Government Operations Committee on May 17th, 2022

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I'm going to propose an amendment, but before I do, I just want to understand the following. Have you ruled that Mr. Paul-Hus can amend his own motion?

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

If there's consensus among the committee to make that change, then we can accept that. If not, then he can't amend his own motion. We would need an amendment to do that. I hope that answers your question.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

I don't have any issue with the changes he made to his motion, so I think we would agree to those changes, if everyone else agrees.

I just wanted to make sure in form that you were allowing it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Just for clarification, I'm looking around the room, making certain that everyone is comfortable with the changes that he's made. We're not amending the motion. It's just....

I see a consensus. Okay, thank you.

Now we'll go to Mr. Housefather.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Basically, the information on expenses that is being requested, I believe, is already covered under the existing motion that was adopted by the committee for the delivery of documents on June 30. I have no issue with adopting a separate motion, albeit not asking the committee to send for documents related to the expenses incurred to date. This is a burdensome exercise that would then require the department to start searching all over the place for whatever documents may exist related to the expenses. That could be people's emails; it could be anything.

My proposal, Mr. Chairman—and I'll speak to it again a little bit after I propose it—would be to change the words after “the committee” to “ask Public Services and Procurement Canada to provide expense reports” related to expenses incurred to date to fix the technical and mechanical problems that have afflicted this aircraft. Then I would add, “and these expense reports be submitted” no later than noon on “Thursday, June 30, 2022”.

Basically, again, Mr. Chair, just to make clear my amendment, it's to take away the words “send for documents from” and change that to the committee “ask Public Services and Procurement Canada to provide” and then insert the words “expense reports”. The only other change would be, “and that these expense reports be submitted”.

Essentially, Mr. Chair, again, instead of searching for documents and then having to translate all of them or emails, or whatever they would be, it would be that an expense report would be provided by June 30.

I have already discussed this with my francophone colleagues and I think it's obvious that we can reach consensus. We do indeed need to know what expenses have been incurred. If, after receiving this information, we have other questions, then we can request something else or ask for a witness to come and speak with us to clarify the situation.

If this exercise were to require obtaining all the documents in question, then I think that's going too far, because I don't know how many documents would be involved or where to find them.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Thank you, Mr. Housefather.

Bear with me for a second. I need to ask the clerk a quick question.

Thank you. Now I see Mr. McCauley has his hand up, and then we'll go to Mrs. Vignola.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Thanks, Chair.

I'm in support of this. I think we should try to get as much as possible from this. This is not like a regular boondoggle; this is like an uber-boondoggle.... If anyone remembers, going back, this is the one that famously had a 30,000-page RFP that they had to rent a van to deliver. We, the government—not us, but the Government of Canada—got sued by Leonardo over improper practices on this bid.

Leonardo then miraculously withdrew the lawsuit in exchange for a $5-billion sole source contract for maintenance, and now, we find, as I understand, it's up to a 10-year delay to get these planes.

Is it the Hercules they're using right now? I don't think for our Hercs that (a) we have enough; I don't think they're going to be available to cover Comox and the east coast for 10 years. I don't want to go hyperbolic, but this is a real crisis in procurement, and it's not Liberal side, Conservative side, NDP side: This is a problem with this really specific problem.... The shipbuilding is a mess, but this one is, like, beyond a mess, with all of the controversies and everything else from day one of this contract. I think we owe it to the forces and fishermen, etc.—east coast, west coast—and taxpayers to really look into this. I would almost be open to saying that we should have a couple of stand-alone meetings on this.

If you read their report, it's gone from that they should be flying right now to “maybe 2030”. It's not like a one- or two-year delay. They're pushing us back a decade. I think we should get all the documents and then go from there to see what is causing all of this. This is a mature design. This is not like the T26, where we're starting from scratch. This is in service in 15 or 20 different countries, and it's a large contract. There's no way in the world that this should be delayed to this extent. I think we have a real big problem on our hands here, and we owe it to Canadians and to ourselves to look into it.

I understand the difficulty of gathering all of this. Maybe there's some solution that can be suggested and we can chat about it a bit more on Friday, but I think this is something that we seriously have to look at: what's causing these massive delays and these cost overruns and, I think, the fact that we're saying these planes cannot be adjusted for what the specs are.

Anyway, I appreciate the time and some thoughts about that and suggestions on how we should approach this, whether it's full-on docs or if it's having someone come specifically on the project, but I think this is a real big issue that we need to tackle.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Thank you, Mr. McCauley.

Just for clarification, we are talking about the amendment at this point in time.

I have Mrs. Vignola and then Mr. Johns.

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

My question is about the main motion.

My understanding, from what's in the motion, is that the concern has to do with the quantity of documents that would have to be produced.

Mr. Paul-Hus, do you want to receive absolutely all the documents, including emails showing whether people had been in agreement or whether they thought it did not make sense? Or do you rather want the contracts and documents that explain the expenses related to the work done?

There might be a way of narrowing things down somewhat.

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

Thank you, Ms. Vignola.

I should point out that we're talking about the amendment now.

Firstly, the documents requested do not cover the entire contract, but rather the expenses involved in the technical and mechanical problems. I'm not talking about the initial contract or the totality of the work. I want to know the details from the moment problems were encountered. It's more limited. I want to know why the project is stalled, what costs were generated by these problems and where we stand at the moment.

The actual motion that we voted on, last week or the week before, has to do with aviation projects, but does not clearly address these aspects.

What we really want to know is what happened and why Canada is still unable to use these 16 aircraft. If we want to know, we will need documents. We already know that there is an additional $150 million, but that's all we know.

Why do we have this problem? As Mr. McCAuley mentioned, Airbus manufactures this aircraft for at least 15 countries. Why is the project on hold in Canada? It's a public safety problem for search and rescue operations.

The motion is only about these documents; I don't want all the documents pertaining to the contract from the outset.

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

Do you know what year we were in when the problems began?

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

The aircraft were to be delivered in 2020. We are now in 2022. COVID-19 was used as an excuse to explain the situation, but the problems continue. Other technical problems surfaced, but we don't know anything about them. That's why we need to know more. We want to know why everything is at a standstill and why it might take until 2030—another eight years. We simply want to know what's going on.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Thank you.

I allowed for Mr. Paul-Hus to answer Ms. Vignola's question, but to get back to the issue, we are talking about the amendment at this point in time.

Before I go to you, Mr. Johns, I think the mover of the amendment wanted to see if he could answer that as well.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

If we request documents, it means that we are asking for all the documents related to each of the expenses, whether it's $400, $4 million, or $10 million. I believe that we should initially ask for the list of expenses, not a list that contains only the final amounts, but a detailed list of all the various expenses. It would then be altogether reasonable to ask for the documents related to the major expenses, or to call a witness to explain them to us. Otherwise, asking for all the documents would mean that we want all the documents, including everyone's emails, and searching through all this information would be a very heavy burden. And it would all have to be translated. That doesn't make any sense.

The first thing to do is get a list of expenses. Afterwards, we could either ask a witness to appear so that we could asking questions about these expenses, or we could request and study the related documents specifically tied to the major expenses.

I honestly don't know how many different expenses there were, but I know that the related documents might be difficult to obtain and that there might be a lot of them.

When all is said and done, I'm in favour of Mr. McCauley's argument. We could discuss this before Friday and come up with a solution. Voting today to obtain all the documents would simply amount to putting a very heavy burden on everyone.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Thank you, Mr. Housefather.

We have Mr. Johns, and then I see Mr. Kusmierczyk and Ms. Vignola.

Go ahead, Mr. Johns.

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

Thanks.

It's always funny when a fiscal New Democrat is speaking about fiscal issues. I think it is extremely onerous to ask for tens of thousands of documents. I'm with you on wanting to get the answers, absolutely, and I support the concept. We want to get the expenses.

I like the idea, Mr. McCauley, that you floated about having witnesses testify so that we can ask some of the questions, but we have to find a better way. We want the information: Why? Why has there been a delay? We want to know what's going on. Maybe there's a better process so we can think up by Friday.

I agree. Let's talk together and work on it together. I support Mr. Paul-Hus in where he's going with this. There's no question about it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Thank you, Mr. Johns, for running that down our runway.

Now we'll go to Mr. Kusmierczyk.

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

I don't want to belabour the point. I think the amendment is sensible and pragmatic, and it gets us information. I'm going to support my colleague's amendment.

I also wanted to raise the point that we've been studying air and naval procurement for the last couple of months, at least. I think we have to be cognizant of the fact—and the committee's time—that there are other studies that this committee wants to focus on and bring before the committee. There are other issues that we need to study here as well.

I wanted to be cognizant of the time and resource commitment that this committee is putting forward on this particular issue.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Thank you, Mr. Kusmierczyk.

Now we'll hear from Ms. Vignola.

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

I'd like to make a suggestion that we could all ponder together. Do you think that it would be possible to request a report on expenses and that only for expenses beyond a specified amount, we automatically be provided with the related documentation?

I have no interest in analyzing a $400 invoice to purchase a nut. No thanks. As Mr. McCauley said earlier, we had about 30,000 pages of documents to read during the previous session of Parliament. I can tell you that I nearly got through them all, but I don't want any more. I am happy to analyze documents, but what I want to analyze in a responsible manner is concrete content.

The report might explain what happened to taxpayer money, and we are taxpayers too. In any event, I pay my taxes. I don't know whether you do, because I'm not aware of the details of your finances.

Not only that, but our work has to be done efficiently, because our work also leads to expenses. We therefore need to work efficiently and cut to the chase.

We could reach a responsible compromise. For example, we could ask for all the documents related to expenses above a certain amount, let's say $1 million, which is a fairly significant amount. These documents should be able to explain why there was a million dollar overage.

That's my recommendation. If you would like me to put it in the form of an amendment, just tell me. For the time being, I'm opening debate on this proposal.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Thank you, Ms. Vignola. Are you finished?

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

Yes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Okay. Thank you.

Before we get to Mr. Housefather's response, let's go to Mr. McCauley. That way he can answer more questions, if there are any.

Thank you.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

I'll address Mr. Kusmierczyk.

I have to address the fact that we're going to spend $200 billion on ships and planes. We owe more than.... I think we had Irving for 45 minutes, and they're getting $100 billion from Canada. This study obviously has to continue. Hopefully, it will be like past studies, which we interrupted to do other studies. I think, at one time, we had three studies going on at the same time. I think the estimates study ran for three years, off and on, so we can certainly accommodate what you're talking about, Mr. Kusmierczyk, while we continue this.

I'm wondering if this can be changed. Can we focus on the change orders—the documentation regarding changes to the existing design, structural failings, etc.—rather than on invoices chasing a $400 bolt? Let's focus on the change orders, design problems and production issues. I'm not exactly sure how to word that in today's motion, but perhaps it would alleviate some of the worries about how many pages will show up. I do care about a $400 bolt, but I'm more concerned about what is leading to this systemic issue we have: our inability to get an existing, mature, successful plane designed, built and delivered for Canada. We're not even in the process of starting up an airline-building industry. Someone else is building that for us.

I'm open to suggestions on how we can address this.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

We'll go to Mr. Housefather.