Evidence of meeting #4 for Finance in the 43rd Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was documents.
A video is available from Parliament.
7:50 p.m.
NDP
Peter Julian NDP New Westminster—Burnaby, BC
I have a point of order on relevance, but I also think Mr. Longfield is becoming a little offensive.
7:50 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Wayne Easter
Just hold on, Mr. Longfield. Wait until we hear the point of order and then we'll make a decision
7:50 p.m.
NDP
Peter Julian NDP New Westminster—Burnaby, BC
This is absolutely not relevant and I found it, quite frankly, a bit offensive to compare the redacted documents to sacred texts. The question of relevance is very clear here, Mr. Chair.
7:50 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Wayne Easter
On relevance, Mr. Longfield, you are on the documents that are relevant. Maybe you should not stretch the comparisons too far.
7:50 p.m.
Liberal
Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON
Sure. I was just trying to draw on the importance of written words and how written words mean so much in different contexts. In Parliament, the written words that we use are very important and that's what we're looking at tonight. I wasn't trying to say these were scriptural words. These are written words that we're dealing with in the same way that written words are used in other contexts.
Page 51 of the PCO document received by the law clerk contains an email that was sent by Sofia Marquez from the WE organization, and it was sent to—well, we can't tell as both the name and the email address of the recipient have been blacked out. In the email, it references someone who had spoken to this named person. If I look through the documents the government provided, you could not find out who the recipient was, so the recipient was being protected. Now we know that it was Caitlin Lyon and the person referenced in the email who talked to her was Chris, who is likely Christiane Fox, who is the deputy minister of intergovernmental affairs at PCO.
You could argue the relevance to our study of knowing whose desk it was on and why it was on it, or if we had witnesses, they could tell us why they didn't think it was relevant. For now, we can see who these people were and what their names were, and it could be discussed at committee whether that's relevant or not.
Page 45 of the PCO documents provided to the committee is redacted again by the law clerk, not by the Prime Minister, not by a Liberal insider. It's a non-partisan servant of the Government of Canada who, interestingly, on the third page, is redacted. However, if you look at the same page in the documents provided by the GHLO, you'll see that the part redacted by the law clerk is in fact the signature block of one of the public servants. Again, is that important for the study? Is that important to decide whether there was a government cover-up?
There is a huge number of redactions in the documents that were received by this committee, but the vast majority of them were done by the office of the law clerk and now we've seen a couple of examples of what was behind the redactions. It is certainly not being addressed to an individual within the Liberal Party.
Page 47 of the documents from PCO provided to the committee by the law clerk also looks like a conversation that was cut off in the middle. If you want to just pull that one up, you can look side by side and you can see the black and the black and some pieces that we can now see. However, if you look at the unredacted document, again you see that the document provided to the clerk had no redactions at all.
As you notice above, these are just some of the examples of the PCO documents that were released by the government House leader compared with those redacted by the parliamentary law clerk. However, I want to turn your attention for a moment to the ESDC document, because this is an issue of differing redactions. It's not just present in the release of the PCO documents.
Much of the subject matter deals with the CSSG that's contained in the documents of officials from ESDC and the staff of the office of the Minister of Diversity and Inclusion and Youth, and she's come up in a lot of these discussions. The first example I would turn your attention to involves an email among the minister's office staff and the public servants. Side by side, you can see a redacted copy and an unredacted copy on page 299 of the ESDC release.
Looking at page 299, this has been released to our committee. We have it on our electric drive. Briefly, the parliamentary law clerk has shown us this. We haven't had a chance to discuss it.
You would be confronted with a line of black redactions throughout the document on one copy, yet if you turn your attention to the same page of the same document released by the government House leader, there are no redactions whatsoever.
What's being redacted? The document from the government House leader was reviewed by the public servants and it was released unredacted, as requested, and you can see what was redacted. What was redacted in the first instance were some names of people. If you look down further, you'll see some email addresses of some of the principal people that were left in the document.
There's another great example. There's no huge cover-up. There's no conspiracy. This isn't a trial. This is a committee room. Committee rooms aren't where you do trials. This isn't where you get objective information. This is where you get partisans debating information. In this case, the words are very clear in terms of what's being redacted and what isn't being redacted.
Looking at page 430 of the law clerk's documents, what do we find? If you look at page 430, there are significant redactions again. The page is riddled with black lines. Let me reiterate for the committee, though, that this was a document that was redacted by the parliamentary law clerk as requested in a motion passed by this very committee and as requested by the official opposition. We were asking for documents, but we said we didn't need to see some of the things that would be considered confidential that didn't pertain to the study the committee was doing.
If we look at the exact same page in the documents released by the government House leader, the documents that the opposition accuse are completely redacted, what do we find? Nothing, there are no redactions. That whole page is clear. There is not one redaction. The proof is right here in front of us.
If you don't believe me, take a look for yourself. When you look at this, the name at the top is Daisy Arruda, I think. I'm having trouble reading my screen. Rachel Wernick is who it's from. It was sent on April 30, 2020. That wasn't redacted in the first case.
In looking at who it went to, you can see the name of the person it went to and the carbon copy of the person it went to. The content is what was being provided. The content that was considered sensitive ended up being blacked out. We can look at it to see whether we think it would be overly sensitive or whether it really contributes to anything. The law clerk decided that we didn't really need to see what was behind there, but now the House leader has looked at it and said, okay, just open the door on that piece to show that we're being open by default.
A few pages later, on page 494, from the ESDC release, we have the parliamentary [Technical difficulty—Editor].
8 p.m.
Liberal
8 p.m.
NDP
Peter Julian NDP New Westminster—Burnaby, BC
That's a very interesting filibuster technique, but it does raise the issue of relevance. His staying in that same position and not actually saying anything at all, I think indicates that we should proceed to a vote, because obviously Mr. Longfield has nothing to add.
8 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Wayne Easter
I don't believe that it's Mr. Longfield in this case. I believe it's technology, Mr. Julian. He is in central Canada, though I think their technology is usually better than at this end here.
Mr. Longfield, did we lose you?
If we lost Mr. Longfield, I will go to Mr. Fragiskatos and come back to Mr. Longfield.
Madam Clerk, do you know what happened there?
8 p.m.
The Clerk of the Committee Ms. Evelyn Lukyniuk
I'm being told that Mr. Longfield's capacity on his computer was at 100%. An IT ambassador is reaching out to him right now.
8 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Wayne Easter
Okay, we'll give him a minute. Otherwise, we'll go to Mr. Fragiskatos and then Mr. Sorbara.
8 p.m.
Liberal
Peter Fragiskatos Liberal London North Centre, ON
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Well, that's proof positive—
8 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Wayne Easter
Why don't we suspend for 10 minutes and take a washroom break while he's coming on? I'm the only one on this end and I think I'm up for a washroom break.
We'll suspend for 10 minutes and come back at 8:15 Ottawa time.
The meeting is suspended.
8:15 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Wayne Easter
We have a quorum again so we will reconvene.
The floor is again yours, Mr. Longfield
8:15 p.m.
Liberal
Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON
Thank you. I apologize for the technical inconveniences. My Microsoft Edge was going through an update and I had too many other programs open. I've closed them all and I got my hot water and lemon, so hopefully that will help out.
I think as I was leaving off I was talking about page 494 from the ESDC documents and looking at what the parliamentary law clerk had decided in terms of what needed to be redacted, including emails and names. It's similar to what we saw on the other documents. Whereas, if we compare it to what the government House leader released, as completed by the professional non-partisan public service, we find no redactions whatsoever.
Again, Rachel Wernick was redacted several times, but now we know who she was and who the author of the document was. We even have her mobile phone number, which was raised a number of times last week, and I can just imagine that if that is public and people have her cell number…. We all know what that does to your life when you're in the middle of a family gathering and someone's calling you asking about redacted documents, but that's the type of public servant we have and were trying to protect. For the purpose of the committee's work, we now know some of those details that were being protected before.
I find it interesting that the opposition has continued, in public, to call into question these documents. They were provided to our committee. It is like a dog chasing a car down the street. The car stops, and the dog doesn't know what to do. You have what you needed, so now what do you want to do with it?
My colleagues will understand that there's always been an inherent tension between what we ask for and can receive as parliamentarians, and the ability of the government to safely provide the documents without compromising the responsible functioning of the government. It's really not a question of covering things up. It's a protection of our civil service, who have been working extremely hard through COVID and always.
When I was first elected, I was just amazed by the professionalism of our public service. They always ask if there is anything more they can do for you. They give you things faster than you expect and then ask what else you need. Those are the people we are trying to protect so that we can use their information without sharing the information that would directly connect them, and we speak on their behalf when we're in committee.
Again, with the subamendment, we are getting the heads of the civil service and the law clerk to come and answer as to what the process of redaction is and what process they were following, because we received the documents through their work. How they make those decisions really should be of interest to the committee so that we know what process is followed.
As a democracy, we do have the three equal branches of government, and whether it's the Supreme Court of Canada, the Senate or the House of Commons, we are all working together for Canadians. It has been recognized, though, that Parliament is supreme, because we are the elected officials, unlike other democracies. I'm thinking of south of us where judges are elected. In our case we have appointment systems for the other orders of Parliament, but we are the ones who are elected by the people of Canada, so the extent to which our supremacy allows for the production of cabinet confidences has been a matter of debate for some time.
We also know that, as cabinet is discussing things, we end up in a different place at the end of the discussion from where we started. If you start at the beginning of the discussion and ask what cabinet's doing, and then the cabinet doesn't deliver on that, that would really undermine the trust that Canadians have in cabinet.
It is similar to a board meeting. In business we had board meetings all the time where we would talk about the future of the company, and sometimes, in times like this, we would be asking how many people we would have to lay off, and sometimes we would find ways so that we didn't have to lay them off. We would get support from the Government of Canada in the case of the businesses now getting support, so that they don't have to lay people off, and those decisions are made. Once they know that the support's in place from the Government of Canada, people don't have to lose sleep because they're going to be losing their jobs, because we're supporting them.
However, those are discussions that are done behind closed doors, not to be nefarious, not to try to hide things, but really to protect your employees from concerns that they don't have to worry about. You're paid as a manager to worry about what needs to be done on behalf of the people you're serving in your company. It's similar to what we do when we're serving the people in our communities. The Government of Canada's cabinet has to be able to have those very frank discussions of worst-case scenarios and then plan around those without causing turmoil in people's homes, or even in stock markets, for that matter.
We could go into great detail about several of the Tory ministers and MPs, including the member for Carleton, who have argued in favour of safeguarding cabinet confidences. Regardless of the stripe of your party, you can understand that certain things have to be done in confidence for very many different reasons—for when you're working with different governments across the world, for world security, for the security of....
In terms of people at their kitchen tables, my family doesn't know a lot of the discussions we have in government, because I'm there for them, as I'm there for the other families in Guelph. They don't need to know what's keeping me up at night. My wife will know sometimes that I've been up at night, but she won't know that I'm worrying about the businesses in Guelph—
8:20 p.m.
Conservative
Karen Vecchio Conservative Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON
I have a point of order, Mr. Chair. If we could just get back on topic, that would be great.
8:20 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Wayne Easter
Relevance, Mr. Longfield; I think you used an example to make a point. That's fine—
8:20 p.m.
Liberal
Peter Fragiskatos Liberal London North Centre, ON
On a point of order, Mr. Chair, here too a member was trying to make their point and in the middle of a sentence was interrupted. It continues to happen. It's been happening today. It's been happening—
8:20 p.m.
Conservative
8:20 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Wayne Easter
Hold on, Ms. Vecchio. I have to hear Mr. Fragiskatos' point of order first.
Go ahead, Mr. Fragiskatos.