Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
It's a pleasure for me to be able to join the finance committee. A lot of my service in Parliament has focused on issues of foreign affairs and public accounts, so it's good to be able to visit this committee and to hear Mr. Blaikie share some information with us about his assessment of Conservative principles. It's always interesting to hear those things.
Chair, there's a consensus among Conservatives that we want to see a robust study of the budget implementation act move forward.
Yes, it happens sometimes, Mr. Beech.
Respectfully, I would say that it's a target-rich environment. There is a lot to talk about in terms of what is in the budget implementation act and some of the concerns it raises.
Sincerely, if the government's wish is for this committee to be able to move forward with meaningful study of that document, of the budget implementation act, the simple thing would be for the witnesses to be scheduled and for the committee not to pass this kind of programming motion.
In my experience, there's absolutely no need for committees to have some predefined programming motion in front of them that says that we will do this in only this way, on this date, with this limitation, and so forth. Most committees undertake studies. They begin studies, and they do so with maybe a general understanding of how they're going to proceed, but with a certain open-handedness to the possibility that there may be reasons to shorten or extend studies based on witness testimony. There may be witnesses who come and raise issues, and those issues may require further discussion or response later on.
I question at the outset the premise of the parliamentary secretary's remarks—and I think Mr. Blaikie said something similar—that we must have a programming motion, that we must pass this motion or something like it in order to be able to study the BIA. I don't think that's true at all.
If this meeting is adjourned without this motion passing—maybe my colleagues can correct me if I'm wrong—my understanding is there is nothing at all to prevent a study from happening. I think that's an important caveat in terms of what's out there.
I have great respect for Mr. Blaikie. He and I have played chess on a number of occasions, and I won't share the win-loss record. That would be unfair. I enjoy chatting with him, etc. To his point, he's put forward an amendment that is fine, but not sufficient. The amendment says that the committee would invite the Minister of Finance to appear before the committee to discuss the budget. In normal times that wouldn't even be necessary. The idea that the finance committee would hear from the finance minister on the budget implementation act.... That should be a pretty obvious, automatic thing. He's putting forward this motion saying the committee would invite the minister to appear to speak on the budget.
Well, again, I would have thought that would be a given. It's maybe less of a given, given the evident, ongoing general absence of the finance minister. It's like we need to make the movie “Finding Freeland” to know where she is. She's very rarely in the House and has not been before this committee.
In terms of finding Freeland, the committee should invite her, and she should appear for two hours. Again, this would normally be a given, but it's not, given that the finance minister has not been as visible and as available in terms of answering questions of the committee, which is why this “finding Freeland” conversation is required.
There is an invitation inherent in the motion, aimed ostensibly at finding Freeland, but the reality is that it does not actually necessarily affect that outcome; it doesn't necessarily ensure that's going to happen.
In the interests of ensuring that we are actually finding Freeland, Mr. Chair, I have a subamendment to propose. Actually, there are two component parts to the subamendment. One brings in, I think, another issue.
Before I share the text of that, I will speak a bit to the underlying principle. Obviously, this committee's primary engagement in terms of ministers is with the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, who is responsible for putting forward the budget, but it should hear from other ministers, especially in a time when we're seeing budgets that are so expansive and that cover so many different policy areas, as my colleagues have alluded to, with respect to foreign affairs, public safety, national defence, international development and housing. It's any policy area you could imagine that involves expenditure, which is virtually everything. Anything the government does has to involve some kind of expenditure. The budget covers such a breadth of policy areas that I think that not just the Minister of Finance but also other ministers should be heard from as well, as part of these deliberations. I think that's important.
In terms of getting ministers to come before committee, I can share that my experience with other committees is that we've had significant challenges getting ministers before other committees. I'm the vice-chair of the foreign affairs committee. We have tried to have ministers appear more often. We've asked for ministers to appear for two hours. We are hearing from the Minister of Foreign Affairs this week for one hour, which is the first time we will have heard from the minister since last summer. We've asked to hear from the minister on multiple sites.
The context is that I think there's a plan. There's some kind of strategic direction from the government, saying that our ministers are not able to answer questions very effectively from members of the opposition, so we're just going to hold them back and encourage them to not appear before the committee. Hence, we have the whole finding Freeland issue and the need to bring the Minister of Finance here, but there's also the need to bring other ministers to appear before this committee. That is the subamendment.
Also, invitations aren't good enough. Committees can issue invitations. We need to take more seriously the role of parliamentary committees in bringing people before them to hear what they have to say. We have this problem of people just blowing off committees that need to hear from certain witnesses who are doing important work.
As Mr. Blaikie pointed out, we don't have the opportunity to compel ministers to appear before committees. As he pointed out, you could have a debate about the provisions around that, and anybody else could be compelled. Private citizens can be compelled. Political staff.... There are debates around the merits of that. The powers of the committee include the power to compel political staff, deputy ministers and any of these folks. Anyone in Canada can be compelled to appear, except for elected officials.
The irony is that our system is supposed to be built around the idea of ministerial accountability. Ministers are supposed to be accountable. Typically, the back and forth that occurs is when one says that we need to hear from a deputy minister or we want to hear from political staff, then the government says that we can't compel those people to come because it's ministerial accountability. The minister is the one who is supposed to be accountable for the department.
Then the ministers decide not to appear. They have this unique privilege of being able to choose not to appear—just because.
There needs to be some kind of a—