Government Operations Committee on July 23rd, 2024

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

I'm sorry, Chair.

I'm looking for the specifics of those departments. You say there are 36. Can you provide the list of the 36 to the committee?

The minister said that the cases total around $5 million. Is that the right number?

[Catherine Poulin]

Yes. That's a good estimate.

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

We're getting a little more specific: It's $5 million. I'm sure there's information to support that. Can you provide that in writing to the committee, the estimate that's been compiled? Initially you said it would be difficult. The minister found it less difficult. That information was gathered for him by you and your colleagues, and I'd like to get specifics of that. It's about $5 million. You say it's across 36 departments. I'd like a list of the departments and the estimates that correlate to each department. Are you able to do that for us, please?

[Catherine Poulin]

We'll check our records to see what we can do. We'll send you as much information as we can.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thank you very much.

Just as a reminder, I'm sure you're aware that this committee passed a motion that we require any requested responses within a three-week period.

Mr. Jowhari, the floor is yours for six minutes.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. It's good to be back.

I move that we resume debate on Mr. Green's motion regarding summer meetings, and I'd like to go on the list for speaking.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Hold on. Just give me two seconds.

Thanks for your patience, everyone. Normally we'd go right to a vote on this. However, upon consultation, I'm ruling such out of order because we are already in summer. It's an invalid motion now because we are already in summer.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Mr. Chair, on your ruling on the vote, I challenge the chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

You're challenging my ruling that it is out of order. Now we can go to a vote.

(Ruling of the chair overturned: nays 6; yeas 4)

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

I am overruled, so we will now vote on resuming Mr. Green's motion.

(Motion agreed to: yeas 6; nays 4)

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Annette Verschuren Thanks.

Before we resume, I'm going to suspend for about a minute so I can send out a copy of that motion so everyone has it. Just bear with us for a minute.

In the meantime, though, I had a speaking list. I had Mr. Jowhari. I saw Mr. Sousa. Was there anyone else from Zoom?

All right, we're going to suspend for a few minutes so we can have the clerks find that motion and send it out to everyone.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thank you for your patience, everyone.

Our clerk has sent out the motion in both official languages, so everyone should have it.

Go ahead, Mr. Jowhari. The floor is yours.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to open by saying that we came here prepared. We came here prepared to discuss the outsourcing of contracts. It is something that was actually put on the list back in February 2022 and hasn't gone anywhere. It's good that we're actually getting back to some business at OGGO. It is a relevant topic. This is something that all the departments have been actively working on, and there are a lot of good stories as far as what the government is doing and what the departments have been successful in doing.

In his opening remarks, Mr. Mills talked about all the initiatives the government has done to ensure that not only do they review, but also that they put new policies in place, so that we are ready to have that conversation. Yet we see our colleagues open up by wanting to do a deep dive on a case that's in front of the RCMP, and they're trying to prosecute this case as it has already been publicized on social media even before this meeting.

On that note, we would like to say that it it were about this, we would have engaged. However, now that we're going down the path of playing the partisan game, no, we're going to take the approach of having no meetings, unless there is an emergency, for the summer. This is a path that's available to us, and this is the path that we're choosing to take.

Had we not gone down that road and not taken that approach.... As as you can see, we provided the list of all the speakers and we are all ready to engage on that, and we would have engaged, but not now.

On that note, I yield the floor back to you, Chair. Those are the points I wanted to make: that we are ready to engage, but not if it's partisan, not during the summer and not for non-emergencies and the case that's in front of the RCMP.

Thank you, Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thank you.

Mr. Sousa, the floor is yours.

[Charles Sousa, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

As was mentioned in that motion before we recessed for the summer, it was clear that the will of the committee should prevail and an opportunity for its will to prevail wasn't allowed or provided for. It has not been the case.

We've had a number of motions put before this committee to try to provide better decorum and some fairness in terms of how we proceed, so I support this motion, and I think some others do as well.

I say that we should move to vote on this issue, and let's stop being judge, jury and executioner on some of these other files. I understand the publicity, but there are motions, and there are activities taking place to manage that process already. In this case, I'd rather that we do our work in the constituencies, where I am right now, and where I believe others should be as well.

Thank you, Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thank you.

I have Mr. Barrett, Mr. Brock and then Mr. Julian.

Mr. Barrett, go ahead, sir.

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

I'm not surprised, of course, Chair, that Liberal members of the committee want to try to cover up the corruption, failures and fraud that have run rampant after nine years of their government. Here we have departmental officials in front of us. We have matters that have been referred to the RCMP. But like so many of the examples with respect to procurement, what Liberal members want is commercials about how well everything is going. They don't want any accountability. We heard that about the arrive scam app. It was supposed to cost $80,000. It cost many orders of magnitude more than that. They tried to thwart and shut down investigations at absolutely every single turn.

We found out, of course, that it cost $54 million, and that the contractors who worked on it have had their front doors kicked in by the RCMP. We know now that it has been just the very top layer of the onion that is this Liberal government. After nine years of Justin Trudeau, all they can do is try to shut down these basic tools for accountability that we have. While I know it brings them great pain to step away from their back deck and their swimming pool, we have important work to do on behalf of Canadians.

I know for a certainty that folks in my community, and I know for a certainty that folks in ridings across this country, 338 ridings, want accountability for this corrupt Liberal government. That's what they want. They want it in the summer, not just when Liberal MPs feel like it or will tolerate questions from the public. We have these officials here today. I have questions prepared for the officials. They're not allowed to answer our questions during this motion that's been put forward, which is a tactic to shut down accountability. It's increased, as we've uncovered more corruption and more examples of the cover-ups that the Liberals have tried to perpetrate.

On my questions, it's so interesting that they find them political. How many cases of fraud have been referred to the RCMP? There's nothing political about that. Canadians have a right to know. They have an interest in knowing the volume of fraud that is being perpetrated on the government. Canadians are lined up at food banks in record numbers. They're struggling to get by and are teetering on the brink of insolvency in record numbers. What they see is contractors like the grifters at GC Strategies who were banking tens of millions of dollars and doing no IT work on IT contracts. We've learned that it's just the tip of the iceberg, with ghost contracting and double billing. But these guys were adding no value.

We know now that there are contractors who were employees of the federal government, this Liberal federal government, who were being used as subcontractors because, we were told, the government didn't have the capability in-house to do it. Well, by virtue of the person working for the government, we know that they have the capability in-house to do it.

Have the RCMP contacted the Trudeau Liberal government regarding criminal investigations into consultants that were not referred by the government to the RCMP? I fail to see how that's a political question. The Liberals don't want that accountability. They don't want that spotlight on the corruption they're presiding over or on the insiders lining their pockets while Canadians struggle.

How many billions of taxpayer dollars does the Liberal government spend on high-priced consultants every year? That would be the question I would address to Mr. Mills, who's in front of the committee today. He's not allowed to answer, because the Liberals are shutting down the questioning of these witnesses. The amount is more than $20 billion dollars.

I could ask for precision from Ms. Poulin, who talked about the percentage of fraud on total contracting, and for her to extrapolate what the forecast would be for opportunity for fraud or suspected fraud within the federal government, but I can't ask because the Liberals are blocking us from asking questions. They're using procedural shenanigans to stop us from getting accountability for Canadians.

Ms. Clara Visser is one of these consultants who were charged for fraudulent billing. We know that there are another three who were referred to the RCMP.

Canadians want to know how many more of these fraudsters and scammers are stealing Canadian tax dollars. Canadians see half their paycheques vaporized by government, and they don't know how much of the money, the taxes that are collected from Canadians, is going to cases of fraud and corruption, with fraudsters as the beneficiaries.

How many government employees, Mr. Mills, are employed as consultants? Well, he can't answer me because of the procedural shenanigans by the Liberals. We want to know how many government employees are employed as consultants, and we have the taxpayer paying twice to get the service one time.

I fail to see what's political about that except that a corrupt, tired government, after nine years, is terrified of the accountability, of Conservatives holding up a spotlight on the corruption they presided over. If the claim by the Liberals is that, “Well, you know, we're going to let the process unfold,” we know that they voted against having the Auditor General investigate their arrive scam. We know that. We know they try to block these. They're on the record. The Prime Minister, the cabinet and the Liberal members of this committee voted against having the Auditor General investigate, so what interest would they have in Canadians not knowing about fraud and corruption? Well, it's because they're their buddies. These are Liberal insiders and grifters who are dining out and lining their pockets while Canadians are lined up at food banks. That's why they're blocking it.

On double-dipping, my question to our witnesses is that, in an industry that's growing under this government, there were 79 cases last year and 84 cases this year of double-dipping, people getting paid by the government and getting paid by the government to be contractors. How many of them are in a conflict of interest?

I hope that the witnesses we have today will take the opportunity to take good note of my questions because I maintain curiosity for myself and on behalf of Canadians looking for answers, and although you won't be formally asked by the committee to provide those answers, you of course could furnish those in writing, through the clerk to the committee, because Canadians want to know.

Fifty per cent of consultants are in conflict. Do we know whether any of the government employees who are double-dipping are also suspected of any of the fraud or corruption beyond their conflicts of interest? We have some who are in a conflict—that's been established. Have we established whether there is also suspected fraud? Have they been cleared of allegations of fraud and corruption in those cases in which conflicts of interest were identified?

That's an important precision for Canadians. We have an appearance of a conflict. Okay. We have an actual conflict. Okay. Is it criminal in nature? Is there alleged or suspected criminality? Canadians want to know. It's not partisan. That's not partisan. That's what we're supposed to do here at the Standing Committee on Government Operations. That's the purpose of our role as parliamentarians 12 months of the year, including in July.

We know that on the list of consulting companies PSPC has created, many of them don't execute the function. They don't perform the work under the contract they've received, like GC Strategies. Some have just two employees. Five of those examples are Solutions Moerae Inc., with two employees and $78 million in contracts; Messa Computing Incorporated, with one associated member and $34 million in contracts; Mobile Resources Group, with one associated member and $28 million in contracts; Access Corporate Technologies Incorporated, with two associated members and $9 million in contracts; and Hackett Consulting Incorporated, with one associate member and $8 million in contracts.

The Liberals say that talking about this is political. Why? Are they connected to the Liberal Party? Are they connected to Liberal ministers? Are they connected to Liberal members of Parliament? Is that why it's political? My questions to officials aren't about Justin Trudeau unless he's connected to those companies, which is, I guess, the contention of the Liberals who are blocking us from asking these questions of the officials who are seated at the table in front of us.

What value did Canadians get from Solutions Moerae Inc. for $78 million? That's my question. What value did Canadians get from Messa Computing Incorporated for $34 million? What value did Canadians get from Mobile Resources Group for $28 million? What value did Canadians get from Access Corporate Technologies Incorporated for $9 million? What value did Canadians get from Hackett Consulting Incorporated for $8 million? Without officials being able to answer, having the officials muzzled by the Liberal MPs, we're just left to speculate on the value or the reasons for these contracts having been awarded. Is it because the PSPC minister directed that these companies be awarded these contracts? Are there connections between the Liberal Party and these companies? Is that why the Liberals are muzzling the officials who are before the committee today? We don't know, because the Liberals are blocking us from asking the questions.

We could suppose that there are individuals who are perpetrating fraud on the government, which is not delivering and not executing on its fiduciary responsibility to protect Canadians' tax dollars and not doing its job. We have grifters and fraudsters and scammers who are taking advantage. If the charge of the Liberal members is that this is too political, well, is it because you feel responsible for it?

The Liberal government is responsible for its failures. It is responsible for allowing the grifting and the fraud to run rampant.

I'd like to know from our witnesses today if high-priced consulting middlemen are still being used throughout the government. Has the minister done his job to stop the racket from continuing?

If the answer were yes, the Liberals would, of course, want this questioning to go ahead. They'd want the officials to say, "Of course, the minister has taken strong action."

However, we're now left to see that they're muzzling the departmental officials.

Is it not true that at this very minute there are middlemen, like GC Strategies, just soaking Canadian taxpayers and more examples of people like Clara Visser who are perpetrating fraud on the government and picking Canadians' pockets?

Maybe the minister doesn't know, so I would, of course, ask if the minister has been briefed on the value Canadians are getting for the hundreds of millions spent on the middlemen who do no actual work. Was the minister briefed? What was the date? Did the minister request it, or was it offered by the DM or the ADM? If the minister didn't request it, or if the minister wasn't briefed, I would propose that perhaps we hear from the minister as to why they didn't take an interest.

It's very interesting that, instead of basic accountability, the Liberals immediately see this as a political crisis. I think it's very telling that they see this as a political crisis. Is it because they can't handle any more crises? We know that they're refusing...the Prime Minister is refusing to even meet with his Liberal caucus, but I don't expect it's because they're concerned about these issues, or they'd have the opportunity today to ask officials questions and show their constituents that they're concerned about the cost of living crisis after nine years of Justin Trudeau and his inflationary spending. They're collecting more in taxes...they've raised taxes on the middle class, which they've been very effective at shrinking—the middle class, not the taxes. The taxes grow; the middle class shrinks. Are Canadians getting more services for it? What has been the increased benefit to Canadians for the $20 billion?

We know what the increased benefit has been for the likes of Kristian Firth and GC Strategies. We know what it's like for the scammers and the fraudsters who are stealing from Canadians. We know what the benefit is for them. No one was holding them accountable.

Imagine the delight and the joy on the faces of the grifters and the thieves who have been perpetrating and carrying out their crimes against Canadians and stealing thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions and tens of millions of dollars in individual cases. Then, in many of those cases, we find out that in the government operations committee—don't worry—they're going to stop asking the hard questions that have produced action from a government that was caught completely flat-footed and completely unaware and, in the best case, that they just didn't understand that they needed to protect Canadian taxpayers.

The worst case is that they're complicit, connected and more worried about the consulting class than they are about Canadians, who work incredibly hard and see their earnings vapourized by inflation and their paycheques more than halved by taxes.

What a gift the Liberals are giving to the corrupt by attempting to stop accountability. You can picture it: They have their countdown clock to each break in parliamentary proceedings, “Well, the House isn't sitting upstairs, so there's no way committees can meet.” Of course committees can meet. My constituents are well represented if I'm in Ottawa for four hours. Does it mean I might need to pack a few more meetings into another day? Absolutely, but when I see them, I don't hear from any of them that, “You know, you guys have too many committee meetings in Ottawa. It seems like it's getting a little too political down there, you asking for answers about all of that money that's hemorrhaging out of Justin Trudeau's Ottawa.” Do you know what? That's not something I hear from people.

I hear that they're struggling and want change: They want change by this government and they want a change from this government. They want a new government, but in the meantime they expect that, after what was a devastating loss for the Liberals in Toronto—St. Paul's, losing a safe seat in Toronto, they would see some kind of change in terms of their posture and approach, and that they'd take Canadians' concerns seriously.

I don't know if you heard, Chair, that there was a cabinet shuffle last week—real change from a government that promised real change, a really innovative change. Just like shuffling chairs on the Titanic, they moved one guy from over here to over there. When one of their ministers decided to flee the sinking ship, they moved another guy, who was already in cabinet, into that spot—real change.

I don't think they got the message, Canada, because here we are today, talking about fraud, conflicts of interest, waste, scandal and mismanagement, and instead of asking a single question of officials, what's the very first thing the Liberals do? They want to pass a motion to block all meetings in the summer. That tells you everything you need to know about a government that, after nine years, can't even calculate the waste.

We have officials at the table. It's addressing corruption, and they said that, “Oh, it's political that we want to talk about it.” I haven't heard anything mentioned that's not about accountability for the government.

I fail to see what those Liberal members could be doing that they can't spare two hours. The majority of them are joining virtually, so they're still in their constituencies. They can have a meeting immediately before and after with constituents, but if they're busy it doesn't need to be a regular member of the committee. All members of the House are associate members of this committee and can be brought in as substitutes.

I'm a sometimes regular and sometimes associate member of this committee. The work is very important. Ms. Block, Mr. Brock and I are participating in the meeting today, but many other colleagues are very interested. They offered to make themselves available for the meeting, because they're hearing the same things we're hearing. They're hearing from their constituents and from Canadians when they're visiting other communities that they're concerned about affordability. They're concerned that after nine years, this Liberal government seems completely unconcerned with their plight. These Liberals are very comfortable with $20 billion going out the door to consultants in a year and having nothing to show for it.

When we dig into and peel off just the first layer, we immediately start to find fraud and corruption. We're seeing that there are entities and individuals in the private sector who are carrying out this fraud and corruption. The government has been investigating and suspending employees now that we've turned up the heat. They were taking no action on it.

It's just like the billion-dollar green slush fund that they didn't want to talk about. There was going to be a consulting report about that. It was all good. They were going to handle it. We pressed on that Liberal government. We demanded accountability. What did we find? The chair, another appointee, is now under investigation for conflicts of interest. The Auditor General's report was damning. All of the Liberals voted against it, which is damning. They ultimately had to shut down Sustainable Development Technology Canada because it was so corrupt. I think more than 180 conflicts of interest were found. They had directors in the room, which the Liberals were fine with, who were voting on giving their own companies money. They said, oh, they talked to their lawyers and they said there was no conflict, so there was no conflict.

I know that Canadians don't see it that way. It took incredible pressure, incredible pressure, and we had to drag them kicking and screaming every step of the way. We've gotten part of the way there. We're achieving some accountability. We're getting some answers. We're going to need to get Canadians their money back, because that's an important part of this too.

I think that's one of the main messages that should come out of this. The Liberals are prepared to disengage from the accountability mechanisms. Conservatives are taking a very common-sense approach, that if you steal from Canadians, you will be caught. We will get the money back. You ought to be jailed. That's not something we can control. We'll refer the matters to the police. The police can refer to the Crown. The Crown can take it to court.

What can we do? We can root out the corruption and get the money back. Why is it that the Liberals don't want to get the money back? Who got the money? Who got Canadians' money that these Liberals don't want to get back? Is it because they know them? Is it because they're Liberal insiders? We could ask the officials some questions, but the Liberal procedural shenanigans are blocking that from happening.

Public servants are working as consultants and consultant contractors with the government, and we know that it's a growing industry. It's a growth industry for bureaucrats who choose to engage in it and ticked up to 84 identified cases in 2023-24, and we know that half of them were in a real or apparent conflict of interest.

Alinea International is an international development consultancy providing “technical and management expertise”. They've received $14 million in government contracts since 2016.

Think Digital is a digital consulting firm that has received nearly $400,000 in government contracts. One of their employees was a candidate for the Liberal Party of Canada in the 2019 election. Ah—now we're onto trouble. Is that why the Liberals are doing their procedural shenanigans today? Is it to stop us from asking questions and make sure that their failed candidates and buddies are getting their $400,000 in government contracts?

Canadian Equality Consulting Inc. specializes in diversity and inclusion consulting and has gotten more than half a million dollars in government contracts since 2021.

H2 Analytics, intelligence and defence consultants who help “decision makers turn information into intelligence”, got $2.4 million. If they work for the government, why is the government paying them a salary, benefits and pension contributions and then also paying them consulting fees worth millions of dollars? That doesn't make sense. It doesn't make any sense at all. Why are we allowing that to happen?

I know that when we passed a motion about banning the practice of double-dipping, we had, I think, national defence who said that they were fine. After a parliamentary committee passed a motion condemning the practice, we had a department say, “No, we think it's fine.” That's the contempt that this Trudeau government has for Canadians: Even when elected officials condemn a practice, a department says, “No, we're good with that. We think it makes good sense to pay government employees with contracts as well to get them paid twice.”

It's absurd. Is that what is political that the Liberals don't want to talk about? Is it the absurdity of the policies that they've not just presided over but that they have departments promoting and saying they're going to keep doing them? They think it makes sense to hire someone because they're the best person for the job and then to hire them as a consultant because they're the best person for the job. How is it possible that they're both the best consultant and the best employee, and they're getting paid twice? Shouldn't we be using that person's expertise in-house? We hear all the time that we need these outside contractors because we don't have the in-house expertise.

All those middlemen companies, billing what amounts to hundreds of millions of dollars, are not adding any value; Google and LinkedIn, maybe. Or maybe—maybe—we have departmental officials telling companies like KPMG that if they want to get the contract, they have to be a subcontractor to a two-person outfit with a couple of jokers working out of a basement who are just marking everything up 30%. It's not added value. It's not bringing in any expertise. It's incredibly expensive.

It's certainly not like the government is presiding over financial management that sees us in some kind of boom time. They've spent more money and racked up more debt than all governments before them combined. That's their legacy. They'll often brag that no one has spent more on housing—and gotten worse results; that's the part they're leaving out. No one has ever spent so much to achieve so little. I guess that would have to be the Liberal campaign slogan. That's why we haven't had an election, to say nothing of the lack of confidence Canadians have in them.

I get asked very often—very often—if it's frustrating or disheartening to see what's happening here. It is absolutely frustrating. It is disappointing when you see Liberal members of Parliament willing to shut down a key accountability mechanism that we have here, a tool to use on behalf of Canadians. That's disappointing. It is disheartening. But I have great heart and hope for our country, because in spite of the challenges that have been foisted upon them by Justin Trudeau's Liberal government, they continue to work hard. They will persevere. They know that, because life wasn't like this before Justin Trudeau and it won't be like this after he and his government are gone.

It's deplorable, Mr. Chair, to have Liberal MPs come here and say that it's not important to get accountability for Canadians and that it's too political. I'm sure it's too damaging politically for their government, but we're not going to abide by that and let them say that they're awfully busy. Well, get busy with the right things. For these meetings they don't even need to leave their constituencies. It's two hours. Ask some officials some questions. Do the work. This is the work. This is part of the job.

So of course I don't support the motion in this form, Chair. I have more questions for officials. If this is going to get shut down, I will speak again to at least advise the officials of what my questions are for them and give them the opportunity to get back to us with some of those answers, because Canadians deserve the accountability. When I talk to them, when I hear from them, they're demanding accountability. That's the function that we're providing for them.

I'm interested to hear what some of my colleagues have to say about this, but if this meeting is not going to go forward with questioning officials, I'll have more questions to pose to the officials, even if the Liberals are going to block the bureaucrats from answering them.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thank you, Mr. Barrett.

Mr. Brock, you're up next.

[Larry Brock, Conservative, Brantford—Brant, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

I have much to say, but I start by offering my sincerest apologies to Mr. Laporte, Mr. Mills, Mr. Albert and Madame Poulin for this shameless display of a cover-up, between the Liberal government and the NDP coalition partners, because we're all here to do a job. You all have jobs to do when you get back to your respective offices. We are taking you away from your respective offices and the good work that you do day in and day out, and it's no different for politicians. As parliamentarians, we're parliamentarians all year long. We're not parliamentarians when the House is sitting. We don't take a three- to four-month break and not worry about our responsibilities to Canada and to address ongoing issues that are of a prevalent concern in Canada, which is the issue with respect to the fraudulent billing and the broken procurement system we have in this country, which allowed fraudsters and grifters to take advantage of a broken system that didn't provide the appropriate oversight.

The Liberal government, and the members on this Liberal committee with their NDP partners, don't want to get to the truth. When I say we're parliamentarians for the entire year, that's exactly it. As my colleague Michael Barrett articulated, members of my community in Brantford—Brant, my constituency, know that I have to work year-round, and work from time to time and for extended periods of time in Ottawa in addition to my responsibilities to my community. In essence, parliamentarians can walk and chew gum at the same time. As my colleague indicated, 90% of the Liberal members of this committee and the NDP member are not physically here in Ottawa. They're taking advantage of what Parliament has allowed, in terms of a hybrid format, to do just that—walk and chew gum at the same time—to take meetings before and after.

I too had an extremely busy day today and a very busy day tomorrow, but do you know what? We all have incredible staff and we can reschedule meetings. When I tell my constituents, “I'm here fighting for you, to be your voice, to ask the tough questions,” they want me to do my job. They don't want to see me flipping hamburgers, stuffing a hotdog or handing out balloons and other trinkets to children. They expect me to do my job as a parliamentarian. When I have the ability to spend time in my constituency, I do that, all while balancing a family life. I'm the proud parent of twin daughters at 15 years of age. I can tell you, that's quite challenging.

It really angers me...and for you, witnesses, this isn't your first rodeo. You've all been either party to or heard how many of your colleagues across a number of departments prepared and attended in person—even though you have the ability to appear virtually as well—and, after working hard on and giving opening statements, got one round in from the Conservatives, only to be met by gamesmanship by the Liberal bench, supported by their NDP colleagues.

For me, it has happened at least a dozen times since January 1. In my view, it is so disrespectful to you as professionals. That's why I offer my sincerest apology.

However, should we be surprised? Where there's controversy, there is risk. The government clearly knows they're not currying any favour with Canadians. Depending on the poll, they're at least 20 points down and have a leader who refuses to smell the coffee and realize he is the most disliked Prime Minister in the history of this country and who is completely tone deaf to the reality and tone deaf to his own caucus, who quietly and quite often publicly voice their displeasure with his leadership. They will take cues from a failed leader as a Prime Minister. They'll take cues from a Prime Minister's Office who loves to control and mitigate the damage.

We've been exposing the damage of this issue every single week at government operations. That's the mandate of government operations: to take a look at problems, to identify those problems, to get the full picture and to look for solutions so the problem can be resolved in the future. If these members view that to be political or acting as a prosecutor, as Mr. Sousa has often indicated from time to time.... “We're being too prosecutorial. Mr. Brock, you've given up your former career as a crown prosecutor. You're a parliamentarian now. It's time to be nice and throw the softball questions to witnesses.”

That's not our job. Our job is to ask the tough questions and get the answers to what Canadians are asking.

We talk about political gamesmanship, and that is exactly what happened today, because there are a lot of problems with this issue that need to be explored.

We all remember the famous slogan that Justin Trudeau used in 2015: “Sunny ways”, Canadians, “sunny ways”. He even then wrote an open letter to Canadians, and I'm going to read various passages of that letter. It was dated November 4, 2015, and it starts off with “My dear friends”—

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

There's a point of order, Mr. Brock.

Yes, Mr. Jowhari, please go ahead.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

First of all, I want to thank you for the latitude you've shown for the spectrum of conversation that we're having, and I also want to thank all of my colleagues for their patience. However, I'm not sure...any Canadian can now see exactly why we call this “a meeting of politicization” more than anything else.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

What's the point of order, please?

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Having said that, I'm looking for the relevance of referring to byelections and referring to...you know, it's all about, too, the fact of the motion we are debating.

What's the relevance?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

I do find it relevant, but we do always offer a very wide berth for such debate. The motion put forward, because it's not very specific, allows an extremely wide area to debate.

Continue, Mr. Brock.