Finance Committee on May 2nd, 2023

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

I'm sorry, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Yes, MP Blaikie.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Am I on your list?

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

You are on our list, because it is your—

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

I just wondered if we were going to have some debate on the amendment. I'd be very happy to motivate it. I know that we were in kind of a conversational mode before, but if we are going to be debating it—

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

There is debate on the amendment, yes. Do you want to continue to speak to that, MP Blaikie?

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

I'd love to have an opportunity to motivate it if we are going to be in debate mode, and it seems like that may be the case. One never knows for certain, of course, until proceedings are under way, but it certainly seems that way.

I want to start by saying that I of course agree that the minister should appear on her bill. I'll furthermore agree that she should appear in the context of our inflation study. I've been very consistent about that over...well, over the years now, I think it might be fair to say. It's certainly close to that. It's many months—over a year's worth of months—so that is something that I want to see.

I'm cognizant of parliamentary principles that prohibit committees from compelling ministers to appear, but many ministers do appear without having to be compelled. I think it would make a lot of sense for the minister to appear. There's a fair bit in the bill. Of course, there was a lot in the budget, and there are lots of issues that the committee has been inviting the minister to talk about for some time. I certainly have some sympathy for my Conservative colleagues, who would like to see the minister appear here for more than an hour on the bill, or, if she is going to come for only an hour on the bill, to be clear about her intention to appear for however much time in the context of our inflation study, and to be clear about when she intends to appear.

I think all of that would help the conversation. I thought I spotted a moment, perhaps, where we could get past our current impasse on the present motion, which I also think is a good motion, because I think it helps us prepare our work over the time to come. I've listened now at some length to Conservative colleagues talk about the importance of studying this legislation. It's why I'm keen to get studying it. I've been happy that we've found a way to start a prestudy and to start hearing from officials, because that was a way to get that work started. I really don't want to end up in a situation where we end up using our time to do this kind of thing as opposed to using our time to hear from Canadians on the substance of the budget implementation act, because I think that would be a shame. It's the kind of shame that we have seen around this table before, where we used a lot of our meeting time to discuss the ways we were going to study the budget implementation act without actually studying the budget implementation act.

Of course, as I say, here we are. We have a decent motion for how to proceed that doesn't put an end date on the study of the bill. It doesn't require clause-by-clause to be finished by a certain time. I think we have enough goodwill around the table that, if we could get to a vote, we could include in there an invitation for the minister to appear for two hours.

As I say, there's a long-standing parliamentary principle that doesn't really permit us to compel a minister, as much as we might like to. Of course, if members are interested in changing that principle, allowing committees to compel ministers to appear, I'm open to that discussion, but this isn't the place where that discussion is going to happen. This isn't the place where that decision is going to get made. I'm open to more dialogue about that and to finding the appropriate place to have that conversation. It would probably be the procedure and House affairs committee.

Some members may know that the procedure and House affairs committee is set to meet this evening on the subject of foreign interference, which, as Mr. Fast rightly pointed out, is a very important and topical issue at the moment. I fear that our current conversation now, if we can't at least get to a vote....

I want to be clear that the conversation we're having is one that we're having because of quite a high bar that the Conservatives have set, which is to have consensus in order to be able to make any decisions. I know that when we talk about electoral reform, Conservatives are always very quick to point out that we live in a majority system, and that a simple majority ought to be enough to make decisions in Parliament, and in fact that a plurality should be enough to make decisions in an election. I know they're very familiar with the principle of majority decision-making, but at the finance committee, for some reason, they feel that we need to have a consensus rather than a simple majority.

That requirement that the Conservatives are putting on the committee, which is to have a consensus in order to be able to make a decision, means that tonight another committee is going to get cancelled. It may well be the procedure and House affairs committee meeting that is going to get cancelled. Wouldn't it be a terrible irony if the study of foreign interference that Mr. Fast has said is so important, and the absence of resources that he's decried in the budget, were to be cancelled, and the witnesses who were to appear this evening didn't get to provide their testimony or had to reschedule their appearances?

Those witnesses include Gerald Chipeur, a partner in Miller Thomson LLP; Ward Elcock, former director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, or CSIS; and Michel Juneau-Katsuya, former chief of the Asia-Pacific unit, CSIS. Then, from the Vancouver Anti-Corruption Institute, there's Peter German, barrister and solicitor; as an individual, Nancy Bangsboll, independent researcher; Thomas Juneau, associate professor at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, University of Ottawa; Christian Leuprecht, professor, Royal Military College of Canada; and, of course, Jenni Byrne, who has an impressive connection to the current leader of the Conservative Party and the Conservative Party generally.

She has said and the Conservatives have said that they're happy to have her appear. Certainly one would hate to think that we're getting filibustered here in order to shut down another committee so that Jenni Byrne doesn't get to say her piece about foreign interference at PROC. I'm sure that's not what's going on, but people speculate around Parliament Hill, and one never knows, of course, what kind of conclusions others will draw.

Here we are. We have Conservatives, who say they believe in majority decision-making, requiring a consensus because they don't like, among other things, that there aren't resources to fight foreign interference. We may well end up cancelling a meeting that's about investigating foreign interference. It just seems like a really basic dysfunction that's happening here, which we could fix by just going to a vote.

If we went to a vote, we could amend this motion to include a two-hour invitation to the minister, accepting the long-standing principle that we can't compel a minister to appear at committee. That's not anyone's fault around this table; that's a long-standing item. Then we could move forward on Thursday with our study of the budget implementation act, which Conservatives have said is going to take a lot of time. In fact, they want more time, not less time.

Also, if we do it soon enough, I think there's a good chance we could allow PROC to do its work examining foreign interference. I just appeal to my colleagues. Let's not get stuck here tonight. I think that's a real possibility, but it's not too late to avert it.

I think we could honour some important Conservative principles, like majority decision-making and investigating foreign interference—which, as it happens, is also an important principle to the New Democrats—and we could be ready to show up to work on Thursday to study the budget implementation act instead of just talking about studying it.

Those sound like three good things to me. I think it's still within our reach to accomplish all three of those things, so I would appeal to my Conservative colleagues, not to agree with something that they don't agree with, but to at least allow a vote to happen so that the committee can make a decision and get on with our work.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the committee for allowing me to open debate on my amendment.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, MP Blaikie.

On your friendly amendment, I saw that Mr. Beech raised his hand. Then I have Mr. Genuis.

Go ahead, Mr. Beech.

[Terry Beech, Liberal, Burnaby North—Seymour, BC]

I won't take up too much time, Mr. Chair. I just wanted to take this opportunity to speak in favour of the amendment.

Also, I want to thank all members of the committee for the discussions that have happened over a lengthy period of time. Since we suspended and came back to enjoy spirited discussions on a variety of topics with regard to this motion, of course, the BIA has now been passed and referred to this committee. It is quite timely that we are debating this at the moment.

I'm in a tough position because, as a good-faith negotiator, I don't want to get into the details of the various talks that have been going on for a long time around this, but I think Mr. Blaikie was correct that this feels oddly familiar. If we go back to BIA 2022, we had a similar motion to this, but with an end date on it. It was filibustered by the Conservatives after some negotiation, until it wasn't. Then it was passed, and the only thing we lost was the time for witnesses to come and share their concerns about the BIA.

Like I said, I don't want to get into all the details, but we have followed a very similar path. It is quite interesting, I think, that through conversations with the Bloc and through conversations with the NDP, we were able to determine where the Liberals were, where the Bloc was and where the NDP was fairly consistently and fairly reasonably.

I think I'm on version 11 of the asks from the Conservatives. I've actually gone through multiple negotiators as well. People wonder why we're currently having a Conservative filibuster at committee. Let's be very clear about what this resolution is: This resolution is the consensus that was shared prior to the resolution's being drafted. At some point, everybody agreed to this, and then the goal posts changed.

Now Mr. Blaikie has put forward an amendment that addresses the primary concern, even though I would also note that the prestudy already has an invitation for the minister to appear. On the request of Monsieur Ste-Marie hours ago, we're working on a date between now and May 18. I think it's a fair resolution. It's a great way to study the BIA. It does it in a timely way that reflects what we did last year and the year before, and I am very excited about getting to a vote.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, Mr. Beech.

I have Mr. Genuis on this.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

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—

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

I have a quick point of order, if you don't mind, Mr. Chair.

At one point, Mr. Genuis indicated that he was moving a subamendment. I respect that I may have missed it, but I was just wondering if he had moved it already, in which case I missed the substance of his subamendment. If he wouldn't mind sharing it with the committee, I think that would be helpful.

If not, that's fine. I expect that he is coming to it.

I think it would be useful to know whether we're debating a subamendment or the amendment right now.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

MP Genuis, can you answer that?

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

We've gone from “finding Freeland” to “finding the subamendment”. I haven't read it out yet, but, in deference to my honourable colleague, who is honouring me with his close attention to my remarks, I will now proceed to read the subamendment, then speak further to it.

The subamendment, as I indicated, seeks to make two substantive changes.

One, I believe the committee should hear from the public safety minister on the issue of the budget implementation act, given the issues we're dealing with around foreign interference and the fact that this budget deals with efforts to combat foreign interference. It creates an office of combatting foreign interference. I would like to hear from the Minister of Public Safety, as well.

Then, I would like to establish that clause-by-clause not begin unless both of these ministers have appeared for two hours.

The subamendment is adding, after the word “Finance”, “and Minister of Public Safety”. Later on, it reads “that this appearance”. That should be changed to “that these appearances”—

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

Mr. Chair, on a point of order, with apologies to my colleague, if this subamendment has already put it in and the process is already complete, that's fine. However, I'm wondering—

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

This is a subamendment to MP Blaikie's amendment.

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

Yes, exactly. If we could hold court on that, go back in time and pretend it didn't exist, and if Mr. Beech is okay with suspending the meeting and negotiating off...until Thursday in a good faith way.

[Terry Beech, Liberal, Burnaby North—Seymour, BC]

I'm perfectly fine with continuing forward. I think we need to get to a vote. I'm interested to hear what this subamendment is. Certainly, there are negotiations going on, and I would say this is probably unhelpful.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, PS Beech.

We're now back to MP Genuis and his subamendment to MP Blaikie's amendment.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

It's no problem at all. Mr. Lawrence is doing great work here and on his excellent private member's bill, which we hope will pass into law soon.

The subamendment adds “and Minister of Public Safety” after the word “Finance”, and it changes the term “this appearance” to “these appearances” for grammatical clarity. It adds, before the word “appear”, the word “each”. That's earlier. After “Finance” is “and Minister of Public Safety”, then “be invited to each appear for two hours”. It should say “each appear separately”—because sometimes they'll show up together and that isn't as effective—“for two hours on the bill, and that these appearances”. It continues with the language of the amendment as it was written, then adds the full phrase afterwards, “and that, notwithstanding the proposed date, clause-by-clause not be scheduled unless both of these ministers have each appeared for two hours.”

If the subamendment is accepted, the amendment would read as follows:

“That the Minister of Finance and Minister of Public Safety be invited to each appear separately for two hours on the bill, that these appearances be scheduled on or before May 18, 2023 and that, notwithstanding the proposed date, clause-by-clause not be scheduled unless both of these ministers have each appeared for two hours.”

I have some comments on that subamendment. Before I proceed to those comments, is it understood by all members?

I'm being told that it all works in French too. That's great.

First of all, let me speak to the issue of why I think it's important that the committee hear from the Minister of Public Safety. As I said, yes, this is a budget implementation act. Yes, it's a budget bill. Yes, it's proposed in the House by the Minister of Finance. However, it is also the case that the budgetary framework of the government—the budget or budget implementation act we've seen—covers a broad expanse of different issues. I could have proposed any number of ministers, I suppose.

It's interesting to me, in general, in this place how sometimes we give so little time to the most significant issues. So much of the decision-making of the government and the legislative work of the government is packed into one document, which is the budget. There's some expectation that we rush it through quickly, and then committees spend substantially more time doing studies, which lead to recommendations but don't even necessarily lead to legislation.

When the committees are at their peak in terms of exercising real, hard power, I personally think that sometimes we seem to spend less time on that and substantially more time on issues that may be important in terms of the philosophical matter they raise but don't actually involve committees' exercising their hard power.

It is important that this committee, in the process of taking the time it needs for the study, hear from ministers—I think multiple ministers—who can speak to the importance of this.

In terms of the full spectrum of possible commentary that we could hear from ministers, though, let's acknowledge that the particular issues that might be present in the testimony of the Minister of Public Safety are a real priority for the consideration of this committee. This budget and budget implementation act come at a time when I think there's really significant, heightened concern about the issue of foreign-state-backed interference in our country, which is the defining national security challenge of our time.

When I was growing up, I think there was a lot of discussion of terrorism, and it's still very much an issue in terms of national security threats. However, I think we need to adjust our paradigm to recognize that there's this issue of foreign state-backed interference in our country that, in the past, has been under-engaged in by the government. We have tried to sound the alarm on it for a long time. I was the vice-chair, in the last Parliament, of the Special Committee on Canada-China Relations, and we began a study on the national security implications of Canada's relationship with the People's Republic of China, trying to understand what those dynamics were and what things we could do to respond to them.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

[Inaudible—Editor] just stick to the amendment and your subamendment.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

A hundred per cent.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Well, you're going off topic now—

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

No, I'm not off topic at all, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Please just get back to what we're discussing.