Evidence of meeting #126 for Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was chair.
A recording is available from Parliament.
September 17th, 2024 / 5:50 p.m.
Liberal
Liberal
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Brassard
It's coming.
I'm going to suspend for five minutes to give everybody a chance to have a look at the motion. We're going to come back to Mr. Cooper.
The meeting's suspended.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Brassard
Thank you for your patience. We are resuming the meeting.
Before we left, we had a motion that was put forward by Mr. Cooper and I have him speaking on it. It has been shared electronically and in paper form. We do have a copy if you don't have one yet.
Mr. Cooper, I will ask you to go first on your motion to expand the study that is currently under way. Go ahead.
Conservative
Michael Cooper Conservative St. Albert—Edmonton, AB
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
We have Justin Trudeau's Minister of Employment, Randy Boissonnault, who for months has been under an ethical cloud involving shady business dealings with his shady company, Global Health Imports, which is embroiled in allegations of ripping off clients. It's a company that has been ordered by Alberta courts to pay more than $8 million back to clients who were ripped off. It's a company that was involved in a shakedown, a half-million dollar fraudulent shakedown, of a client who had purchased PPE equipment. Someone named Randy was involved, based on text messages, in the shakedown and was involved in what may amount to wire fraud.
Now, Minister Boissonnault says he's not that Randy, yet for months no one can find Randy. According to Mr. Boissonnault, only a handful of people worked for Global Health Imports. If the Randy in the text messages involved in the shakedown is not Randy Boissonnault, then who's Randy? Where's Randy? We need to find out. It should be noted that we now have at least nine text messages in which Randy was named, including one text message that situated the Randy in the text messages in Vancouver, which just happened to be, I'm sure by coincidence, at the very same time Randy Boissonnault was in Vancouver as part of the Liberal cabinet retreat.
Why is that relevant in terms of Randy Boissonnault's involvement or potential involvement in this half-million dollar shakedown and potential wire fraud? To begin with, it's very concerning that Justin Trudeau has in his cabinet a minister who was involved in a shady company that has been ordered by Alberta courts to pay $8 million for ripping off clients. I think that ought to be a fireable offence. But if Minister Boissonnault was the Randy in the text messages, then Minister Boissonnault violated Canada's ethics laws. He violated the Conflict of Interest Act. The Conflict of Interest Act is very clear that ministers cannot be involved in the operations of a private company.
There's more. We have recently learned that this very same company that Randy Boissonnault up until last month had a 50% interest in entered into a contract with Elections Canada. This is in violation of subsection 13(2) of the Conflict of Interest Act, which says that no minister shall have an interest in a partnership or private corporation that has a contract with a federal department or agency “under which the partnership or corporation receives a benefit”.
The bottom line is that, after months, the ethical cloud over this minister continues. Every week there are more questions, more allegations, and we still don't know who Randy is and where Randy is. This motion I believe is timely to expand the scope of the study and to call in additional witnesses so that we can get answers for Canadians and we can hold this minister to account for his potential corruption.
Conservative
Liberal
Brenda Shanahan Liberal Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC
Thank you very much, Chair.
Chair, I do need to point out—I've been reviewing all of the materials and so on—that this motion has just been tabled-dropped on this committee. We're already running 30 minutes over time. It's the first time we are seeing it. There are many names in this motion that we are not familiar with. I understand, as you've mentioned it several times, that we do have Minister Boissonnault coming on Thursday. Members will have many questions, I'm sure.
With that, Mr. Chair, I move to adjourn the meeting.
Conservative
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Brassard
We have a motion to adjourn the meeting. It is non-debatable, so I am going to ask the clerk....
I suspect we don't have consensus on this.
Conservative
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Brassard
Okay. That was a little premonition on my part.
Madam Clerk, do you want to take the vote on the motion to adjourn?
The vote is a tie.
My vote is no, because we have time. We started late, so we can continue. My vote is no.
(Motion negatived: 6 nays; 5 yeas)
Liberal
Brenda Shanahan Liberal Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC
On a point of order, it's the practice in some committees that the person who was speaking before the vote continues to have the floor. Do I have the floor?
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Brassard
I haven't been notified of any other speakers. Go ahead, Mrs. Shanahan.
Then I have Ms. Khalid and Mr. Housefather.
Liberal
Brenda Shanahan Liberal Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC
Thank you, Chair.
It was in the interest of time that I kept my remarks very short, so I have to say, just from what I've heard about this study, because I believe this study was undertaken.... I am referring to the analyst's notes now, and maybe the analyst can help me out on that.
When did we begin the study on Minister Boissonnault?
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Brassard
We started it just before the summer recess. We've had two meetings on that, I believe. We had Minister Boissonnault and then we had Ms. Poon and Mr. Anderson appear before the committee. We've had two meetings up to this point. We have Minister Boissonnault coming on Thursday as well.
Liberal
Brenda Shanahan Liberal Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC
Okay, and the last meeting is the one referred to here as being on July 17.
Liberal
Brenda Shanahan Liberal Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC
All right, so this is an ongoing study. It's well on its way. The minister is coming on Thursday, I would think. It's a normal practice of the committee for members to prepare for such an appearance. The effect of this motion is to upend the work the committee is already doing, yet in no way would it prevent members from asking questions about what appear to me to be very random names.
I don't know if Mr. Cooper is going to provide us with background information on what is driving him. Aside from the litany of the best hits, maybe some informative information would be helpful to the other members who are here, because, of course, we all have a concern with anything having to do with a conflict of interest or ethics.
However, primarily, I would say...and I'll have to ask the analysts again.
Have we heard from the Commissioner of Conflict of Interest and Ethics on this issue? We have. We have heard from Mr. von Finckenstein? Again, this motion seems to have come out of nowhere. It's not something we've had a chance to discuss.
I don't know if the chair is open to doing another time out, but honestly, I am in no position to support this motion at this time. I wonder if there are other members who agree that there are many ways to address this issue. Dropping random motions on this committee doesn't seem to make any sense to me.
I'll leave it at that.
Conservative
Liberal
Iqra Khalid Liberal Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to our committee members for bringing forward this pre-emptive motion, I'll say.
I say that because we know that Minister Boissonnault, who is the Minister for Employment, Workforce Development and Official Languages, is coming to this committee on Thursday. I know that all of us have a lot of questions to ask the minister, including me and everybody here at this committee. We've been given the opportunity to do so, as is the right of this committee. I am very glad that the minister has been forthcoming to come forward and answer all of these questions.
I find this motion pre-emptive because perhaps it would make more sense if this was presented after the minister has come, given his testimony and answered all of the questions. This motion is pre-emptive and lists a lot of people I'm not familiar with. I'm not sure about my colleagues, but it's pre-emptive because it seems like it is a fishing expedition.
We have spent a lot of time and government and House resources trying to go down this rabbit hole with the Conservatives as they lead us down this path. In the interest of transparency and in the interest of upholding our ethics and the values of this committee, we on the Liberal side have gone along with it, but at what point, Chair, do we say, “Enough”? At what point is it safe to say, “There are no fish in this lake”?
What this motion really represents is an underlying continued aggression against our Ethics Commissioner, against our democratic values and what this institution, Parliament, represents.
I say that because I watched the mover of this motion in the industry committee yesterday being shut down, question after question after question, by the Ethics Commissioner. All of this was posed in the industry committee and put forward to the Ethics Commissioner, and the Ethics Commissioner outright said that there's no investigation here and that there has been no violation.
My understanding here is that, if you can't get it right in one committee, let's come to another one and try and try again until something gives. Unfortunately, Mr. Chair, what that ultimately ends up doing is wasting the resources of the House and wasting the resources of this committee.
As I have said today, as I have said for months and months and months, week after week, there are very important studies for us to start working on in this committee. They include misinformation and disinformation campaigns. They include the impact of social media on our young people and on Canadians at large. They include how the Lobbying Act impacts public officials or the people we have contact with and, as we discussed earlier today, issues of how to strengthen the regulations of our Ethics Commissioner and how he governs himself and his office.
There are ways for us to move forward. There are ways for us to conduct our business in an effective manner, business that matters to Canadians, business that has a direct impact in each and every household of Canadians, and this is not it.
We're talking about no less than four meetings, when you just finished telling this whole committee, Chair, that you couldn't spend the next three meetings talking about one of the biggest issues not just in Canada but across the world in all democratic states, which is disinformation campaigns. We just discussed how it is not appropriate for us to go and study this issue because of “timing”, yet I'm sitting here looking at this motion saying, “no less than four meetings”. Why?
Why are we spending all of this time when the Ethics Commissioner very clearly has told the opposition quite unabashedly in the industry committee and otherwise that there is no investigation? Why are we wasting House resources and time? Why are we trying to go on a fishing expedition while ignoring some of the most critical issues of our time? They include misinformation and disinformation. They include our democratic institutions and the perception and trust that we have within them.
Chair, this motion is pre-emptive as I've said. It has no place to be discussed today. If anything, I encourage Mr. Cooper to bring this forward after Minister Boissonnault has come to this committee to testify and has answered all of the questions that any of these members would have. Go from there.
Again, I come back to my original point. Why is this brought in today when we know that the minister is coming in on Thursday? If we are being genuine, then why not pose all of these questions to the minister and then whatever is left over you bring forward in a motion to say, “All right, these are the questions that I don't have answers to and I want answers to.” We've had answers from so many different committees, from so many different witnesses. Again, we'll refer to the industry committee yesterday, where Mr. Cooper got told off by the Ethics Commissioner who said something like “What are you doing, buddy, and why?”
It doesn't make sense to me. Again, I'm happy to go down their rabbit hole, but I don't want to do it pre-emptively. I think that we need some time to really question the minister, who is coming before us on Thursday, to ask our questions to our hearts' content and then to re-evaluate as to whether we are effectively using House resources, whether we are doing something that is going to benefit Canadians, or we are taking away from what Canadians can really benefit from, which is a study on misinformation and disinformation, which is a study on social media, which is a study on the Lobbying Act and perhaps the conflict of interest code, etc., to see how we can better reframe ourselves to build that public trust and to protect the public in these times of artificial intelligence, social media and a lack of privacy for individual Canadians as well.
We try our very best to ensure that there's transparency within our government institutions and public institutions, and we try to protect Canadians along the way.
l will say again that this motion is very pre-emptive. I think we should wait until the minister has testified before we revisit this motion, and go from there.
I'll park my comments there, Chair. Thank you.
Liberal
Anthony Housefather Liberal Mount Royal, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I agree with what Ms. Shanahan and Ms. Khalid have said, for a number of reasons.
From what I understand, the committee reported to the House of Commons on the issue involving Mr. Anderson. The real question is the following: Did Mr. Anderson lie to the committee? He clearly refused to say who the “Randy” in his text messages was. I think we should be putting our questions to Mr. Anderson, who should be sent before the House to provide answers. In my opinion, it would be good to consider that after having heard from Mr. Anderson.
What is alleged is that the company acted in a non‑ethical manner once Mr. Boissonnault left and was appointed minister. That may be true but, for the committee, the only issue of interest is whether Mr. Boissonnault was involved and whether he was there at the time.
I've seen the names. We're told that one of the people involved is an ethics professor who was quoted in a Global News article. However, he could not say whether Mr. Boissonnault was part of the company. I read all the Global News articles, and these names come up either in those articles or in the ones from Rebel News, if I've understood correctly. Nobody has relevant information that would tell us whether Mr. Boissonnault was involved. That is information that only Mr. Anderson and Mr. Boissonnault can give us. The latter has already testified before the committee and will be here on Thursday. Witnesses cannot give us this information. The only thing they can tell us is whether the company acted properly in terms of the contracts between these companies and Global Health Imports, or GHI. If someone worked in the GHI building, they would be able to tell us whether they had hired a certain person and how many people worked there. However, I don't think that any of the people here can tell us about the only thing that concerns the committee, and that is whether Mr. Boissonnault breached the ministers' code of ethics.
I don't think it's relevant to know whether the company acted appropriately with the other contractors. This is not an issue for the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics. Rather, it would be an issue for the civil courts and the police, among other entities. We are here to deal with the issue of Mr. Boissonnault. None of the proposed witnesses can tell us who “Randy” is or whether Mr. Boissonnault was involved during the period during which he has said he was not involved.
For my part, I find it a bit strange to put forward a list of the names in this article in Global News. I also find it a bit strange that we were not given notice of this motion so that other members of the committee could look at who these witnesses are. I was only able to do a very quick search on the matter.
Finally, I think that what's important is to get answers from Mr. Anderson. I must say that I completely agree with the fact that Mr. Anderson was not a very good witness. He did not keep his word before the committee and we should demand that he answer our questions.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Brassard
Thank you, Mr. Housefather.
Next up is Ms. Shanahan, followed by Mr. Fisher.
Go ahead, Ms. Shanahan.
