Government Operations Committee on Nov. 29th, 2023

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Let the company decide—I agree.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

That's a clause in the contract. Why are you deciding?

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Yes, but the whole point of it is that I am looking at the contract and I'm not making it public. If you're going to make the decision for the company to decide what they want to redact, then we don't have an issue. Let's agree to the amendment to the motion we put in. Let's get the redacted contract from the company. Let's bring it into a closed meeting. We have it unredacted and redacted, we look at it and we mitigate that risk.

We eliminate that reasonable doubt that exists. We eliminate the fact that our partner countries are looking at us right now. There may be five Canadians looking at us on CPAC, but I'm telling you that there are a lot of other countries and trade commissioners looking at us to see what we are going to come up with. Do you know what? Going back to Canadians and saying, “Oh, I'm sorry,” is not going to work.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

I have a point of order.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

I definitely—

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

I'm sorry, Mr. Jowhari.

Mr. Perkins, you have a point of order.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

In the vicious circle that we're in with this statement, the member earlier said—and I think this is the issue of repetition—that we would get an unredacted contract. Now he's saying we'll get a redacted contract, so in the circle to spin wheels and spend time, he seems to be confused.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

That's not a point of order. This is a debate.

Second of all, the member across misunderstood me.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

That's actually for me to comment on, and not you, Mr. Jowhari.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

I'll go to the clerk any time to ask the clerk to—

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Allow me to finish, please.

I am now actually writing notes of everyone's comments about the repetition, so please be on point and continue, Mr. Jowhari.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you.

The key thing is that our amendment is saying that we want to have access to an unredacted copy of the contract. Great. We are going to look at that. We also get a redacted copy from the company and we compare the two. It can't be any more transparent. By doing this we would be mitigating the risk of doing potential damage as a result of unintended consequences of full disclosure. It's a reasonable doubt that we may not only impact this contract and this job but also other negotiations and other contracts.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

I have a point of order. It's repetition.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Do we have the right to do that?

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Impacting other contracts that are theoretical.... He's said it about five times now. If you're keeping notes, I'd count that as number six.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thank you, Mr. Perkins.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Number six is responsibility, sir. Number six is about risk mitigation. Risk mitigation is about protecting Canada as a leader. It's about a safe place to invest. It's about making sure that our government demonstrates that we protect jobs. It's also saying that we, as members of this Parliament, are exercising our fiduciary responsibility to ensure that we don't expose the Government of Canada and the Canadian...and our agreement internationally to risk. That's why it's relevant. That's why it's important for us to take the amendment and move on. We are going to get to the bottom of this. I assure you that it's going to be a success story for the government, and it's going to show how we deal with our contracts in Canada.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thank you, Mr. Jowhari.

Next on my list is Mrs. Atwin.

Go ahead, please.

[Jenica Atwin, Liberal, Fredericton, NB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I'll mention right off the top that I appreciate everyone's time this evening. I know it's getting pretty late there. It's a little later here on the east coast, as well.

I'll be as clear and direct as possible, of course. I really want to reiterate that it's important for me to outline, for my constituents, for stakeholders and for Canadians who are paying attention to this.... I believe that people are paying attention to this. There was some back-and-forth about that earlier, but I really do feel that Canadians are concerned about this. It's important for me, again, to outline my position, my rationale in deciding on this amendment. For me, Mr. Chair, of course, it's about facts, and it should be for all of us who are engaged in this very important discussion.

Again, how did we get here? It started with a social media post by the Windsor Police Service. That's really where this discussion began. It cued the online misinformation mill and then, unfortunately, made its way to the House of Commons and into our very important standing committees—with limited resources, I might add.

Here are some facts.

“There is nothing new about Canadian firms leaning on foreign professionals when launching new industrial projects.”

“There isn't a single, mass-scale battery cell production facility operating in Canada. This is the reason Stellantis opted for a joint venture with LG Energy in the first place: to tap into this technical expertise.”

The “transferring [of] Korean nationals into Canada [through NextStar] exists only because of the Canada-Korea Free Trade Agreement — an agreement negotiated and signed by the Conservatives themselves back in 2014.”

We have to ask ourselves, again, the following: What's different now? Why are we doing this?

Another piece that I think is really important—and Madam Vignola mentioned this a bit in her intervention—is that there are problems, of course, in some of Canada's programs regarding the possible exploitation of migrant workers. I certainly agree with her in her concerns for the well-being of these workers.

The answers to that really important debate, which I hope we have and which I hope there's a lot of discussion on—at another time, of course, and not in this committee because I don't think it's appropriate—will not be found in the documents, redacted or otherwise, that we are discussing here with this amendment.

Again, we're going to stick to the facts and stick to why this amendment is important for us to really focus on.

Facts, again, eliminate the concerns raised by our colleagues, and that's why I'm going back to some of the things that they've mentioned.

Here is another fact: “Without comparable government supports for battery plants—”

[Kerry-Lynne Findlay, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock, BC]

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

I'm sorry, Mrs. Atwin, but we have a point of order.

Go ahead, Ms. Findlay.

[Kerry-Lynne Findlay, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock, BC]

I don't understand the relevance of the member's interventions. We're not talking about the abuse of temporary foreign workers or whatever it is that she's talking about. I don't see that it's relevant to this amendment.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thanks.

Mrs. Atwin, perhaps you could stick to the amendment.

Colleagues, I've brought this up several times. We seem to be debating the main motion and not the amendment. If we continue down this road, I'll stop recognizing people, and we will go to the vote on the amendment. Please stick to debating the amendment, and then we can use of all of these arguments, I'm sure, for the motion itself.

Mrs. Atwin, please go ahead. I realize that you're probably going to summarize a couple of things in advance and then get to the amendment itself.

[Jenica Atwin, Liberal, Fredericton, NB]

Certainly, Mr. Chair.

Again, it's important for me to outline my rationale.

I know that Ms. Findlay wasn't in the room earlier. That's when one of our colleagues actually raised that specific point about the well-being of temporary foreign workers, which I wanted to address in that comment.

[Kerry-Lynne Findlay, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock, BC]

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair.

If I had been in the room and her colleague had mentioned that, I would have made the same point of order about relevance.

It isn't for some speaking to an amendment to talk about what someone else said that was also irrelevant to the amendment.

Thank you.