Evidence of meeting #8 for Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics in the 45th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was rules.
A video is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Brassard
Well, until this motion is disposed of or we run out of resources, it will be debated. I'm sorry that you have a meeting, but I would suggest you speak to your whip and maybe have somebody come in and fill in for you, sir.
Mr. Cooper, you still have the floor. Go ahead.
Conservative
Michael Cooper Conservative St. Albert—Sturgeon River, AB
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
We have the Prime Minister meeting in secret with representatives of companies with ties to Brookfield—global investment leaders like Bill Gates of Microsoft. Microsoft has an offshore agreement with Brookfield with respect to green power. Google has a large agreement with Brookfield on green energy. Of course, we know the Prime Minister coled efforts to raise tens of billions of dollars of capital for two of the largest green energy funds in the world, the global transition funds, for which he is entitled to carry interest pay, a.k.a bonus pay, with respect to the performance of those funds.
It's not good enough to provide the names. We need to know exactly what was discussed. Canadians deserve to know whether the Prime Minister, in any way, tried to advance Brookfield's interests, which would advance his personal interests. This motion is about transparency. It's about providing those answers. If the Prime Minister has nothing to hide, didn't advance his personal interests and acted fully ethically, the Prime Minister's Office should be very happy to provide those details, and Liberal MPs across the way should be voting for this motion with enthusiasm.
I'll wait to see what they do.
Conservative
Liberal
Linda Lapointe Liberal Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
The information covered by the motion has already been made public. It's been in the media, so there's no secret there. For that matter, Mr. Cooper already stated that it was made public. Indeed, he sent us his notice of motion last Wednesday.
However, I don't understand why he still wants to move his motion today. I don't understand why he's moving his motion again, even though everything was made public. Everything he wants to know is already in the media.
Liberal
Leslie Church Liberal Toronto—St. Paul's, ON
Well, if we are being honest with ourselves here, this motion is about grandstanding at this point. A motion to have more information about these super secret meetings that have already been disclosed, along with the people the Prime Minister met with—which is public knowledge and on the public record now—doesn't seem to be a particularly good use of the committee's time.
The one thing I would say to the members opposite proposing this is, actually, a word of thanks for explaining to all of us—and I'm sure to our audience at the committee—the extent of the Prime Minister's expertise in helping to build private sector investments and relations across the world with some of the strongest economic and corporate actors in global markets today. At a time when members opposite spend much of question period talking about the importance of investment in the Canadian economy, I think it's reassuring to see a government focused on trying to ensure that Canada remains top of mind for some of the world's largest investors and that they understand directly from a high office, like the Prime Minister's Office, the value of investing and contributing to growth in Canada.
Despite my views on this matter, I still think, for the sake of the committee's time, that these meetings have already been disclosed and that we have lists in front of us of the people the Prime Minister met with. It should be within the prerogative of this committee to focus on work that will advance our understanding of access to information and ethics, rather than the grandstanding we're seeing here.
Conservative
Liberal
Abdelhaq Sari Liberal Bourassa, QC
I think quite a few things have been covered by my honourable colleague Leslie Church.
I think the purpose of this committee is to provide a framework for ethics and access to information. On October 1, a request was made to require a certain amount of transparency from a specific person or public figure—namely, the Prime Minister. We got the information, which demonstrates our Prime Minister's transparency. Also—as MP Leslie Church put it so well—our Prime Minister is diversifying our economic capacity quite a lot. He is meeting with public figures to increase our investments in various sectors or in other countries.
Instead of recognizing the Prime Minister's exceptional work and efforts, he's now being asked to report on his meetings and show much greater transparency. Is it the role or the objective of this committee to ask people to tell us whether they had a coffee with such and such a person, to ask them if they took notes and to ask them to provide those notes? Is that really what we want to do?
I think that in doing so, we're wasting our time. What we want is not just to frame the current situation. We want to frame the situation on an ongoing basis in the short, medium and long term, so the work of members is as regulated as possible and so we don't get bogged down in discussions like the one we're having today.
I'm perfectly willing to stay here until midnight. I have no issue with that, as long as it's to discuss how we, as members of Parliament, can be better governed in terms of ethics and access to information.
When this kind of request is made at 6:30 p.m., what exactly does it show? Is that how we're going to function during this mandate? I don't think it will really be efficient and effective. It doesn't do anything for the taxpayers who are listening to us right now, and I think that's really unfortunate.
In closing, I would like to congratulate the Prime Minister once again on the work he has done. I congratulate him on the meetings he attended, because that answers all the questions asked during question period today. I congratulate him because he is working hard to ensure that we have a strong economy and a strong Canada.
There you have it, Mr. Chair. I'll stop there.
Bloc
Luc Thériault Bloc Montcalm, QC
Mr. Chair, I would like to commend Mr. Cooper for not moving his motion earlier. At times in the past, notices of motions given before our meetings were debated while witnesses were present, and we were unable to hear from those witnesses. Out of respect for today's witnesses, I think this was a good thing.
Now, there is a notice of motion that must have been distributed to the Liberals. That's fine, but it would have been nice if the Prime Minister's office, out of respect for this committee, had sent not only that information to journalists, but also everything that the motion or notice of motion requested from the committee. That would have been a sign of respect, because we are not playing politics. We are concerned with ethics here, and the reaction of my colleagues across the floor leads me to believe that their position is to defend their leader. I have nothing to do with that. That is not why I came here.
What I want is transparency, and especially more transparency in the unusual case we are currently dealing with. Everyone agreed that the current situation of the Prime Minister—who holds the highest office in Canadian government—was not anticipated when the Conflict of Interest Act was drafted. It was not even anticipated during the last revisions.
In this regard, if my colleagues are acting in good faith, they will not oppose greater transparency surrounding the work that is supposed to be done in the common interest by this Prime Minister.
That is why I will be voting in favour of the motion.
Conservative
Liberal
Gurbux Saini Liberal Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC
I am a new member, but I thought we were here to debate the ethics legislation. What I see happening here is that my colleagues on the other side have nothing more to do than attack our current Prime Minister, who was elected by Canadians knowing full well what he was doing, as compared to the Leader of the Opposition, who couldn't even hold his own seat.
It is a sad situation that we are just attacking one person. This is not the ethics committee's role. I'm sad that this is where we're heading.
Conservative
Conservative
Michael Barrett Conservative Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands—Rideau Lakes, ON
I'm sorry to interrupt the member opposite's dinner plans, but I think this is an important matter. We have, as Mr. Cooper articulated, a situation that's extraordinary.
We can go back several months to lay out the situation that Canadians are facing. I would hearken members back to one of the debates during the election, when the Prime Minister, the former chair of Brookfield Asset Management, which is a major shareholder in Westinghouse Nuclear, said from the debate stage that Westinghouse—by name—was the preferred option for a government that he would lead.
Why on earth would that have been the Prime Minister's choice? This, of course, is the same Prime Minister who, before there was any type of ethics screen in place, before disclosures were made to the public or before there were finalized reports to the commissioner, was sitting at the cabinet table in March. It's also the same Prime Minister who said that he, himself, wrote the Liberals' election platform. That's before any of these screens were being administered or were in place and, again, before the disclosures were made public. People are rightly concerned that this Prime Minister has not been acting in their best interests.
As for the list of companies or individuals that was disclosed, we don't know whether it's the full list, and it wasn't proactively disclosed. If I'm not mistaken, it was only released after media questions and after Mr. Cooper moved a motion at committee. This is a matter on which we're dragging—kicking and screaming—a prime minister.
Look, this isn't my first day. I've been here for a few years. It's been demonstrated that just the existence of the rules is not enough for Liberal ministers and prime ministers to follow them. Justin Trudeau was a serial ethical lawbreaker, time and again, as were ministers in his cabinet. Some ministers who broke ethics laws are still in the Liberal cabinet. You'll have to excuse us if we can't just say, “My goodness, this is unbelievable. The Conservatives are doing politics here and they're not taking the right honourable Prime Minister at his word.” We haven't been given any reason to. Unfortunately, we have to force a disclosure from the Prime Minister. Give us the information. Disclose the information so that we can get on with it.
I think it's unreasonable, at best, to simply say that this is not something we would ask for, because the only reason the information we have exists in the public forum is that we moved a motion at this committee. We can backslap and congratulate ourselves on what a great job everybody is doing instead of just addressing the matter at hand, but that's not providing accountability and transparency to Canadians in the context of a study that's about strengthening Canadians' confidence in elected officials and our public institutions.
I think everyone should see this. We hear the refrain from the government, very often, that they're a new government. Well, the only reason there's been a branding change is the conduct of the old government, but it's the same: The same people are still there, and we saw what happened before.
As some of our witnesses testified to today, the absence of meaningful penalties means that people treat this just like a speeding ticket, as if it's no problem; they're in a hurry, so they're going to move fast and break stuff. That's not the integrity Canadians expect from elected officials. That's exactly what undermines confidence in our public institutions.
Time and time again, as we saw in the last Parliament and over the last decade, in this very committee room we've had members opposite say, “This is just politics, and there's nothing to see here.” What did we find out? We found out that we were right. When we said there were what we believed to be contracting irregularities and that there was insider dealing on things like the $60-million arrive scam, that is exactly what we found. We were told, “Do not investigate this. You're calling into question the good work of honest public servants.” Nope. We were calling into question grifting done by people who were adding no value to products that Canadian taxpayers were paying for but could ill afford and that provided no real safety or service to them. We were told, “Don't ask questions. This is just politics that you're doing.”
The House passed motions to recuperate and recover that money because those were ill-gotten gains. We have a real opportunity here to actually refurbish the confidence that Canadians have in their public institutions and public office holders. That is something we're able to do. We're not going to be scared off by the mere suggestion that we should be delighted the Prime Minister ran for office. We're not going to simply accept that because he says it's so, it is. Trust has to be earned. If this was, in fact, a new government, we would not see ministers who broke the very law we are reviewing at this committee in the federal cabinet today. There hasn't been that kind of repair done to the reputation of the government.
We're going to demand accountability, especially in the context of the law we're reviewing. We saw, from the time that Mr. Carney started as an adviser to Mr. Trudeau, decisions being taken by the Liberal government that aligned directly with the investments and financial interests of Mr. Carney and the company he represented.
I think about decisions on heat pumps and Brookfield's investment in Trane. I think about mortgage rule changes. Brookfield is the owner of the second-largest private mortgage insurer, if I'm not mistaken. We saw what happened when Mr. Carney was in the U.K., with exactly the same kind of heat pump scheme being peddled by the government there in response to a request that benefited him. The heat pump hustle is a perfect example of why we can't just take him at his word.
This is about the integrity of the system we have, and I don't need to relitigate the issues of Mr. Trudeau, but Mr. Carney seems to be accumulating his own issues at such a speed that if we don't slow down and take a look at some of them.... Take, for example, this list not being furnished to this committee. He didn't send it to us, but he knew the motion had been passed. He has a really big staff. It was not furnished to this committee as evidence for our consideration or as a response to Mr. Cooper being proactive and being open.
This is an opportunity that they passed up, that Mr. Carney passed up. Why is that, if this isn't about politics and he's just focused on doing a great job?
Conservative
Conservative
Michael Barrett Conservative Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands—Rideau Lakes, ON
Unfortunately, it's impossible to believe because of the decisions he's made to this point. We're left to ask for the receipts. Show us who was there. We need to know.
Some of the questions we've examined today are about how we can improve on the act so we can know who knows what. When is the screen being triggered? What decisions has he recused himself from? We don't know. Again, we're left to take him at his word.
The question about tax havens today wasn't just conjured up out of thin air. It's because we know that Mr. Carney put together funds in his role as chair at Brookfield Asset Management that were in tax havens.
I can't believe this is someone who is altruistic and solely focused on what's in the best interests of Canada, when he thought, “What would be best for us is what's best for Bermuda. Let's headquarter this business down there above a bike shop and make sure we're not paying our fair share of taxes in Canada.” That doesn't sound like someone who has a good level of focus, so we have to press and we have to ask the tough questions.
It should be pretty up and down—a vote on something like this. You would think it could pass. Again, I've been here for a minute, and I've seen filibusters move from the back burner to the front burner. I can't sit here while we just cycle through speaker after speaker who just wants to say that everything is great and we should just let things slide and take him at his word.
I don't take him at his word. I would like to see the receipts, as we said. If this was a good-faith exercise from the Prime Minister's Office, they would have furnished them to the committee. They did not. We're asking for the rest of the information. It's not too much to ask. It's actually the least they can provide to Canadians.
If the conversation has to continue, we can continue it, but it's about improving the safeguards, improving the shields, so that Canadians can have confidence in elected officials and can have confidence in Parliament.
Liberal
Leslie Church Liberal Toronto—St. Paul's, ON
Mr. Chair, my colleague, the member opposite, talks a lot about trust in institutions, but I would argue to this committee that what we're actually witnessing is an undermining of the trust in our institutions. The law is an institution in this country. There is an ethics regime under the law. It exists. The Ethics Commissioner oversees this regime.
We've just spent two hours listening to witnesses who have talked to us about the strictures of the framework that exists and that has been in place for decades. When I hear the members opposite talk highly about maintaining trust in institutions and about their concern over how the ethics framework is applied, I think about this committee's role and a member's role usurping the function of the Ethics Commissioner.
We heard from Mr. Giorno, about half an hour ago, that the Ethics Commissioner very deliberately has insight into the disclosures of all members who are subject to the regime. Parliament, in creating the ethics framework, has ensured that disclosure exists and that disclosure goes to an Ethics Commissioner who is independent and, in fact, above the partisanship of Parliament—a partisanship that is appropriate in certain circumstances. When it comes to personal and private interests and when it comes to the financial situations of all members of Parliament, these are communicated to the Ethics Commissioner to ensure that the office has full knowledge of what the situation of members is. With that knowledge, the Ethics Commissioner sets up the rules, which public office holders are then bound to apply.
What I'm hearing from my colleague opposite is actually an undermining of that framework, because he suggests that it is this committee's role to ensure that members go above and beyond, that in some ways, they take under their own advisement what rules they should follow. It's not about the rules on the books, the rules delineated in the law and in the act, and the time frames that have been established by Parliament. Somehow members must go above and beyond. It is a strange time when Conservatives consider the best approach to be that parliamentarians go outside or above the law.
As a committee, we need to be focused on the review of the act before us. I think that's the main prerogative of this committee. We should direct our attention, if the laws are insufficient, to fixing and changing those laws, not to prosecuting individual cases against individual members of Parliament in this forum.
Liberal
Abdelhaq Sari Liberal Bourassa, QC
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I'd like to thank everyone who spoke.
I'm trying to understand what's happening right now. In my opinion, we're harming our institutions.
First, as for trust in members of the House of Commons, including those who sit on this committee, not to mention political parties—I want to stay away from partisanship—I would remind you that it is founded on the will of the people, which was expressed less than six months ago.
Second, some are ignoring what people came to tell us. I don't doubt that there are experienced people across the table, but those commissioners appeared before us to explain this committee's role and that of MPs, as well as our Prime Minister's current situation. They're saying that these people are wrong and that we have to go further because it's an odd situation. It's odd for me to witness such experienced members go off the rails like this and overstep the role we have as members of this committee.
We must first focus on producing a report related to the mandate we were given—and it is your role to ensure that, Mr. Chair. If we have piecemeal discussions, our report will not represent the experience and expertise we should have as members of this committee.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Brassard
Thank you, Mr. Sari.
There is nobody else on the list.
Do I have consensus on this, or do we need to go to a vote?
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Brassard
There is a tie, and the chair votes “yes”.
(Motion agreed to: yeas 5; nays 4 [See Minutes of Proceedings])
There is one more matter of business, and that is the budget.
Did everybody receive the information on the budgets for the briefing sessions with the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner and the Privacy Commissioner, and then for the review of the Conflict of Interest Act?
Are there any objections to the budgets? Do I have unanimous consent on the budgets?