Finance Committee on April 9th, 2019

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

I was asking a question.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

In any event, there was nothing on the floor.

There isn't agreement by the mover to do that, Pierre, so there's no way of doing it unless you can think of a way procedurally to do it. I certainly can't. If you can think of a way, Pierre, come forward with it.

Go ahead. The floor is yours.

[Pierre-Luc Dusseault, NDP, Sherbrooke, QC]

I tried to find a compromise, so I'm proposing to delete numbers 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10 and 11.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Pierre-Luc Dusseault, NDP, Sherbrooke, QC]

That's my amendment.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Okay. Your motion is to delete sections 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10 and 11.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

That seems fair.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Is that your motion?

The motion is on the floor.

Mr. Poilievre. This is on the motion to delete all sections except 2 and 7.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Yes, that's right.

I think this is a very reasonable motion. At the end of the day, it allows for study of the bill, and it allows us to hear from the minister. I have to say I'm not entirely satisfied with the outcome that this amendment would deliver because of course, once again, it puts the minister in a nice, warm, comfortable cocoon to protect him from the ravages of democracy. He would testify for only an hour and a half, in which he tends to burn easily a 15-minute hole at the very beginning, and then he takes prewritten softball questions from his government members for more than half of what remaining time exists. Finally, whenever things get difficult, the chair has a tendency to come to his rescue, almost as a bodyguard would rescue a client, so that leaves us a couple of minutes to actually ask him serious questions about his conduct and his legislation.

We now know the consequences of sheltering the minister from accountability. They include the adoption of legislation that has engulfed the government in scandal. I think, ironically, if members had been willing to hear legitimate criticisms about the deferred prosecution agreement, hived it off and sent it to Justice for a proper six- or seven-month study, they probably wouldn't have ended up in this mess in the first place. They probably would have spotted some of the dangers that later metastasized into the horrendous events of the last two months.

It's funny sometimes that politicians and governments think they are doing themselves favours by sheltering themselves from accountability, but the resulting impunity with which they act when they are without accountability gets them in more trouble than if they had just answered the tough questions up front.

So in a strange way, while it would have been uncomfortable for the minister to stay longer and answer more questions about his BIA last time, we might have saved him from himself and he might therefore have saved his boss from himself. But by preventing this committee from doing that accountability job, we gave the Prime Minister and the finance minister the liberty with which to cause themselves such enormous difficulty.

Why not just accept the member's amendment for now, and then we can discuss another amendment later that would bring the minister in for three hours, instead of one and a half, and require him to answer questions rather than give speeches while he is here? I think that would probably be a better approach.

I will see if any of my colleagues agree. I believe that Mr. Richards is on the list, as well as Mr. Deltell.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Mr. Richards is on for sure, and Mr. Deltell is now.

Mr. Richards, go ahead.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

I think I will actually be looking to move a subamendment, but I want to speak to the amendment first. Then I will maybe move that, and we can discuss it. I'm sure some of my other colleagues will want to chime in on the subamendment at that point. I will allow them that opportunity then, but I want to speak to this before I do that.

Listening to the arguments that others have made here, I certainly would say, first of all, that I can't help but agree. To look at an omnibus bill of this nature with the kinds of timelines that are being proposed here, with the hammer that's going to be put on top of the opportunity for debate.... Any time you limit opportunities for scrutiny, it's a concern. We've seen the outcomes of that limiting of scrutiny in the past.

For example, we could get into the last budget this government brought forward. They, of course, snuck in something there to try to help their buddies, their Liberal friends, and it has led to a giant scandal for this government and, obviously, a huge concern for Canadians all across this country. Those are the kinds of things that happen when you limit scrutiny and you limit the opportunity for something to be looked at in detail. When you limit the opportunity for debate, it results in problems, lack of accountability, maybe even mistakes in some cases.

We have already seen the type of error there was just in the math alone on this budget from this government. Fortunately, that has already been caught by one of our Conservative members.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Thank God.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

Mr. McCauley, who discovered it, is a very diligent member of Parliament. Those are the kinds of opportunities we need to give for there to be these things when there are errors. We've seen a multitude of them from this government over the last few years, so there's certainly lots of precedent to believe that there would be more errors and mistakes, and we need to have the opportunity to comb through things for those and to properly question and make sure there are accountability measures built into them.

The idea that Mr. Dusseault has suggested here, whereby there is an opportunity.... Obviously, I think everybody here would agree that there would be a desire to hear from and question departmental officials and, obviously, the Minister of Finance, for some of those very reasons and others, such as the idea that the minister should be here to be held accountable and to be transparent and open. We haven't necessarily seen that in the past, but it's certainly something we should expect.

The same goes, obviously, when we're looking at the details here. There are likely to be a lot of questions for officials on some of the omnibus things that are thrown into the budget.

I saw in this year's budget an example of something like that. There's a line item in the budget that directly affects my riding, and only my riding. There certainly are some questions by some in my riding as to why, in fact, it's being done the way it is. It shrinks the area of some of the ski hills in Banff. It seems like an odd thing to be in a budget, to say the least. Those are the kinds of things on which there needs to be an opportunity to ask questions. That's one example; there are many others like it.

That's why it's important that we do hear from officials, and that we have the opportunity to question them. That's why it is important to have the same opportunity with the finance minister. I guess, as a side note, I will say that at least, in this case, it is going to be the Minister of Finance and not a parliamentary secretary, as was offered the last time when it was supposed to be the minister who was to appear here.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

No offence intended.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

Not at all. The point is that this is not the person who is supposed to be here to be accountable. It's supposed to be the minister.

The bottom line is that the idea of taking those two out.... There were obviously efforts made by my colleague in the NDP to try to do that in some kind of co-operative way. It didn't seem as though the government was willing to co-operate in any kind of way to try to allow the opportunity to have more discussion about some of the other parts of this motion. He's made the decision to approach it in the way he has.

I will point out to members of the government that I guess there's nothing stopping them from bringing forward the other nine sections they have in here, if this amendment and the motion itself were to pass. There would be nothing stopping them, at least to my knowledge, from bringing forward the other nine sections and trying again. We can have a full debate at that point on the other nine, if that's what they choose to do.

I think they can expect a fairly full debate on it, because there seem to be some concerns. The point is that I can't imagine why anyone would say there's a problem with hearing from the people who are supposed to be here to answer for what's in there and to be held accountable by members of Parliament on behalf of the public of this country. I can't imagine why anyone would oppose something like this, so hopefully that will be what we see as a result here: that we can move forward with these couple of items and then figure out the rest of it from there.

To look at the idea of.... First of all, I would say that probably nobody here has had the opportunity to really fully look at the BIA, obviously, at this point. The briefing for members of Parliament and their staff is not even scheduled until tonight. Is that correct? The briefing will be held this evening, so to have a motion brought forward to give us a drop-dead date when the debate and the opportunity for consideration are going to be closed and hammered shut, before anyone has even had the opportunity to fully examine the contents and to be briefed on it, is beyond the pale, Mr. Chair. I think there are a lot of reasons why everyone would be concerned as a result of that.

Maybe what I'll do at this point is to move a subamendment. It's much in line with some of the comments that we heard from my friend and colleague Mr. Poilievre, but the subamendment I'll move is on section 7.

What it currently indicates is that “the Committee invite the Minister of Finance to appear on Bill C-97 on Wednesday, May 1, 2019, from 3:30 p.m. to 5:00 p.m., and that officials appear from 5:00 p.m. to 6:30 p.m., if necessary”. What I would suggest as a subamendment here would be to indicate that “the Committee invite the Minister of Finance to appear, along with officials, on Bill C-97 on Wednesday, May 1, 2019, from 3:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.” That's so both would be available to the entire committee for the whole three hours.

I think the least that can be expected with an omnibus bill of this nature is that the minister would come and appear for the full period of time and not leave officials here to do his dirty work for him for half of the time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Just to interrupt, Mr. Richards, you could move the subamendment to the original motion, but Mr. Dusseault's amendment is to delete all of those sections. We're not dealing with sections 2 and 7 at the moment, so your subamendment is disallowed.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

My understanding, Mr. Chair, is actually that we are.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

No, we're not.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

If my understanding of the amendment is correct, he was seeking to delete sections 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10 and 11, so sections 2 and 7 are actually the subjects—

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Yes, but sections 2 and 7 are not subjects of his amendment. They're just not subjects of his amendment. You can bring that in later. If this motion is successful, you can deal with this later. Sections 2 and 7 are not the subjects of his amendment, if I can put it that way.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

They are the objects of the amendment—

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

They're not. I'm ruling—

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

In fact, the two sections that he is indicating, Mr. Chair, are the whole point of the amendment, which is to make sure that we have the opportunity to debate and vote upon those two particular sections.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

At this point in time, I'm ruling your subamendment out of order.

If you want to challenge the chair, you can.