Finance Committee on May 25th, 2023

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

Are you muted? You're not muted, so I don't want to....

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Go ahead, MP Lawrence.

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

Thank you.

Was there anything in that motion that would limit it to only 10 hours of testimony?

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Yes, there was, MP Lawrence. I just read it to you, but I can repeat it one more time—

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

Please do.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

As it says here, MP Lawrence, what was agreed upon—including by you, because you voted, and there was unanimous consent here in the committee—is in (a). It reads:

Inviting witnesses to appear on the contents of Bill C-47 during meetings scheduled for the weeks of May 1, May 8 and May 15

That was last week, MP Lawrence. It was May 15. That was last week. That's what you voted for. That is where it is limited.

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

Thank you.

I'll wait for you to go on mute.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Yes.

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

Thank you.

There was discussion among the parties. As you are a member of the Liberal Party, I made it clear to Mr. Beech that Conservatives wanted 20 hours of testimony, and there's nothing stopping the committee from getting 20 hours of testimony. It's disingenuous at best, the argument that you're making, Mr. Chair.

However, I will—

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

I will respond to that, MP Lawrence. What is disingenuous is what you've just said.

I'll read it into the record, because I'd like to do that. This is what I said today at the start of this meeting as we were going to get into clause-by-clause. This will give me an opportunity. All those who may be watching can hear this, which may be limited to the members of this committee.

Knowing that we have spent a considerable number of hours on the subject matter and Bill C-47, I'd like to provide a recap for the benefit of our members, as well as for anyone watching this committee.

To be precise, as of last week, we have completed a total of 40.5 hours, which is the equivalent to at least 20 meetings, thanks to our wonderful clerks right here to my left. As chair, I must interpret the motion as written, given there seems to be some confusion—and that may be your confusion—over part (d) of the motion and how the phrase “goal of accomplishing at least 20 hours of study prior to the beginning of clause-by-clause consideration of the bill” interfaces with the rest of the motion.

I want to specifically read out the start of the motion and section (a). It reads:

That the committee continue its pre-study of Bill C-47, an Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 28, by:

(a) Inviting witnesses to appear on the contents of Bill C-47 during meetings scheduled the weeks of May 1, May 8, and May 15, 2023....

I hope you have a calendar in front of you, MP Lawrence. You could look at when those weeks were.

In keeping up with specific requirements, our clerks had diligently worked hard to schedule witnesses. Our members may already be aware that we had to cancel all those scheduled witnesses ahead of the meetings. We had to cancel those, MP Lawrence. In fact, thanks to the kind intervention of our Bloc member, MP Ste-Marie, we were able to break a marathon meeting, number 87, which ran for approximately 27 hours or at least equivalent to 13 meetings. It started on Tuesday, May 2, at 11 a.m., and ended on Tuesday, May 16, at 4:24 p.m. I just want to make sure that you get that correctly. We adjourned that meeting through unanimous consent.

For all those watching, and for members, who I'm sure are aware, unanimous consent means that all members, including yourself, MP Lawrence, from all parties agreed to add the following:

(e) and that the whips of the recognized parties, and the clerks, be empowered to seek as many meetings as possible, with the goal of meeting for 10 hours before the end of this week.

That's what you agreed to—for 10 hours before the end of the week—for the week of May 15, which was, again, last week, MP Lawrence, if you pull out your calendar. Thanks to our extremely hard-working clerks again, we were able to miraculously achieve the 10 hours of witness testimony last week as required with a full house of witnesses for every hour of those meetings.

Unfortunately, due to the late passage of this motion, members are fully aware that we are under constraints, and our clerks did their best to work around the timelines required for last week. We had a number of committees that had to be cancelled, etc., to be able to pull those hours together and to have the resources to have those witnesses come before us. Everything was done in good faith and in collaboration.

I know that because, MP Lawrence, you never reached out to me. You had my number. You had my text. For MP Chambers and MP Hallan, it was the same. Actually, you spoke to me about a number of things but never was this ever brought up. I just want to let you know. Everything was done...as evidenced by being carried, again, with unanimous consent from you and from all the members, from all the parties here.

All parties submitted amendments in the same good faith within the required deadline of 12 noon last Friday, including the Conservatives. This was a very clear indication, MP Lawrence, that everyone interpreted the adopted motion the same way that I understood. Also, this timely submission helped our legislative clerk and his team—who are with us here right now, and we have heard them read some of the clauses into the record—work towards the next step to ensure they prepared the required documents and package for clause-by-clause.

I understand that the members brought that letter that came to us late in the afternoon yesterday. Yesterday is when you sent it—the first time I heard from you from our last meeting when we were here, hearing from witnesses. You had plenty of time to bring this up earlier, submitting whatever amendments you had.

All members on this committee have my personal contact information. I know, because you text me regularly. Adam Chambers texts me regularly. Jas Hallan does the same. I don't know if Marty has ever texted me.

Marty, I'd love to get a text from you. Please text me, Marty. I feel lonely when you're not doing that.

Everybody, including the Liberals, including the Bloc, including the NDP, regularly communicates with me. None of you reached out to me. None of you ever reached out. I just want to make that very clear, MP Lawrence.

Again, let me thank MP Ste-Marie here for his quick thinking. He was really quick on his feet. He was able to think of how we could efficiently get in as many witnesses as possible, which we did. Thanks to the hard work of our clerks and everybody else, we heard from those witnesses.

That's where we are today, MP Lawrence. You know, we have officials who have been brought in. They are here to answer questions, etc., and to help us as we go through clause-by-clause. Many Canadians are waiting for their benefits. You've spoken to some of them. They've come up, actually, in the first couple of clauses, where we talked about tradespeople, etc., who need this to happen.

MP Lawrence, I'm going to give the floor back to you, but that's where we're at and that's how we got to this place.

Just to do a full recap for you, if there's something that you feel was not right in what I just spelled out for you.... Did you not vote for that motion? Through unanimous consent, did you not say “yes” to what we wanted to do here today? Now it sounds like amnesia, like you've never heard of this before.

MP Lawrence, go ahead—

[Adam Chambers, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

Mr. Chair, just on that same point of order or point of information, or whatever this is, I want to correct for the committee that I actually didn't get my amendment in on time. I did that, but I want to thank the clerk for making sure it was part of the package.

The second is that the notice of motion for this meeting only came out at the end of the day Tuesday. Conservatives made known their challenges with that yesterday morning, less than 24 hours after receiving the notice of motion. We went into the weekend thinking there was witness testimony coming this week, only to find out at the end of the business day on Tuesday that clause-by-clause was starting less than 48 hours later.

I just want to make sure we get that on the record, as we were debating the point of information of Mr. Lawrence's question to the clerk and the chair's description and timeline of events.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, MP Chambers.

MP Chambers, you're a lot smarter than I am, and MP Lawrence, you're the same. Listen, I know that you both are lawyers. I know that you both agreed to unanimous consent on what we're doing here. You're both lawyers. You both understand. I don't understand how you're going back in this revisionist type of approach.

Listen, you can do whatever you like, but I just want to kind of bring you back to where we are today.

Again, you do both have my personal cell and my number, etc. You have the clerk. You didn't reach out. We didn't hear anything from you until, as I said, late yesterday. That's where we are today.

MP Lawrence, you have the floor. You may—

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

Mr. Chair, on this point of order, because Mr. Chambers was surprised about us moving to clause-by-clause, I just want to point out that in section (b), the thing that everybody unanimously agreed to, which you cited very well. I think your history was very well done. It says, “(b) Moving to clause-by-clause review of Bill C-47 no later than Thursday”—oh, that's today—“May 25, 2023, at 11:00 a.m.”—that's when this meeting started—“provided that the bill is referred to the committee on or before Thursday, May 18, 2023”.

A number of other provisions are in here. The nice thing we did when we passed this is that we wrote it all down and distributed it to every member of the committee.

I just wanted to cite part (b) for Mr. Chambers' benefit.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, PS Beech.

We have a lot of smart members here—MP Lawrence, MP Chambers, PS Beech, MP Morantz....

MP Morantz, please email me or text me or do something. Please reach out to me. I want to bring you in. I hope you do have my personal contact information. If not, we'll get that out to you.

[Marty Morantz, Conservative, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB]

On this point of order, Mr. Chair, I actually don't have your personal cell number.

I would point out that there was time for more witness testimony. We had 10 hours of witness testimony on Wednesday and Thursday of last week. We didn't have a meeting on Tuesday of this week. We could have met Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday and still been able to do clause-by-clause by Thursday. I don't accept the argument that it was not possible for us to get up to the goal of 20 hours.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Mr. Chair, that's debate. We should have had it before we voted unanimously.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

I'm glad to hear from MP Morantz.

However, MP Morantz, you were also part of this unanimous consent. You understood. You were in the room. I don't know what I'm missing here, guys, but, listen, you were in the room when this all happened. It's on video. It's recorded. I don't understand how you're looking to change what you agreed to in this room.

Maybe it's some kind of.... I'm not going to say it.

We'll go back to MP Lawrence.

Thank you.

MP Lawrence, go ahead.

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

That's perfect.

We can fix this confusion right away. Why don't we just delay clause-by-clause until June 6 and get some witness testimony? Let's get this solved right now.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

MP Lawrence, there's no confusion, unless it's with you. We can bring you back to the record of what you voted on and what you agreed to—you, and everybody, actually, on this committee.

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

Maybe I'm guilty of acting in good faith. When dealing with a Liberal, that's probably never a good idea, especially with a Liberal chair.

When you look at the record beforehand, the discussion beforehand, we were about to have an agreement on a UC motion that was based on a negotiation between me and Mr. Beech that he would do everything possible to get 20 hours of testimony in. I believed him, and maybe I'm a fool for doing it. Then Gabriel Ste-Marie piped up and said, “We want 10 hours before”. You can ask Gabriel. Gabriel didn't say, “We only need 10 hours.” He wanted 10 hours before the end of the week.

We could end this discussion and this impasse right now. We still have lots of time in the session to get the budget passed. I know that's the goal on the Liberal side. Push it back by a couple of days to get some testimony. I hate to do this to the clerks, but they are amazingly talented at getting witnesses done up. We could have had witnesses today, but instead you're stubborn and you won't move forward with us collaboratively, despite our knowing the context of this entire discussion. All Conservatives are asking for is 10 hours of additional testimony, which could have been done. We could have had that today. The clerks have proven that they are miracle workers, and I appreciate everything they do. We could have done the 10 hours of testimony today. We could have done it yesterday. We could have done it Tuesday, and there would have been absolutely nothing wrong with that.

I'll carry on with this discussion of my motion. As I said, it's a good-faith effort. We can sit down and we can push it back a couple of days just to get 10 hours of witness testimony.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

MP Lawrence, the one thing I will say that I could agree on is that our clerks are miracle workers. They work so hard. They filled the room with witnesses. They did a tremendously amazing job.

I know you have the bill in front of you, hopefully, but I would ask that you pull out the calendar. With respect to part (a), it says the weeks of May 1, May 8 and May 15 were scheduled for inviting and hearing from witnesses, and that's why there were those superhuman efforts following MP Ste-Marie's suggestion to bring in as many witnesses as we could, which we did. We filled those rooms. We exhausted all the resources, all the hours that we had up until that Friday, and that's where we are.

MP Lawrence, the floor is yours. You can continue discussing your motion.

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

Mr. Chair, sometimes you're intentionally vague about this. Maybe when we're in government, we'll be the same, but I hope not.

Are you telling me that there were no resources available on Tuesday or Wednesday for witness testimony?

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

MP Lawrence, what I'm telling you is what you voted for, and what you voted for was to schedule witnesses for the weeks of May 1, May 8 and May 15. You said no different. You voted and the other Conservatives voted unanimously for this.

When MP Ste-Marie brought up the fact that he was looking to find a way to get in as many hours—up to possibly those 10 hours—before Friday, we got that done, which was great. That's what was asked for. At the same time, you heard MP Ste-Marie. You voted for that. You have voted for everything that, today, you're disagreeing with.

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

That's just not true.

What I voted for was to have 10 hours before the end of the week and then an additional.... We came into this week expecting there to be witness testimony.

Once again, Mr. Chair, I'm putting the question to you. Are you telling me that there were no resources available for witness testimony on Tuesday and Wednesday?

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

What I'm saying, MP Lawrence, is that what you voted for and what all the members of this committee agreed to was to have witnesses up through the week of the 15th and that we would be into clause-by-clause then, and that's where we are today.

You may continue with your motion. That's where we are.