Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I can understand why government members are confused about whether this is an amendment, subamendment or a sub-sub-subamendment to a motion that was about as clear as mud in the first place, although I think it was all done with the best intent of trying to move us from the original spot to what we believe is the importance of true transparency, which is the release of the contracts completely publicly, versus the government's desire to keep them completely secret to hide something.
They claim it's about confidentiality. Of all of the government members who have circled through this committee since I've been on this debate, not one of them has read the Volkswagen contract—but I have. I'm the only one here who can speak with any clarity about what's in these contracts, because I've read them.
I can tell you that there's virtually nothing in them that is commercially sensitive, unless you find it politically disturbing that contracts don't contain clauses that guarantee Canadian jobs. I can tell you what's not in the Volkswagen contract, and that is a clause that protects Canadian jobs—and that's a guarantee. I can also tell you what's in it. Is there a clause that prohibits its release? There is no clause that prohibits its release.
What we're dealing with here is a legitimate attempt by the member for Windsor West to try to find a way out of the two sides between complete disclosure—where we and the Bloc Québécois and the NDP were—and the government's intransigence in trying to keep poorly negotiated contracts secret. That's the real reason they're trying to keep them secret: They didn't negotiate a good contract. They're being caught by those failures of both the Department of Industry and the Minister of Industry to read them.
If you can believe it, I've been actually questioning the Minister of Industry about a number of contracts that he's responsible for having signed. Recently, a few weeks ago—about two weeks ago—in the finance committee, I was asking him about the contract on Stellantis and whether he had read it, and he said no.
I asked the Minister of Health in the health committee whether the Minister of Health had read the contract to procure vaccines from Medicago before he wrote a $150-million cheque, from the taxpayers, to pay for a contract that they essentially cancelled. He said it was an advance payment on vaccines, which we didn't receive. When I asked him if he had read the contract, he said that no, he hadn't read the contract. He wrote a $150-million cheque to the largest company in Japan on behalf of taxpayers, and it was based on not reading the contract.
The Minister of Industry said he hadn't read these contracts. Why would a corporate lawyer not read a contract? Now, he also said he didn't sign it—and fair enough, I guess he has people for that, as he's too important to actually read and sign a contract that is fewer than 30 pages. At some time when he's flying around the world—I'm sure in his business class seat—he can find the time to read a 30-page contract. I'd advise him to do so and take a look at these contracts.
He will not be scared, if he reads them, about releasing them—or maybe he will—but if he is, it's not because of all the commercially sensitive information that's in these contracts; it's because of how poor a contract the Liberal government negotiated and how they've been caught in it.
In an attempt to try to make Mr. Masse's motion a little more legible and transparent, my colleague MP Genuis started with an amendment to the first paragraph, which starts at, “That, an order...for production...and upon receipt immediately post on its website”.
The idea was that the most important thing that we thought the NDP cared about, along with the Bloc and ourselves, was transparency, and that it would be made public. That wasn't contained in Mr. Masse's motion, so we thought that in the spirit of consistency with the NDP and what they said publicly—and what their leader said publicly in the House of Commons in question period—maybe it just slipped, because we're all working hard at this time of day, so we'd help the motion along and provide an improvement. We know it's Mr. Masse's intent to actually have these contracts released publicly, because that's what he and his leader said in the House of Commons. It's what Mr. Masse said in this committee. I'm sure that Mr. Masse has no objection to an addition to his motion that actually inserts what he said we should do, which is releasing the contracts publicly.
Now in the confusing paragraph of (f)—and we can debate whether it's new or not—that time will come, I guess. We started to try to have that discussion earlier. In that, I think MP Genuis made an amendment that helps actually make this a little more legible by....
I'll leave the word “new” out because that's a little confusing, but paragraph (f) said, “That the departments and agencies tasked with gathering these documents be redacted according to the Access to Information Acts with the exception that all companies must fully disclose and make publicly available to correct any misinformation the following”. That sentence is sucking and blowing at the same time. It's very confusing. It says we're going to have them redacted in making them public and accessible, but let's redact them to correct misinformation. How do you correct misinformation if it's not public?
It's confusing, so Mr. Genuis proposed to remove the words “and agencies tasked with gathering these documents be redacted according to the Access to Information Acts with the exception that all companies must”, so it would read now, “that the departments fully disclose”, an idea that the NDP clearly supported many times, hopefully, “that departments fully disclose and make publicly available the following”.
It's a much cleaner and simpler way of what I think MP Masse was originally trying to get to. In his attempt to make a friendly or compromise motion, I think some of the language got muddled. I think, in a genuine attempt to ensure that Mr. Masse's motion is clear for all the public and for everyone that we want this public, we want to make sure that Mr. Masse is expressing exactly what it was he said in committee and in the House, and what his leader said, which is that these should be public. That confusing back-and-forth redaction of “redact this or redact that, but make it public”, was a redaction that's very confusing, so now we've cleaned it up so the thing is consistent with the words Mr. Masse said in the past.
Item number four under (f), “that redacted versions”, again is very confusing, because Mr. Masse said he wanted these public, and the intro line in (f) said it would be redacted but made publicly available. Well, we're just assuming that the NDP wants to be consistent with what they said publicly and that they're not changing their mind and flip-flopping, or, as I said in the last meeting, quoting Churchill, that they're ratting. That's when a politician crosses the floor. In Britain they call it ratting. Churchill said that it was easy to rat but it was really tough to re-rat, so we're making some cleaned-up language here so that Mr. Masse doesn't have to re-rat and so that Mr. Masse and the NDP can stay clean with their public statements that they want these contracts public and transparent to ensure Canadian workers are protected.
Isn't that the best way to ensure, with all the stories that have gone out there, starting with the ambassador from South Korea and his meetings in Windsor, who said 1,600 foreign replacement workers were coming and they needed to find houses? I'm sure, as everyone knows, that many of us interact with diplomats all the time. I've not met a diplomat who's allowed to freelance, to go out there and make these things up on their own—