Evidence of meeting #77 for Government Operations and Estimates in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was amendment.
A video is available from Parliament.
NDP
Gord Johns NDP Courtenay—Alberni, BC
You know me—I think every report should go to the House eventually, so I think this is something we should all support.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Kelly McCauley
Colleagues, is there anyone else? Can we agree to this?
Go ahead, Mr. Kusmierczyk.
Liberal
Irek Kusmierczyk Liberal Windsor—Tecumseh, ON
Can I ask for a brief suspension of the meeting, please?
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Kelly McCauley
Is five minutes fine, Mr. Kusmierczyk? Are you going to rush back in five minutes?
We will suspend for five minutes, colleagues.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Kelly McCauley
Colleagues, we are back.
Mr. Genuis, could you clarify the intent of your motion? My understanding is that it is to report the motion to the House, not for PROC. Could you clarify, please?
Conservative
Garnett Genuis Conservative Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB
It does seem there's some confusion. My proposal was to amend the motion by adding the words “and report this motion to the House” to the end of the motion, which, if it's not clear, has the effect of reporting this motion to the House and not simply requesting that a subsequent report be done by another committee. I think this is important because when a committee reports a matter to the House, it provides the House an opportunity to pronounce on that matter.
Clearly, this would be a stronger approach than simply writing a letter to PROC. It would involve writing a letter to PROC but also informing the House that we'd written a letter to PROC, and providing the House with an opportunity to pronounce on the matter.
Another option would be to add a request for a government response, which means effectively that we cannot do concurrence for four months. If people are concerned about it being used as a dilatory tactic.... Simply adding in the request for a government response would address that concern.
I think a letter is not good enough, which is what I said at the beginning. I think informing the House about this is an important step to actually working to get to the bottom of the matter.
NDP
Gord Johns NDP Courtenay—Alberni, BC
I'm going to reiterate that it is PROC's mandate to look at this. This is their job. There's a reason we don't have one giant committee to cover everything. We have different mandates in different committees, and that's within PROC's mandate.
It's important that we send this letter. I think it's pretty clear that we want them to do it with urgency. I don't want to see this turn into this letter being tied up at the House of Commons for hours on end through concurrence. I think PROC has the message. This is a pretty clear message from our committee to say, “Do your job. This is your job. This is your mandate.”
I won't support the amendment. I've supported your other two amendments, Mr. Genuis.
I think we need to get to the end here, and I'm hoping we can. We're all supportive of the contents of the letter and what we're trying to achieve here, but I don't want this to become a tool, something outside the scope of our committee. Let's get this to PROC and highlight to PROC that we need them to take this on ASAP.
I really appreciate Mr. Genuis saying that if they don't have the capacity, because of their study on foreign interference, they could create subcommittees, if necessary, to take this on and move this forward.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Kelly McCauley
Thank you, Mr. Johns. I appreciate that.
Can we move to a vote on this amendment?
(Amendment negatived: nays 7; yeas 3)
Mr. Sousa, go ahead.
Liberal
Charles Sousa Liberal Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON
I think all of us share the deep concern with what happened in the House. We all recognize that it's something we should have been better aware of so it would not have been exposed. I think we're all in agreement with that.
There is a piece of the submission that I think needs to be tweaked, because I think we all recognize that we want to get down to what occurred and how it should not have happened and not to presuppose that there's some blame or that somehow someone did something wrong. That's why we want it to be reviewed.
I would amend the portion where we're saying it was “ignored”. That presupposes that it was known. I would amend that portion of the text.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Kelly McCauley
Do you have different wording, then, Mr. Sousa?
We can't just take out the words “was ignored”. It says, “proper vetting was either not done or this individual's military record was ignored”.
Liberal
Charles Sousa Liberal Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON
That presupposes the vetting. You're vetting to make certain the person was—
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Kelly McCauley
I'm sorry. Maybe I misheard. I thought you said that you wanted to take out the word “ignored”.
Liberal
Charles Sousa Liberal Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON
Well, take out...who he was. It's basically saying that there wasn't proper vetting, and then we go from there and take out the portion of it that somehow we knew that he was a vet and we purposely ignored his record, because you're presupposing that it was done. That's the issue we're trying to get at.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Kelly McCauley
It says, “proper vetting was either not done or this individual's military record was ignored”, so they're saying either vetting wasn't done or it was done and his record was ignored.
Liberal
Charles Sousa Liberal Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON
I'd say “proper vetting wasn't done”. I think that's the important piece here.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Kelly McCauley
Okay.
We'll get to you in a moment, Mr. Genuis.
So it would say, “during the President of Ukraine's special address to Parliament on Friday, September 22, and that proper vetting was not done on this individual's military record”.
Liberal
Charles Sousa Liberal Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON
On this individual or any individual.... We are again presupposing. Were there any others? We should make certain—
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Kelly McCauley
Okay, so we have “and that proper vetting wasn't done”, semicolon, and then it goes into me writing....
I have Mr. Genuis and then Mr. Johns.
Conservative
Garnett Genuis Conservative Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB
I just don't see the problem with the existing language. The existing language says, “that proper vetting was either not done or this individual's military record was ignored”. In other words, either the research wasn't done or the research was done but the results of that research were ignored. The existing language, I think, is inclusive of all possibilities. It doesn't say that his record was ignored. It says that either the proper vetting wasn't done or his record was ignored.
I don't see the need for the change. It does seem like wordsmithing at this point, but I think the existing language is better.
NDP
Gord Johns NDP Courtenay—Alberni, BC
I hear where Mr. Sousa is coming from.
Look, we can all agree that there was no malice intended here. This is a horrible, horrible mistake. I think that by removing “this individual's military record was ignored”.... Clearly, if anyone had identified this and connected the dots, it wouldn't have happened. If there were a proper vetting process in place, this never would have happened, which is the whole idea of writing the letter to PROC, so this never happens again and there's proper vetting in place. There's work to be done.
I would support Mr. Sousa's motion. I'm hoping that we can try to figure this out here, because we've tied up a whole meeting on this. It's important. I'm not saying that it's not important—it really is. Again, I appreciate Mrs. Kusie bringing this motion here for us to really cement to PROC how important this is to all of us as members of Parliament and this committee.
I would support Mr. Sousa's motion. I'm hoping that we can all come to an agreement here to move things along.