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.