Evidence of meeting #41 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 request.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Brassard
Perfect.
That deals with the subamendment. Are we on the subamendment or the amendment?
The Clerk
That's the subamendment. We should probably go to a vote with respect to the House motion, unless there's agreement from everybody to adopt it.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Brassard
If there's no further debate, we'll go to a vote on this.
(Subamendment agreed to: yeas 10; nays 0 [See Minutes of Proceedings])
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Brassard
Thank you.
The subamendment carries. That leaves us with the amendment. Let me clarify it with the clerk.
We dealt with the subamendment, which changed what the amendment was. We're on Mr. Fergus's amendment. Is there any further discussion on that, or can we go to a vote?
Liberal
Iqra Khalid Liberal Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON
Chair, can you read out what it looks like in its present form, please?
The Clerk
It will be, “That, further to the commitments made by the testimony of October 17, 2022 on the Use of Public Funds related to the Roxham Road Crossing, the Committee requires to receive:”, and we have agreed that if we add notes to items 1, 2 and 3, we are going to strike the part after “receive”.
Then it will be “...the Committee requires to receive, 1) The Report on the use of the Hotel Saint-Bernard (Mr. Guay and CBSA and/or PSPC); 2) The justification(s) for invoking the “national security exception” for each of the leases and contracts (PSPC); 3) The agreements reached between the federal government and Pierre Guay in the context of the crisis at Roxham Road (CBSA and IRCC); that these documents be submitted, in both official languages, in an unredacted format, to the Clerk of the Committee no later than November 14, 2022.”
That is what the final motion would look like.
What you're going to be voting on right now is the part after “requires to receive”. Do you want to strike “from Mr. Pierre Guay” and so on, and then add the text between parentheses at points 1, 2 and 3?
Is that clear?
Conservative
Bloc
René Villemure Bloc Trois-Rivières, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Until now, I was under the impression that under item (2), it was Public Services and Procurement Canada and the Canada Border Services Agency.
The department told us the other day that they acted on instructions from the agency, their client. If we don't include the Canada Border Services Agency, we risk being turned down.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Brassard
In the notes that I've taken on my sheet, it was SPAC or PSPC, and the border agency was included in number 3, not number 2. Am I correct in that?
The Clerk
Maybe the analyst can make sure, but my understanding is that SPAC in French is Services et approvisionnements Canada.
Committee Researcher
PSPC stands for Public Services and Procurement Canada.
Bloc
René Villemure Bloc Trois-Rivières, QC
Since we are discussing the details, PSPC acts on the instructions of its clients. In this case, that client is the Canada Border Services Agency.
If we don't include it in our request, the department will simply reply that it acted on the instruction of the agency, and we will be no further ahead, because it will be incomplete. It is the same as in point (3).
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Brassard
Thank you, Mr. Villemure. That's a fair point. If the committee is okay with that, I would propose that we include it.
Mr. Fergus, do you want to make an amendment on that?
Liberal
Greg Fergus Liberal Hull—Aylmer, QC
I was just going to ask, Mr. Chair, if we can do “and/or”. I want to get the information and move on.
Rather than doing “and”, so we have to wait for both, and then somebody's going to include one word and not include another, this “and/or” will get the information so that we can move on.
Bloc
René Villemure Bloc Trois-Rivières, QC
If we get the full information, I don't see any problem with it.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Brassard
Okay. We'll include “and/or” in that. We'll take that as an amendment.
We are voting on the amendment to the motion. Can we have a vote on that, please?
(Amendment agreed to: yeas 10; nays 0 [See Minutes of Proceedings])
The amendment passes, so now we're on the main motion as amended.
Is there any discussion on that? Seeing no discussion, either in the room or on Zoom, we'll move to a vote.
(Motion as amended agreed to: yeas 10; nays 0 [See Minutes of Proceedings])
Thank you, Madam Clerk.
The motion as amended passes.
As an update to the committee in terms of going forward—again, that's with the work plan—we have three witnesses confirmed for the continuation of the access to information and privacy study.
The other thing that I need to discuss is a draft report that's been completed—it hasn't been brought to the committee—on the RCMP device investigation tools. That's ready. It can be studied next week for two days, on Monday and Wednesday.
Of course, we have the constituency week after that, and then we'll have to determine what we're going to do on November 14 and November 16, but the plan this week is to continue with the study on the access to information and privacy system.
Are we all good? Okay. That's it.
Thank you so much, everyone. Thank you for your patience with a new chair.
The meeting is adjourned.