Evidence of meeting #1 for Finance in the 43rd Parliament, 2nd session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was chair.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Carleton, ON
Can you clarify where the e-binder was mentioned in my amendment?
Conservative
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Carleton, ON
It wasn't. Oh, good. So then that's irrelevant to the debate.
Liberal
Mark Gerretsen Liberal Kingston and the Islands, ON
Mr. Poilievre should do his homework if he doesn't know what his motion says.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Wayne Easter
Hold on.
The clerk could restore the e-binder and make available all evidence that was in the last session and bring it forward to this one as well.
Conservative
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Carleton, ON
To end my point of order, so what part of that evidence has not been made public yet?
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Wayne Easter
I might have to ask for clarification on this from the clerk, but I think all of that evidence was made public in the last session.
Conservative
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Wayne Easter
—but we need that evidence to go to the Speaker as per this motion as well.
Conservative
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Carleton, ON
To conclude my point, that's great. All the documents are public, and the Speaker, therefore, can acquire them. If he needs someone in the clerk's office to point him in the right direction, that can happen too.
Thank you very much. Let's go to the—
Conservative
Liberal
Sean Fraser Liberal Central Nova, NS
Mr. Chair, I apologize for coming back to this. I understand that there are documents in an e-binder that should correspond to what the committee had on record. I understand from your explanation following the recent suspension of this meeting that there is an ability to provide whatever was provided at the time the first session of the current Parliament was prorogued.
The question I still don't understand is whether the complete disclosure package that the government did in fact provide to members of this committee is actually included in what this committee will have.
This is not some nuanced technical point. One reason I'm concerned about it is that, upon a review of the documents that the clerk directed us to during suspension, I remain unable to locate the transmittal letters. I suspect that other things that were disclosed by the government are in fact not going to be made available.
Having incomplete disclosure, particularly....
I keep drawing your attention to the transmittal letters because those are the documents that explain why certain portions of documents were redacted. For example, they may have included information about the family members of public servants or just a list of email names of public servants who had personal information.
It seems foolhardy for us as a committee to demand production that we know or expect is incomplete not because the government chose not to disclose information but because it may not have been fully uploaded.
Is it possible to have someone do a comparison of the documents that were in fact provided to committee members directly—say, by the USB keys—and any information that would—?
Conservative
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Wayne Easter
We can't have a point of order when there is a point of order on the floor, so I will go to you next, Ms. Jansen.
This is point of order day for sure in finance committee, I can tell you that.
Mr. Fraser.
Liberal
Sean Fraser Liberal Central Nova, NS
Thank you.
To finish my point, Mr. Chair, it would be very helpful if the clerk could do a comparison to ensure that we're not on a fool's errand here, demanding production that we know will be incomplete because we know it wasn't properly uploaded.
Is it possible for the clerk, perhaps, to do a quick review of the two sets of documents to ensure that the same number of pages are in each, for example, so that we can verify that we are looking at a complete body of information?
What I would love to avoid is setting the stage for a false accusation that the government failed to meet the order or request of this committee, when in fact they did their best to but, due to a technical reason during the timing of the upload, the complete package wasn't put on the table.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Wayne Easter
Okay. I'm going to go to Ms. Jansen's point of order, but to your point of order, this may be something to think about. You can put an amendment to the amendment to ensure that the documents include transmittal letters, if that's a huge concern.
Ms. Jansen.
