Evidence of meeting #46 for Finance in the 43rd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was chair.
A video is available from Parliament.
NDP
Peter Julian NDP New Westminster—Burnaby, BC
Yes. Mr. Sorbara obviously doesn't want the committee to vote on this, but he is not speaking to the motion at all. As a result of that, I question the relevance.
Mr. Chair, it's a very simple matter. If Mr. Sorbara doesn't believe that the Prime Minister could answer questions for three hours, he should put that forward. He should speak to the motion.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Wayne Easter
Yes, we'll go to relevance, Mr. Sorbara. Could you stay close to the topic at hand?
Go ahead.
Liberal
Francesco Sorbara Liberal Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON
With pleasure, Mr. Chair.
Thank you for your intervention, MP Julian. I find your comments to always be insightful and judicious. Thank you for that.
My concern about three hours is along the lines.... We heard testimony yesterday, and we heard questioning yesterday. We heard every question. We even touched upon the issue of mental health and how an individual's mother was dragged through the mud yesterday. To be blunt, that was, to me, quite sickening. To be blunt, I was disappointed in that.
For the opposition, Mr. Poilievre, to state that he wants to bring the Prime Minister in for three hours instead of the allotted hour, I was wondering where we were going with that. I have been thinking about the testimony we heard yesterday and some of the questions that were asked, and frankly, as I said, in the last two hours of those four hours of testimony, I didn't hear any original questions from the opposition members. That was disappointing.
Even with regard to the structure of the WE Charity, which is under review and they are doing their own self-analysis and we know that.... We know that they were provided with advice by in-house lawyers or other representatives in order to structure themselves to run this program for liability purposes, and we know that is a very common practice for organizations, yet some of us ignored or wanted to close our ears to understanding that.
I am going to let WE and the Kielburgers speak for themselves—and they have for four hours, and can continue to do so. However, at the same time, I want to make sure that if we are going to bring in any witness for four hours or three hours or an hour, the time will be spent wisely, that diligent questions will be asked...and not the ones I want, because I may not agree with my opposition members or my government members on the questions I want to hear. I may want to hear other questions. For me, it's important to know that they're relevant—and we've spoken to the motion of relevance, Chair—that when the Prime Minister arrives on Thursday and answers questions on this relationship....
Because this is only one program from a plethora of programs we have brought forward as a government that are benefiting Canadians.
Liberal
Francesco Sorbara Liberal Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON
Mr. Chair, I will stop there.
I'll yield the floor to my honourable colleague, MP Dzerowicz. I think she is next on the list.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Wayne Easter
I do have Ms. Dzerowicz next on the list, but I would prefer it if we could rotate between parties.
Is it okay for me to allow Ms. May in, and then Ms. Dzerowicz?
Green
Elizabeth May Green Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC
I'm going to limit my comment to the matter of the procedure taken by a chair of a committee in a minority Parliament.
As a non-member of this committee, I'm extremely grateful to the latitude from you, Mr. Chair, but I recognize that all of my other colleagues, including Mr. Poilievre, whom I'm going to agree with and then upgrade in just a moment, are incredibly kind. I appreciate it.
I certainly can't lecture you, Mr. Chair, as I think you've been trying throughout this to be extremely balanced. However, I agree with Mr. Poilievre and Mr. Julian that you were having some difficulty yesterday in keeping partisanship out of this, and that's rare for you.
I want to remind Mr. Poilievre that way back in 2007, when he was parliamentary secretary to the President of the Treasury Board, his party put forward a handbook for committee chairs. It dealt with the difficult circumstances that a minority party in government faces in trying to control committee proceedings. It was a handbook that led Leon Benoit, then chair of the international trade committee, to adjourn a proceeding—and Peter Julian may remember this—and storm out of the room. He threw his pen down and said, “Adjourned”, leaving the majority of the members, who had just voted to proceed, in something of a quandary. The handbook was full of tricks like that.
I would ask my Conservative colleagues to bear in mind their own history, and I would ask all of us to be as non-partisan as possible, because the country is still in a pandemic.
I said I was going to limit myself, but I don't believe that we got great, helpful, forthcoming information from the witnesses yesterday. I appreciate Mr. Poilievre's efforts and Mr. Julian's efforts to get more information out. Canadians do want to get to the bottom of this, but I really hope that all members on all sides, regardless of partisanship, including the chair, can be way above the normal level of fairness, and that the gutter approach of the minority Parliament in 2007 is never approached again.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Wayne Easter
We'll now go to Ms. Dzerowicz, followed by Mr. Fragiskatos, unless there's a member of another party.
Ms. Dzerowicz.
Liberal
Julie Dzerowicz Liberal Davenport, ON
Mr. Chair, thank you so much.
I do not support this motion.
For me, it's an absolute honour to have our Prime Minister come before our committee. It is unprecedented that a prime minister comes before a committee, so if we are able to have him for one hour, I think that is sufficient.
I also think that if we have our chief of staff, Katie Telford, for one hour, it's an honour to have her with us tomorrow. I do not support this motion.
In fact, Mr. Chair, I keep rereading the official motion that we adopted—I believe it was at the beginning of July—and I believe we have done a great job. I think we've reached the conclusion of what we were asked to do in that motion.
To remind everyone, there were two key parts of that motion. It was to conduct a study in examining how much the government spent in awarding the $912-million, sole-source contract to WE Charity. That was the first part. The second part was how the outsourcing of the Canada student service grant to WE Charity proceeded as far as it did.
On the first part, we heard numerous times that there was no money that was misspent. Indeed, none was spent; no money was wasted. For any of the admin dollars they received, WE Charity is sending it all back. They've also indicated to us that WE Charity was not, in any way, to have profited from the Canada student service grant.
The other thing—and this is part of the awarding of the $912 million and the sole-source contract—is that it was not a sole-source contract. It's a complete fabrication and misinformation. It was a contribution agreement. It was a contribution agreement, because it was the best vehicle for us to be able to get this very important student program out the door as soon as possible. It had a lot of key deliverables and a lot of accountability.
The contribution agreement should not be seen by any Canadian as being a fast way of throwing money out the door without any oversight at all. That was not at all the case, and we heard that very clearly from Ian Shugart, the Clerk of the Privy Council. We heard that also from Rachel Wernick, who is the senior assistant deputy minister at the skills and employment branch. On that first part, the $912-million, sole-source contract, we have heard those elements time and time again.
The last thing I'd mention that keeps being thrown around—and I think my colleague Mr. Sorbara also spoke to this—is that it's a $1-billion contract that was given to WE Charity. That's not at all the case. We heard, and we have evidence in our hands that has been formally submitted, and also under oath confirmed by the Kielburgers yesterday, that it's really a $543-million contribution agreement. Up to $500 million would actually go to students, depending on how many students participated in the program, and up to $43.5 million to WE, again only to cover the costs of delivering this program.
I want to say that time and time again we have satisfied that first part of the original motion we passed at the beginning of July.
In terms of the second part, how the outsourcing of the Canada student service grant to WE Charity proceeded as far as it did, the implication behind this motion was that it was the Prime Minister or one of our other ministers who somehow directed the public service to select WE Charity.
With all of the testimony that has come before us—and again, it included, under oath, the Kielburgers yesterday—we have heard zero evidence that this is the case. We have heard from the Clerk of the Privy Council, Ian Shugart. We have heard from—
Liberal
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Wayne Easter
Sorry, Peter, I was muted. I was yelling at you to make your point of order. My apologies.
NDP
Peter Julian NDP New Westminster—Burnaby, BC
You don't need to yell at me, Mr. Chair; a whisper is fine.
I question Ms. Dzerowicz's relevance on this.
Again, we have a motion that we're discussing. I think this is an important one. It's very timely. It's for tomorrow. We've seen the case advocated for the three hours, and I gather that.... It is true that Liberal members were repeating themselves, but I think they need to be better prepared tomorrow.
As far as opposition members are concerned, we did not get our questions out in four hours. If we could speak to the motion, that's the relevance that I think is important, so that we can get to the vote on this.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Wayne Easter
Mr. Julian, I think you're going beyond the point of order a little as well, but that's fine; I understand. Partly tied into this, I would think, is the original motion on what we are meeting on, is it not? I guess that's what I'm having a little difficulty with, as chair, on relevance, because the original motion passed on July 6. This ties into that, as an extension of that motion. Maybe I'm wrong; I'm certainly willing to be corrected.
I'll go back to Ms. Dzerowicz and ask her to stay on topic, if she can—she'd better—and then I'll go to Mr. Fortin and Mr. Fragiskatos.
Conservative
Conservative
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Carleton, ON
I want to confirm that this meeting cannot be ended without a majority vote of the committee. Your clerk has confirmed that with my office, and I have a written memo from my staff who spoke to your clerk. We had a very strange episode the last time we held one of these planning meetings, where you suddenly demanded unanimous consent for the meeting to go on and when one Liberal decided that she didn't want the meeting to happen you slammed your gavel and flipped the switch on Zoom and the lights went out. I want to make sure that we don't suddenly pass some imaginary threshold whereby all of a sudden a single Liberal MP has the power to shut down the meeting, because that would again be contrary to the rules.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Wayne Easter
I'm still trying to determine that rule, Mr. Poilievre. I know any time when bells ring we need unanimous consent, but I have been communicating with the clerk and we do have an additional problem today: I didn't realize the meeting is scheduled from six o'clock to seven o'clock and we are operating....
Maybe I could ask the clerk to explain the conversation we had over email while this meeting is going on. Could you, Mr. Clerk? Relative to...we are in a different.... With Zoom meetings, the times are organized by the whips and the times are fairly specific. Mr. Clerk, if you could give us your opinion on this, we'll go from there. I don't tend to adjourn a meeting on the basis of one objection from a member...because we're uncertain on that at the moment, I'll give you that.
I see Mr. McLeod's hand up.
Mr. Clerk, go ahead.
The Clerk of the Committee Mr. Leif-Erik Aune
Thank you.
I took note of Mr. Poilievre's points, and I think the distinction here is that the proceedings in the virtual meeting environment, particularly Zoom, require an additional and quite extensive amount of technical support that has come up long after the rules, which Mr. Poilievre pointed to, were established. Of course, all members who have experienced committee proceedings before the pandemic know that the usual practice is for the chair to perceive general agreement around the table when it's time to adjourn a meeting, and that usually occurs at the anticipated scheduled hour of adjournment.
Ordinarily, committees should continue sitting if the members wish to, but the proceedings under a Zoom environment, the virtual meeting environment, are different. As a result, the House has organized, particularly through the offices of all the whips, to set a schedule for committees to meet, to ensure that each committee has the necessary interpretation and multimedia support to provide the service in this new virtual environment. To ensure that those services are available, the whips have agreed to a strict, set schedule when committees can meet, and if committees wish to continue meeting virtually outside of those times, they should request and obtain approval from the whips so that administrative support can be made available. It's not to contest Mr. Poilievre's point that the committee has a right to meet, procedurally, but from a technical and an administrative perspective, the whips have agreed to collaboration to make sure that committees can meet and receive the services they've come to expect.
It's an administrative and a technical explanation—
Conservative