Finance Committee on May 2nd, 2023

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

I did not see.

We're going back to MP Perkins.

[Eric Duncan, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

There's no correspondence.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

You may continue, MP Perkins.

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

I appreciate that, Mr. Chair. I really do.

For the translators, I'm on page 3 of the document that I have been citing.

I think that as a parliamentarian I'm entitled to actually express the reasons why I would support the motion calling for the ministerto be here, and I think it's incumbent upon the minister, perhaps, to read or to listen to some of this testimony. Maybe I will be able to change her mind and have her show up this time.

Page 3 states:

It is critical to the principle of responsible government that all organizations within the executive be the responsibility of a Minister who is accountable to Parliament for the organization. A Minister is accountable to Parliament for the proper functioning of his or her department and all other organizations within his or her portfolio.

Those are fine words. This continues in the next paragraph:

Ministers fulfill their accountability with respect to organizations by demonstrating appropriate diligence and competence in the discharge of their responsibilities.

It's hard to disagree with that, although we could question some of the performances. It goes on to say:

What constitutes appropriate ministerial oversight will depend on the nature of the organization and the Minister's role. In some cases, where arm's-length bodies are concerned and most powers, duties and functions are vested in a deputy head or a [government] body, the Minister's engagement will be at a systemic level—for example, making or recommending appropriate appointments, approving corporate plans, or examining the need for changes to the framework [of] legislation.

The final paragraph in this section—I believe it's in the section before we go to section 2, which is called “Portfolio Responsibilities”—says, on page 3:

Ministerial accountability to Parliament does not mean that a Minister is presumed to have knowledge of every matter that occurs within his or her department portfolio—

We certainly see that demonstrated most days in the House.

—nor that the Minister is necessarily required to accept personal responsibility [on] every matter.

That's a statement in here that this government excels at. It does require that ministers attend to all matters in Parliament. Let me read that again:

It does require that the Minister attend to all matters in Parliament that concern any organizations for which he or she is responsible, including responding to questions. It further requires that the Minister take appropriate corrective action to address any problems that may have arisen, consistent with the Minister's role with respect to the organization in question. It is important that Ministers know and respect the parameters of their responsibilities with respect to arm's-length organizations.

I think the key sentence here is that it does “require that the minister attend to all matters in Parliament that concern any organizations for which he or she is responsible, including responding to questions”. Isn't that at the heart of the matter of this discussion? The heart of this matter is that we have a simple ask on a complex bill. The simple ask on this is that the minister come and answer questions, as is part of our parliamentary Westminster system—to answer questions about this complex bill that sets out a framework to spend $3.1 trillion.

For those of you who were here earlier, I'm going to speak a little more to the ministerial responsibility. This is in “Open and Accountable Government”. I might come back to it at some point, but for now, for those watching who don't understand this, when cabinet is sworn in, they get a mandate letter from the Prime Minister. It tells them what priorities the Prime Minister, as head of government, wants them to focus on.

I have here in my hand two mandate letters, both dated December 16, 2021. They're both the most recent ones for cabinet, and I'll read part of the first one.

This is Minister Freeland's mandate letter. The Prime Minister quite likely thanks her for continuing to serve Canadians as Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance. It's quite an honour for anyone to have that role. It is an honour and deserves respect. We have respect for the minister in her role; it's just a question of whether she respects parliamentarians in their roles in this committee.

It goes through some boilerplate stuff—because this was still in the midst of COVID—about the COVID issues.

People can find these online. They're available. They can Google-search them.

I go to the second page—that's for the translators. I want to look specifically at the paragraph at the bottom of the second page and the instructions from the Prime Minister of Canada, the son of Pierre Trudeau. I'd like to see what instructions he gave her in this particular mandate letter. It's very important. This is what guides them. This is how you would conduct a performance review in the private sector: “This is the mandate. These are the things we'd like you to achieve. When I decide whether you've been successful or not, we will look back at these goals and see how you've done.”

The “finding Freeland” effort, I'll remind you, is...five days in Parliament in five months, once a day.

Here's what the Prime Minister wrote and signed himself, personally:

The success of this Parliament will require Parliamentarians, both in the House of Commons and the Senate, to work together across all parties to get big things done for Canadians.

I wouldn't expect a minister to get little things done, just the big things. Apparently, the little things, like getting a passport, don't enter into the mandate of a minister.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

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

Little things, like processing an immigration application while 2.4 million people wait on those, are the things we're not supposed to be focused on. We're supposed to be getting to the “big things”. I'm sorry. There was a saying, once: “Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds”. Maybe I have a little mind, because I'm reading into this and they're only focused on big things for Canadians. Perhaps that explains why the search for DFO enforcement in my riding, since the beginning of March, has been as successful as the search for Freeland. It's just as elusive.

This paragraph—for the translators—goes on to say this in the second sentence. The first sentence certainly has lots to chew on. The second sentence is, “I expect you to maintain constructive relationships with your Opposition Critics”.

[Some hon. members]

Wow.

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

Just so people get that again.... I know some of the other members who are legitimately, as the rules allow, Zooming into the committee meeting may have a convention or a hockey game on in the background.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

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

Let me repeat what that sentence says:

I expect you to maintain constructive relationships with your Opposition Critics and coordinate any legislation with the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons.

I can tell you, I think I have a fairly constructive relationship with the Minister of Industry. In my year as fisheries critic, I wouldn't say the Minister of Industry listened to me on anything. In fact, in my first meeting with the Minister of Fisheries, as critic, when I started to brief her on the issue we were facing in the elver fishery....

[An hon. member]

She wasn't sure what the fish were.

[An hon. member]

An “eel-legal” fishery.

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

For all those who have just joined us and didn't see my presentation at the previous meeting, an elver is a baby eel. They're not as cute as seals but worth a lot more: $5,000 a kilogram. They're caught live, shipped to Asia, grown into full eels and eaten.

At my first meeting with the minister, I said, “You have a problem with the elver fishery.” All the big to-dos in the fisheries department were there—the deputy minister and all the ADMs. They were so afraid of little old me that they flew the director general of Nova Scotia in all the way to Ottawa for this meeting. It was little old me and my legislative assistant then, a fine young fellow named Matthew Clark, who was 23 years old. Matthew Clark and I, apparently, intimidated the fisheries department before we'd even had a meeting with them. Maybe that's because I defeated the fisheries minister. That might have had something to do with it.

I raised elvers with her. Do you know what the minister said to me? The Minister of Fisheries of Canada said to me, “What's an elver?”

[An hon member]

I knew it.

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

I turned to the deputy minister, a fellow named Timothy Sargent, who got turfed out one day late last year by the PMO as deputy minister. He's gone off on a “special assignment”.

I explained to her about this eel-legal fishery that's going on—

[An hon. member]

There you go. Hear, hear!

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

On this eel-legal fishery, I said, “An elver is a baby eel.”

The department asked me to actually explain this to the minister—the officials. I'm not sure what all the paycheques and bonuses they're getting paid are for, when little old me had to explain to the fisheries minister what an elver was, but I did. That's part of this issue of good relationships in this ministerial accountability letter with the opposition critics.

I tried. I said, “Look, I'm not going to raise this in Parliament. I'm going to give you a chance to fix it.” That's the way I operate. There's the stuff that we have to do in Parliament, but this one is so important. “Please, Minister, will you look at this? Will you look into this? We have poachers from all over the place. In fact, I wish you could see this.”

I had a text today that came from Digby County, from the fishing community, with a picture of a truck arriving from the United States. Digby County is in Nova Scotia, in the riding of West Nova. Digby scallops are the best scallops in the world, by the way.

The picture that was sent to me was from one of the big spokespeople for a big fishing alliance. He sent me this picture. I'm sure you can't see it. I don't know whether I should block this out, but there is a licence plate number of a Maine truck that has just arrived in Digby County.

Do you know where he's located? He's located at the local hardware store. Why would a truck from Maine be at a hardware store in Digby, Nova Scotia? I'm sure everybody was asking that.

They were going in to buy nets, to buy anchors for those nets and to buy bubblers. What's a bubbler for? You put a bubbler in the water, like with a fish tank. They keep oxygen going, because all fish need oxygen. This fellow, whom we know and have reported many times to DFO, has been illegally poaching elvers at $5,000 a kilogram, and he is still here, from the United States, and doing it, unabandoned.

In this search for Freeland...I think five days in the House of Commons a month is actually more frequent than DFO enforcement showing up at the rivers with thousands of poachers.

The minister said to me, “I don't know what an elver is,” so I explained it to her. I gave her the chance. For months, I waited. It was like Waiting for Godot. You know that old movie. I waited. Please. I'm hoping the minister was earnest.

In her mandate letter.... Let me be sure. So that you know and everybody watching knows, this requirement in the Minister of Finance's mandate letter from the Prime Minister is that they maintain “constructive relationships” with their critic.

Guess what? When I looked at the Minister of Fisheries's mandate letter, it has a similar paragraph. In fact, if I turn it over and don't see who it's addressed to, it's identical. The final page, page 2, says this says this to the Minister of Fisheries. This will sound familiar, because I just read it in the other one:

The success of this Parliament will require Parliamentarians—

[Sophie Chatel, Liberal, Pontiac, QC]

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Go ahead, MP Chatel.

[Sophie Chatel, Liberal, Pontiac, QC]

Thank you.

This is an absolutely fascinating story.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Clerk, I am not getting interpretation. Wait one second.

Go ahead, MP Chatel, again.

I'm sorry.

[Sophie Chatel, Liberal, Pontiac, QC]

I just wanted to say how fascinating I find all these stories. Perhaps we should invite the honourable member to the national Liberal convention, and if he's inclined to attend, we could listen to him regale us with his incredible stories over a drink.

This is the Standing Committee on Finance, however, and we are supposed to be discussing the motion. Fisheries is a very interesting topic, but this isn't the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans. I just wanted to point that out.

Thank you.

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

On that point of order, I have a response to that, Mr. Chair, if I could respond.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

This is MP who?

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

It's MP Lawrence.

“It's MP who?” MP Perkins has taken over this committee—