Finance Committee on Oct. 8th, 2020

[Peter Fragiskatos, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

Yes, apparently Mr. Genuis debated at length in high school and in university. He's quite proud of himself. That's fine. He has asked here about the education levels of public servants. They're very well educated, I assured him.

On Thursday, April 2, from 2 to 4 p.m., we had a study on the government's response to COVID-19. It was a set of meetings that I won't soon forget as a parliamentarian. We heard a number of individuals from the Canada Revenue Agency articulate their points of view. We had a number of folks from the Department of Employment and Social Development and from the Department of Finance who I've already mentioned, so I won't repeat them. It was an impressive group of people who, in the midst of carrying out all sorts of work on policy and program design, found time to appear here before the committee. I know they're expected to do that, Mr. Chair, but these are folks who are working 20-hour days and still finding ways to inform the committee about their work. I think they deserve respect, not just by acknowledging them here and now. They deserve the respect of being able to come here to committee to explain this issue that the opposition is so concerned about, instead of putting words in their mouth. That is effectively what the opposition wants to do by actively preventing them from coming to committee.

If we go with Mr. Gerretsen's motion, we have a fair outcome that allows the opposition to get answers to their questions in a way that does not silence our public servants.

I'll begin my conclusion from here, Mr. Chair.

Conservatives are refusing to engage at all. I hope that we start to see a different approach also taken by the NDP and the Bloc.

The members of the opposition are very fond of quoting the law clerk of the House of Commons who has said...and who carries out incredible service for all of us as parliamentarians and who serves the country as well. The Conservatives want to vote that down. Remember that Mr. Gerretsen's motion calls for the law clerk to appear, allowing all members, every single one of us, to engage. I call the NDP and the Bloc to support that. Unfortunately, I haven't heard very much on that point from either Mr. Ste-Marie or Mr. MacGregor.

Mr. Chair, we should not dither here. We should not waste our time. The end of Mr. Gerretsen's very reasonable motion asks that “debate on the main motion and the amendment from Mr. Poilievre be suspended, and that the chair be authorized to schedule these witnesses and convene a meeting to resume debate on Mr. Poilievre's motion once these meetings have taken place.”

This seems very reasonable to me, Mr. Chair. We ought to allow the clerk and analysts to do their important work and furnish us with the documents that this committee has not yet received.

Unfortunately, yet again, the opposition won't allow us to carry out the important work to be conducted here. That needs to be put on the record and recognized. We don't even know what they think or what their justification is for all of this. I hope that a member from the NDP and the Bloc—I've given up on the Conservatives—will come forward and tell this committee, their constituents and all Canadians watching at home what their view is, Mr. Chair.

I'll end my comments there. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Thank you, Mr. Fragiskatos.

We will turn to Mr. Ste-Marie, then Mr. Badawey, Ms. Dzerowicz and Mr. Gerretsen .

Okay, first up, we have Mr. Ste-Marie.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to respond to my colleague Mr. Fragiskatos, who says that the Bloc doesn't talk much. I will just say that the committee has been sitting for nine hours. If I'm not mistaken, Mr. Chair, only you and I have been present for the entire meeting without being replaced.

In my view, everything we have heard at this committee meeting could have been—

[Peter Fragiskatos, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

I have a point of order too.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Okay, we have two points of order, Mr. Ste-Marie.

We have Mr. Fragiskatos and Mr. Gerretsen.

[Peter Fragiskatos, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

I'm guessing that Mr. Gerretsen is jumping in on the same point of order as I am, and my voice is kind of hoarse right now, so I'm going to allow Mr. Gerretsen to speak.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Mr. Gerretsen, go ahead on your point of order.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Mr. Fragiskatos and I have both been here since 11 o'clock, right from the beginning, Mr. Chair. I am disappointed to hear that what we've had to offer to this debate has not been so memorable as for Mr. Ste-Marie to remember the fact that we've been here from the beginning. We have indeed been here from the beginning of this meeting at 11 a.m.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

I think your point has been made.

Mr. Ste-Marie, the floor is yours.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I apologize for implying that some of my colleagues have not always been here from the beginning. I had not noticed them, perhaps because they did not make five-minute speeches.

What I meant to say is that if I have not spoken in the past few hours, it is because, in my opinion, all the debates we have been party to today could be summed up quickly: if we limited arguments to 30 minutes, that would do the trick.

We are clearly witnessing systematic obstruction by people who are trying to buy time. Liberal Party members do not want to respect democracy or the majority in the committee, even though it reflects the will of the people in the most recent election.

In Quebec, debates are often organized according to the Code Morin. If the debate goes around in circles after a few statements from either side, the previous question can be put and the vote is called. However, that is not happening here.

I feel it would be in our best interest to be guided by Quebec's practices and perhaps also speak more French on the committee. My colleague Peter Julian spoke in French a little. Otherwise, it has been in English only. You might say that, for nine hours now, I have felt far removed from my world as I sit on this committee.

In my opinion, this subamendment, like the previous ones, distorts the main motion. All the floods of words we have heard so far are only intended to buy time and to ensure that we don't come to a quick decision.

That's all I have to say. You will not hear from me again in the minutes, or perhaps hours, to come.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Thank you, Mr. Ste-Marie.

Did I come in too soon, Mr. Badawey?

[Vance Badawey, Liberal, Niagara Centre, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

I just want to make sure I have the right order here, because some people dropped off.

I have Mr. Badawey, Ms. Dzerowicz and then Mr. Fraser.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

I should be on that as well, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Yes, and then Mr. Gerretsen.

[Vance Badawey, Liberal, Niagara Centre, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I was going to wait awhile to speak again based on what I heard, but I had to jump back in based on some of the comments from some of my colleagues—in particular, Mr. Lake's comments on some of the points that I had made, as well as other colleagues. It's, to some extent, time to really call out what it is, which I'm sure the opposition is thinking about and very well should. This is, once again, an attempt to gain a narrative because of the fine work that the government and Canadians have been doing since COVID hit us back in March. That's what it is. Let's just simply call it what it is.

Quite frankly, most of our residents—at least my residents here in Niagara—see that. They see right through what's happening here and, with that, are giving us a great deal of dialogue and a great deal of feedback with respect to what we should be doing and the priorities we should be having, as I spoke about earlier. To try to divert the discussion from the work that's being done is simply wrong.

I also want to bring up that word that I brought up earlier, which obviously isn't resonating: respect. It was mentioned by Mr. Lake with regard to fighting for the rights of....

Let me be very clear, Mr. Lake, who I/we are fighting for—and very well you should be fighting for. We should be respecting the people we represent and respecting our team. We should be respecting the ability and the opportunity for our team to come out and ensure that the decisions that we make are decisions that are based on evidence, that are based on reasons, that are based on what our team actually does on a day-to-day basis. Quite frankly, it's beyond what you and I do on a day-to-day basis, as it relates to issues that we depend on them to then, therefore, be evidence-based so that we then make the proper decisions. Once again, it's about respect—respect for them to do their jobs and respect for the people we represent—to ensure that those decisions are evidence-based and are, in fact, decisions that are sound.

I want to go back to the narrative again and, to some extent, based on Mr. Lake's comments, give a bit of a history lesson, the narrative being, again, putting Canadians first, putting people before politics versus putting politics before people. The narrative, quite frankly, on October 15, 2020, should be the health and safety of all Canadians. To have this discussion once again is simply rhetoric and noise, and it's, quite frankly, getting in the way of us doing that. When I say “us”, I mean all 338 members of Parliament, as well as the people we represent, working together to row in that same direction. That same direction is looking out for the best interests of Canadians.

Let's be very clear on that, Mr. Lake and others on the opposite side of the table. That's our narrative. That's our priority.

With that said, some things that were mentioned were COVID spending and, of course, the direction that this government has taken throughout the past many months. Often I hear the new leader of the opposition, the former leader of the opposition and members of the opposition critique the spending that's happening. My comment has been, and continues to be this: Where's your feedback? What are your thoughts? Instead of being a critic and part of the problem, be part of the solution. Of course, with that, I/we welcome some of those thoughts and what you would do in terms of taking care of the people, putting food on our tables, ensuring that people are working, ensuring that our business community—our SMEs and our big businesses—are being looked after, that their rent can be paid. The list goes on. I don't have to give you that menu; you read about it every day. I'm sure that you hear about it every day with respect to the people who need and, for the most part, are being dealt with and taken care of because of the programs that we've put forward.

Yes, this is about transparency and accountability. As I said earlier, it's also simply about respect. I think that we should all be cognizant of that and ensure that, as much as we respect each other, we also respect the people we work with on a daily basis and, quite frankly, look after our best interests as much as we look after the interests of our constituents.

Having said all that, let's look at past parliaments, at votes in past parliaments that we entered into on many occasions, and at many occasions where the Conservatives would vote against.

I recall budgets and early morning votes that the Conservatives would stand in opposition to, investments in homelessness and poverty; seniors and infrastructure spending; health care; spending in my riding as well as the riding of Mr. Lake in Edmonton—Wetaskiwin; local sporting organizations; recreation; lowering taxes; support for businesses. I can't understand why those were voted against. Those were good things, very good things, like those we're doing right now in the middle of this pandemic. Fortunately, we had a majority government then. We moved forward on a lot of those investments.

I have to give another history lesson—I apologize, Mr. Chairman—just to respond to the words that are now on the record by Mr. Lake and others about proroguing Parliament. You know, look at the 41st Parliament, the Harper government, in October of 2013. They shut down Parliament for 33 days to avoid questions on Senate expenses and the Senate expense scandal and the resulting PMO cover-up. In the 40th Parliament, the Harper government shut down Parliament for 63 days to avoid the Afghan detainee issue. In 2008 the Harper Conservatives shut down Parliament to avoid a confidence vote that would have toppled the government. That shutdown lasted 53 days. In 2007 the Harper government shut down Parliament to declare mission accomplished on five priorities from the election, and took 32 days before bringing in a new Speech from the Throne.

Mr. Chairman, I'm flabbergasted at the comments being made and how people can actually have the nerve to make those comments while knowing this. Quite frankly, Mr. Lake was around then. He was a minister.

If the opposition parties do not support this subamendment, all it will show is that they don't care about the facts. They don't care about an evidence-based decision being made. Again, it's a lack of respect. All they care about is having something to flash around, props, to get their supporters supporting them, supporters who will blast out this information too for their next fundraising event. They should be ashamed that by doing that they're robbing this committee of the opportunity to do its important work.

Again, Mr. Chairman, I would go back to my former life. When we had situations like this and issues like this, no, we didn't go into filibustering. We didn't get into the minutiae of the politics. Quite frankly, we put the people before the politics. We didn't put the politics before the people, trying to gain a narrative. Quite frankly, the narrative should always be dealing with the issues that people deal with every day, that they talk about at the dinner table at 5:30 or six o'clock, sometimes at nine o'clock at night. For myself, tonight it will be midnight. These people think about and live that every day. To simply have the discussion diverted from what they're thinking about to something for political gain is wrong, frankly.

MPs from the other side can talk all they want. Call it what it is. Everyone knows it. We know it here. We're in the box, but quite frankly, folks, the people who are outside the box know it too. Call it what it is.

All this subamendment is asking for is simply to ensure that the decision being made is made on the best evidence presented to us by the folks we count on every day to bring us that evidence. You can't be hypocritical here. You can't say on one side of your mouth that you want that evidence in other ways on other issues, but yet you're not prepared to look at it here. What does that tell us? What does that tell Canadians?

It's about accountability. It's about transparency. But most of all, it's about respect, respecting our team and respecting the decisions that we're counted on to make in a manner that is evidence-based.

I often say to people that different people have held our seats throughout time. Although people have opinions about the people who sit in those seats, regardless of what level of government it may be—it could be a mayor; it could be a city councillor; it could be a member of Parliament, a member of a provincial parliament—the chairs sit there. Those seats sit there forever; different people occupy them.

People have opinions about those people who occupy them. However, as occupiers of those seats, we must—not should, but must—respect those seats we sit in. Part of that respect is ensuring that the decisions we make are made by a team that includes all parliamentarians as well as our support staff; ensuring that those decisions are evidence-based and therefore good decisions; and putting people before politics, not politics before people.

We see that too often from those on the opposite side of the floor. We lived it between 2015 and 2019. I think people see that, hence the reason we're here back in Parliament forming a government. The expectation is for that to continue.

I ask all of you to take that into consideration, the respect that those people deserve, the respect of making a decision that's evidence-based, and therefore the respect to make the proper decision.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Thank you.

Do you want in too, Mr. Genuis? Is that what you're saying? Okay, you're just making sure I'm off mute.

I have Ms. Dzerowicz, and then I'm not sure who's next, Mr. Gerretsen or Mr. Fraser. You'll have to notify me on that.

Ms. Dzerowicz, go ahead.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Thank you so much, Mr. Chair. I'm glad to be back as part of the discussion.

I was gone for 55 minutes, Mr. Ste-Marie, in case you are following that.

I was listening very closely to your comments, Mr. Ste-Marie, and was glad you did speak. I don't agree. This isn't about killing time; I think this direct motion that Mr. Gerretsen has proposed is trying to address what we felt was truly the concern of the opposition members. If there is a perception that there were redactions in order to somehow hide some secret information the public should be seeing, I think that motion was there to directly address that point.

Let me mention four key points of this motion.

The first part, the main motion and amendment of Mr. Poilievre, is suspended. It's just suspended. It's not killed; it's not thrown out; it is just suspended.

The second part is that the chair is authorized to schedule meetings with witnesses. Who are those witnesses? Basically, we invite each of the relevant deputy ministers or the signatories of the transmittal letters, as well as the law clerk and parliamentary counsel of the House of Commons to come and talk to us about the 5,600 plus documents, to answer our questions, to talk to us about why things were redacted.

The fourth part is to convene a meeting to resume debate on Mr. Poilievre's motion once these meetings have taken place, so it's to suspend to try to directly address the issue that we believe is actually at the heart and soul of what we are hearing from opposition members, the public, and even here. That's what we're trying to address. If we're not hearing clearly, if we're missing something, then tell us what it is we're missing, because I want to listen. I want to hear you.

I agree with my colleagues that Mr. Badawey made a beautiful presentation, I think a very genuine one, about Canadians and where all our thoughts are—not just those of the Liberals but of all of us—in terms of where we want to be when we are thinking of them, setting a course for them, and helping to restart the economy in the strongest way possible, so I'm listening, Mr. Ste-Marie. I'm listening to all the opposition members right now. If we're missing something, tell us what we're missing because I thought this motion was not about killing time but about actually addressing, very deliberately, what we felt was the key issue being brought up by opposition members over the last few weeks.

I'll also say regarding this whole day of talk, talk, talk, that anyone listening is kind of thinking we are crazy people, anybody listening to us for any period of time, but sometimes I think you have to talk things out to try to get to some sort of a solution. It seems to be that is part of what we do here. We see if we can find some common ground, see whether or not cooler heads or our better angels prevail over time, so I don't see this whole day as a colossal waste, although I would have preferred not to be meeting for, I think, going on nine, 10 or 11 hours now.

I want to reiterate a couple of points, because this is what I believe we are trying to do with this motion.

We are being told that we, the federal Liberal government, are trying to hide things because of so many pages of redactions. We, the Liberal government, are saying that's not the case, because we have outstanding independent civil servants who followed the letter of the law to do their very best to provide all the information that was asked for in the motion that was presented and passed by Mr. Julian on July 7...although he presented the motion on July 2. You heard key evidence to that point from my colleagues Mr. Fragiskatos and Mr. Fraser, and from me. We read out key examples of civil servants doing their very best to give us as much information..., and if they hid some information it was personal cellphone numbers—completely irrelevant information to the CSSG—and cabinet confidentially. We gave example after example after example.

The other thing I love about this motion is that it provides a chance for us to hear from bureaucrats, from our public servants who were in charge of this. I think the redactions would be a learning experience for all of us as well, around what the rules are, why the redactions, and I think it would comfort the opposition members. To be honest, if we need to hear from our public servants to be able to continue with the work of our pre-budget consultations, I'm willing to spend a couple of meetings on that.

Again—I want to keep on repeating this—we're just suspending the motion of Mr. Poilievre, as well as the amendment. The fourth part of our current motion says that we convene a meeting to resume debate on Mr. Poilievre's motion once the meetings have taken place. There's no desire to throw this out. We're trying to address the issue at hand.

I also want to mention a few other things. I often think that if people are saying, “Well, you know...”. Just so you know, I've received zero telephone calls and emails. By the way I hate saying that publicly because whenever you put that out there all of a sudden someone starts a campaign to send you emails and make telephone calls around these things, but nobody has called us over the last few weeks about WE, believing that we were trying to hide things in some of the redactions of the WE documents that were submitted. People are very concerned about everyday things, and I'll talk a little more about that in a minute.

I want to point out to Canadians, or anybody outside our team right now who might be listening, two motions were put forward and approved on July 7. One was all this information, but the other one was to conduct a series of meetings that would look at why the government awarded the contract to WE and how the decision came to be made. I think there were some concerns about corruption. We heard very clear testimony. We heard under oath from the Kielburgers. We heard from Prime Minister Trudeau. Historically a prime minister doesn't come to committee, but he made a point of making sure he came to the committee to be transparent and to be personally accountable, to personally answer questions. We heard from Mr. Morneau. We heard from all of them, and they all said to us, “No, we're not friends. There's no corruption”.

No one was selecting WE to make sure that WE was paid back for any type of friendship with our Prime Minister or any of our cabinet ministers. That is on record. There's no misuse of funds. We heard that all the money came back. Zero dollars were misused. There was no profit to WE. The contribution agreement we put in place had a number of checks and balances to make sure the money was being spent properly. There was no profit to WE. It was all about having as many students engaged in volunteer initiatives and earning some money to be able to continue their schooling.

We also heard from Ian Shugart and Gina Wilson and Rachel Wernick. For those who don't know, Ian Shugart is the Clerk of the Privy Council and Rachel Wernick and Gina Wilson are two top public servants. We heard very clearly from them that it was they, the public servants, who selected WE and felt that in the amount of time we had, WE was the best able to deliver this program.

We also explained why we were rushed to do the contribution agreement. It was because we only had four months and we were trying to do our very best for all our students.

I was only able to go to the cottage for two days this whole summer. I was talking to some friends and they thought the CSSG was the only program we provided for students. It's not true. We provided $9 billion in supports. We provided supports through the Canada emergency student benefit. We expanded the number of jobs created beyond Canada summer jobs. We expanded it to more than 160,000 additional jobs. We made huge adjustments around Canada student loans, as well as Canada student grants. We did a tremendous number of things for students, $9 billion worth. Even if you take away the CSSG program, over $8.1billion was spent on students. They used it. It's been helpful to them. They're continuing their studies right now. We need to continue to do more for them.

I've already talked about the fact that it wasn't a sole-source contract. It was actually a contribution agreement.

I just want to remind everyone that we have contribution agreements for food security, $100 million; for non-profits, $350 million in order to help those in shelters; for our fight against domestic violence, $50 million. We have contribution agreements. We made that. It's a very typical way for a government to basically engage in this.

I wanted to list all of that because it's part and parcel. Why did we ask for all these documents? It's all part of this initial consideration about whether there was anything inappropriate in terms of selecting WE.

Who selected WE? Was there anything untoward? I think the evidence proved unequivocally in each of the points that I mentioned that that is not the case.

It doesn't mean that no mistakes were made, because no government is perfect. I was listening to Malcolm Gladwell a couple of years ago at some sort of talk or speaking series in Toronto. One of the key things he said is that in a world of change that we're in right now, we need governments to step up and do radical experimentation. We need governments to be able to experiment and not be afraid to fail. Because if it's not governments, then who? We're the only ones who are able to do that.

I do come from the business world. A small part of my life was actually in the venture capital world. I'll tell you, success for them is one in 10. If they have one business in 10 that actually succeeds, then they actually think that's beneficial.

In any case, I actually think that Minister Qualtrough actually said it best. She said we dropped the ball on CSSG. We could have done much better. It was a pandemic, and things were crazy. We were going at breakneck speed. We should not have dropped the ball on this. But she also said that she didn't think in any way it should take away from the other really important, and I would say fantastic work that we've done for students and for Canadians, writ large. She goes on to talk about it.

We're not perfect. We did our best. Of course, we're going to make mistakes. Of course it's okay for a committee to have looked at it. We've spent about two months on it. We asked really important questions. We've answered the really important questions. I think it's important for us to acknowledge it.

I think it's also really important for us to acknowledge that the Auditor General is also looking.... We have to remember that we have two outstanding independent officers who have a long history of serving the public and serving Canadians. They are continuing to look at our spending as well to see if there were any ethical breaches. Our Auditor General came before us to say that she's actually looking at our spending, absolutely looking at all the programs and how we've gone about doing it. There will be a series of reports before the end of this year.

Then we have the Ethics Commissioner who's still investigating our Prime Minister and our former minister of finance, minister Morneau, to see whether or not there's actually been any ethical violations.

I want to remind Canadians that these committees...and I know for sure this committee is not non-partisan. It is not non-partisan. I wish it were if even for a moment. I think we have some really important work to do.

I visit a lot of classrooms. I'm sure you guys all do, too. One of my favourite classes was the grade 5/6 class at St. Nicholas of Bari. One thing they asked me was what was the surprising thing for me as a politician. I said to them that for me the surprise was just the theatrics. I didn't realize how much theatrics and gamesmanship there would be. I said that to them.

Another kid asked me—and it's relevant to this—“Miss, are there ever days where you think that you just can't take this anymore?" I loved them asking me this. I said, “Well, there are definitely frustrating days, but I can tell you that it's such an honour and privilege to have this job because I get a chance to be able to make people's lives better every single day. I get a chance to be able to work with an amazing team of colleagues to try to create a better country.”

I love those questions. They are my favourite class ever because they asked the best questions ever.

I will tell you that the stuff I've been hearing over the last—I want to say the last few weeks, but I would probably say the last few months—is that they're really worried about their parents and family members. In my riding they're worried about their kids in school with the second wave under way right now. They're wondering why the federal dollars that have been going down to the provinces and to the city haven't resulted in more test sites and more contact tracing.

They're wondering, and they're asking why. They are worried about their jobs and their future. They're worried about their extended families. There are a lot of things they're really worried about.

A number of them have written to me to say that if there's anything we could be studying in pre-budget consultations—they know I'm on the finance committee—we should look at the environment, look at how we could restart the economy in a way that's going to help us continue to transition to a low-carbon economy, that's going to help us decarbonize, that's going to help some of our energy sector and multiple other sectors to be able to transition.

They worry about housing. When I was growing up, my mother, who earned minimum wage, and my dad, who had a working-class wage, were able to afford a house in downtown Toronto. That isn't possible right now. They're worried about housing.

I have a lot of amazing people in the arts and culture sector in my riding. They have been struggling for a long time in terms of being able to survive in the 21st century. So much has changed in how we fund our artists and our cultural sector. We know that arts and culture, in addition to tourism and hospitality, have been particularly hard hit through this pandemic, and it's going to be a while before anything returns to normal.

I'll also say that we've been hearing and reading a lot from a lot of economic leaders, such as David Dodge and Don Drummond, and I think they've had some valuable things to say. It's made me think I'd really like to get to pre-budget consultations, because I want to hear ideas about how we can ensure that Canada has a competitive economy as we come out of this pandemic. How do we attract more foreign direct investment? How do we accelerate economic growth? How do we invest in productivity-enhancing physical and human capital? How do we invest in industries in transition? There are so many things that we should be getting to right now, and the everyday things that my colleague Vance Badawey was talking about. Those are the things that I hope we'll focus on.

I'll end with a few more comments, Mr. Chair.

Canadians need us, as leaders, to be our best selves and listen to our better angels, to be the government they need in this moment and to rise above partisan games and business as usual. I'm sorry that Mr. Poilievre feels that he needs to yawn during my comments, but I think they're important for us to hear.

I would say to you that I don't think what's happening on this committee now is trying to find a solution. That is what I am feeling is happening right now. I would say to you that it would be really powerful if we could find a way to move forward to pre-budget consultations. Just imagine that we could do that. What would we give up? Would we give up a bit of ego, a bit of power to hold up a committee or the illusion that the opposition members are now holding government to account?

Don't you think it would be far more powerful if we conducted the most ambitious pre-budget consultations, listened to a historic number of ideas and stakeholders and brought the best national and international leaders to give us their best ideas? How about if we actually had some true debate and battled over the best ideas? Maybe we could even try to present a unanimous report to the House of Commons, to our Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance. Don't you think that would be more powerful and historic? We and Canadians could say in history that when we were going through an unprecedented pandemic, all of our parties laid down their partisan arms and worked together in the best interests of Canadians. This is the moment when Canadians need us to rise to the occasion, to be our best selves and say we rose up and did exactly that.

We all ran for office to serve Canadians and to create a better country. If it's not we who are leading and charting a course for the future, then who? If it's not now, at a moment of tremendous change, fear and confusion, then when?

Thanks so much, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Thank you very much, Ms. Dzerowicz.

Mr. Gerretsen will be next, followed by Mr. Fraser and then Mr. Vaughan.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to my colleague, Ms. Dzerowicz, for her intervention. The passion she showed towards the end of that is truly reflective of the calibre of MP that she is and what she brings to the table here. I wholeheartedly see that she wants a solution and a way through this. That is going to be a compromise that everybody is going to be able to appreciate and value.

I'll go back to Mr. Ste-Marie's comments. He said that this was a waste of time. Obviously, filibusters are inherently intended to do that to make a point. There is, perhaps, a bit of confusion as to why we're going down that road. The illusion that Mr. Poilievre and other Conservatives would like to paint is that there's something to hide. That couldn't be further from the truth.

I am very adamant about this one particular subamendment specifically because I'm concerned about the manner in which public officials are being treated. I want them to have a voice. I want to allow them to express themselves before we get to a point of determining whether or not they breached parliamentary privileges by the manner in which they provided information. I'm not talking about political staffers. I'm talking about the officials who contributed to the redactions that we see in the documents.

I'm getting a sense, Mr. Chair, that I'm not going to get anywhere with this. It hasn't been obvious to me that there's any interest from members other than Liberals at this time to support this amendment.

I'm led to the the conclusion that it's going to be very difficult for these public officials to be able to defend themselves. I think it's extremely important that they have the opportunity to do that. If we're not going to allow them the opportunity to defend themselves, Mr. Chair, then I think it's incumbent upon me to go to the wall on this one, as Mr. MacGregor phrased it. It's incumbent upon us—and I certainly take the challenge—to make sure that they are properly represented and that their voices can be heard. I do not want officials to go down as the reason that parliamentary privilege was broken when perhaps that wasn't the case. We really won't know and be able to cast the best judgment possible unless we give them the opportunity to speak for themselves.

Since members don't want to afford that opportunity, I'm going to try to defend them to the best of my own ability.

With that, I would refer everybody to the PCO redactions that were submitted. I'd like to go through those to explicitly highlight where redactions were made so that the general public can know and it can be put on the record.

There are 151 pages in this document. I'll try to go through it as thoroughly as possible to provide as much detail as possible, so that their voices can be heard through this process of trying to make sure that what they did to the documents is understood.

If we start on page 49, we see the first perfect example. We are looking here at a PCO document. A number of programs are listed. I wish I could share my screen and go through this with everybody. What we have here is an Excel-style table. There are a number of programs here that completely do not relate to the Canada student service grant program that was the subject of this motion.

I'll read off the ones that were blacked out, the ones that were redacted. This was one of those perfect pages that Mr. Poilievre held up and shook while he stood there at the podium saying that it had all been blacked out. Well, let's talk about what was actually blacked out.

We have the youth employment and skills strategy, which wasn't relevant to this, the student work placement program, the student learning program, Canada Service Corps, other financial supports, the Canada student loans program, the doubling of the Canada student grant and the Canada student benefit. None of those were visible, because they were not the subject of the motion from this committee.

However, among the ones that were visible and were completely subject to this committee's motion was the Canada student grant, where it specifically talks about post-secondary students under 30 enrolled in spring, summer or fall courses who significantly contribute to COVID-19 efforts through voluntary service, and then it goes on to talk about the $900 million to be set aside and the various questions that needed to be addressed in relation to that.

There was also the WE social entrepreneurship initiative, which was relevant and which is visible in the document. There's the $12 million there, and again that is completely visible on that document.

The next part that came from the PCO that I think is germane and relevant to discuss is pages 78 to 79 of that document. It is from Mr. Kielburger to Ms. Fox at PCO, yet the only redaction present in this whole email, Mr. Chair, is the private citizen's email address. That's the email address of Mr. Kielburger's assistant. This is private information and has no relevance to the process. Therefore, there was nothing that was necessary to be—

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Yes, Mr. Fraser, go ahead.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

I'm just seeing that one of our colleagues has apparently been booted off the call.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

He's back.