of MPs as they perform jobs in their capacity as public elected members, we're not talking about just a few members; we're talking about the entire Liberal caucus. I think we should look at the process. What's the code of conduct? That falls under the scope of the Board of Internal Economy. Determining whether or not the members obey these codes of conduct, I think, is its job.

I understand that you said committees don't have the mandate or don't have the power to tell another committee what it needs to do. Simply put, I'm sure there are Conservative members on the Board of Internal Economy. They can, according to the result of today's debate, move a motion over there to start an investigation. I think that's much better than having a debate here. We are making a lot of assumptions that members are using public dollars, taxpayers' dollars, to somehow do partisan stuff.

What is within the scope of this committee is privacy. That could be expanded to the privacy of our constituents. I think that needs to be looked at.

I have heard members from the Conservative Party say that they don't use public dollars to somehow fund this kind of system. I'm very interested in knowing how these systems are being paid for and how constituents' information is being used. I know from Ms. Lattanzio on this side that there's a very effective firewall being built around individuals' data, around what's being accessed from the MPs' offices in terms of their constituents' information. Privacy is very important, and I've made that very clear to the staff in my office.

Speaking of wasting taxpayers' dollars, I want to remind the committee and the public watching that I've been here at this committee since day one of the 43rd Parliament, and to my recollection we've completed only two studies: those on WE Charity and Pornhub. It's a public taxpayer-funded fishing expedition. Our WE Charity study and investigation was parallel to an investigation done by an officer of the House. The Integrity Commissioner did an investigation.

As well, I want to point out that this meeting was not scheduled. It's not a regular meeting. It's a special meeting that's been called. We see all the support staff, all the wonderful translators and the clerk here. That's all on taxpayers' dollars. I have to question the efficiency of our committee.

Mr. Barrett, in his debate on the amendment, mentioned that he's quite happy to be in front of the committee and to talk about the practices of his office. I applaud his transparency and, quite honestly, bravery. Sitting in front of a committee and disclosing information, which we all know is to the public, is not an easy thing to do.

I have to point out some quick research.

The company he mentioned, CivicTrack, which he uses, is a software provider that is owned by Momentuum BPO Inc. Its president is Matt Yeatman, who has donated $12,556 to various Conservative EDAs and campaigns between 2008 and 2019.

According to the public record, another software company that he uses, which is online in his expenditure report, is called Softchoice. It is owned by Vince De Palma, who has made multiple $1,000 contributions as donations to the Conservative Party. I think there is merit to the amendment, in that if we're going to make assumptions that a lot of members don't know the rules and their integrity is being questioned, we should open up the questioning so we can improve the process, although, as I've said before, I don't believe that this falls under the mandate of this committee.

That leads to my final point. When I read the original motion, I found that it wasn't typical. Usually I'll see in a motion that we will refer the matter to the House and require a response from the government or require a response from, in this case, the Board of Internal Economy or whatever. We have to have some recommendation in the study; otherwise, what's the point of the study? I have not seen that, which leads me to question the timing of this proposed study.

Repeatedly the Conservative members have talked about being on the eve of an election. I haven't heard that the writ has dropped. What I know is that a motion was passed in the House by all members that we don't want an election until it's safe.

I haven't heard that call. They want to deal with this expeditiously. Do you know what that means to me? They want to pull a fast one. They want to pull a fast one against the Liberal members, on the eve of an election—

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair.

[Han Dong, Liberal, Don Valley North, ON]

—to gain a partisan advantage. That's what they're doing here.

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

On a point of order, go ahead, Mr. Carrie.