Government Operations Committee on May 15th, 2024

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

You must understand my confusion. How can one be very involved if one has not been briefed on this audit? It would seem to me that the foundational step for involvement in the transformation or structural issues at Global Affairs in general would be to receive a briefing on this critical audit, wouldn't you say?

[Shirley Carruthers]

I would have to ask her staff if they've briefed her on the outcome of this audit. The practice would be for us to brief her employees on this type of information.

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

On that basis, Chair, I suspect that you will find agreement of the committee to invite Minister Joly to testify on this.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Mr. Kusmierczyk, are you opining on this?

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

Yes. I don't think there are grounds for that at this point. Again, these are contracts that have zero political involvement—

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

I'm going to interrupt you there.

I'm going to take it that we don't have UC, and I'll give the floor back to Mr. Genuis.

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

Chair, I move that we invite Minister Joly, and we can have a vote to see where members stand on it.

The fact is, from my line of questioning, it's been made very clear that the officials cannot speak to whether the minister was informed, what she knows and the extent to which she is involved or not in this issue. She is responsible for the department. I do not suppose that she personally signed off on every one of or necessarily any of the 8,000 contracts, although maybe she did in some cases.

The principal point here is that there's a very significant audit that shows very significant problems in contracting within her department, and officials are not able to answer questions about what she knew and when, what actions she has taken, if and when she was briefed, and her engagement with the follow-up on that.

Insofar as we have a system of ministerial accountability, I think we should hear from the minister about these matters. I will simply move, as I said, that the committee invite the minister to testify on this matter for two hours.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thanks.

I see Mr. Kusmierczyk and then it's Mr. Jowhari.

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

I would ask, Mr. Chair, that we suspend so we can read through this motion. If it can be translated and circulated to all the committee members, that would be much appreciated.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

As it's such a simple motion—it's just to have the minister attend for two hours—I don't see a reason to suspend or to spend time circulating it. You can stay on the—

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

I would ask for a short suspension, Mr. Chair. As I said, this would provide my team with an opportunity to have a discussion about this.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Fine. We'll have a one-minute suspension because we're running late.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

We are back.

I have Mr. Jowhari on the speaking list.

Go ahead, Mr. Jowhari.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I think the conclusion we are reaching that the minister was not directly updated by the deputy minister does not mean that the minister was not updated by her staff. That's a very wrong conclusion to reach and use as a base to call the minister to come. I don't think we have enough grounds to say that, because Madam Carruthers did not personally brief the minister, the minister was not briefed and is not aware of the situation, or that other ministers were not briefed and were not aware of the situation.

You can look at the world we are in right now. Let's talk about something that started a couple of years ago. Let's talk about the challenge we had with the supply chain and then with NAFTA, which translated to CUSMA. Shortly after that, we had a conflict in Russia and Ukraine and then in Azerbaijan and Armenia, where we opened up a new mission. Then there's the challenge we have in the Middle East.

We can look at the priorities that any of those ministers have, like the agenda of the Minister of International Trade, which is specifically on the Indo-Pacific strategy and trying to make sure that we build the strong partnerships we need in the Indo-Pacific region, or the international development minister's agenda. When we look at the agenda the government has, with the level of complexity and the sensitivity of time, even if the minister did not get briefed directly by Madam Carruthers, I don't think the minister should be called over. There are bigger priorities.

Looking at the fact that the absence of one update does not necessarily mean the absence of other updates to the minister, as well as at the priorities of all three ministers, I don't think it's justified for us to call any minister to come in at this time.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thank you.

Before we go to Mr. Kusmierczyk, I'm going to excuse our witnesses because we've hit our three o'clock time.

Before you go, though, could you get back to us on one thing? We asked about this previously, but we haven't heard back from PSPC. You may recall the Nuctech issue from a few years ago. Would you provide to the committee who the CBSA finally chose for the scanners at our embassies once the government stepped back from Nuctech? Could you get back to us on that?

[Daniel Pilon]

Yes, we can get back to you on our procurement of additional scanners.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Perfect. Thanks.

Mr. Kusmierczyk, go ahead.

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

Thank you very much.

Chair, how much time do we have for resources? I'm just curious. I'm looking at the time.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

I have nothing but time for you, Mr. Kusmierczyk. Go ahead.

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

Do we have resources for the foreseeable future?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

No, we don't have a lot of resources, sir.

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

Until what time do we have them, Chair?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

We have until about 3:04, so I suggest you start talking if you want to get something in in the next few minutes.

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

Sure. I appreciate that.

We looked at the report that Global Affairs Canada proactively brought forward and published as part of their plan, their own departmental plan, to make sure they could strengthen their processes when it came to procurement and contracts. Over a five-year period, they signed 8,000 contracts, which was worth a total of half a billion dollars.

They went through this audit process, again, proactively—it was part of the audit plan—and they looked at 100 contracts. The non-competitive contracts were valued at less than $40,000. They looked at those contracts, and what they found was that 90% of them had a documented rationale for not soliciting bids. Those that remained perhaps needed to strengthen some of their documentation, but 90% had a documented rationale for not soliciting bids.

These are contracts of under $40,000, and the decision as to whether to award those contracts or not at the ministerial level. It's at the level of the officials. It's at the level of the deputy minister, senior management and officials who are down the ladder in terms of authority. Again, 90% had a documented rationale. What the report showed was that we needed to strengthen documentation for the remaining 10%.

When you look at the contracts in the competitive process, the report found that there was insufficient documentation for 27% of them. Nowhere in the report does it talk about malfeasance, misappropriation, corruption or fraud. It is about strengthening documentation.

What I would put forward is that to call a minister here, especially the foreign affairs minister, when we have significant crises around the world, like the war in Ukraine that's taking place and the crisis in the Middle East, and when we have significant issues that require the minister's attention.... To call the foreign affairs minister to this committee for two hours to talk about why there's insufficient documentation I think is a misallocation of her time, her resources and her focus. It harms the work that Canadians need the foreign affairs minister to be focused on, and it does them a disservice.

One thing I've found over the years is that my Conservative colleagues like to interject hyperbole at every turn, wherever they possibly can. They're doing so again in this situation. We have a report that clearly states we need to strengthen—

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Mr. Kusmierczyk, I'm going to interrupt you because we are out of resources.

Before we go, though, I'll note that several of us around the table still have our hockey teams playing in the playoffs, and your Leafs are not.

With that, we are adjourned.