Finance Committee on May 2nd, 2023

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

That's if you can call a Liberal delegate "normal". If they pay the maximum amount in the donation they get to go to Laurier Club events, and of course the minister herself would have been there. She would be a big draw as the Minister of Finance, but we don't know how many of those events they had during the convention because Laurier events are secret. We do not know how many Laurier events were conducted at the actual convention itself.

For some reason, the Prime Minister and the president of the Liberal Party did not share the details of the Laurier Club agenda with me.

Going back to the issue of the bill and ministerial accountability, it's so key. As the Prime Minister's letter on her mandate—and the Prime Minister made a big deal out of making these mandate letters public. These never used to be public. Prime Ministers have always given mandate letters. This Prime Minister, in the context of supposedly open, transparent and accountable government, said this. This letter says that the ministers have to familiarize themselves with “Open and Accountable Government”, which sets out the core principles and standards of conduct expected of them while they are in office.

When you read that interesting document—it was issued in 2015—it says that ministers have to be available and open and attend Parliament and respond to questions. Now, it doesn't say “answer” questions, because they knew ahead of time that answering questions was not something they wanted to do; they just wanted to respond to questions, which is different. I could get into the Webster dictionary difference on that, but I think most people who are watching and listening probably understand the difference between those. That's why we're into this, and that's why these documents are very important—particularly this document, from Treasury Board, which is an additional guide to the “Open and Accountable Government” issued by the Prime Minister in 2015, for which ministers are supposed to be responsible.

These are the Treasury Board guidelines for ministerial accountability, and where I left off was on page 10. I'll leave out and not finish the last sentence of the paragraph I was on....

Okay, by popular demand, I will repeat the last sentence before I go on to the next section of page 10.

The last sentence says, “Ministers remain individually”—

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

There may be new members.

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

There may be new viewers.

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

Did you tell them how many pages there are in here total?

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

I've been asked how many pages there are in this document. Apparently there are 55 pages. We're on page 10. For those who have joined tonight, I did a matinee show today, and now I have my evening thing. Usually you repeat the show when you have a matinee and an evening show, but I'm not going to repeat the show. That would be against the rules.

I'm going to continue with the document that's before us that Treasury Board, I think, has set out for ministers to read. I'm hoping it was in their briefing books when they were sworn in. I know it was in ours when we got in, so that we could understand ministerial accountability and, as parliamentarians, how we would hold those ministers to account based on what Treasury Board and the Government of Canada expect.

On page 10, in the second-last paragraph, is the sentence that I read before but I'll read again just to provide continuity:

Ministers remain individually and collectively responsible for their statutory duties and accountable to Parliament

—and that's where we stopped before the break—“accountable to Parliament”. It was actually a pretty good place to stop, but it then goes on to say:

—and the prime minister for the stewardship of the resources and exercise of powers assigned to them.

I will spare members this, because I know some of the members probably don't need to know about the collective responsibility of cabinet. That's in the next couple of paragraphs in this report.

I can circulate it, Mr. Chair, and table it in the committee, if you would like, so that ministers can read the collective responsibility of cabinet at their leisure.

The collective responsibility, of course, is the idea that is the same in a corporation. This is that you, as a collective group or a management team, make a decision and you're expected, regardless of what your view of that decision is privately, to go out and support it publicly. If you're not supportive of it and you just can't do it, you can do as the Right Honourable John Turner did in the 1970s, and resign from cabinet so that you are free to speak your mind.

I'm being asked what John Turner resigned over. He resigned over the issue of deficit spending by Pierre Trudeau. He was a Liberal of principle. That's about as rare as “finding Freeland”.

I will skip that collective responsibility section and go on to the next section on page 11. For the translators, it is entitled, “Individual responsibility of ministers”. This goes to the crux of the subamendment and amendment, which deal with ministerial accountability before this committee, which is a committee of the Parliament of Canada. It reads:

In applying the concepts of responsible government to individual ministers, we see that they have responsibility

—that's spelled r-e-s-p-o-n-s-i-b-i-l-i-t-y, for those following at home—

for their portfolios, which can include not only their departments, but also non-departmental organizations, such as Crown corporations.

I think we've seen some of this before in some of the reports. We know that Crown corporations report to various ministers—the Minister of Transport, the Minister of Finance, etc.—and they have various Crown corporations and duties they're responsible for.

There's a whole bunch of stuff here about legal authority, but in the second paragraph under that section on “Individual responsibility of ministers”, the Treasury Board writes:

A minister’s accountability to Parliament for his or her department means that all actions of the department—whether pertaining to policy or administration, whether taken by the minister personally or by unelected officials under the minister’s authority or under authorities vested in those officials directly by statute are considered to be those of the minister responsible. If Parliament has questions or concerns, the minister must—

It uses the word “must”, not “may” or, perhaps, “occasionally”. It does not say they show up once a month. It states:

...the minister must address them, providing whatever information and explanations are necessary and appropriate. (This means that accountability always includes answerability.)

That's what we're looking for. It's answerability in this committee by the Minister of Finance for the $3.1 trillion. It's answerability for the doubling of housing and renting prices. It's answerability for the 10% increase, which now seems annualized and regularized, in food prices. It's answerability for why spending $3.1 trillion more and never, ever balancing the budget, as the party dictated to the minister, is in the interests of bringing down or will bring down inflation. It's how spending more and putting more money into the economy—from the government taking more money from taxpayers and then borrowing more money on top of that—actually reduces inflation.

That's an economic theory that's new to me. It is a little while since I was in university. I did my MBA not too long ago, but I didn't see in any of the economic texts that a government spending more money reduces inflation. It would be an interesting question under this provision of the Treasury Board, which states, “This means that accountability always includes answerability.”

Here it says “answerability”, so responses are supposed to be answers. I'll leave it to your judgment, if you watch question period, as to whether the government adheres to that guideline from the Treasury Board.

It goes on to state:

If something has gone wrong

—sometimes those things happen. Sometimes departments do things wrong—

the minister must undertake before Parliament to see that it is corrected. And, depending on the circumstances, if the problem could have been avoided had the minister acted differently...

That's an important part of ministerial accountability, when the minister or the department makes mistakes. Parliamentary committees and Parliament itself, in the House of Commons question period, are seeking answers as to whether that mistake could have been avoided in the first place.

This is very important. It's an essential manual for ministers to read. I'm surprised they presumably haven't read it.

Do you know what it says next? If that mistake is made, as Treasury Board says, and there could have been a different decision or outcome for the minister, the next line says, “the minister may be required to accept personal consequences.”

Generally, in a Westminster system, accepting personal consequences.... It's not experiencing it differently; it's experiencing it the same way. If the minister is responsible for the department, then the minister must do the consequences for their actions.

One action that we've seen lately is that the Minister of Finance has supported her cabinet colleague in sole-sourcing contracts to her campaign staff or personal friends to do media training.

Perhaps the media trainers should have gone over what would face the minister should she sole-source contracts to a personal friend. That might have been a good preparation for the minister in preparation for being held accountable in the House.

Now did that minister resign? We've had ministers resign for a lot less. We've had ministers resign for things that cost less than $20.

Minister Boudria—I digress on these things, but I remember these things—resigned from the Chrétien government because he took a free night at Château Montebello. Some of the members here may have experienced a wonderful weekend not far from here on the Quebec side of the Ottawa River at the Château Montebello where Pierre Trudeau held the 1980 G7 economic summit. It's a beautiful place. Don Boudria took that free night and resigned over a couple of hundred bucks.

But when a minister of this government gives tens of thousands of dollars for sole-source, breaking contracts, the minister just says, “Oops, sorry.”

Now, is that good enough? If your children do that, do you put them in a time out, or do you just say that sorry is good enough?

Well, there are consequences to actions. That's what this says. It says, “the minister may be required to accept personal consequences.”

I believe that when they wrote this, they meant that personal consequences weren't just an apology. It's something more. It's standing up and saying, “Do know what? I erred twice. I did it the first time as a mistake; the second time it's a habit and needs to be corrected.”

The best correction is to resign, but that hasn't happened for the Minister of International Trade, who used to, by the way, work in the Prime Minister's Office for this Prime Minister with the person who she gave the contract to, who also used to work in this Prime Minister's Office. Perhaps Pomp & Circumstance kept her from doing the right thing in resigning and Pomp & Circumstance advised her that the best thing to do was tough it out, so that Pomp & Circumstance could get more contracts in the future.

The document says, “Ministerial accountability does not require that the minister be aware of everything that takes place” in the department.

I will go on to say that it continues on the top of page 12 to say, “To support a minister's accountability for a department, the minister and his or her deputy must work together to understand the level of detail at which the minister expects to be involved in the department's work."

You know, some people want to be briefed and want to know every detail of everything that's going on when they run part of an organization. Some are happy just to get a two-page briefer. As Jean Chrétien required, nothing should ever go to the prime minister that's more than two pages because that's the attention span.

The current Prime Minister's chief of staff said before a parliamentary committee.... She came before a parliamentary committee for two hours; she's generous with her time. The ministers of the Crown and the Deputy Prime Minister, though, apparently don't have the time to go to committee to the same extent.

We calculated that $8 billion is what it would cost for the minister to come to committee. Maybe that is too much of a price to pay. I don't know.

This report says on page 12, “Accountability and blame are different: blame applies only if problems are attributable to the inappropriate action or inaction of the minister.”

I don't know. Sole-source contracts to one of your best friends seems like something the minister did.

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

Are you talking about Mary Ng?

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

It was the Minister of International Trade and her former work colleague, good friend and campaign manager. It was the Pomp & Circumstance company. That's where we're full of pomp and circumstance in this government.

That's how you get a $9,000-a-night vacation, presumably, or a $6,000-a-night hotel room in London with a butler and a piano so you can sing Bohemian Rhapsody if you are the Prime Minister of Canada. Pomp & Circumstance must have done the booking in advance on that because why else would you use a company called Pomp & Circumstance than to go to Britain and deal with the pomp and circumstance.

This goes on to say in the second paragraph:

whatever the level of detail at which the minister becomes involved, the minister and deputy have a complementary responsibility to ensure that appropriate systems are in place to manage the risk of problems and to correct them when they occur.

Ministers are similarly accountable for the exercise of the authority by the deputy minister

I spoke earlier on the Al-Mashat affair. Remember when I was reading several nights ago from that excellent Library of Parliament report on ministerial accountability? There was a discussion in that paper about Al-Mashat, the former long-serving Iraqi ambassador to the United States for Iraq during the first Gulf War.

There may be people in this room and even members of Parliament who weren't even born then, but you need to know history. It was in 1991 just for clarification, and some of the members here were toddlers.

That Gulf War was when Iraq invaded the sovereign nation of Kuwait and the “coalition of the willing” came together. They came together under the leadership of the first president Bush and under then-prime minister, Brian Mulroney, to push back a despot in Saddam Hussein out of an independent country. Saddam Hussein's ambassador to Washington was a fellow named Al-Mashat and Al-Mashat decided that he wanted to emigrate to Canada; who wouldn't, really.

Even if you're an ambassador in Washington with the fancy life, the cars, the limos, and the expense accounts that an ambassador gets, Al-Mashat decided he wanted to come to Canada. The immigration minister of the day, who I happened to work for, said no, but he got in anyway. I was talking about this with the Minister of Immigration today, actually, just before a vote, we were talking about ministerial accountability in the immigration department. I informed him that the reason that all of the people in the embassies abroad now work for the immigration minister, and not Foreign Affairs, is because of this ministerial accountability issue around Al-Mashat.

At that time all of the people who processed immigration applications were actually foreign service officers. The deputy to the deputy minister then, known as the associated under-secretary, was Raymond Chrétien. Surprisingly, if you haven't heard of Raymond Chrétien, Raymond Chrétien was the nephew of the then-Liberal opposition leader, Jean Chrétien, future prime minister of Canada, who had decided through various Liberal channels that the best thing to do was to take Al-Mashat and send him off to Belgium, have him processed and put in, in spite of the fact that the immigration minister had said no. You know, what the heck. What's the point of being the 2IC, as the bureaucrat in charge of where foreign service officers go on their postings, without having the ability to actually tell one of them what to do.

The poor immigration officer who was a foreign service officer for the Department of Foreign Affairs gets a telex—back then it was telex—from the person who decides whether his next posting is Paris or Mogadishu. What is a telex? Back to this thing about some of my colleagues only being a few years old in 1991, a telex was how embassies communicated to each other back then because the Internet was in its infancy. It's like a telegram.

The guy in charge of deciding, Raymond Chrétien, the nephew of the opposition leader, on the request of the former Liberal ambassador to the United States, a buddy of Al-Mashat, a fellow named Allan Gotlieb, requests that the poor, lowly, officer in the Belgium embassy of Canada process this application. Guess what? That poor, young, foreign service officer, didn't choose to listen to the immigration minister, who had said no to this person coming in, but chose to listen to the person who decides whether he gets to go to Paris on this next posting. It's human nature, I guess, so he processed him. Little did all those people know that one month later that immigration minister would become the foreign minister.

That foreign minister would read in The Globe and Mail, much as we're reading today about Chinese interference, because apparently The Globe and Mail learns about it before the Prime Minister. The Globe and Mail then published a report that said that, in the middle of a war with Iraq, Canada had allowed their ambassador into Canada and given him landed immigrant status. It's phenomenal, really, when you think about it. The Immigration minister said no, so what is a minister in accountability supposed to do?

This is really what this is about, the issue of ministerial accountability. The ministers of the day said.... This is why it was in that insightful Library of Parliament report. I know the library because of my interventions the other night and again today. They will probably want to revise this report to include more detail on this initiative, and I'd certainly be willing to spend time with them to explain it.

The minister is still alive. Her name is Barbara McDougall. I can't go on without a statement here mentioning that the Honourable Barbara McDougall, who happened to be my boss back then, experienced this. She didn't experience it differently, it was.... Well, I guess she did. As Immigration minister, she said no, but the department and the bureaucrats in External Affairs experienced that command by the immigration minister differently and said yes.

The minister of Immigration, as I was explaining to our current Minister of Immigration today in question period.... The new foreign minister said, “You know what? I'm never gonna let this happen again,” and made all of those foreign service officers no longer diplomats with all the status that comes with diplomats. They are now and have been ever since employees of the Department of Immigration. They weren't happy about that, but they are now in Immigration. They still are.

The reason that our current Minister of Immigration has an accountable task force of people throughout the world to execute on his strategy and this government's strategy on immigration and to implement the exceptional processing of immigration in Canada that has led to 2.4 million people being in our backlog....That exceptional efficiency is because the minister has clearly marshalled his resources accordingly, but he has all of these resources around the world, and do you know what he has that they didn't have back then? He has computers, Internet and things like that to keep....

Back then, everything was done by paper. The immigration backlog back then, when we were allowing 200,000 people into the country, was 40,000 people. Can you imagine a world with only 40,000 people? I think the Minister of Immigration should be added to this motion to account in this budget for the changes, because there are changes in this omnibus bill to immigration rules and citizenship. I don't know how we're going to get through this in two hours.

That is a bit of a digression from the Treasury Board report.

I will skip down a few paragraphs in the interest of time. On page 12 it says:

Ministers are said to be answerable, as opposed to accountable, with regard to the day-to day operations of arm's-length organizations in their portfolio. This means, for example, that if questions were raised in the House—

It's hard to raise questions in the House in our search for finding Freeland. Six days and five months....

I was trying to figure out yesterday why the minister was there in the House, and it dawned on me. I looked at my calendar. Do you know what happened between last week and this week? It's a new month. It's the month of May, so it's the monthly appearance of the Finance minister. It sounds like—she's promising at least—this may be an unusual month of May, the merry month of May, as it's called in the song in Camelot.

We're going to have a second presence of the minister, at least for an hour anyway or, as one committee member on the government side put it, she has been here in the past for at least an hour. I don't know. Maybe she misspoke, because I don't think she's ever been here for more than an hour. The proper English explanation of that would be that she was here for an hour, if we're going to be factually correct, and we're just looking for two hours. It's a small amount to be worried about.

The last paragraph on page 12 says, “An important dimension of accountability is the capacity to respond when issues arise.” Fifty-one acts being amended is an issue that has arisen, so the dimension of accountability is obviously important, according to Treasury Board.

The report goes on:

Accordingly, with respect to matters arising under the watch of a previous minister

—well, that's not the case here—

the current minister, rather than the previous minister, is accountable for answering to the House....

We see that every day, obviously, with some of the issues going back to the Minister of Public Safety. Some of these things go back to the previous Minister of Public Safety, who sits silently in the House as the current minister, sadly, has to defend that record. The previous minister used to be the police chief of Toronto—

[An hon. member]

You don't hear much of him anymore.

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

No, you don't hear much of him, although while he was police chief of Toronto, it was said that he was in the pocket of the union, that he was totally in the pocket of the union and wasn't much in management.

I see that every day as the shadow minister for Innovation, Science and Industry. I see that my counterpart minister actually said something contrary to this when asked why this government approved the takeover of Canada's only lithium mine, a critical mineral, without a detailed national security review. Under the green strategy that this government approved in 2019, they approved the takeover of that mine by a Chinese state company, but 100% of the production of that Manitoba mine goes directly to China. So much for the critical mineral strategy of this minister of industry.

When I asked him about it, he said, “Well, it wasn't me. That was the other guy”, who happens to be working at Rogers now with a big fat paycheque.

He said that before, so I asked him why the government had allowed China to acquire a company out of Vancouver called Norsat, which also owns a company in Toronto called Sinclair Technologies, which are both critical telecommunications companies. In 2017 the previous minister of industry in the Government of Canada allowed that to be taken over by a company called Hytera. I know where Hytera is based. I know you guys know, but I'll just say it for those watching: It is based in Beijing. It's a state-owned company.

Canada allowed a critical telecommunications manufacturer in Canada—two of them, in fact, with one in British Columbia and one in Toronto—to be acquired by company called Hytera, a Chinese state-owned company, and do you know what? That previous minister never asked for a detailed national security review.

That is puzzling, because 2017 is the year that the supposed Government of China legislature in Beijing passed their national security law. Do you know what that national security law says? It says that if you are an individual who works in China or is a resident of China, or you are a company headquartered in China, it is your duty to steal all of the technology and secrets from other countries and other companies. It is your duty as a citizen. In fact, you are breaking Chinese law if you don't do that.

In 2017, when that law passed, we then allowed them, without a national security agreement, to buy two telecommunications companies. What's the effect of that?

The minister, in his accountability, said, “Not me. That was the guy before me.” The guy before him happens to have been in the same cabinet with this minister when this minister was the foreign minister; perhaps, as foreign minister during that time, he could have actually raised his hand at the cabinet table and said, “Wait a minute. Maybe we should do a national security review.”

This is about ministerial accountability and the lack thereof in this government. I know everybody watching and listening is enraptured by this story of the incompetence of this government in doing national security reviews and being accountable for its decisions. Decisions have consequences, intended and unintended. The consequence of this was that this company won two contracts in Canada by low bids. By low bids, they won a Government of Canada contract.

Let me tell you which contracts they were—well, let me stop there before I tell you. I'm going to keep the contracts a mystery for now, but I am going to tell you that in January 2022 Hytera, the Chinese state-owned enterprise that had been allowed to buy these Canadian companies without a national security review, was charged with 21 counts of espionage in the United States of America. That great conservative, that paragon of conservative values in the United States, President Joe Biden—

I'm being corrected. I'm sorry. I misspoke: He is a paragon of socialism. The Democratic president in the United States, apparently a left-wing fellow himself, actually banned Hytera from doing business in the United States.

This comes on the heels of their also banning Huawei, which is still doing research projects in Canadian universities. Perhaps the Minister of Industry and the Minister of Finance could come together to this committee on this budget presentation and explain why Huawei, contrary to what the minister says publicly, is still doing research in Canadian universities. It's incredible. We had testimony in the science and technology committee just two weeks ago on the number of projects that Huawei is involved in, but in the spirit of ministerial accountability, the Minister of Industry—who is responsible for giving Canadian taxpayer money to universities for research—says, “Oh, that's not my problem. I can't control everything the universities do.” However, he does control the money that goes into those research grants.

In the 1993 election, Jean Chrétien famously said, “It's easy, that helicopter deal. I will just put zero through the contract.” Well, it's very easy for Minister Champagne. He represents the same riding as Jean Chrétien did, Shawinigan. Jean Chrétien was the little guy from Shawinigan, and this is the effervescent guy from Shawinigan. All he can do is say, “Zero contracts go to Huawei in Canadian universities”, just like his predecessor in that riding said about the helicopters. Then he ended up buying the same helicopters afterwards, and breaking the contract cost $1 billion, but I won't go there.

Now, I know everybody is waiting to find out the contracts that Hytera won. I'll tell you that after they were banned in the United States, Hytera won two contracts in Canada. One was with the RCMP. It was not with just Procurement Services Canada or with Immigration Canada or with Environment Canada; they won it with the RCMP, one of our primary security agencies. When the minister comes here next week, I'm sure she should be able to answer why a company charged with 21 counts of espionage in the United States and banned from doing business in the United States was granted the ability to install telecommunications equipment for the RCMP across the country.

We did have a special meeting, and I have to say I put forward a motion in the industry committee and asked the Minister of Public Safety, who does not report to the industry committee, to come to the industry committee and explain this. Do you know what happened? The Minister of Public Safety actually came to the industry committee. He actually showed up for questioning in the industry committee.

I think he should invite our Minister of Finance in our effort for finding Freeland. Maybe he could be an ally in getting the minister to come here, in finding Freeland.

[An hon. member]

Do you think that will happen with the leadership race?

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

If there is a leadership race, I think there might be a little bit of a division. I can see it already.

However, what he did was he explained. He said “Hey, Rick, good news. I know you guys raised this issue. I wasn't aware of it, but the good news is that the piece of equipment that Sinclair is installing was installed across the country for the RCMP, but it doesn't hook into any of our computer systems, and there was an RCMP representative with that person every time, just to make sure they didn't monkey with the RCMP security equipment.”

There may be people out there who feel reassured by that, but I wasn't. No, I wasn't reassured.

I said to the minister, Minister Mendicino, “Let me get this straight. Minister Mendicino, you are saying that a Chinese state-owned company got access to the physical communication spaces where all that RCMP hardware is located across Canada. They may have been watched to make sure they weren't hooking into it or planting a bug, but they do have GPS on their phones. I think they could figure out exactly where the key RCMP communications equipment is if the Chinese government wanted to interfere with it. Do you think that is good news, Minister?”

[An hon. member]

What did he say?

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

I've been asked what he said. He said he never thought of it that way. Well, okay.

Then I went on to say, “You're also responsible, are you not, Minister, for the Canada Border Services Agency?”, and he said yes.

Again, this budget bill, Bill C-47, allocates changes to some of these security acts.

I said, “Then you're aware that the Canada Border Services Agency had a contract with Hytera.”

By the way, do you know how Hytera wins these government contracts?

[An hon. member]

How does that happen?

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

It's because they're the lowest bidder.

I looked at Hytera's financials, because Hytera claims to be publicly traded on the Beijing stock exchange, which I'm sure is a stock exchange with the highest ethics and security in the world. The Minister of Public Safety or the head of the RCMP, like anyone else, could google it like I did. It took me about five minutes. It does require you to understand some basic financial definitions of numbers, like what a return on investment is, what a capital expenditure is or what a balance sheet or an income statement is. I'm not sure every one of the ministers can do that.

Let me underscore that this investigation took 10 minutes, and I don't have the entire security apparatus of the government of Canada available to me. It showed me that Hytera does not make a profit. In fact, they lose money every year. If the profit motive is not the issue that drives that company, what could possibly be their other motive in wanting to own telecommunications companies in Canada? They are winning with low-cost bids and underbidding companies in Canada that have to bid and make a profit. I have not had an opportunity to ask that question.

It is baffling that the Minister of Finance.... When she comes here, maybe she could answer why we think that's a good expenditure of taxpayers' dollars, because they now have access to the Canada Border Services Agency. They have access not only to the RCMP's telecommunications; they have access to know where our communication facilities are and what equipment is in the Canada Border Services Agency.

I know there's an old poetic saying that “consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds”. Perhaps I have a little mind when it comes to consistency, but I expect consistency. This government is consistent, I can tell you, because while we search in the “Finding Freeland” episode or perhaps the “freeing Freeland” episode, I'm hoping the PMO is freeing Freeland so we can find Freeland. I'm hoping the Prime Minister's Office has done that.

I can tell you that the Minister of Industry is consistent with what we've heard from the Minister of International Trade, who I know sits just behind him in his seat in the House, where she said basically, “Oops—not my problem that I gave sole-source contracts.” Do you know what Minister Champagne said? “Oh, sorry; that's the other guy, not me. I know I served in cabinet with him and I know I was around the cabinet table.”

As we've heard, collective decision-making is part of the parliamentary system. Each minister is responsible for the decision that other ministers make, and we understand that this is the way it operates, but in the guise of collective responsibility, we have a collective lack of responsibility: They blame the other guy.

I'm sure we're going to hear that because Stephen Harper did not bring in a bill to prevent Chinese state-owed enterprises from buying Canadian companies, it's not the Liberals' fault as a government that they didn't do a public safety check on these companies. It's not their fault, because if only Stephen Harper had brought in legislation to make sure it was mandatory to do it, then they would have followed the rules. Because they've been in power for eight years, they certainly couldn't be responsible for not thinking in the last eight years that this was something they should do.

In fact, for public security options in any acquisition over $512 million by a state-owned enterprise, the minister has an option, every minister has an option. As Brian Mulroney said to John Turner in the 1984 election debate, “You had an option, sir.”

Canadians deserve better. You could have gotten rid of the old Liberal ways. You could have brought in a new standard of ethics and have said, "I'm responsible for this and I will make sure it never happens again, and every single state-owned enterprise of China will get a national security review because, first and foremost, I care about that". But why would you if you were aware for two years that China had been interfering in Canadian elections, had actually been intimidating the family of a member of Parliament and you did nothing about it?

Apparently, that's Stephen Harper's fault too. It's Stephen Harper's fault that, eight to 10 years ago, he didn't pass a law that compelled these Liberals to actually say that when a member of Parliament is intimidated by a foreign country you're compelled to tell them about it. You can't just sit on it and benefit from that in an election; you have to actually do something about it. In the eight years this government has been in power, they chose not to do that.

We know that every sparrow that falls from the sky for this government is Stephen Harper's fault. I would like to lay claim to that quote, but that quote comes from a member of Parliament named Roy MacLaren, a good Liberal and a former trade minister under the Trudeau era, who during the free trade debate in 1989 said, in a rare show of honesty for a Liberal in the House of Commons, that we will blame every sparrow that falls from the sky on Canada's free trade agreement. You will remember that the Liberals opposed free trade back then, and they ran an election against it in '88, they ran an election against it in 1993, and they said that they would tear up the free trade agreement and they would get rid of the GST.

I have a question for everybody here. Do we still have NAFTA? Now it's called CUSMA, USMCA, NAFTA 2.0. Apparently, they're quite proud of that, the NAFTA. The last time I checked I think we still have the GST.

It pains me to say this, but after the 1993 election, there was a Liberal minister who had integrity. I'm shocked I'm saying this about the Right Honourable Sheila Copps. Sheila Copps was Jean Chrétien's deputy prime minister, a long-time Hamilton, Ontario MP. In the 1993 campaign, like every other Liberal, she promised to get rid of the GST. Then, shortly after that election, there was a summit of the three amigos, as they were called, the president of the United States, the president of Mexico and Jean Chrétien as the newly elected prime minister. You would have thought Jean Chrétien had invented NAFTA and invented the GST and embraced it, so in a rare move of integrity—although it wasn't a very risky move given that Sheila Copps had represented that riding for many years in Parliament, for many years in the provincial legislature, and her father had been the mayor of Hamilton, if you didn't know that—she resigned her seat. No, she didn't resign her seat to go back to some private practice, she resigned her seat to run again in the by-election.

This was a big risk for somebody who had represented it federally and provincially, and whose father had been the mayor—a very big risk. I'm not sure the last time a Tory had run that riding, but she did it anyway, and cost the taxpayers' money, but she is the only Liberal who resigned her seat. You'll be shocked to learn she won the seat in a by-election. You know what? That is a minister who, according to this Treasury Board guideline and the open and accountable guidelines for ministers of 2015 for this government, actually lived up to her commitments.

To get back to this primary issue of how does Parliament—and I know everybody watching out there is asking this—hold a minister to account, I can tell you that I know.... I can hear the Liberals here in the room telling me that they want to know how Parliament holds a minister accountable.

This Treasury Board document, for the sake of the translators, is called “Meeting the Expectations of Canadians: Review of the Responsibilities and Accountabilities of Ministers”.

I will refer the translators to page 15. Section 2.2 is entitled “Parliament's role in holding the government to account”. This, perhaps, will be guidance for those ministers that are now—

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

I have a point of order, Chair.

The bells are ringing and we do not have unanimous consent, so we need to suspend.

I hate to do your job, but evidently you're not doing it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

It's been called for, Member.

The bells are ringing. I'm looking to members for unanimous consent.

[An hon. member]

No.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

We'll return after the vote. We're suspended.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

We're back.

MP Perkins, the floor is yours.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[Damien Kurek, Conservative, Battle River—Crowfoot, AB]

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Go ahead on a point of order.

[Damien Kurek, Conservative, Battle River—Crowfoot, AB]

Again, the point needs to be made that it would be very straightforward to move on with the important work the finance committee does if the finance minister would simply articulate that she is willing to come and speak for two hours.

I am wondering, Mr. Chair, whether you've heard from either the clerk or possibly the finance minister and Deputy Prime Minister on whether she would simply be willing to commit to coming before this committee—if she were asked, of course—for those two hours. It is a fairly straightforward request.

Mr. Chair, on this point of order, I would ask that you share with the committee—or consult with the clerk on—whether or not we have heard that the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance will come for two hours to defend her budget before the finance committee of Canada's Parliament.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

MP Kurek, just to reiterate.... I think you asked the same question just before we went to the votes, or a little before that. Right now, what we're on is a subamendment to the amendment of MP Blaikie, which is, “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.”

The minister has emailed the committee and said she would like to appear this upcoming Tuesday, which is May 16, MP Kurek. That is the information—