Thank you, Chair.
In English, it was at the point, Chair, when you recognized Mr. Warkentin, and Mr. Warkentin said—as the blues indicate—“I think that now having amended this motion extensively, having addressed what the Liberals have said are their concerns with the motion, I think it would be prudent to proceed to a vote. Obviously, anything other than moving to a vote would just extend the timeframes by which this committee would be delayed in receiving those documents. Having now given in to the Liberal's request for the seven-day extension, I would request that we move to a vote.”
Then we have the chair saying, “Okay. Colleagues, I'm just taking a look at the screen—” and Mrs. Julie Vignola interjecting, “I have a point of order.”
Ms. Vignola said, “I'm sorry, but there is no more interpretation. I understand what Mr. Warkentin said, but I would like to hear it in my mother tongue. I can't hear anything anymore.”
Mr. Angus responded, “I can hear the interpretation here.”
Ms. Vignola said, “I turned on the French channel...”
Mr. Angus responded, “Yes.”
The chair said, “I'm not getting any translation.”
Ms. Vignola said, “... in my language.”
Mr. Gourde said, “I can hear the interpretation very well, so maybe my colleague is having a computer problem.”
The Chair added, “Madam Vignola, go ahead and repeat what your concern was.”
Ms. Vignola said, “The interpretation just came back on.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.”
The Chair said: “Let me canvass the committee again. Do you want to move to a vote on the main motion as amended?”
Some members then agreed and the chair said, “It looks as if we have consensus. Madam Clerk, would you do the honours then, please, for a recorded vote.”
The motion was then amended with five nays, four yeas.
Then the chair moved to adjourn.
I think we know that the yeas were Mr. Barrett, Monsieur Gourde, Monsieur Warkentin and Mr. Angus, whereas the nays were Mr. Dong, Madame Lattanzio, me, Mr. Sorbara and Madame Vignola. Indeed, there was one abstention on the Liberal side, and that was Mr. Housefather.
This goes to the point, Chair, and I think you rightfully ruled on this, that there are no revotes in our parliamentary system. That is because each member has the responsibility to make their vote. It is a courtesy that no other member presupposes or anticipates or seeks to overturn the vote of another member.
I am bringing this outcome up—which we, of course, applauded—because we recall that Madame Gaudreau voted in support of negating a motion, not just once but actually twice in the last session, that aimed to open up an investigation of the “Trudeau II Report”. Madame Gaudreau voted, along with Liberal members at that time, to overturn that motion.
So this is not something that is never seen or untoward. I think we are able to accept—in fact, I am glad to see that this committee, through you, Chair, has accepted—the results of that vote, as rightfully we should. But now we see an amendment that is essentially bringing back the same motion that we defeated in committee last week.
This makes no sense whatsoever. This is a backdoor way to continue the review of the WE Charity matter even though this was already decided.
Mr. Chair, I don't have to remind you that the information being requested in this motion goes back not only to well before the time frame of the WE Charity matter, but well beyond the Prime Minister's time in government. It goes back to 2008 when he was first elected as an MP.
We have spoken to the fact that we do not see the relevance of going back to a time when, yes, the Prime Minister was a member of Parliament, as all of us here are, but he was not a public office holder. He was not a member of the executive. I fail to see the relevance of this type of request. When I look at the amendment that Madame Gaudreau brought forward, I would say that I can at least understand the original intention of studying the regime that we have for conflict of interest, because, as we have said in earlier meetings, this is an evolving area of practice. This is the managing or review or.... A regime and a code of conduct and legislation governing conflict of interest rules, not only in the workplace but also in public work places such as Parliament, 20 or 30 years ago simply did not exist. It is always important and reasonable to want to study how we can improve that regime, and I would support Madame Gaudreau on that element.
It is the scope of this motion that is rather bizarre, because on the one hand we're examining procedures that are in place to prevent conflicts of interest as they relate to the Office of the Prime Minister—and that seems like a legitimate course of action—but then we also have provisions that have no relevance to the stated topic of discussion. At minimum, I would challenge the relevance of establishing that we may want to look at a topic as part of this study being part of the terms of reference of this study. Why are no other matters that could serve as examples or as important areas to look at being given the same honour?
Mr. Chair, I regret to say this. However, since Ms. Gaudreau is reintroducing the gist of a motion that we defeated last week and the other opposition members of this committee agree with her doing so, this strikes me as a fishing expedition. It's a way of going through documents and hoping to find, even if it's almost nothing, a reference or a connection of some kind. Once again, we're talking about the privacy of individuals.
We can rightly look at conflicts of interest involving people who sit in government. However, in this case, we're looking at documents from a firm whose clients are people who give speeches, as we do as members of Parliament.
I'm often asked to speak somewhere. Afterwards, a committee of my peers could investigate my activities, even for years. No one here thinks that this is a good idea. In terms of the speeches that the Prime Minister has already given—as soon as he became the leader of the Liberal Party, he made a list of his engagements—it's really hard to believe that no one has had any issues with the list since that time.
We don't understand why this crusade is being waged. Why is the opposition so fixated on the idea that the Prime Minister was asked, even when he was a member of Parliament, to speak to organizations and citizen groups? There's something really strange about this fixation.
The fact that this involves his spouse is highly questionable. For over seven years, this list of speaking engagements has been public, and no one has said anything about it. However, now people like to talk about the private affairs of the Trudeau family. This issue is becoming more significant than the issues that are critical to Canadians right now.
This is unacceptable. We could easily look at other topics that are even more relevant to Canadians. I know that some of my colleagues, including Mr. Angus and Ms. Gaudreau, want to move other motions for consideration by the committee.
Ms. Grégoire Trudeau took all the necessary steps. She knows that she's under scrutiny as the spouse of the Prime Minister of Canada. When she had the opportunity to speak about mental health and empowerment, she approached the Ethics Commissioner, Mr. Dion, for advice. He told her that it was fine and that she could work with WE and get her expenses reimbursed. There was nothing secret about it. All these steps and actions were public.
It's unbelievable. The commissioner is being asked to rule on unfounded allegations, as I said earlier with regard to Ms. Telford and Mr. Silver. However, in the cases of Ms. Telford and Ms. Grégoire Trudeau, the proper steps were taken. If the committee thinks that there's an issue concerning these steps, the committee can study the issue and see whether there should be more or fewer steps. I don't know whether we're calling the work into question, but we will once we've studied several cases. I know that other cases involve different members of Parliament. Maybe we can learn from this.
I was very pleased when the committee finally gave up the idea of investigating Ms. Trudeau, Mr. Trudeau's mother and Mr. Alexandre Trudeau. We didn't make this decision right away, did we? We started this discussion at the beginning of the first session of this Parliament, and the discussion went on for hours. That's really the way to get all the questions out of the way.
Granted, things have evolved somewhat. We see in the United States, with Congress, that individuals are being investigated. This isn't part of our traditions, and I'm very happy about that. I think that the parliamentarians agree—I've already heard Mr. Angus speak about this topic—that our committee's role doesn't include investigating the personal lives of distant family members.