I have a lot more to go through. I'm only discussing my sixth page out of 151, so I really want to get down to this.
As I was saying, the document that came from the PCO was titled “Increased Support for Canadian Youth and Students”. This goes into a lot of the details about money, including where the money came from, why it was important, why these programs were being developed, the Minister of Finance's ultimate decision, and all this stuff. None of it is blacked out. It is all right there. None of it is blacked out. Again, this would have been a great page that Mr. Poilievre could have waved around that had nothing blacked out on it.
If you go to the next page, now you have a full page. Just so everybody's with me—I know everyone's following along closely—I'm on page 106 right now. This page specifically has three programs on it. This is marked “Secret” and “Confidence of the Queen's Privy Council”. This one is obviously setting out details about programs that were used to compile the information. Two of the programs in here, the youth employment and skills development program and Canada student loans, were not relevant, so they were completely blacked out. They were not asked for in the motion, so they were completely blacked out. On the one that you do see in there, the reason it was important to provide this page was that a paragraph at the bottom specifically goes into the Canada emergency student benefit. This lists off everything with respect to the briefings and the eligibility for students and the extension to all post-secondary students, including those in college, whether part time or full time.
The point is that if we asked those officials to come here, which this motion is trying to do, they would have the opportunity to answer these questions. They'd say that they blacked out these large areas because they had stuff to do with other issues. They even left the titles in there so that at least you knew what they were blacking out. That's the irony here: They didn't even black out the titles. They left the titles in there so that you knew exactly what they were blacking out. You ended up with just this little paragraph at the bottom that was relevant to the motion.
Then you go to the next page of that same document. It continues on with two additional points as they relate to that particular program. Then it starts to go into other programs where again stuff is blacked out, but then you have another area that is germane to the motion. It goes on to talk about the CSSG program again and everything that was offered in that.
You'll see this happening over and over again. It might make for great theatre in terms of being able to wave around papers and say, “Hey, see everything that was blacked out?” I know that when the time comes for Mr. Poilievre to see what was actually blacked out there, he's going to have nothing. He's going to fall flat, because there is nothing there. My motive here, as I've stated before, is to make sure that those who did do this are not found to have breached privileges of Parliament because they did exactly what they were supposed to do. It's unfortunate that we can't let them come here to tell us this.
I'm now at the bottom of page 108, in section 69. You will see that it references the Canada student service grant again. It says:
In your announcement, you indicated that the grants in support of post secondary studies would be available for students helping to fight against COVID-19 this summer. You also announced that the grant value would be between $1,000 and $5,000, depending on the number of hours. The remaining details including eligibility criteria, scalability, specific amounts based on hours and delivery mechanism have yet to be determined.
Then, of course, on the next page—I know everyone's following along—there's that section that talks about the WE social entrepreneurship initiative. It goes into the details about that, about a $500 grant for a 10-week mentorship program. It finally comes to the PCO recommendation. The PCO's recommendation is all there, except for the one portion that is blacked out again, and it's clearly marked that it's not relevant.
You're getting the reason it's been blacked out. We keep coming back to this point of what could possibly be here.
I'm on page 111 of that submission. From the PCO release, it's pages 189 to 190. We're looking at an email between Rachel Wernick and Ms. Shannon from PCO. As the motion expressly stated, unrelated cabinet confidences were removed. They're unrelated. As well, Ms. Wernick's cellphone was removed. I don't know why Mr. Poilievre would want Ms. Wernick's cellphone number, but I think it's entirely her privilege to have that cellphone number distributed only to those who need it, nor do I think providing that phone number would be necessary or have any relevance to the issue at hand that this committee was looking for.
I think we can all agree that we wouldn't want that phone number to be out in public. However, the entire email and all the details about it, from Rachel to Tara and back and forth, it's all there, except for those details that are the missing phone numbers. It brings us back to the point about why we even need to have this information out there when it's completely irrelevant. People deserve to have that privacy.
Turning to page 191 now of the PCO release, we have another email between Ms. Wernick and Ms. Shannon. Again, only the cellphone number has been removed. This one is from May 7, 2020 at 3:14 in the afternoon. They discussed the intent of the policy and they go back and forth in multiple emails. All the email addresses are available. They're .gc.ca email addresses. Everything is available in there except where it says “Mobile:” and Ms. Wernick's phone number. That's the only thing that's been blacked out from there. Again, I have no clue why Mr. Poilievre would be offended by the fact that the phone number has been blacked out.
Going to pages 192 to 193 of that PCO release, we have another redaction due to a cellphone number. Again, I think we can all agree that the removal of such information is completely reasonable.
I find it interesting that while the public is battling the second wave of COVID-19, my colleagues are chasing down private cellphone numbers of people. I don't know what the motive is, but I'm sure they have a motive.
The point is that you see this entire email, which starts on Thursday, May 7 at 3:22 p.m. It starts off with Ms. Wernick, who says, “Wonderful, thanks [for the information]”. It's a back-and-forth conversation between them.
I'm not going to lie; it's not the most entertaining stuff to read. It's definitely not juicy, nor does it have that smoking gun that apparently Mr. Poilievre was looking for. Therefore, I guess he decided that chasing down a mobile phone number or searching for other information that's completely unrelated to those programs must have the.... I don't know, maybe buried in there is even the discovery of who the second gunman on the grassy knoll was. I have absolutely no idea.
The point is that so much information is being provided here. The only stuff that isn't being provided is the information that is specifically irrelevant or confidential in terms of being somebody's phone number.
We can look at pages 219 to 221 of the PCO document release. Frankly, this is truly extraordinary. It is a document that would rarely ever be released. It never would have been released under the Harper government, I'm sure, unless Mr. Lake wants to correct me on the Harper government's incredible openness and transparency. This goes into a synopsis of the entire cabinet meeting. Obviously, this would be protected by confidence, but these details are in there. It's there for them to see. It's stuff that, as it relates to this particular issue, has not been held back.
We have another page—the next page. If it had not been for the one bullet and sub-bullet at the bottom of page 220, that one little section there that relates to the Canada student service grant, this page would never have even been included, because the entire page would have been irrelevant. The only way to provide the five or six lines there that are relevant is to black out the other sections.
Of course, Mr. Poilievre takes this and flashes it around and makes it seem like it's a smoking gun because we're covering up massive conspiracies—or at least he's trying to drum up those conspiracies—but the reality is that this page would never have even been provided had that bullet about the Canada student service grant at the bottom not been there. That's the only reason they had to get rid of the rest of it. The next page, because the bullet continues from there and leads into the next page, is completely non-redacted.
If there are still people out there among the public—and we're now 11 hours into this—who are watching and listening to this, I hope they can appreciate, though perhaps I'm not doing a great job of explaining it, what we're talking about in the redacted documents.
This is a perfect example. We have a page here, starting at page 220, about four-fifths of which, I would say, has been redacted. The only reason is that the information there was not germane to the motion. Then, in the next bullet, the part about the Canada student service grant starts. The following page, the entire page, is not redacted, because it relates to the Canada student service grant and the PCO's comment on where things were going and coming from, so it's entirely appropriate to share.
It's no different from copying and pasting, if you were to just copy and paste the relevant parts. The problem is—and again this goes to those people who may be paying attention to this—that rather than explain this to you, rather than think that the public is educated enough to be able to.... No, let me rephrase that. When somebody takes the one page that has the major part of the redaction and waves it around, it appears as though they are assuming the public is going to buy in right away and say, “Hey, this isn't the government being transparent; they blacked out everything.” I understand why the theatrics of it play off so well, but it's the reality of how these documents are released.
As the document continues, as you go into pages 220 and 221, it really starts to talk about the details and PCO comment, and it turns to the Deputy Prime Minister to provide the key takeaways from it. Literally, it's all there for everybody to read.
There is another email, on page 222, which references pages 254 to 256 of the PCO release. Once again, we find a redacted part, and—you guessed it, folks—it's the personal and private cellphone numbers of a staff member, again something that would never be released in an ATIP, but something that Mr. Poilievre is obsessed with obtaining.
If you go into the details of the email, you can read the entire email. It's from Tara Shannon, again, going to Ms. Shannon Nix. It just goes back and forth about the partnership, about struggling to deliver on the existing programs, not having the capacity to take on more placements and so on. The second part goes into the CSC programming not being funded and so on, and it goes into the details of that.
My point is that nothing was redacted here that was germane to what is going on and what the committee was seeking to get through this motion. The only thing in this that has been redacted is the telephone number, both in French and in English. Her signature at the bottom is in English first and then in French, and the phone number in both versions of the signature has been redacted.
That's it, Mr. Chair. Everything else in there is totally available.
We can go on to the next email, an exchange between Ms. Wernick and Mr. Philip Jennings from the PCO. In it, they are discussing an attachment that Ms. Wernick has forwarded to the PCO. I know that the opposition has a lot of interest in Ms. Wernick; however, only one item here has been redacted. Can anybody guess it? Does anybody know? The cellphone number is the only part of this that's redacted.
See, this is what I find so fascinating. Mr. Poilievre didn't jump up to the podium there and start flashing around these papers saying, “Why isn't Ms. Wernick's phone number being shown to us? Why is it being redacted?” Of course not. He doesn't get theatre out of that. But that's the reality of all the documents that have been submitted.
Again, she talks about the attachment, being the proposal. Everything is in there: who it was sent to, when it was sent, what the PDF is called, her signature again, and then her phone number has been blacked out.
We get to confidence with regard to another document here, which would be the next one. We have another synopsis of a meeting, another cabinet scenario. Here again, it's another one of Mr. Poilievre's fully blacked-out documents that he wanted to wave around. The reality of the situation is that the parts of it that are blacked out are the parts that have absolutely nothing to do with the motion that this committee had asked for. However, the reason it was important to provide all of that—including the cover sheet, including the synopsis, and having all of it—was that, on the next page, which is the first page that becomes relevant, all of a sudden you have the part about the Canada student service grant.
This is happening time and time again in these documents, where these large sections are being blacked out, but the reality is that the only parts being blacked out are the parts that are completely irrelevant to the motion. When you do get to the parts that are relevant, then you get everything on the Canada student service grant. I mean, I don't know; perhaps Mr. Poilievre was hoping to get something else out of cabinet confidence that he was digging around for, and that's why he's upset that parts of this are blacked out. But the reality is that he got exactly what he asked for. The committee got exactly what they asked for.
With regard to my amendment, which we're speaking to right now, the reason I think it's so important for us to have a discussion about this and to pass this amendment is so that the people who did these redactions can come here and explain things.
Excuse me while I take a sip of water here, Mr. Chair.
They can say one of two things. They can come here and say, no, Gerretsen is totally incorrect; all the stuff we blacked out there was WE-related stuff and we just didn't want you to see it. Or they can come here and do what is probably the most plausible thing that we would see. We would see them come here and probably validate everything that my colleagues and I have been saying today on this issue, which is that the items that were redacted were items that were completely irrelevant and didn't have anything to do with supporting this particular motion. I'm sure we would end up seeing that, if that's the case; I have no doubt about it.
You know, people were asking why I'm suggesting motive by the opposition. Well, why wouldn't you want them to come here and confirm whether or not what I'm saying is true? I can't understand that. I find it incumbent on us to make sure that this voice is heard.
If you go to the next page, which is page 351 of that document, it continues to go right on. The PCO comment on this particular program is in two bullets there. Then it blacks out the rest. It blacks out the rest because it is completely unrelated. A really good sign to know that this is actually what's happening is the fact that in these documents, which are clearly PDF documents or some form of Word or something like that, you're not seeing lines here and there. It's not like you're seeing paragraphs and within the paragraphs words being blacked out, or sentences being blacked out. You don't see any of that in these documents.
What you do see in these documents are entire sections that are clearly coming before or after sections that relate to this program and sections that relate to the request that was made by the committee to get this information. That is a massive signal that what you're getting here is the reality of what was related to this particular motion, the CSSG program in particular.
I think people should take note of the fact that in a page or two of relevant information, not a single word, phrase, sentence or paragraph has been redacted. It's the entire portion that's related to this program.
I cannot wrap my head around the fact that the opposition would allow government officials, who are non-partisan, and parliamentary officers, who are non-partisan, to have their careers stained by the notion that they contributed to infringing upon the privilege of members of Parliament.
I can't understand, when it's so obvious that this is the case, why members of the opposition.... I get why the Conservatives are doing it. They've been doing this since day one, since I arrived on the Hill. They've been like this right from the beginning. I don't know what it is. Maybe they just don't have any good ideas. All they ever want to do is talk about the Prime Minister and everything he's doing that they perceive to be some kind of scandal. They don't want to offer actual substance.
But I'm shocked to see this coming from my colleagues from the Bloc and the NDP. I've always appreciated the fact that they want to stand up for the public servants we have. This is a glaring example of how they're not doing that.
I'm at a loss for words when it comes to that, Mr. Chair, because our public servants are the institution. They're the bedrock of how Parliament functions. Think about it. We politicians come and go. Of the people sitting around this table, some of us will be here after the election and some of us won't, and some of us will be gone after the election after that. However, those public servants, the clerks and the people who create the bedrock for the institution to function are the people we're talking about. These are the people who are being affected by this, Mr. Chair.
What's going on, Mr. Chair? Are we in a conference call?