It's related to the origin of the entire Canada student service grant. That's really one of the essential mysteries of this entire saga—where did this strange and exotic program come from, given that we already have a Canada summer jobs program that could very easily have funded the creation of additional positions for students at charities and non-profits across the country? What on God's green earth would have compelled the government to completely duplicate that existing program and then farm it out to a third party that just happened to have paid the Prime Minister's family 300 grand and happened to have taken the finance minister on a $41,000 vacation?
The government continues to imply, without saying it, that it was the public service that came up with this idea. They imply it by saying that the final recommendation came from the public service. I have no doubt that the government is going to be able to produce some document somewhere that shows that after weeks and weeks of insisting by political staffers and ministers, somebody in the bureaucracy was forced to put their name on a so-called “recommendation” to create this strange program and direct it to this particular embattled organization. We need to know how this all came about and what conversations led to its genesis.
The reason I'm not circumscribing the kinds of communications to mention the Canada student service grant is that we've seen how Jesuitical the government can be. For example, we had the Minister of Diversity come before this committee and say that she did not discuss the Canada student service grant with WE at any point ever. We all left thinking that she had not been in contact with the group. Well, we learned a day or two later in a news report that she had spoken with the group and that she spoke with Mr. Kielburger directly, but they didn't talk about something that at that time was called the “Canada student service grant”. The words “Canada student service grant” were not used in that particular order, and therefore she thought, cleverly, that she could say she had never discussed that issue with them.
This grant experienced a very slow development of its branding, over many weeks. It is entirely possible that there will be all kinds of communications that led to its creation that don't mention the grant itself. It would not be appropriate simply to limit the committee's request to communications in which the program entitled “Canada student service grant” would be mentioned. Rather, it should be limited by time. I'm not interested in seeing every text message that Craig Kielburger has had with every minister going back a decade. At this critical period during which this program went from unthinkable to imagined to supported to named to funded to retroactively granted, that chronology needs to become known. That's why I put forward this motion to make it known.
Mr. Fraser is concerned that journalistic communications might get caught up in this. I would be prepared to say, “...that all government witnesses, including exempt staff”. That would deal with his concern. It would just be a friendly amendment, right after the word “all” and before the word “witnesses”, saying “that all government witnesses, including exempt staff, who have appeared or will appear release all written communications (texts...”, and so on and so forth.