Finance Committee on May 2nd, 2023

[Philip Lawrence, Conservative, Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON]

I'm reminded by my colleagues across the way that we have to be relevant. I would point the member perhaps to the $12 billion of unaccounted funds in the budget as a way of connecting to relevance here.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

MP Perkins, your fellow colleague is telling you to be relevant. Let's refocus.

The amendment says “That the Minister of Finance be invited to appear for two hours on the bill and that this appearance be scheduled on or before May 18th, 2023."

MP Perkins.

[Adam Chambers, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

I have a point of order before we continue, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Point of order, MP Chambers.

[Adam Chambers, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

Thank you very much.

I just wonder if the clerk has heard back from the minister's office yet.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

No.

[Adam Chambers, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

Thank you very much.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

There's no new update.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I was hoping that the Prime Minister's Office was watching on ParlVu and monitoring this and saying that MP Perkins is making great points. What have we done? We really need to tell the minister to come to the committee for two hours.

[Sophie Chatel, Liberal, Pontiac, QC]

And the Pope too....

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

It's being suggested that we should call the Pope. I'm not sure he's in good enough health to do that right now, but maybe the committee could travel to Rome, to the Vatican to have questions. I know we have a travel deadline request coming up for standing committees. Maybe it's something the government would like to propose.

The practices of the House of Commons to pay for the translators...2017....

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

MP Maguire, welcome to the committee.

Is this a point of order?

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

It's a point of relevance. Yes, it's going back to what my colleague was saying about the government. They implemented the GST. They said they wouldn't do some things, but ended up doing so with the gas tax when they came in. It's the same relevance that happened to the Manitoba NDP when Premier Selinger, in an election campaign, said he wouldn't raise the PST in Manitoba.

[An hon. member]

What's the PST?

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

It's the provincial sales tax. I'm corrected by my colleague there. These acronyms sometimes aren't always picked up by everyone, so I appreciate his intervention.

Of course, within months of re-forming government they did. It was 1%. It went back up, but there were even discussions of 2% at that time. I guess they didn't figure that they could push it that far, but they still lost the next election over it. I remind my Liberal colleagues that there are good things that can happen when you don't pay attention to what happens to the finances of the country, which is relevant to the budget that we're speaking on there.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, MP Maguire.

MP Perkins.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, MP Maguire, for that clarification on the use of a province on the provincial sales tax.

I want to say that on page 17, we come to an interesting point in the report or the requirements on ministerial accountability from Treasury Board.

It may come to a shock to committee members that I occasionally tell stories about the experiences I've had in the past, sitting around cabinet tables and that kind of thing as a staffer, and some of the history we've gone over. Sometimes I joke that I sat in the cabinet of Sir John A., but I will clarify here for the public record that I did not.

I am going to make a reference here that really matters. It is in this document. I wanted to make that clarification before somebody makes a point of order against me, asking me if I was here in the presence of what this document says. I will say that I was not there for what I'm about to read. It says:

The practices of the House of Commons and the use of standing committees have evolved. The practices and procedures that the House adopted in 1867

—I'm making that clarification. I was not there then—

were a refinement of those in force in the United Province of Canada (1840–1867).

It's important for this point, I think, that the Treasury Board made a footnote on that point. In says in footnote 15 at the bottom of the page, “See a brief history of the evolution of the House of Commons in the McGrath Committee Report”. Most people would pronounce it “McGrath”, but it's not pronounced “McGrath”. It's “McGraw”. He was a good Newfoundlander MP who did an amazing report. It's still relevant today, if you haven't read it.

[Philip Lawrence, Conservative, Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON]

There was an NDP member on that committee.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Yes, there was, and his name was Blaikie. He contributed enormously to that seminal report on our parliamentary system. It should be mandatory reading for all today.

In case you don't know about the McGrath report, this footnote notes that it's called the “Report of the Special Committee on Reform of the House of Commons.” It was by Queen’s printer, the Government of Canada printer, and it was printed in 1985.

You may also want to see.... I'm sure MP Bill Blaikie, a fine gentleman whom I knew—the father of MP Blaikie sitting at this table here today—was part of it as well.

It says, “See also C. E. S. Franks.” C.E.S. Franks did a report called “The Parliament of Canada”. It was printed in Toronto by the University of Toronto Press two years later in 1987. If you go and get that report from the Library of Parliament, and I recommend you do, it says that, in particular, you should you look at pages 238-256.

Getting back to the paragraph on this issue of the united provinces of Canada and how committees have evolved:

Little changed in the standing orders—

The Standing Orders, by the way, for those watching, are the rules of the House and the rules of how all of this works.

—or in the detailed scrutiny of government expenditures until the mid-1950s.

I'll also clarify that I wasn't born then either, so please do not accuse me of sitting in cabinet meetings in the 1950s. It continues:

Rules adopted at that time addressed matters including the length of time for the budget debate.

That's an interesting point. Moreover:

In 1958, with the election of the Diefenbaker government—

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

Were you there?

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

For the Diefenbaker government, I was not there. I never met John Diefenbaker, but I knew his executive assistant. MP Maguire met John Diefenbaker.

He was first elected prime minister in 1957 in a minority, but he had an overwhelming, smashing victory in 1958, winning many seats. He was only to be surpassed in the number of seats by Brian Mulroney's victory in 1984.

Apparently, in 1958, with the election of the Diefenbaker government:

...greater use was made of standing committees; for the first time, a member of the official opposition was chosen to chair the Public Accounts Committee—

Imagine that. The Conservative government of John Diefenbaker expanded the roles of committees and said examining the spending of government accounts by the public accounts committee is not something that should be chaired by a government member. They, in government, said, “We should have an opposition member chair the public accounts committee.”

Is that a dedication to ministerial accountability? That's a belief in our parliamentary system like we don't see these days.

Again, I will read it, “for the first time, a member of the official opposition was chosen to chair the Public Accounts committee and the Committee began to hold regular meetings”. That's a good concept.

In 1968 there were more significant reforms made to House procedures, including the following—and remember, I don't know what time of the year it was in 1968 that it happened. It could have been under Prime Minister Pearson, or it could have been under newly elected Prime Minister Trudeau, who was fresh faced, and there was Trudeaumania. If it was under him, with all the world before him to change the world and use government for good with an unusual respect for Parliament for the Liberals, in 1968 they made a series of significant reforms to House procedures, including the following three key changes.

The estimates were no longer considered by a committee of the whole of the House but were sent to standing committees. That was a good reform. It gave those expert committees the ability to scrutinize the spending of the departments that the minister is responsible for, i.e. the Fisheries minister in the fisheries committee or the Industry minister in the industry committee.

The second significant reform, according to Treasury Board, that was made in 1968 was that the opposition was given a total of 25 days when it could choose a topic of a debate. Those are colloquially called opposition days, when we get to propose a motion for the House to debate and move and, for the general part in this government, for the government to ignore the vote or, in some cases, vote against it, as they did recently on several opposition days. We were thankful that they voted to send China interference, which the government has been aware of for two years, I believe, yesterday, to the procedure and House committee. Thanks to some of these reforms, those things can happen.

The third thing was that most bills were referred to standing committees. I was talking with MP Blaikie the other day about bills going to standing committees, and talking about the time.... Again I'm going to give a story. There is a standing order that is still on the books today, little used, that committees could be freed up from the arduous work of dealing with legislation, which can throw off the important subject studies that standing committees do. For example, we now have three government bills before the industry committee, which has stopped, halted, right in the middle of the important study we were doing on a Bloc motion to have the electronics and recycling ecosystem studied by the industry committee to understand all types of things. That has been stopped because we now have three bills, Bill C-27 on privacy, Bill C-34, changes to the Investment Canada Act, which I'm sure all members here are very interested in, and Bill C-42, a bill to create, finally, a beneficial corporate ownership registry.

There is a standing order that still exists today that says you can refer bills to legislative committees. These are special committees that get set up for each bill. They exist for a bill, then disappear.

During the days when I was a young legislative assistant to a minister, that's where all bills went. They didn't go to standing committees, except for the budget. They didn't go to standing committees; they went to specially constituted legislative committees that would be set up, for example, to deal with Bill C-21, which changed the Firearms Act. It wouldn't go to security, SECU, as we call it. It would go to a special committee of MPs set up from all parties, and it would have its own budgets, its own clerks and its own travel budgets and then, when the bill was reported back to the House with or without amendments, that legislative committee would disappear.

For example, Mr. Chair, look at the biography of a former chair of this committee whom I knew well, Don Blenkarn, an irascible fellow from Mississauga who was elected and chaired this committee, I believe, for six years during the Mulroney government. He wasn't always a person who followed the government rules, I can tell you, much to the chagrin of then finance minister, Michael Wilson. When you look up his bio, you will see legislative committee after legislative committee after legislative committee listed by bill, because when a finance bill came out of second reading in the House, the legislative committee would set up, and Don Blenkarn would always be one who wanted to be on those bills to examine them.

While this reform in 1968 referred it to standing committees, I know personally that there were further reforms to the Standing Orders to allow for more flexibility. It is something we should use a little more today, those legislative committees, but, like I've said before, I've gone a little off topic from this, but I still think it's about how we hold ministers to account in Parliament.

There are different ways to do it under the Standing Orders, and some are effective, but the key part of it, whether it's a standing committee, a legislative committee, public accounts, the finance committee or two of my favourites, industry and fisheries, is that ministers come because it's a courtesy on both sides.

It's a courtesy to ask the minister to come and explain why this is such a great legislative initiative, but it's also generally polite—like when you get a dinner invitation to somebody's house—to go. I won't say to you, Mr. Chair, since I expect I will get an invitation to dinner with you sometime, “Well, I can only go for half an hour.” I know you want to talk to me about the insights I've provided the committee on ministerial accountability for more than that over dinner and maybe a few glasses of wine.

[An hon. member]

What about eels?

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

I might bring eels with me. We could go for sushi.

[An hon. member]

They would be legal.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Legal...that's true. MP MacDonald reminds me, a fellow Atlantic Canadian, that a legal fishery is critical. I will only consume fish legally caught—shellfish, as well—as I'm sure you do, Mr. Chair. That is part of your respect for the law.

The report goes on to say, on page 17, “Further reforms occurred in 1982”—

I was getting ahead of myself, but 1982 was the last government of Pierre Trudeau and the year the Liberal government of the day brought in the national energy program. Now, the author of that recently died and there was a minute of silence for him in the House. I was surprised to see.... I think it was gracious of the western members to stand, out of respect for a former parliamentarian who had passed away, in a moment of silence. He was the minister of national energy in 1982 and implemented the national energy program, which essentially tried to nationalize oil and gas in western Canada and forever cut any chance of Liberals winning seats in the Prairies, in any significant way....out of their prospects. It's still much remembered today. I think it was the height of respect, accountability and graciousness for our western members to stand for a former parliamentarian, even though his primary claim to achievement in Parliament was a socialist program to nationalize our oil and gas, which resulted in the former premier, at that time.... He is also not with us anymore. He quipped, at one time, “Let the eastern...freeze.” There's a little blank in there. I won't say the word out of respect for the institution. “Let the...freeze” if they're going to do this.

While on a tour of the Prairies, at that time, when the government was also—in 1982-83—trying to get rid of something called the “Crow rate”.... No, I'm not talking about birdwatching. I'm talking about.... Back then, the rail company CN was a Crown corporation. It was how they charged for freight and grain on the Prairies. The fee they would charge was by the mile, back then. We might have gone to metric by then, which Prime Minister Trudeau brought in, but they charged it as the crow flies, not actually the miles or kilometres the train travelled. That, obviously, was cheaper than paying for the kilometres.

Of course, CN was a Crown corporation and, surprisingly, the government wanted more money from grain producers and, to try this, brought a bill to Parliament—on its own, not in an omnibus bill. It wasn't in an omnibus bill. They brought in a separate bill to get rid of the Crow rate. It was pretty controversial, as we know, because at one point in the heated debate in the House it was so bad—what we see in question period today is tame—that the opposition physically charged the chair in challenging her, and surrounded the Speaker, because the Speaker made a ruling that the opposition didn't agree with.

Back then, the rules were different, as this paper on accountability is telling us. One of the ways in which the opposition could hold the government to account was to not show up for the vote, because it required both whips to be present for a vote to be held. Because this was such a contentious issue, and because the Conservative Party didn't feel—we didn't feel—that the government was being held to account properly on it, the opposition whip didn't show up for the vote. Her Majesty's loyal Opposition didn't show up for the vote. The bells—occasionally we see them flashing in here, but as we know, they make a noise when you're not in the committee room—rang for 18 days straight. For 18 days straight, the House didn't sit because the official opposition whip would not show up until the government would compromise and bend on their desire to overcharge and to change the way grain farmers were being treated in this country.

I know that the analysts and the clerks of the committees could appreciate this: It got so bad and those bells were ringing for so long—they were physical bells, not electronic bells like we have now—that they wore out. They were having to replace bells in Centre Block in order to keep them running. They had to order new bells, place them and then hook them up to the wires so that the bells could keep ringing for 18 days. After 18 days, the government finally compromised a bit on that issue. That's about accountability. The opposition has few ways to be accountable.

I haven't read ahead, so I don't know if this paper deals with it—I apologize if it does—but the government changed the Standing Orders after that, by the way, so that the whips don't have to be present in the same way for a vote to happen. These things tend to change the rules, as this government has done by still using the COVID excuse to put in a bill with the costly coalition or the temporary Standing Order rules change that the government can extend the sitting into the evening to midnight anytime it wants, without the consent of Parliament.

Most incredibly, the NDP actually agreed. Great parliamentarians like Stanley Knowles would be rolling over in the grave.

Stanley Knowles, by the way, if you don't know of him, was House leader for the NDP for I think almost 30 years, MP Blaikie.

He was actually offered the Speaker's job by the prime minister I mentioned earlier—Mr. Diefenbaker—and said that, no, he didn't want it; there was an appointed Speaker back then. He said that he didn't want the job. He wanted to remain House leader.

Out of respect for Stanley Knowles, when Pierre Trudeau left office in 1984 he made Stanley Knowles an honorary clerk of the House. He gave him a seat at the procedures table and an office on the Hill. Nobody expected that he would actually go because he was retiring, but he went every day, I can tell you, as a young legislative.... Stanley Knowles sat at the table of the House every day for question period. He wasn't even elected anymore and he was going to question period, but the finance minister isn't. Stanley Knowles had more respect. As we search for Freeland, our “finding Freeland” exercise continues.

I wish Stanley Knowles were here today to tell us what he would think of a Minister of Finance not being willing to appear before committee for two hours and a Minister of Finance only being in question period for six hours to be held accountable.

The other thing that Liberal motion did on the Standing Orders is that it allows them to actually operate those evening sittings without a Liberal quorum, without government quorum. That's a fundamental thing about any meeting. Maybe some of our viewers—I hope they do—volunteer for organizations. If you go to the board meeting for those organizations, you need a quorum to conduct a meeting. The House of Commons is no different. You should have quorum to be able conduct business, but they've temporarily suspended that democratic accountability element of the House of Commons until June.

I suspect that they're going to try to make it a permanent thing that they don't even have to show up. What do we expect? We can't get the Minister of Finance to come for two hours. Why wouldn't they amend the rules to ensure that the government doesn't actually have to show up when it forces the House to sit to midnight? Why would they bother showing up? They'll say, “We'll just make everyone else sit while we go and watch the Leafs win this round of the playoffs.” It will happen: I am confident that the Leafs will win this round and make it to the next round. I know the chair of the committee agrees with me at least on our love of Canadian teams making it to the next round of the NHL playoffs. Edmonton also looks like it's on its way to the next round. I bet Edmonton will be in the final.

This paragraph says, “Further reforms occurred in 1982, including the establishment of an annual parliamentary calendar”—which you can fine online, by the way—“and numerous measures to improve the use of the House’s time.”

In 1985, the McGrath report, of which MP Blaikie's father was a part of, noted that many parliamentarians were straining under the new workload placed upon them under this new committee system.

The Mulroney government, with one of our best prime ministers in my personal view, implemented a number of the McGrath committee report recommendations, as any good and responsive government would do that believes in ministerial accountability and democracy. The Mulroney government implemented a number of recommendations made by the McGrath committee report, as MP Blaikie knows, because I'm sure he had these discussions with his father. These included reducing the size of parliamentary committees and ensuring continuity of committee membership in order to allow them to develop expertise, and providing committees with their own budgets.

I know some of the staff here will really appreciate this one. The McGrath committee report asked that committees have research staff, and the Mulroney government agreed and implemented that recommendation.

I'll say that again. It recommended ensuring the continuity of committee membership and providing committees with their own budgets for research staff. Committees didn't have research staff before then. Legal counsel was provided, as well. Of course, when you're dealing with law, it's sometimes good to have legal counsel. The government also agreed that standing committees should have before them the full departmental policy array, including the department's objectives, the activities carried out in pursuit of those objectives and the immediate and long-term expenditure plans for achieving them.

Since 1993, further efforts have been made to enhance Parliament's capacity to hold the government to account by providing more timely and comprehensive information to Parliament, with greater focus on results, if you can believe it.

The government's operations and estimates committee was greater in 2002. I believe it would have still been the Chrétien government, when Prime Minister Chrétien was still in power, before the internal coup that happened in the Liberal Party where he was thrown out as a sitting prime minister and replaced by his finance minister, the ever ambitious "Mr. Dithers", Paul Martin.

This report by Treasury Board goes on. On page 18, for the sake of interpreters, it comes to a new section on the role of the Auditor General. We know the Auditor General is critical in the ministerial accountability framework in our parliamentary system. Under this report, which I'm sure all ministers have read, ministers need to understand the role of the Auditor General in their ministerial responsibilities.

I did not know that the first Auditor General was John Langton, but he had responsibilities to both the government and Parliament as deputy minister of finance and secretary of the Treasury Board. Let me get this right: The first Auditor General was actually the deputy minister of finance and Treasury Board. He was also responsible for the use of funds and for reporting to Parliament as a result of his audits. Gee, this guy was a super bureaucrat in the first Trudeau era, as it was famously called then in a book called “The Superbureaucrats”. He was a super bureaucrat, auditor general, deputy minister of finance, secretary of the Treasury Board, and responsible to Parliament. That guy had a lot of meetings to go to in Parliament, and a lot of meetings to go to in the House.

It sort of reminds me—and I did not know this—that Sir John A. Macdonald's law partner was a guy named Sir Alexander Campbell from Kingston. They were law partners. He was also Sir John A. Macdonald's campaign manager. He did such a good job getting Sir John A. elected in Kingston and the Islands.