Government Operations Committee on March 10th, 2021

[Steven MacKinnon, Liberal, Gatineau, QC]

Okay.

My only point is that this information either has, is or will appear in various formats in the past, present or future, but it's unlikely that the Treasury Board Secretariat is the source of such information. Of course, the public accounts will be published, to state the obvious. Of course, the Department of Finance regularly reports on these matters.

I don't know about Mr. McCauley, but there's nothing more transparent than government spending. If he's sending our friends here from the Treasury Board Secretariat on a make-work project, it will be resolved in short order in any event in the regular course of financial reporting.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Thank you, Mr. MacKinnon.

I see that Mr. McCauley's hand is up.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Thank you.

I am not too keen on waiting a year or so for it to show up in the public accounts. I'm making the assumption that TBS has this information or that it's being supplied to TBS by the CFOs. I think we owe it to ourselves to have this information.

I'll give you a perfect example. We found out under COVID spending that Fisheries and Oceans spent over $100,000 of taxpayers' money to put up people at a luxury millionaire resort on Vancouver Island, which had absolutely nothing to do with COVID at all, as I have stated.

I'd like to see how much more taxpayers' money is either being misspent under the guise of COVID spending or in the actual spending itself. The whole reason this committee exists in Parliament is to oversee spending. I see no reason why, under transparency and openness by default, we would not welcome this information.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Thank you, Mr. McCauley.

Mr. Kusmierczyk.

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

Just to reiterate what my colleague Mr. MacKinnon stated, I do feel very strongly that this is a matter that is best directed to the Department of Finance and not TBS. This is not a TBS matter. That's my first objection.

My second objection is that I'd really like to ask Mr. McCauley to make a case for why we would go beyond the regular schedule of financial reporting that is expected and that is on the calendar in terms of the financial reporting that happens on a regular basis, and why we would need to have a month-by-month account when, again, this is part of the regular calendar and regularly scheduled accounting of expenditures. I'm just wondering what the argument is for going outside of that regular process.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Thank you, Mr. Kusmierczyk.

I see that Mr. McCauley's hand is up.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

I could ask what the reason is for hiding this. We are not seeing it on GC InfoBase. We've asked in the past. We've been told by TBS at previous meetings that it's all on GC InfoBase. However, that's the authorities or planned spending and not the actual cash.

There are untold billions being spent, and I think we owe it to Canadians as members of this committee and as members of Parliament to see this spending.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Thank you.

Mr. MacKinnon, I see that your hand is up.

[Steven MacKinnon, Liberal, Gatineau, QC]

Let's just disabuse Canadians of the notion that they are not going to see the spending. Mr. McCauley, you know much better than that.

There is a reason why we return to this committee to examine witnesses on estimates and supplementary estimates on multiple occasions. There's a reason why our financial reporting systems are set up as they are. There's also a reason why real-time reporting of finances and spending is not possible in an enterprise as large as the Government of Canada.

I know Mr. McCauley knows that. I know that history has yielded literally dozens of mechanisms to ensure the financial transparency that he hopes to achieve here today.

What I would submit is that forcing officials to create new instruments and new ways of doing financial reporting—which is really only reinventing the wheel—is just a make-work project for public servants who are extremely busy getting us through a pandemic. He's looking for financial reporting by the very people who are working right now to help us manage our way through a pandemic, who are buying vaccines, who are supplying PPE—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Steven, please....

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Order, Mr. McCauley.

[Steven MacKinnon, Liberal, Gatineau, QC]

—who are doing the work of getting Canada and getting Canadians through this pandemic. Those are the very people he is targeting with this motion by having them create new and strange financial reporting tools that the government is ill-prepared and not set up to provide.

Mr. McCauley, I think you know this. In fact, I know you know this, and I know you know that these kinds of dilatory manoeuvres here at committee are not the kinds of things that are going to serve Canadians in the long run.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Thank you, Mr. MacKinnon.

Mr. Fergus is next, and then Ms. Harder.

Mr. Fergus.

[Greg Fergus, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I don't want to repeat what my colleague from Gatineau, Mr. MacKinnon, just said.

However, I want to say that I'm a member of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts and that we conduct this exact type of analysis in that committee. We receive financial statements from all departments and we mainly review the analyses provided by the Office of the Auditor General.

Mr. McCauley is an experienced member who has served on both sides of the House. He certainly knows—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Both sides...?

[Greg Fergus, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

—that the Standing Committee on Public Accounts will receive the data.

My colleague, Mr. Green, who sits with me on that committee, knows that we spend a great deal of time reviewing the government's financial statements to ensure that these amounts are being spent correctly. When they aren't, all our colleagues on the public accounts committee participate in the fine and unanimous tradition of reviewing the financial statements on a regular basis and making sure that the work is done properly.

If Mr. McCauley insists on moving this dilatory motion, it will only force our hard-working public servants to come up with work that's already being done in another committee.

Mr. Chair, I want to know whether I can ask the clerk of our committee, through you, the following question. Doesn't this fall more under the purview of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts than the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates?

There's a fine parliamentary tradition in the House of Commons of not duplicating committee work. When a committee does a job, we let the committee do its work. We don't have the power to reinvent this.

I'm asking you this question, Mr. Kitchen. I would like you to ask the clerk to clarify this issue for me.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Thank you, Mr. Fergus.

I'm looking at the clerk to see whether he feels comfortable answering that question.

[The Clerk]

What I can say, Mr. Chair, is only from a procedural point of view. From a substantive point of view, you'd have to speak to the analysts. I know that Raphaëlle has her hand up.

Ultimately what I would say from a procedural point of view is that if the chair has ruled the motion in order, then the chair has ruled that the motion is in order and it's before the committee. The committee can then consider it, as it would any other motion the chair has ruled in order, and then can amend it, vote on it and decide it.

With regard to whether the content is actually within the mandate of the committee, I'm probably the wrong person to ask. I would refer this to Raphaëlle, who will be able to answer that.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Thank you, Mr. Clerk.

If the analyst feels comfortable answering that.... Raphaëlle, do you have any comments?

[Raphaëlle Deraspe, Committee Researcher]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm going to comment in French.

If you look at the mandate of the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates, you'll see that the committee must review the format and content of all budget documents.

Since the COVID-19 expenditures are part of the budget documents, this matter would be related to the mandate of the committee.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Thank you, Raphaëlle.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Can I just make one quick comment?

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Mr. McCauley, I actually have Ms. Harder, then you and then Mr. Kusmierczyk. We'll let Ms. Harder go first.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

This matter at hand is actually quite simple, which is to say that the mandate letter of every single minister within this government states the same thing, and that is this. I will quote directly. It says, “I”, being the Prime Minister, “expect us to continue to raise the bar on openness, effectiveness and transparency in government. This means a government that is open by default.”

I repeat: “open by default”. This means that every single Liberal member sitting at this table should be facilitating the procurement of this document and this information that has been asked for today.

Instead they are arguing against it. That's not “open by default”. The government should make this information available and it should be accessible to this committee. It's totally appropriate. Be open. Be transparent. That's what it says in the mandate latter.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Thank you, Ms. Harder.

Mr. McCauley.