Government Operations Committee on Oct. 8th, 2020

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Thank you, Mr. Paul-Hus.

We need to recognize that we're discussing the amendment by Ms. Vignola at this point in time as she has made the amendment to the original motion, just for clarification. Is there any further discussion on Ms. Vignola's amendment?

Ms. Vignola, do you have anything more to add?

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

I assume that the report of the Parliamentary Budget Officer is ready, as Mr. Paul-Hus said, but that given the prorogation of Parliament, if I’m not mistaken, we have to move a motion to formally reintroduce that report.

Am I wrong, or is my assertion correct?

[The Clerk]

I will answer Mrs. Vignola.

I put this question to the members of the Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer at the beginning of prorogation. They were in the process of reviewing the laws that govern them. There is nothing to prevent the committee from making the same request of them. I have yet to receive a response from the Parliamentary Budget Officer. I don’t know how the bill is drafted or how the Parliamentary Budget Officer interprets it. We have to wait and see. I don’t know if the people in the office continued their work during prorogation.

On another subject, Mr. Chair, I would like to clarify something for those who have problems with interpretation. I forgot to mention at the beginning of the meeting that if you want to speak in French, you have to be on the French channel. If you want to speak in English, you have to be on the English channel. When you switch from one channel to the other, it takes a few seconds for the change to take place. This can create problems and cause you to hear the interpretation while you are trying to speak. I hope that this clarification can solve some of the problems.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Thank you, Mr. Clerk. I appreciate that.

There's just a point that I think we need reminding of. In the committees that I've been involved with in the past, the reality is that the motions that are presented at the beginning will be taken to each committee's subcommittee, at which point that subcommittee will determine which ones to proceed with, based on that process, and then be brought back to the committee.

I'm assuming that is the same process this committee has already followed. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I do believe that's the process that we set out, and although we will move forward on this motion, there will be others that will be presented and then discussed.

Do we need a vote on the amendment, Mr. Clerk?

[The Clerk]

Mr. Chair, if I may intervene on that, the subcommittee makes recommendations to the main committee. A motion adopted by the main committee doesn't have to be referred to the subcommittee, though the subcommittee may want to make recommendations as to, for example, how to run the studies. Once adopted in the main committee, the motion doesn't actually have to be referred back to the subcommittee for consideration. The subcommittee, however, can make recommendations, which have to be approved by the main committee.

I would suggest that we proceed to a recorded division on the amendment and the motion, as there has been considerable debate. I don't know if Mr. McCauley wanted to intervene again or not.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

No. I'll leave it. I was just going to suggest that we refer it to the subcommittee to hash out a general order of stuff once we know about the estimates and everything else.

[The Clerk]

The chair can always convene a meeting of the subcommittee at a later date to discuss future business and then make recommendations to the main committee, or the main committee can adopt motions right now.

As there is a motion on the floor, I would suggest that we should dispose of it, and I would suggest, Mr. Chair, that we proceed to a recorded division on Madame Vignola's amendment, if you agree.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

I think we should as well.

(Amendment agreed to: yeas 6; nays 4)

Is there any further discussion on the motion as amended?

Mr. MacKinnon followed by Mr. Paul-Hus.

[Steven MacKinnon, Liberal, Gatineau, QC]

Mr. McCauley said that we’ve been wanting to do a review of the National Shipbuilding Strategy for a very long time. It is still the largest procurement in the history of the country and it is having an impact in every region of Canada. So it is entirely appropriate for this committee to look at it.

Unlike Mr. Green, I don’t think it’s about turning the page, as he said. On the contrary, we’ve been trying to do this in-depth review for several years now. We should support the motion as amended by Mrs. Vignola.

Mr. Paul-Hus, Mrs. Vignola and Mr. Weiler represent important shipbuilding regions.

I will be supporting the motion, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Mr. McCauley.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Thank you.

I appreciate what Mr. MacKinnon says. It's quite funny when we say we've been trying; I've been trying for five years. The Liberals have been blocking the study for most of those years.

Maybe it's just semantics, but it's not the NSS that we owe it to taxpayers and Canadians to review; it's the actual procurement process, the cost overruns, the delays and everything else. I think all parties agree on the idea of the NSS. I think we want to look not at that but rather at the actual procurement process.

I appreciate Ms. Vignola's amendment, but again, with all the other items that we have as well as our previous discussions from before prorogation, this is going to go well into the new year. We could spend 16 meetings, I'm sure, just on the JSS or what's going on in Irving right now.

I don't support the motion period, because I think it's too restrictive with regard to what we actually need to do and also does not address this looming chance that the polar icebreaker or new icebreakers for the Great Lakes, etc., could get offshored any moment now, as we've seen. I think we're doing a disservice to taxpayers but to the shipbuilding regions as well if we don't get it right. I don't think this motion does that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Thank you.

We are going to go to Ms. Vignola, followed by Mr. Paul-Hus, Mr. Kusmierczyk and Mr. Green.

I'm going to ask people to hit the little raised blue hand. That way I can catch things fast enough and then follow in order.

Ms. Vignola.

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

Thank you.

I will respond quickly to what Mr. McCauley just said.

Mr. Weiler, if memory serves me correctly, your motion mentions icebreakers. Are you talking only about polar icebreakers, or do you include light and medium icebreakers?

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Mr. Weiler, I'll let you answer that, if you would.

[Patrick Weiler, Liberal, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

We're specifically talking about the polar icebreakers.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Ms. Vignola, do you have anything further to add?

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

No.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Mr. Paul-Hus.

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mysteriously, I can no longer click on the little raised blue hand. It has disappeared from my screen.

I recognize that there are a lot of questions that need to be asked about the National Shipbuilding Strategy. We know that some contracts are not being executed effectively, but this is not a good time to look at that because of the situation we are facing.

In any event, we cannot support the date that is mentioned in the motion. We can defeat the motion and present it later in a different way or we can amend it to change the date. The November date does not hold, given the Main Estimates that we will be required to review in the coming weeks.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Mr. Kusmierczyk.

[Irek Kusmierczyk, Liberal, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I really appreciate it.

This is an important study and an important motion being brought forward. It is a matter of urgency, I feel.

In our constituency of Windsor—Tecumseh, we don't have a shipbuilding footprint, although being in the Great Lakes, we depend significantly on the Coast Guard and the ships there to patrol our waters in the area.

Fundamentally, I do appreciate the incredible significance of the shipbuilding industry, not just to the security and the safety of our country from coast to coast to coast, but also to the jobs that I see from shipbuilding. In this climate and situation with COVID, that is absolutely paramount.

When I think of shipbuilding, I think not just about the direct shipbuilding jobs, but also about the skilled trades and how important the health of our shipbuilding industry is to the development and cultivation of skilled trades in this country. When I think about shipbuilding, I also think about communities that have a large steel sector and steel industry, and how important that is to those communities as well, and to all the workers who are tied to that.

To me, this is a priority. This is about making sure that, yes, while we're focused on COVID and the health and safety of Canadians as a top priority, at the same time, it is important that we focus on advancing, protecting, and growing jobs. Shipbuilding, obviously, is a large accelerator and catalyst for that. Again, whether it's skilled trades, good union jobs, or good steel jobs, it's absolutely critical.

There is, to me, quite an urgency to see this study brought forward in a timely fashion. I will be supporting this motion.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Mr. Green.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

I don't think anybody is disputing how important jobs are to the shipbuilding industry, just as we're not disputing how important jobs are to veterans, or looking at the green economy, or any of the other priorities that we had prior to this. The kicker is how overly prescriptive this is, which is why I referenced how it turns the page on other discussions that we had prior to the unfortunate and untimely dissolution of Parliament.

Even in my remarks after this is dealt with, I would still point out that defence procurement, with a focus on shipbuilding, has always been a priority of this committee in my short time here. I don't think that will change. What will change, though, is how we order the studies of this committee.

My preference is to resume, notwithstanding....To be on the record, for those who might be tuning in for the first time, we worked through COVID. It's not as if we hit pause at this committee and didn't do any work during COVID. We worked through COVID and had collaboratively identified and prioritized the good work of this committee to come up with what should have been, at least in my opinion, a full resumption of the work we had done.

I'm not going to be supporting this. I understand that defence procurement and the focus on shipbuilding is critically important. At the appropriate time, we can work together to draft a motion that would be beneficial to the entire committee, and not just switch our attention to something that is very prescriptive in a 16-week, November or December, drop-dead period.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Ms. Vignola, I see that your hand is up.

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

You know how important the national shipbuilding strategy is to me and to jobs. That there are guaranteed jobs in Halifax and Vancouver is good, but that there are as many here at Davie shipyard, which represents half of the construction force, is equally important. I am sure you have heard enough from me on this so far.

The proposal would force us to look at all of this very quickly, so we would be looking at budgets very quickly. It does not make sense. We have to take the time to get it right.

So in order to serve our community well and to take into account the jobs that this strategy will create in a direct, indirect and induced way, I cannot agree with the original format of the motion.