Government Operations Committee on May 17th, 2022

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to my colleagues for having proposed constructive thoughts.

What I would suggest, Mr. Chair, because I don't have the answer right now, honestly, as to what the amount would be or what documents might be easier to produce than others.... I would have thought that having a witness here who knows the program, to whom we could ask questions, telling us what the real issue is and perhaps ask for those...that would be a good way to do it.

In the meantime, if we're going this way, I would request the committee delay this until Friday, if we could, Mr. Chair. Move the motion to discuss on Friday, and set a time for us to continue this. Let me try to figure it out over the next two or three days, and talk to colleagues in the department about what they think is deliverable within that period of time, and what the main things are. I don't have much knowledge about what the costs actually are, at this point.

Is that possible, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Thank you.

Mr. Paul-Hus is next, and then it's Mr. Jowhari.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I have a proposal to make which, I think, will solve our problem. Instead of talking about expenses, I'd like us to talk about documents about changes that occurred along the way. If a product that was ordered is late, it's because changes were requested. We would therefore have to see the list of documents concerning changes requested to the design or structure of the aircraft, for example. Delays may well have resulted from the fact that Canada, unlike other countries, asked for 30 specific modifications.

That would not require the production of thousands of documents. The project office already has these in hand. What we want to know is what's happening and why are there delays. If the delays are caused by changes that were requested, we'd like to know what these changes were. As my colleague Mr. McCAuley mentioned, the company has already been producing this aircraft for other countries, and they're not experiencing these problems; that's the reason we want to know why it's happening for Canada.

We would accordingly only ask for documents related to the changes requested to the structure or design of the aircraft, rather than those on expenses. It's true that we're talking about overall expenses, but what we mainly want to know is how did we get there, because we are not moving forward and there's an efficiency problem. That's what we're asking for.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Thank you, Mr. Paul-Hus.

Mr. Jowhari.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

I think we are trying to use a set of data, such as expenses, as it relates to this project to determine why there have been delays. If that's the case, then that might not be the best way. I believe we have to find what the drivers of the change—i.e. the delay—have been and then decide what data elements we need to ask for.

That's why I support what MP Housefather is saying, and I think Mr. Paul-Hus is saying the same thing.

MP Housefather is saying to give us some time—until Friday. We'll go back to the department then and say specifically that we are trying to understand the delays or that we're trying to understand not necessarily the delay, but what has been the driver of this. We'll be looking at those drivers.

Once we know what the drivers are, it's easy to ask for the data that's quite relevant to that, whether it's the expenses, design changes or whatever it is.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Thank you.

Mr. Paul-Hus.

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

Just to be clear, I just changed the ask. Instead of the expense, we want a document about the change on design and all that stuff. It's exactly where we actually want to go.

We're not talking about expenses; we're talking about why. What kind of change has been done and what has been asked for?

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

Excuse me, but I lost the interpretation while my colleague Mr. Paul-Hus was speaking English.

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

What I was saying, basically, was that we agreed on my proposal. We are agreeing not to talk about expenses. We don't want a list of expenses, but we would amend the motion to talk about the changes made to the design and structure of the aircraft that caused the delays. We're saying the same thing. I don't think we need to wait. If we make this amendment to the proposal submitted by Mr. Housefather, we can settle the problem today and move on.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

I saw Mr. Johns first and then Mr. Housefather.

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

Why don't we actually ask someone from the department to appear before the committee first? We can ask them tough questions and decide what documents we want after that. I don't think we're going to want truckloads of documents. I think we're going to be able to pin down what we want. I'd rather us use some of our committee time to ask some difficult questions.

This is a very important issue, especially when it comes to search and rescue. I absolutely, wholeheartedly support Mr. Paul-Hus' work in wanting to get to the bottom of this and get some answers, but I do want to make sure that we're not spending thousands of public service hours to bring forward documents when we could probably get that in some questions to someone from the department.

I just think it's really expensive and it's onerous on the taxpayer. I want to make sure that we're being efficient. I think we can still ask for whatever we need after we've asked questions. They would have to supply that as a witness anyway.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Thank you, Mr. Johns.

Mr. Housefather and then Mr. McCauley.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I agree with Mr. Johns. As I stated before, I think we're going about this backwards. I think the easiest way is to bring somebody from the department to explain what the large change orders were. Then we could ask for what we think we need following an explanation of what the costs incurred related to. Right now I'm certainly not prepared to support any motion today that does anything more than provide the expenses that were already agreed to in the previous motion. It's not that I think it's unreasonable, necessarily, to ask for some documents, but I think we need a better understanding. I don't have enough information today to determine what the limits would be or what those documents would be.

I'd ask either to just push this over till Friday so we can have discussions or to invite somebody from the department to come. That I'm okay with, but I'm not in favour of simply saying change orders and agreeing today to what those are, because I don't know what they are, in what universe they are.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Thank you, Mr. Housefather.

Mr. McCauley.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

I appreciate what you're saying, Gord. My only concern, though, is that when we've had department officials before us, we've seen that it's “I can't answer that.” It's between these three departments at different committees. I'm just concerned that we're not going to get answers from them. We haven't had a lot of answers so far on the F-35s or the ships. There have been a lot of non-answers. I'm afraid we'll commit short, precious committee time. We'll just have someone from PSPC—heaven forbid that I'm the cynical one, and I'm being sarcastic here—and my worry is that they're going to show up and we'll just get more non-answers, and, “No, that's a secret. No, we can't talk about that. Well, it's because of this. We're negotiating.”

I understand you're frustrated.

[A voice]

I just really want to do that.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

How do we move forward to address this? I agree that it's a lot of work, but we can't just turn a blind eye to it.

[A voice]

We can hear from them first. No. We should get them in front of us.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Thank you, Mr. McCauley.

Mr. Lobb and then Mr. Paul-Hus.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

I think Anthony makes a good point and Gord makes a good point. I'm good with whichever way we decide to go, with documents first or somebody from the department first. As for what Kelly was saying, I don't know how members of the committee feel, but I think back to specific times when I've asked PSPC and people from the air force specific questions about air defence. When I asked about the Javelins and all of the different ones, they either wouldn't say or they said it was an operational issue. I would ask them, “Are you sending any to Ukraine?” That was an operational issue.

Then I read in the The Globe and Mail yesterday about some Ukrainian soldier saying, “Boy, because of those Carl-Gustafs we're blowing up Russian tanks left, right and centre.” I couldn't even get them to answer that in committee and then I read about it in The Globe and Mail.

To me, the issues are different as far as talking about fixed-wing aircraft and what we have for weapons goes. The point is, to Kelly's point, that it doesn't matter who's in government, whether it's the Conservatives, Liberals, NDP, or if somehow the Bloc figures out how to get into government.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

It would be quite a trick.

The point is that we do need to get better answers. It is frustrating. To me it's not political gamesmanship on something like this. It's just trying to get the answers. It's whatever, but I think it's a good endeavour. We'll test how much information they'll give us.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Thank you, Mr. Lobb.

Mr. Paul-Hus.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

After the conversation we've just had, I believe the goal is clear. This request meets a very important need, particularly for the opposition parties. As Mr. Lobb just mentioned, ever since we've been here, people have been laughing at us and we are not getting anywhere. That's why we have to introduce motions like this one. Because really, my goal is not to ask public servants to produce thousands of pages of documents. What we want is the truth about this matter and to understand more clearly where things are headed, not only for this specific instance but several others as well.

I am open to the idea of suspending debate on this motion. We're going to talk about it among ourselves once more with a view to finding amendments to the motion that would make it efficient. I don't want the committee to invite a witness who, after 45 minutes, wouldn't have told us much more. We really need some answers on this.

I'm therefore in favour of the committee suspending debate and resuming later, once we have found a different way of proceeding to obtain this information.

[The Clerk of the Committee, Ms. Miriam Burke]

Would you like to propose a motion to adjourn debate?