Information & Ethics Committee on Nov. 3rd, 2020

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

Colleagues, we'll begin our meeting now.

I have two people on the speakers list right now, Mr. Angus and Madam Shanahan.

Go ahead, Mr. Angus.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm looking forward to this meeting. We have spent much too long debating what we are going to debate as opposed to getting down to the work Canadians sent us here for.

In my region, there's an incredible amount of uncertainty with the second wave. People are looking to us at this time to show that we can make Parliament work and that we can rise above the partisan battles that, in other times, may seem perfectly okay, but right now we have an obligation to the Canadian people.

I've certainly tried to spent a lot of the last few weeks trying to see if we can broker some consensus to move forward. We all recognize that we had started a study on the pandemic spending that had gone awry with the WE project. That began in the summer. With the prorogation, we were unable to finish it, and we need to finish that.

We had a promise from the Prime Minister about a committee to look at pandemic spending issues, and that did not materialize, even though the Prime Minister committed to it, so it falls to our ethics committee to finish off some of these outstanding issues.

I brought forward a motion yesterday, and I was pleased to see the Liberals very supportive of it. The Liberals asked me to change some things in that motion, and I agreed. Why did I agree to change some things that I thought we should be discussing? It's that, if we are going to get where we need to be, we need to be willing to show some compromise here, so we moved off the issue of the judges. There are a lot of questions about whether or not partisan interests are being involved in the hiring of Canadian judges, but we set that aside.

I set aside the issue of Rob Silver, who's married to Katie Telford and was given the contract in terms of the rent review with small business. I think it's a serious issue in the context of the rent crisis we're seeing with small businesses that are still waiting and still calling for us, but I agreed to set that aside for the Liberals because they said that, technically, it had passed a review by the Ethics Commissioner, so we do not need to relitigate it. I have questions about that, but I think, okay, fair enough.

What we have before us now, I think, is a working plan that I'm hoping we can vote on, and then we can get to our witness list. Just to recap, we've agreed to the commitment to finish off the WE study. I don't know how many more witnesses we need. I know the Liberals had a lot of witnesses when the study happened. It's up to them how many witnesses they'd want to bring. I have some areas we need to focus on, because we need to get our report to Parliament so we can close this off. It just looks too strange to not have it finished.

I'm very glad the Liberals, Conservatives and Bloc agreed with my request to look into the issue of Palantir. I am very concerned about this company, this massive data surveillance corporation. I think it has some very dark links in the work it's done in Iraq, its ties to the CIA and the fact that this kind of data mining has raised serious questions about civil rights and privacy rights, which is naturally within our committee's ambit but belongs within the pandemic study because of the role of David MacNaughton, our former ambassador to the U.S. and also the former co-chair of the Trudeau campaign. He was not registered to lobby and has been found guilty of trying to get gigs for Palantir in the middle of the pandemic, all the way up to the Deputy Prime Minister's office. I think that's very concerning.

In a pandemic we need to tell Canadians that, of the massive amounts of money that will need to go out the door to help people through this, this money is always focused squarely on making sure that people get through it and that whoever gets the contracts for these gets them because of merit, and that's it. It's not because of political connections.

That brings us to the other thing the Liberals, Conservatives and Bloc agreed to, which is that we were going to look into the contract of former ethics committee member, Frank Baylis, a man whom I worked with for many years. I have a lot of respect for Frank Baylis, but there are questions about how that contract was awarded.

Those are fair questions to ask. That's not cheap partisan politics. We have to know that the contract was given without political favouritism to reassure Canadians, so we have that agreement.

The Bloc amended the motion with the support that the chair gave them in terms of the documents. My understanding, when I was reading the room last week, was that we were set to get those documents.

Therefore, I don't see any reason to delay any further at this point. I'm encouraging my colleagues to pass this motion, to get this pandemic spending study done. We need to tell Canadians we are watching how the spending is being done. We're looking at it in the Conflict of Interest Act. We're looking at lobbying.

I will certainly not be supporting a continual extension of these hearings. We have an agreement to hold the hearings. I'd like to get down to the witness list. We have other things that we need to work on. Certainly, some of my colleagues have expressed interest in working with me on the facial recognition study. That is important right now. I think we can do good work.

In the last Parliament, I think the ethics committee set a super standard in working across party lines to establish a number of standards for the protections of Canadian citizens. The work of that ethics committee was recognized globally. We were seen globally as leaders on privacy issues.

We have a standard to reach at our committee. That means we're all going to have to rise up, to give up something, and that we have to start getting down to work.

I'm asking my colleagues to move this along. Let's get this to a vote so we can start picking our witness list.

Thank you, Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

Thank you, Mr. Angus.

Currently I have Madame Shanahan, Mr. Sorbara and Mr. Dong on the speakers list.

Madam Shanahan.

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you for clarifying the list.

Apparently, some of the telephone lines are not working. Can we have a look at the phone line that the staff would use?

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

We're looking into it right now.

Do you want to continue your comments while we look at that, Madame Shanahan?

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

Yes, I'll continue.

I appreciate the words of Mr. Angus. He summarized, from his point of view, the procedures and the progress of this committee over the last little while.

I would like to talk about the motion before us now because, Chair, it's no longer the same motion we saw yesterday at the first part of this meeting, as amended by Mr. Fergus.

Mr. Chair, I'll continue in French.

I really thought that, after the failure of Mr. Barrett's motion last week, we would be able to keep moving forward and to address other issues that really matter to Canadians right now. My colleague Mr. Angus referred to a few topics, including facial recognition, which I think is a very serious issue. I'll talk more about this topic.

However, there were other very important topics as well. I know that my colleague Ms. Gaudreau tabled motions regarding digital identity and ways to use this technology. There was even a general motion. However, this motion falls primarily within the purview of our committee. The goal of the motion is to look at the work of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner and to see whether we can identify any shortcomings or add or recommend improvements to his work. We acknowledge the work done by the commissioner, especially recently.

I can refer to a few statements made by Commissioner Dion recently, in particular regarding Ms. Telford and her husband, Mr. Rob Silver. In the commissioner's view, the allegations were speculative and there were no facts to support the allegation of a conflict of interest violation. In the commissioner's view, the request made by Mr. Poilievre and Mr. Barrett from this committee didn't warrant an investigation.

However, I'm hearing today that my colleague Mr. Angus believes that there should be an investigation. Is there any reason to believe that there may be some deficiencies in the commissioner's work or a flaw in the Conflict of Interest Act that requires investigation? We could consider this. We were open to the idea, as Mr. Angus was saying, with regard to the motion that he moved yesterday with Mr. Fergus' amendments.

There's also the COVID Alert application. I must remind my colleagues that a pandemic is still ongoing and that it's still the main concern of Canadians who are tuning in right now. The Prime Minister announced that over $5 million people have downloaded the application. I want to point out that, in my own family, we received an alert and the individuals concerned were able to get tested. This means that it's working. I'm so pleased that Quebec decided to adopt the application. However, could the application be even more effective? Should there be more information to go along with—

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Sorry, I have a point of order.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

Yes, Mr. Angus, your point of order—

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

Mr. Chair—

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

I don't think we're discussing the app. It has nothing to do with the motion.

If the member is going to speak, she should be speaking to the motion, because we've had to give up time and other meetings to be here. Rather than waste our time, let's stick to the motion at hand.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

Thank you, Mr. Angus.

I have a history of giving our members lots of breadth, but it is important to try to stick to the topic at hand.

Madame Shanahan, please go ahead.

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

We're now considering the motion before us, to which an amendment was proposed. The amendment was defeated when it was voted on last week. Ms. Gaudreau says that she wants to study conflict of interest, but she wants to study only matters concerning the current Prime Minister and his spouse.

I wonder why the member, with whom I've already spoken both within and outside this committee, is saying this. She said that she wanted to study issues that are important to her constituents. Of course, I believe in her goodwill. However, this new amendment is an obvious attempt to study the WE case. She's trying to do this, even though the committee ruled on the issue.

I'll refer to the blues of the meeting on Monday, October 26. At the very end of the meeting, we discussed at length all the issues before us.

I'll read the part in question. Apparently, there was an attempt to change the facts contained in the blues. I'll change—

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

I have a point of order.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

We have a point of order from Madame Gaudreau.

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

I want an explanation of the difference between looking at an amended motion, which we then must vote on, and the amendment that we all voted on at our last meeting. It's a good question.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

It's another question of procedure, Madame Gaudreau. I think the speaker who has the floor has the option of speaking to a particular point in the motion rather than other points. I think that's what Madame Shanahan is trying to do.

Look, I'll let her proceed and make her point, because she is saying that she is going to cite the blues, so it would be germane to our meeting if she's citing the blues from a previous meeting. I'll let her go ahead. If I see that there's some digression, then I'm sure Madame Shanahan won't mind my interrupting her and getting her back on track.

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

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.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Chair, on a point of order, I don't want to be misrepresented on the record, but we agreed not to study the Trudeau family as a sign of good will. As soon as we agreed to that, Madame Shanahan just went and found another road block, so I think she needs to be correct. We decided not to continue the investigation into the Trudeau family as a sign of good will, to try to get the Liberals to actually stop filibustering. Now she's misrepresenting history. I think, on the record, we need to be clear that she has found every possible means to obstruct and to filibuster, and to deny our getting to our work.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

Thank you, Mr. Angus.

Continue on, Madame Shanahan.

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

May I continue, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

Yes, certainly.

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

I want to apologize to my colleague Mr. Angus if I didn't accurately convey his point of view.

I was still very pleased that we were able to work together to keep some parts of the preliminary motions and reach an agreement on the motion moved yesterday by Mr. Angus, which was amended by Mr. Fergus. I think that we found a middle ground.

We can't always get everything that we want, and we fully understand this. That's how our parliamentary system works, especially with a minority government. I'm just a private member of Parliament. This isn't my profession, but I'm honoured to serve after a career in other fields, such as co-operatives, where we have a different way of working.

We were very happy to be making progress on Mr. Angus' motion, as amended by my colleague Mr. Fergus. However, we suddenly took a step backwards. You wanted to put back on the agenda the contents of a motion that this committee defeated the week before. I don't see how this could be positive for our committee.

In addition, we'll be bringing in representatives from Speakers' Spotlight to talk about the documents. Once again, Mr. Chair, I find this unfortunate. Some opposition members appear fixated on all the details of the Trudeau family's activities and affairs. They want to ask questions that are completely irrelevant and that don't in any way help us make progress on committee business.

I think that the Prime Minister has been open and transparent, and so has Ms. Grégoire Trudeau. The goal of a good conflict of interest regime is prevention, isn't it? It's about shedding light on the actions and activities of public office holders. In my opinion, Ms. Gaudreau's amendment just sets us back. The amendment has no purpose. Since the information requested has already been released to the public, it isn't necessary.

We can work very effectively and conduct a proper study based on Mr. Angus' motion, as amended by Mr. Fergus. At the same time, we can discuss issues that are important to Canadians, such as the fact that private companies are collecting information and biometric data from individuals. I think that we should start looking at this issue. It's really time to get back to work.

I'll end on that note, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

Thank you very much, Madame Shanahan.

I'll now go over the speakers list. It's Mr. Sorbara, Mr. Dong, Madame Gaudreau, Mr. Warkentin and Mr. Angus.

Mr. Sorbara.

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, everyone.

It's great to see everyone today and get back to work, as always, during this sitting week before Remembrance Week. Remembrance Day happens next week, and I guess many of us are actually back in our ridings.

I just want to take a little walk down memory lane of where we're at. I was just going over MP Angus' motion that I have, dated October 22, where he put forward a motion. I wish to read it because I want to make sure I'm on the same page here. It reads:

That, pursuant to Standing Order 108(3)(h), this Committee undertake a study into issues of conflict of interest and the Lobbying Act in relation to pandemic spending; that this study continue our work relating to the Canada Student Service Grant, including this committee’s work to review the safeguards to prevent conflicts of interest in federal government expenditures; government spending, WE Charity and the Canada Student Service Grant; and the administration of the Canada Student Service Grant and WE Charity; and, that this study include:

At that time, Mr. Angus' motion stated that we should include four components, as follow:

(a) an examination into MCAP and Rob Silver’s involvement with the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy and the Canada...Commercial Rent Assistance program; (b) the consideration of all aspects of the government’s involvement with Baylis Medical Company Inc., as well as former Liberal Member of Parliament Frank Baylis, including the awarding of a procurement contract for medical devices; (c) an examination into Palantir Canada’s relationship with the government including the breach of the Conflict of Interest Act by its president and former Canadian ambassador to the U.S. David MacNaughton; [and] (d) an examination of the use of partisan resources and processes in the appointment of federal judges that may have constituted violations of the privacy rights of nominees; and that the Committee, report its findings to the House with recommendations to better permit the Government to conduct the business of government with public confidence in its integrity.

We started off with that motion. Mr. Chair, I will say this. I think the will of the committee is the will when the committee decides to undertake a study on a motion that's proposed. The committee's will will obviously be heard when it reaches that point.

I know there are a number of motions that MPs have put forward, and I think some are very relevant to our constituents and Canadian citizens with respect to privacy rights, the COVID-19 app, facial recognition and how it impacts marginalized communities and so forth. There are just so many things this committee should be doing.

However, right now we're focused on the matters at hand.

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair.