Government Operations Committee on March 4th, 2008

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

The floor is yours, Ms. Bourgeois.

[Diane Bourgeois, Bloc, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Of course, no one can be opposed to the direction that Mr. Kramp sees for the committee. As a taxpayer, I find that what we are doing at the moment is quite appalling.

Nevertheless, I would like to point out to my colleagues that this a game that two can play. As opposition members, it is normal for us to ask questions. What is not normal is that, as the party in power, you are so lacking in transparency that we have to fight tooth and nail to get information. What lack of transparency, you say? Each time we make a motion, someone from the party in power makes another one to prevent information from being released.

If we received the information clearly and upfront, we would not have to waste our time running around. We are all like “Colombo”, not because playing politics is easy but because we want to find out the truth. Our work is not done just because we worked on the Williams-Catterall report. There are other items. We want to study the budget. We want to study, gentlemen, what your non-elected minister, Mr. Fortier, did with the billion dollars raised from the sale of public buildings. Has that been added in for the benefit of the public? Just you wait for that. You are going to find that we will wear you out. Be open and transparent.

As to the motion, Madam Chair, I agree with Ms. Falco's amendment. I would like us to move to another motion that could shed light on other items in this committee's purview.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Thank you, Ms. Bourgeois.

Mr. Holland.

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

Thank you, Mrs. Chair.

[An hon. member]

Madam Chair.

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

Madam Chair.

There are a couple of things that I think need to be said. I'll be brief, because I expect that this debate will continue on.

I have moved motions--in fact, I've sat with some of the members opposite in reversed roles when we were in government--but I have never seen the kind of resistance to motions that I have seen on the two or three I've proposed with respect to Mr. Baird and light rail.

What to me is interesting about this is that while there's a great hue and cry about the need not to investigate this from Conservative members, within Ottawa and within the Ottawa press--and in such hardly liberal bastions of media as the Ottawa Sun--it's stated very clearly that this needs to be investigated, that there is a very serious issue here that resulted in a $280 million liability for the City of Ottawa. For me, if we're not here to investigate government operations and its implications, and how ministers conduct themselves, and to hold those processes accountable, then I don't know what we're here to do.

Here are the facts. At the last meeting, we had Mr. Wouters from Treasury Board come in and state that Mr. Baird acted on his own; that, in his opinion, it was the decision of Transport, not Treasury Board, to intervene at this stage; that Transport should have been the lead, not Treasury Board; that the minister acted without the advice of the Treasury Board and interfered in this process at a stage when seven government departments had already signed off on the project. The province had already signed off on the project. The city had already signed off on the project. And yet the minister saw fit, on a file that Treasury Board says was not theirs, to inject himself. The question is, why?

We've been given two explanations. One explanation is that it was political interference to help elect a friend. The second is that it was a boondoggle that he wanted to interfere in. Yet Treasury Board itself and the minister himself agreed that they would sign off on the project along with those seven other departments. That makes eight government departments that were willing to sign off on a so-called boondoggle, if you accept that second argument.

The conclusion by most of the press covering this--and this isn't my conclusion, this is from papers that hardly have a liberal bias—is that there was inappropriate interference.

The only thing this motion does is request Mr. Baird to come to the committee, as he himself has requested to do, to answer for that and to fill in these gaps and discrepancies. That's the intent. I think it's pretty clear. In my opinion, it's well within the mandate of this committee. I think it's necessary to clear up a lot of questions that are being asked not only by opposition members and not only by citizens of Ottawa but also by people beyond Ottawa.

For that reason, I think the motion needs to pass.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Mr. Angus.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Thank you.

I don't believe the end is nigh for this committee. I believe we are trying to carry on some work that has to be done. We need to get to it. Certainly a few issues have been discussed because they have drawn a lot of media attention, and I think it is incumbent on us to look at it and then move on.

As I have already expressed to Mr. Holland, I am very uncomfortable with this motion in that I don't think it is the purview of this committee to speak to Mr. O'Brien. I am not interested in the municipal fights in Ottawa any more than I'm interested in our committee studying the Elton John “ticketgate” in Sudbury. These are municipal matters.

I do believe there is a question for Mr. Baird that I would like to...and as a result of our discussion, I think it would only be fair to hear from him. What I'm uncomfortable with in the motion, however, is that we're going to do this before the break. We've set a number of motions and we've voted on them. We get a plan here and then we're always throwing something else to the top of the list.

I don't have a problem with the motion if we're just going to be speaking with Mr. Baird, but I'm not ready to push it ahead. We only have two other meetings, three meetings maximum, before the break, and we already have a schedule.

So if they want to make an amendment to make it after the break, I don't have a particular problem with hearing from Mr. Baird.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

I believe there are some spots. We could do it before the break or after the break. There are means of doing it either way.

I will go to Mr. Warkentin and then Mr. Fitzpatrick.

[Chris Warkentin, Conservative, Peace River, AB]

Because we're just talking about the amendment right now, I'm not going to get into the entire substance of the issue. But I'm going to refer to what Mr. Angus was speaking about with regard to timelines.

It seems we haven't at any point scheduled a time when we're going to start talking about the report we're going to bring forward on the geographical distribution and the turnover of the public service. We have spent time on these issues, we have gotten halfway through a study, and then all of a sudden our attention has been turned. I don't know when we as a committee decided we would not proceed with these investigations.

So we have that one. We have the real estate plan, which we have had many hearings on and have discussed. We've never gotten to the bottom of where we are as a holder of real estate—we've heard about the condition of very few buildings—and what we as a committee might suggest to the government. Every time the government talks about doing something with real estate, there seem to be howls from the opposition, yet there have been absolutely zero recommendations from this committee with regard to real estate.

There really is no position for the opposition or the members of this committee to howl, if the government decides to proceed with something, because there have been zero recommendations from this committee. It's just complete political rhetoric. There has been that on the real estate plan; there's been that on the geographical distribution; there's been that on the passport issues. There's been nothing from this committee.

I know that Madame Bourgeois is going to be upset with me for saying this, but she has to agree the taxpayers' money is being wasted, because we continue to have these discussions as to what we think may be ailing the federal government, but at the end of the day we put nothing concrete, nothing beneficial forward to provide any direction for the government whatsoever.

[An hon. member]

Hear, hear!

[Chris Warkentin, Conservative, Peace River, AB]

We continue to go on partisan witch hunts and all kinds of things. But at the end of the day, this committee provides nothing of value for the Canadian taxpayer, if we continue to run it the way we have.

We have many issues. One issue I am quite concerned about is the turnover within the public service. We've never had somebody come to this committee to clarify. We've been asking and asking again for somebody from the public service, somebody from a third party, to come to talk about turnover. Madam Chair, you'll know that I've been asking for this for some time—long before any of these other matters came up—and yet we still don't see them scheduled.

To say that there are two slots available before the break I think is a complete misrepresentation of this committee's will. We have again and again asked for these things to happen, yet there seem to continue to be openings in our schedule, and we still haven't come up with any kind of report.

I don't want to belabour the point, but I think we as a committee have to get our act together. Even on the issue of accrual accounting, which we spent all of last year working on, we still have not come up with any resolution. Nothing has been reported back to this committee in terms of the subcommittee's deliberations on this—zero. We as committee members have not been provided with a report from the subcommittee during a committee meeting.

I think it's a disservice to the analysts who are working hard on these issues that we as committee members seem to say: work hard on this, but then we're going to divert from it and are never going to get back to the work that's been done.

It's one thing to say that we as committee members have wasted our time. But it's a whole other thing to say that we as committee members have wasted taxpayers' dollars in terms of the resources they provide for us through the people who work so diligently to supply us with background information and to come up with recommendations, and then we as committee members don't ever move forward on it.

I have no problem getting to the bottom of all kinds of issues. But at the end of the day we have piles and piles of issues that we as a committee have decided we are going to deal with. We have told ourselves they are the number one issue when they come forward, and then all of a sudden they're gone the next day.

I don't want to tell my kids that I had an opportunity to do something about the turnover within the public service, but we were too busy trying to get headlines from this committee to deal with it.

I see that Mark Holland is laughing about this. But the day that this becomes an issue, he is going to be the first person saying the government didn't have a plan, that no one had a plan, nobody was talking about this thing. Well, I will be on the record as having talked about this thing, urging the committee to move forward on these issues.

Madame Folco is heckling from the other side. Madame Folco, I don't know if you have all the recommendations in terms of the turnover of the public service and how we're going to deal with the aging public service. We see that 40% of the people who worked in a job last year are no longer working in that job this year.

In terms of the payroll issues, Madam Chair, which you have brought to the attention of this committee so many times, they all play into this bigger issue. Yet we as a committee have never taken the time to move forward on these things.

In terms of the amendment that says we should get to this before the break, I think that makes a mockery of this committee in terms of the number of things we have to deal with before the break that are as important as anything else. We've started our work, and we've not done anything to fulfill what we began.

Madam Chair, I will not be voting in favour of the amendment, even with the changes in terms of the number of meetings we're going to be having. I just don't support having any meetings before the break when we have so many other pressing issues that we as a committee have never resolved, that we as a committee have never taken to fruition. We as a committee have a responsibility to fulfill some of the work we've started.

Now won't be the time, but I'll be bringing forward a motion to talk about getting some type of report written on turnover within the public service, on the payroll issues, on all the issues, Madam Chair. And I think you would be the first to be a proponent of seeing something in written form on some of these issues.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Thank you, Mr. Warkentin.

If we can solve this problem and get on to our guests, we might actually be able to move forward on some of the things you're interested in.

We'll go now to Mr. Fitzpatrick.

[Brian Fitzpatrick, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

It's a privilege to be on this committee today. By the way, I have a lot of time on the public accounts committee with Mr. Holland. He has been there for many years as well, so we have some shared experience.

I always liked the public accounts committee. We may have gone off on some partisan tangents here and there, but it's a committee where people generally work together to try to bring some accountability to government and improve government in the long term.

And I think this committee was a very good idea, because it's the system that has to be studied. It's the system that delivers services and programs to the people. It's not a blame game. In most systems it isn't the people who are the problem; it's fixing the system. Government operations was designed to examine the system, not individuals and getting into a Star Chamber-type procedure where you're trying to find blame and play partisan games.

It's unfortunate that reports aren't being done. Work is not being done on important things like the turnover problem and maybe the demographics problem we're facing in the country. We spent a lot of time in public accounts on accrual accounting with the Auditor General. We're all quite concerned that there hasn't been as much progress in getting the public service of Canada in line with the rest of the world in using accrual accounting in reporting financial operations.

It's really unfortunate that this committee seems to be preoccupied with holding hearings to determine guilt and assign blame rather than getting on with examining and improving government operations. There are a lot of people around here who see themselves as big game hunters, if I can quote a famous prime minister. From what I see, these big game hunters make one big mistake: they look at rabbit droppings as their clues. At the end of the day, they really don't seem to get any results.

[A voice]

If you want results, I'll get results.

[Brian Fitzpatrick, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

There's a lot of smoke and fire and a lot of barking going on.

I really don't want to criticize one of my colleagues, but if one member had actually defended Conrad Black, I suspect Conrad Black might be serving a life sentence rather than a five-year sentence, given his track record of success at defending his issues and so on.

It is unfortunate. I look at the clerk and the analyst here. They're good people. They come here every day wanting to do good work. But I can see they are frustrated. The motions are constantly being changed. The agenda is being changed. Reports aren't being made. It's a chaotic situation. There are certain people who want to turn this into a Star Chamber exercise and affix blame and attack people and carry on in that manner. Progress is not being made, and it has been rightfully pointed out that we are not improving the system and services for the public, but we are spending a lot of taxpayers' dollars. Somebody said they are a taxpayer too, but we have to remember it is taxpayers who pay our salary. If we're giving any money back to the system, it originally came from taxpayers.

I did hear one member say that there is a lack of transparency, there's a lack of this and that, and we need more time to go at these things. But my goodness, I understand that when one of these people was before the committee, that very member had seven or eight minutes to examine the key witness she now wants to bring back and she only used up four minutes of her time. If it's that crucial and important, do your homework, be prepared when you bring these motions forward, and use your time. Obviously there must be a fair bit of transparency if a member had seven or eight minutes to examine a witness and only used four minutes of it and let the rest of her time slide off. Now they're calling to bring the person back. I guess they didn't have enough time the first time around.

These are some of the concerns we have here.

Again, I would encourage the members on both sides to take some cues from the public accounts committee. Let's look at making this committee an actual constructive committee that gets on with improving the system.

We file lots of reports out of the public accounts committee, Madam Chair, and they usually have unanimous support of the committee when they're filed in the House. Very rarely do we have one with a minority report.

It's unfortunate, looking at what's going on in this committee, that we're off on a whole bunch of tangents and Star Chamber hearings and investigations and hunting trips for certain members. There are some members on the opposition parties I would love to go on a fishing trip with, Madam Chair, but I wouldn't put them in charge of the fishing trip because I think we'd find an awful lot of dry holes.

Those are my comments for the brief period of time I've been before this committee.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Thank you.

I will go to Madame Bourgeois.

[Diane Bourgeois, Bloc, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

Thank you. Madam Chair. I want to revisit two items. I will do it quickly and I will not drag out the time.

Mr. Warkentin was telling me—and I have nothing against you, Mr. Warkentin—that it was perhaps just because I am from Quebec that I ask so many questions about real estate. You said that I should calm down about real estate, Mr. Warkentin, but we cannot forget that this non-elected minister is selling and leasing back the most beautiful buildings in Canada without telling us, without telling members of this committee what is going on. Furthermore, he is acting unilaterally, because a part of the value of those buildings belongs to Quebec. Quebeckers paid their share, along with the rest of Canada, and these are beautiful buildings. When the minister sells them, leases them back, and gets a billion dollars, part of that money belongs to Quebec. I was elected in a constituency where they asked me to go and find information, but I am not getting any. I am doing my job.

As for public service renewal, they are hiding behind it. They say that they are the purest of the pure, but I do not think that the Conservatives or their non-elected minister are interested in it. If they were, the non-elected minister could perhaps have provided more financial resources to public service staff, which might help to reduce their workload.

I have not seen any additional amounts anywhere, not for improving people's physical surroundings, not for addressing the problem brought to us by people who tell us that they are overwhelmed in their jobs.

To sum up, gentlemen, I think we have to rebuild trust. I trust neither the non-elected minister nor the Conservative government. We find things out about the break, about the train, about all kinds of things in the morning papers. You are hiding all these things from us.

Now that I have said that, Madam Chair, I would like us to vote, please.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

There are still people who would like to speak.

Go ahead, Mr. Albrecht. We are listening.

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I just want to point out a couple of things again. First of all, we did agree as a committee to hold one meeting. We held that meeting, at which the officials were here.

They explained the situation and it was clear from that committee, from Treasury Board officials, even from the representatives from the city, that it was the council, many of them Liberals, who voted to not proceed with the light rail transit.

And the other fact remains that the money for that light rail system is still on the table.

It's certainly the responsibility of Treasury Board and our minister to protect taxpayers' money and to spend it wisely.

A question I have of you, Madam Chair is this. What happened to our subcommittee in terms of the planning ahead of the future business of this committee? We were very clear when we started this committee that motions like this required 48 hours' notice. We talk about not being prepared. My colleague mentioned doing our homework. How can we do our homework when we're presented with a motion a few minutes before a meeting when we agreed, as a committee, to have 48 hours' notice? I don't understand how we got off track in that way as well.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Mr. Albrecht, in answer to your question, the motion was presented with plenty of time. What you're dealing with now is an amendment to the first motion.

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Okay.

There are a few things I'd like to point out. First, the previous member mentioned something about this being an obvious example of the lack of transparency on the part of this government. Again, I want to reiterate that our officials have been here when requested. Our ministers have been here. Many times they've been here and there have been no more questions. So it's obvious there's been a great degree of transparency.

I don't belive this has anything to do with transparency or anything to do with priorities. In fact, I think this is another example of the fact that it is hard to set priorities. We see that over and over with this opposition.

To balance the record in terms of political support for this among media, let me quote from the Ottawa Citizen:

...Holland thinks he's latched onto some big scandal. He's invited city officials and a representative of the company suing the city over cancelling the contract to come to a Commons committee and agree with him. It's difficult to imagine that this matter is worth the committee's attention, but it will provide the kind of cheap political theatre that opposition parties always thrive on.

The problem is, Holland doesn't know much about Ottawa, or light rail.

I think we have here, Madam Chairperson, an attempt to have information for a ten percenter, a Toronto MP proclaiming to be an expert on Ottawa municipal matters. I think it's time we moved on to some important committee business.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Mr. Warkentin.

[Chris Warkentin, Conservative, Peace River, AB]

Madam Chair, we've run around this thing a few times. There's a realization among committee members that although we have this motion before us right now, there seem to be a number of issues, as mentioned by the Bloc member and a few others, that we need to get to the bottom of and resolve for the benefit of taxpayers.

In terms of the real estate plan, we've never come up with a report on that. We've never come up with a report on the payroll issues. We've never come up with a report on the turnover rate in the public service. And we've never come up with a report on the demographic challenges in the public service.

I'd like to move that we table the motion before us today—the amendment and the main motion—with the understanding that we'll come back to it once we have come up with reports on the real estate plan, the payroll plan, the turnover rate in the public service, and the demographic challenges in the public service.

Madam Chair, unless we do this, it seems we'll never have the attention of the committee redirected to these issues that we've spent so much time on. I don't know how else to ensure this committee actually comes forward with something of value.

I have no problem talking to anyone before this committee. I really don't. But I think that we as a committee have got off track in terms of so many of the things we were doing that were good work and of value to the taxpayer.

I'd like to move my motion that we deal with these things before we go on wild goose chases.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Did you put in a motion that we put aside this motion?