Information & Ethics Committee on Nov. 7th, 2024

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

I call the meeting to order.

Mr. Barrett, I see you, but first I have Ms. Khalid on a point of order.

Go ahead.

[Iqra Khalid, Liberal, Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON]

I would like to seek clarification from you on two things.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

What's number one?

[Iqra Khalid, Liberal, Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON]

It's with respect to a status update on Twitter documents at some point in today's meeting.

It's also with respect to how you decide who gets recognized at this committee. I had my hand raised on multiple occasions, and I know I was the first person to raise my hand meeting after meeting after meeting, yet you didn't recognize me.

I'm just wondering if we can count on your non-partisanship as the chair of this committee.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Yes, you can.

[Iqra Khalid, Liberal, Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON]

I'm not done talking, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

You can, Ms. Khalid. I recognized Mr. Barrett to start, because his hand was up.

[Iqra Khalid, Liberal, Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON]

No.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

It was up as soon as the gavel dropped. You can challenge me if you like. Challenge me.

[Iqra Khalid, Liberal, Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON]

That's absolutely fine, but I would like an update on why we have committee business today, when we have so many motions we have to go through and so many issues we need to get through. We're having another committee business meeting today, which doesn't help us understand....

We haven't seen any work plans from you. We haven't seen any witness lists from you. We haven't seen how we are going to conduct ourselves with respect to all of these motions. I don't understand why we have a committee meeting today.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

I was going to update the committee before your point of order.

[Iqra Khalid, Liberal, Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON]

No, Chair. You clearly passed the floor to Mr. Barrett—

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

I saw his hand up.

[Iqra Khalid, Liberal, Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON]

—which is your right, absolutely. You see only that side of the floor. That's great. Good for you.

I would like to know exactly what we're doing here. If we're having a committee business meeting, I would like to know from you what the committee's business is. There are all of these motions we've passed and all of these witnesses we've submitted for all of these various studies, yet we have no idea what we're doing, except for calling motion after motion and referring only to Mr. Barrett. Mr. Barrett might as well be—

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Do you want me to answer the question?

[Iqra Khalid, Liberal, Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON]

Mr. Barrett might as well be the chair of this committee.

Go ahead.

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

Is that a nomination?

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

The committee business was to update the committee on where we are with the witnesses. We had some challenges based on the fact that the motion on the CRA was passed last Tuesday.

As it stands right now, I want to update the committee that on the 19th, we have the Privacy Commissioner scheduled. We have H&R Block. We just couldn't get anybody scheduled for today. H&R Block is also scheduled. For the 21st, we're still waiting to hear from the minister. The request has been made to have the minister appear before the committee, and then we're going to have the commissioner of the CRA. The challenge is that some of the commissioners are out of the country. We've been able to schedule those for the week of the 19th, which is when we get back.

I have Mr. Barrett, followed by Mr. Villemure.

Go ahead, Mr. Barrett, please. You have the floor.

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

Chair, I'm going to move a motion. I move:

With regard to Minister Randy Boissonnault’s involvement in Global Health Imports and the firm's contracts with the Government of Canada, the committee call the following witnesses:

Shawna Parker and Felix Papineau of Global Health Imports

Minister Randy Boissonnault

Malvina Ghaoui.

I've sent that to the clerk in both official languages, Chair, and I'd like to speak to the motion.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

The motion is in order.

Madam Clerk, have you shared that motion with members of the committee?

It will be coming around in a second.

Mr. Barrett, you said you'd like to speak to the motion. Go ahead, sir.

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

Chair, it's a bit like Groundhog Day when it comes to this scandal with Randy Boissonnault. It continues to both get headlines and concern Canadians when it comes to our obligations and our mandate under the Conflict of Interest Act and the obligations of that minister to abide by it.

We've had appearances at this committee of the minister and his business partners, and the minister claimed he was not the person in question. It was another Randy. It wasn't him. Now, we have new WhatsApp messages from Stephen Anderson, from 2022. One says, “I just updated Felix and Randy.” We have another, which says, “I won't tell Shawna and Felix and Randy yet.”

Now, Mr. Anderson, the 50% business partner with Justin Trudeau's minister from Edmonton, Randy Boissonnault, claimed it was an autocorrect.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

It was nine times.

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

It was nine times. However, we now have more messages, so it would have to be more than nine times. In none of those nine instances, nor in the new documents, does anyone ask who they mean, because they're not familiar with that name. No one questions whether it's a typo or whether it's someone else. No, they say it's Randy. Now, Randy has said that he's not the Randy in question, but we also have confirmation that there was no other Randy who worked at this firm.

We later learned, after the Liberal minister from Edmonton said he couldn't have communicated with his business partner Stephen Anderson on the dates in question, because he was at a Liberal cabinet retreat in a room impenetrable by electronic communications, and his phone was locked in a box and buried under the building, that he did actually exchange text messages and did have a phone call with his business partner, Stephen Anderson. It's another example of where we see that the Liberal minister is not being truthful. We also know that while he was a 50% owner of the company, they won a contract with the Government of Canada while he was sitting around the cabinet table.

Of course, none of these things are acceptable. What is of paramount importance, though, is that we had the issue with Mr. Anderson. This committee did vote by majority to send to the House that he had been in contempt and that he had prevaricated when he was here, and the Speaker ruled on that. Now we have an issue of a similar nature with respect to the minister.

Therefore, today, I'm not looking for the committee to take a decision on whether there's been contempt by the minister, but I do think we need information about this. While these text messages or WhatsApp messages add a new dimension to what this committee is dealing with, it comes down to whether the minister was honest when he testified at this committee.

There's a story in the National Post today that says, “Liberal minister's former business questioned over 'Indigenous' claims in government contract bids”. It's highly suspicious at best, but at worst, it's fraud. While that issue is one that perhaps we can discuss another day, it certainly speaks to the apparent dishonesty of the minister.

We can't have people come before parliamentary committees and do anything other than tell us the truth. They can't not answer the question, and they can't lie to us. Therefore, we need answers to that. It is incumbent on this committee.

We've heard, time and time again from members of the Liberal Party that the Ethics Commissioner looked at it and said that it was fine, but then he had to look at it again, because it turns out he wasn't given all the information. Then he had to look at it again, because he wasn't given all the information. I think that he's going to be surprised that he was, again, deprived of all the information. However, that's for the Ethics Commissioner to decide. He can take his decisions about what he would like to do.

This committee is solely responsible for whether we permit people to come before this committee and lie. We need to get answers, and it's important that the witnesses who are proposed in the motion also come to speak to this. We've seen, so far, that the co-owners of the company have demonstrated themselves not to be honest. We are not looking for Mr. Anderson to return. The committee has taken a decision with respect to his conduct before this committee and has referred it to the House, and the House will deal with it. We do need to speak to another parliamentarian, Mr. Anderson's business partner, Mr. Boissonnault, and we need to hear from these two folks who come up every single time the minister's name is mentioned, and they are Shawna and Felix.

No one at this committee should want to be made a fool of by people who are invited to come before us, but that's what's happening. We are being made fools of by these witnesses who have come before the committee.

It can't be allowed to stand that Randy Boissonnault can offer a different set of facts in answering the same question every time he comes before the committee. He needs to come here and tell us the truth. Then we can move on. Until we've finally gotten the truth, then this committee needs to undertake this study and get resolution.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Thank you, Mr. Barrett.

I have Mr. Genuis next, followed by Mrs. Shanahan and then Mr. Cooper.

Go ahead, Mr. Genuis.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Thank you very much, Chair.

I want to speak in support of this motion from Mr. Barrett to bring Liberal Minister Randy Boissonnault back to the ethics committee.

In particular, I want to speak to the issue of the claims made that his company—a company that he owned as minister, which was also seeking federal government contracts—was indigenous. Now, the government operations committee that I serve on as a regular member has been investigating this government's indigenous procurement scandal. We've been undertaking this investigation really at the request of and in response to concerns that have been raised by indigenous leaders themselves. Indigenous leaders have asked the Auditor General to look into the contracting scandal.

The basis of this scandal is basically that well-connected, non-indigenous elites have been able to take for themselves contracts that are supposed to go to indigenous people and indigenous businesses. It is cultural appropriation leading to financial misappropriation. It's people pretending to be indigenous or entering into shady joint ventures where most of the benefit and most of the action is happening on the non-indigenous side, to try to appropriate benefits through these kinds of arrangements away from indigenous communities and towards well-connected, non-indigenous insiders.

This is a problem that we have become aware of and that we've been investigating for a number of months. In fact, Chief Bernard from the AFN said that in their view, most of those contracts from the indigenous procurement set-aside are going to shell companies.

This is a huge problem. It's a problem that has been brought to Parliament by indigenous leaders themselves, and it's a problem that we have been trying to get to the bottom of. Meanwhile, Liberals have been saying that there's nothing to see here and that it's no big deal. They're trying to check the box and wanting to move on rather than actually get into the substance of the issue and really take seriously what we're hearing from indigenous leaders.

Then today we have this revelation that not only is it just well-connected, elite insiders taking advantage of this program, but it is the most well-connected, elite insider possible, a minister of the Crown. His own company has been trying to get contracts on the basis of a claim that the company is indigenous-owned.

Looking back at the record, Minister Boissonnault has made all kinds of contradictory claims regarding his identity in various places and in various publications. In the House today, in response to a question in question period, the Liberals admitted, in fact, that this business was never on the indigenous business list. The government is saying that this company wasn't on the indigenous business list, yet the minister's company was making the claim that it was indigenous on the basis of inconsistent claims about identity that the minister has made.

This is a very serious issue, because we can see the legacy of various things that have been done to indigenous people and the tragic rates of poverty. Therefore, there's urgency for fully including indigenous people in the economy and for supporting measures that advance economic development, yet we have measures announced by the government being taken advantage of by elite insiders, including a company that, in the course of trying to get these contracts, claimed to be fully indigenous-owned and was able to do business with the government to its advantage.

We very much need to get to the bottom of these claims and the involvement of Minister Boissonnault in this very serious Liberal indigenous procurement scandal, so I'm very supportive of the motion and look forward to his being brought back to testify before this committee.

Thank you.