Information & Ethics Committee on Nov. 26th, 2024

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

We have an amendment on the notice of motion that was put forward on Friday, November 22. It's basically a change of date.

There does seem to be a kind of musical chairs here or uncertainty with the date—

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Can I interrupt you for a second? You still have the floor.

Monsieur Lareau, I want to thank you for your appearance at committee today. It appears that we may end up debating this issue for a bit of time, so I'm going to dismiss you as a witness.

I want to thank you, sir, not only for your patience—I know that we tried this before—but also for being in front of the committee today.

Thank you, sir.

[Prof. André Lareau]

You're welcome.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

You provided valuable information. I appreciate that.

Go ahead, Mrs. Shanahan. You still have the floor.

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

I imagine that Mr. Lareau has already left us, but I wanted to say that his comments were very interesting. I did a lot of work in this field in another life, and he raised some very important points.

With regard to the motion we're debating, there appears to be a problem. Its purpose is to summon two witnesses, which is nothing new. However, my understanding is that the clerk has had trouble contacting people and the dates are a problem.

Having said that, I want to discuss the fact that we're proposing to retain the services of a skip tracer.

A skip tracer brings me back to my banking collection days, Chair. I wasn't even really sure that it was still a thing, because there are so many ways to find people online now and so on.

It seems bizarre, to say the least, that a parliamentary committee—which has the power, if it so desires, to invite people, reach out to people and, if need be, summon people—would be hiring the services of a private third party. I'm not sure we have the budget for that, Chair. I would like to see just what would be involved. At the very least, I would think that daily rates for these kinds of professionals would be around $500 a day.

It seems very bizarre to me that we would even be talking about this, but maybe it's a new thing that can go on social media. We'll have a skip tracer and we'll be doing a reality show or something like that. Maybe that's what we're going for. I don't know.

It's all quite bizarre. I think we can adopt a motion to that effect, if necessary, but we should normally start by inviting people to appear.

I don't think it's absolutely necessary to set dates. I'm really quite uncomfortable with the idea of hiring a third party to find these people when we have no budget for it. I can't agree on this motion as drafted and think other changes should be made.

I'd like someone on the team to explain the reasoning for this motion to me.

Mr. Chair, if the committees start hiring people to do these things, where does it all lead? We have highly qualified employees, and the committee has powers and privileges that it can normally use.

I'd like some changes to be made to this motion. I'm thinking about that.

I'd like you to put my name on the speakers list once again, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Thank you, Mrs. Shanahan.

Again, to reiterate what the motion says, it reads:

That the committee summon Felix Papineau and Shawna Parker to testify before this committee on December 10, 2024, provided that the chair and clerk be directed to retain, if necessary, the services of a skip tracer to assist with the service of the summonses.

This doesn't preclude our use of that service. We have, within our authority and the authority that's granted to us, the ability to hire services if we need to. As you know, the clerk has been having difficulty finding Felix and Shawna. Anyway, I'll leave it at that.

I have Mr. Fisher online. Go ahead, please.

[Darren Fisher, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I'm just curious. Maybe I could ask the clerk what efforts so far have been thwarted by these folks. Are we at the stage that we need to summons and talk about skip tracers, etc.? Are we sure that we have the right contact information for these folks?

Maybe you could just outline what attempts have been made. I have no interest in standing up for these folks. I just want to make sure that we....

Have we attempted to reach them several times, and they've refused? Are we certain that we have the right contact information for them? Those are just a couple of questions that I have.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Mr. Fisher, I can answer those questions, and if the clerk wants to weigh in on them, she can.

[Darren Fisher, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Thank you, Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

There have been many attempts to contact Felix, both by.... We don't have any contact information for Shawna. The emails for both Felix and Shawna are blocked. The original contact number that we had went to a voicemail that didn't identify the holder of the cellphone, but we were able to get another number at which messages were left, specifically with Felix.

At this point, there's been no response from either one of them, and certainly not from Shawna, because we don't have contact information for her. We were hoping that maybe if we did get a response back from Felix, it would lead us to Shawna, but right now neither of them is available in any way from a contact standpoint for us to get hold of them so that they can appear before this committee.

I don't know.... Madam Clerk, did I cover that?

[The Clerk]

That's it.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Okay.

[Darren Fisher, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

That's helpful detail, Mr. Chair. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Thank you, Mr. Fisher.

I have Mr. Housefather next. Mr. Green, I see your hand. You'll be after Ms. Khalid.

Go ahead, Mr. Housefather.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I actually have two things I wanted to speak to, but I have a question to follow up on what you and Mr. Fisher just discussed.

How did we get the email addresses that were used for finding Mr. Papineau? Has there been any attempt to search Facebook and Instagram and use other things, such as googling, to try to find them, or did we just rely on the emails and phone numbers that somebody provided?

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

For that, I'm going to go to you, Madam Clerk, because you've been front and centre in trying to contact them.

Go ahead.

[The Clerk]

At this point, in the communications that the committee received from Mr. Anderson, there were email addresses for his colleagues or people working for GHI. I did contact the emails, and our emails cannot be delivered. They appear to be blocked, because there's apparently an auto-forward to a different email address, and this email address is blocking, possibly, my communications from the House of Commons. All the contact information found on the public website by googling and in the information that we received from Mr. Anderson is leading to nothing.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Thank you very much, Madam Clerk.

Mr. Chair, just to ask a procedural question, can I amend the amendment put forward by Mr. Caputo to simply remove the date of December 10? Could I propose a subamendment? I think I can, but I just want to know that I can.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

The answer to that is yes. Of course, as you know, Mr. Housefather, I like working with dates and deadlines and not necessarily leaving it wide open, because it gives us some clear direction, but you can, if you want, leave it to the discretion of the chair. There's nothing to guarantee that we're even going to get them by that date.

[Frank Caputo, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

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

[Frank Caputo, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

I don't want to interrupt Mr. Housefather's train of thought, but my understanding is that in order for it to be a summons, that summons has to have a fixed date to it, so removing the date essentially—

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

That was the other point I was going to get to before your point of order. I do require a specific date if we are going to issue a summons.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

I guess my issue, Mr. Chair, is that I wouldn't want to see the date missed because we couldn't find them so that no summons could be issued and then have someone claim there's a privilege motion to be made because they didn't come on the date in the motion. I just wanted to understand. I'm fine.

What I was going to suggest, Mr. Chair, was that if the summons could be served, the chair would call them within seven days of being able to find them and delivering the summons. Again, if they're not found by December 10, I don't know what would happen, but I don't want to see another privilege motion going to the House because they didn't come when we couldn't summon them in the first place. They may not even be in Canada, and then we may have no authority to summon them.

I guess my logic, Mr. Chair, was that once they are found, I'm fine to have a date within seven days of the date that they're found. I just don't understand how we could include a date when we don't know if we'll find them.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

I would put the point back to you that if they are found on December 13, for example, and the House is not scheduled to sit beyond December 17, we can't possibly have it within seven days at that point unless we all agree to come back as a committee.