Government Operations Committee on May 29th, 2020

[The Clerk]

Mr. Chair, if I may intervene, the motion that Mr. Green gave notice of earlier this week, which was distributed to members, contained the June 29 date, so it would be in order for him to move that motion with the correct date.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you very much. Please strike May 25 and change it to June 25. It has been that kind of week here, as I'm sure everybody can appreciate.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you.

Mr. Green, it has been that kind of day for me too, so I have some empathy for you.

Colleagues, if you wish to join this discussion or debate, please raise your hand and we'll get a speakers list established. The first two I see are Mr. Drouin, followed by Madame Vignola and then Mrs. Block.

Mr. Drouin, please go ahead.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

We agree in general with the motion. The only amendment, if I can propose a friendly amendment, is to the June 29 date. I would seek from my colleague whether we could agree to come to an August 30 date. The simple reasons are to allow the departments to seek that information, but also to allow enough time for translation. We know already in our committee that the time from the report to the end of the report is almost a three-week process. I know the information we're seeking is going to be a lot thicker in terms of what will be provided to this committee, so we would propose an August 30, 2020, deadline.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

I'm happy to support that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you.

We'll now go to Madame Vignola.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

I was about to make essentially the same proposal. I agree with the motion as a whole. Ten years of research is substantial. I'm in favour of a slightly later date, which is more reasonable for both research and translation. Mr. Drouin's amendment works perfectly for me.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you.

Before we go to Mrs. Block, we have an amendment.

Mr. Drouin has proposed August 30, so we are now debating the amended motion, one that I believe Mr. Green has indicated he would be amenable to.

Mrs. Block, we will now go to you on the amendment.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Given Mr. Green's acceptance of what I assume he views as a friendly amendment, we were prepared to support his motion as put forward to the committee, so we would support this amendment.

I note that ATIP requests appear to be delayed by departments. I believe this vehicle is really all MPs have left in terms of seeking this type of information, so we definitely support it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you.

We'll now go to Mr. McCauley on the amendment.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

I lowered my hand. I'm fine, thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

All right.

Paul, I have not seen any other hands, unless you have some that I missed.

[The Clerk]

Mr. Chair, I have not.

In order to take the decision on the amended version of the motion, including August 30 rather than June 29 as the date, it has to be by recorded division.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

We will have a recorded division. Thank you very much, colleagues.

(Motion as amended agreed to: yeas 10; nays 0 [See Minutes of Proceedings])

Mr. Green, I did not dock you any time when you started your motion, so you still have approximately one minute left.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Out of respect, I'll happily forgo the rest of my time and allow my colleagues—

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

I'm sorry, I have no audio coming across, Mr. Green.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Just out of courtesy for the rest of the members on the committee, I'm happy to forgo the rest of my time and allow the time to be recovered by them.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much.

We'll now go to our second round, which will be five minutes each.

Paul, who do we have first?

[The Clerk]

That would be Mr. Aboultaif.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Mr. Aboultaif, you have five minutes, please.

[Ziad Aboultaif, Conservative, Edmonton Manning, AB]

Good morning, Ms. Hogan. Thank you for joining us today and congratulations on your appointment as the Auditor General.

We know that the COVID-19 pandemic has left a dire situation and immense challenges for federal and provincial governments. Spending on just two programs, the CERB and the CEWS, as of the report we received this morning, is over $110 billion. On a lot of the spending, there are still questions that need to be answered, including on the CERB, and specifically on the CERB's lack of eligibility verification before the funds are sent out.

Will the AG's office be looking into programs such as CERB for cost overruns, fraudulent accounts and accountability?

[Karen Hogan]

Any time we approach an audit, obviously we look at the risk that fraud may have occurred or that there's a risk that fraud could occur in a program, and that will obviously cause us to either scrutinize a program differently or in more depth. As you mentioned, those two programs are very significant. They have had a big impact on Canadians and will likely be items that we will spend some time looking at.

We do recognize that as decisions were made quickly in order to react to the pandemic and in order to support Canadians, errors might occur, and when those errors occur, we would expect that an organization would have a mechanism in place to identify those and also have processes, procedures and mechanisms in place in order to address or correct those errors and, if needed, recoup any funds that were paid in error.

[Ziad Aboultaif, Conservative, Edmonton Manning, AB]

So the answer is yes?

[Karen Hogan]

Short and sweet, if we do look at that program, the answer is yes.

[Ziad Aboultaif, Conservative, Edmonton Manning, AB]

Thank you.

The current funding of the AG's office could challenge and interfere with your responsibility to oversee those dramatic increases in spending. How much does your office need in order to accomplish a review of the government's response to COVID-19 and its usual mandate?