Government Operations Committee on Feb. 5th, 2024

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

I guess we'll agree to disagree, Mr. Kusmierczyk.

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

I think it's more important than that. Moving forward, I think it's more important that this committee have the opportunity to have a say in how it conducts its business here. Pertinent, important information was withheld from this committee, and I think we ought to have had a chance to—

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Let me respond.

On January 29, you received a letter about the report from President O'Gorman. If it had been as important as you've been stating, you could, as you said, simply have sent a simple email to me asking to have it distributed.

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

Mr. Chair, we depend on you. You shared with us over the break that you had received the information. You had read through that report. Why were we not given the same privilege?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Mr. Kusmierczyk, every single one of you received the letter on the 29th from Ms. O'Gorman about the report.

Certainly any one of you could simply have said at that time, “Hey, let's get the report out.” You could have simply said that on Wednesday or Thursday or Friday or Saturday or Sunday or even this morning, knowing that we had Mr. Lafleur coming.

It's not as though it was a big secret. We knew about the report. Mr. Sousa actually referenced this letter at our last meeting, so somebody could have addressed it then if it were all that important.

Mr. Genuis, go ahead, and then Mr. Bachrach.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Chair, respectfully, we have Mr. Lafleur before us. I have more questions that I'm willing to ask him, and we have this silly process point from the government, which on the one hand seems surprised that somebody might know something they don't know because of something they might have been sent directly.

Also, they don't seem to appreciate at all the legitimate exercise of the chair's discretion. I've been on many committees. It seems that the issue the chair has articulated is that he sought to get access to the information for the committee, and initially CBSA was trying to not send it or to not have it distributed or to require that people be in a locked room. The chair has undertaken a negotiation process back and forth in order to get the committee access to this document.

Let's remember that it was my motion to get us access to this document in the first place. When I initially put that motion forward, Liberal members said, “Oh, we don't know; we have to wait to receive it in both official languages.” Then I put it on notice and had to bring it back, I think a week later, and that's when we got it approved.

If the members of the government were so eager to get access to these documents, then they should have just approved my motion to request it. We have people proposing that we request documents that we've already requested.

Look, the chair has put forward a proposal to say he'd like to distribute this document to members. I think we should approve the sending of this document to members and I'd be happy to have Mr. Lafleur back. I have more questions to ask him and I don't know if I'll get to ask those questions today.

I do suspect that this may be the government just wanting to eat up the time that would otherwise be spent asking questions of Mr. Lafleur. I'm ready to get back to work. Let's agree to allow the chair to distribute the documents and let's get back to work.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Go ahead, Mr. Bachrach.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

With regard to this line of conversation around when the chair knew what he knew, how it was communicated to the committee and how we ended up here without the statement of fact with Mr. Lafleur here, I don't think we're going to get anywhere in that conversation. There are things going on. There are strategies being employed. I'm reminded of that famous quote from Casablanca, “I'm shocked to find that gambling is going on in here.”

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

It is what it is. We're not going to change what's already happened. We have to move forward.

I think, given that some members of the committee are talking about the statement of fact and reading from it, it would be beneficial to have the whole thing in front of everybody. I have no way of knowing whether it compromises the investigation, because I haven't seen it, but it would seem that putting out portions of it and not the statement in its entirety is not to the benefit of transparency and accountability.

I'll leave it at that. It sounds like we're going to have that conversation. Potentially, we'll have Mr. Lafleur back at a future date once we have the statement in front of us.

We are running out of time in this meeting, and I had hoped to bring forward my motion, so if I may, Mr. Chair, I'll take this moment to thank Mr. Lafleur for his time with us today and to move my motion, which has been put on notice, that the committee undertake a study on the loss of postal service in Canada's rural and remote—

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

I'm sorry. Just on a point of order, I was under the impression that we had a motion on the floor.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

We're still discussing the motion to release this document.

Can I address a couple of things quickly?

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Chair, we are—

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

There was a motion about releasing the documents.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

I made a motion and I withdrew it, but was there previously a motion made at this meeting that was being debated?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Yes. It was about the documents.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

From whom?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Actually.... Well, I had put forward and we were discussing whether we were going to release the documents or not.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Can we have the motion read back?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Yes. Why don't we just....

We'll get to yours, Taylor. Let me just—

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

It's like now we have 10 minutes, Mr. Chair. The question is—

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

We'll have less if we continue.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

You've just said that there's a motion on the floor. I'm just asking you to read back the motion.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

It was a motion to release documents.

You cannot take back your motion without UC—unanimous consent.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Chair, through you, can I ask the clerk what the motion is that we're debating currently—