Finance Committee on Oct. 8th, 2020

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

The meeting is suspended for a couple of minutes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

All right. I will allow the motion. Go ahead.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

It reads as follows:

That the Chair be instructed to present the following report to the House forthwith, provided that dissenting or supplementary opinions, pursuant to Standing Order 108(1)(b), shall be filed with the Clerk of the Committee within 24 hours of adoption of this motion.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Mr. Poilievre, could you slow down a little? We do have to write this down.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Absolutely. I'll be happy to provide the motion in writing to your office thereafter so that you will have a copy. My staff is in the process right now of emailing it to your team and to the clerk so that you will have a copy.

The motion continues as follows:

The Standing Committee on Finance, pursuant to Standing Order 108(1)(a), has agreed to report the following. Standing Order 108(2) empowers your Committee—

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

Point of order, Mr. Chair.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

It continues:

“to study and report on all matters relating to the mandate, management and operation of the department or departments”—

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

I can't take a point of order until we get through the motion, Mr. Fragiskatos.

Go ahead with the motion.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

I will have to reread that sentence, then:

Standing Order 108(2) empowers your Committee “to study and report on all matters relating to the mandate, management and operation of the department or departments of government which are assigned” to it, among other things. Additionally, on May 26, 2020, the House adopted an order of reference permitting your Committee to meet virtually to consider matters “related to the COVID-19 pandemic and other matters” and empowering it, “in relation to [its] study of matters related to the COVID-19 pandemic”, to “receive evidence which may otherwise exceed the [committee’s] mandate under Standing Order 108”.

On July 7, 2020, the committee held a virtual meeting. It adopted the following motion:

That, pursuant to Standing Order 108(1)(a), the committee order that any contracts concluded with We Charity and Me to We, all briefing notes, memos and emails, including the contribution agreement between the government and the organization, from senior officials prepared for or sent to any minister regarding the design and creation of the Canada Student Service Grant, as well as any written correspondence and records of other correspondence with We Charity and Me to We from March 2020 be provided to the committee no later than August 8, 2020; that matters of cabinet confidence and national security be excluded from the request; and that any redactions necessary, including to protect the privacy of Canadian citizens and permanent residents whose names and personal information may be included in the documents, as well as public servants who have been providing assistance on this matter, be made by the Office of the Law Clerk and Parliamentary Counsel of the House of Commons.

On or about August 8, 2020, several deputy heads of government departments provided the Clerk of your Committee with documents in response to the order for document production. These documents were, in accordance with the order, referred to the Office of the Law Clerk and Parliamentary Counsel for review and redaction. On August 18, 2020, the documents were released to the members of your Committee. The Law Clerk and Parliamentary Counsel also wrote to the Clerk of your Committee stating, in part:

the letters and documents indicate that the departments had also made redactions to protect personal information in accordance with the Privacy Act, to protect third party information and information on the vulnerability of their computer or communication systems, or methods employed to protect their systems. These latter grounds for exemption from disclosure are contained in the Access to Information Act..

Upon reception of the documents on August 9, 2020, you provided them to my Office so that we could make the necessary redactions to protect the privacy of Canadian citizens and permanent residents, as well as public servants as contemplated by the production order. However, as mentioned above, the documents had already been redacted by the departments to protect personal information and on other grounds. As my Office has not been given the opportunity to see the unredacted documents, we are not able to confirm whether those redactions are consistent with the order of the Committee....

It goes on:

As mentioned above, the departments made certain redactions to the documents on grounds that were not contemplated in the order of the Committee. We note that the House’s and its committees’ power to order the production of records is absolute and unfettered as it constitutes a constitutional parliamentary privilege that supersedes statutory obligations, such as the exemptions found in the Access to Information Act. The House and its committees are the appropriate authority to determine whether any reasons for withholding the documents should be accepted or not.

Parliament was prorogued on August 18, 2020, preventing your committee from meeting to study the documents and the government's failure to comply with the July 7, 2020 order. A question of privilege was raised in the House on this matter at the beginning of the new session of Parliament. In his decision of October 1, 2020, the Speaker of the House said:

As of today, it is not possible to know whether the committee is satisfied with these documents as provided to it. The new session is now under way. The committee, which has control over the interpretation of its order, has an opportunity to examine the documents and decide what to do with them.[...] Given these facts and circumstances, it is my view that this is a matter for the committee to consider. If it believes that its privileges have been breached or has any other concern with respect to the situation, it can report to the House.

At its October 8, 2020, organizational meeting, your Committee considered the government’s response to the July 7, 2020, order. Your Committee has concluded that the government’s response failed to comply with the order, and, accordingly, wishes to draw the attention of the House to what appears to be a breach of its privileges by the government’s refusal to provide documents in the manner ordered by the Committee. Your Committee, therefore, recommends that an Order of the House do issue for the unredacted version of all documents produced by the government in response to the July 7, 2020, order of the Standing Committee on Finance, provided that these documents shall be laid upon the Table within one sitting day of the adoption of this Order.

That, Mr. Chair, is my binding motion.

Having concluded the filing of that motion and having instructed my staff members to provide your and the clerk's office with a full copy of it in order to ensure rapid precision in its recording, I will state the rationale for the motion very briefly.

We asked for documents. The documents were blacked out. We have the right to see those documents unredacted. We have a law clerk, a lawyer, who represents all of us, who has the ability, the expertise, and the confidence of this committee and our House to determine what we should and should not publish. That is the role of Parliament. My motion is now before the committee.

I look forward to our going to an immediate vote on it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

I have to go back to a point of order by Mr. Fragiskatos, and then I need a clarification from you on your motion.

Mr. Fragiskatos, you have a point of order. I had to wait until Mr. Poilievre was done reading the motion.

What's your point of order?

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm having a difficult time understanding the substance of Mr. Poilievre's motion.

The reason for that is that we're in a new session of Parliament. Since this is our first meeting, there has not been, by definition, a motion adopted to review any documents. There haven't been, as far as I know, documents received by the committee. The clerk has not received a relevant letter.

The member, Mr. Poilievre, talks about a breach of privilege, which the Speaker did not find on the matter that he raises. When such issues come up, Mr. Chair, even in a case of a point of privilege, they go to the—

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

I think, Mr. Fragiskatos, you're more into debate than a point of order. The motion is debatable. I'll allow those points to be made in debate.

However, before I get into debate, Mr. Poilievre, I just want to be clear so I understand it. Here in your motion, you say at one point—and for committee members, the clerk has now sent that motion to members on their units, so you should have it—that the documents be unredacted. You mean unredacted as they go to the law clerk, because there have been some motions floating around, which I've seen here and there, that basically said cabinet documents, etc., unredacted.

Maybe I can explain it this way. You're saying that the original request, after the finance committee met, was that the documents that would go to the law clerk be unredacted and that the law clerk could make the decision regarding what's redacted and what is not. Is that correct?

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

I will quote directly from my motion so that you don't rely on a secondary interpretation of it. It says in the final paragraph:

Your Committee, therefore, recommends that an Order of the House do issue for the unredacted version of all documents produced by the government in response to the July 7, 2020, order of the Standing Committee on Finance, provided that these documents shall be laid upon the Table within one sitting day of the adoption of this Order.

Therefore, with the possession of these documents, the committee then can have the clerk remove any information that would violate personal privacy or national security rules, though I suspect there is no such information, and then the rest can be made public.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Okay. The motion is debatable.

Please raise your hands, because I still haven't figured out this hand thing. My apologies for that.

I have Mr. Fragiskatos first, Mr. Julian second, and Ms. Dzerowicz third, and we'll go from there.

Mr. Fragiskatos.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Pat Kelly is next.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

The motion makes reference to the Speaker's ruling on October 1, but it neglects to mention the part of the ruling that said “the Chair cannot”—cannot—“find that there is a prima facie question of privilege”. That, I think, is a very relevant point in addition to everything I raised earlier. There was a bit of commotion there, so I'll repeat what I said: We are in a new session of Parliament. A motion has not been adopted to review documents. The committee has not received relevant documents. The clerk has not received any relevant letter.

I would also remind the member, who's an experienced member, that these matters, as we know from the guidebook on parliamentary procedure specifically relating to the conduct of committees, are issues to be taken up by the Standing Committee on Procedure, the PROC committee. I think that's a highly relevant point. I would point my honourable colleague to a relevant section in the chapter on committees and also relating to questions of privilege. It says as follows: “If the Speaker finds there is a prima facie breach of privilege”—again, he did not find it in this case, but the text is making a general point—“the member raising the question of privilege is asked to move a motion, which is debatable, usually requesting that the matter be examined by the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs.”

That is the convention, Mr. Chair. Mr. Poilievre wants to bring these matters to the finance committee. Again, I made this point many weeks ago, when we were meeting in the previous session. Canadians are deeply anxious right now about COVID-19 and its economic impact. I think that's where our focus ought to be. We are again today embroiled in a debate over documents, over technical matters. I'm not dismissing the substance of those. As I put on the record many times during the WE hearings that we had, I thought serious questions had to be asked of the government. I asked, along with other Liberal colleagues, very serious questions of the government. We did not hide from that responsibility or shirk that responsibility. However, I worry that here again too we have given in, or could be giving in, to a tendency to look at matters that are not specifically relevant to the committee on finance. We need to begin to think about the pre-budget deliberations that are going to, or ought to, seize this committee. In fact, that is a responsibility of the committee if we follow the Standing Orders.

I think colleagues around the table will hold that same view. If they wish to raise their perspective on this matter, on the matter of pre-budget deliberations, I would welcome that. It would be great to get that on the record. I think it's a very relevant point. I know that a number of stakeholder organizations have expressed a deep interest in letting this committee know about where the country ought to go, where the federal government should go and what advice this particular committee should provide to the government on economic matters going forward.

For all these reasons, Mr. Chair, I have a tough time understanding the special relevance of the motion introduced by my honourable colleague. He knows conventions very well. I think it would have been more instructive and appropriate for him to raise these matters, or rather for a Conservative member to raise these matters, in the PROC committee.

I'll leave it there for now, Mr. Chair. I'm glad I had a chance to put my views on the record.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Okay.

I will find the hand function before the next meeting, Ms. Jansen.

Next on my list are Mr. Julian, Ms. Dzerowicz, Mr. Kelly, Ms. Jansen and Mr. Fraser.

Do any others want in? Ms. Koutrakis and Mr. Poilievre do, hopefully to wrap it up. Then we'll go to a vote.

Mr. Julian.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate being recognized.

I will start off by giving the committee a notice of motion. The notice of motion is for a subsequent committee meeting:

That, in light of troubling allegations of misuse of public funds by the government during the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada, the House appoint a special committee with the mandate to conduct hearings to examine and review all aspects of the government’s spending in response to the pandemic, including, but not limited to—

[An hon. member]

Chair, a point of order.

[An hon. member]

A point of order.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

If I could—

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

It continues:

the Canada Student Service Grant, the Canada Emergency Commercial Rent Assistance program, and the procurement of personal protective equipment:

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Mr. Julian, we're in a debate on the motion that is before us—

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Yes, and it is absolutely in order to read a notice of motion, Mr. Chair, as you know. So I'll just complete that and then I will speak to the motion.