Yes, I guess Bob Rae, a bit, on what's going on in the UN. He's maybe not always been consistent with where the government is, apparently, in its flip-flop on Israel....
However, when you talk about the issue of consistency, I think it's important. The public expects that when we make a commitment and say that we want to do something, like making contracts public, we do. For the life of me, I can't think of any reason—because I have read the Volkswagen contract—for what they're afraid of.
The contracts, like any well-negotiated contracts with the government—and I've read the Medicago and the Volkswagen contracts—have clauses, standard sorts of government clauses, on public release. When you as a corporation deal with the federal government, whether you're a domestic corporation or an international corporation—and Stellantis is a very sophisticated global company—you know that when you're taking taxpayer money, if you're going to take taxpayer money, if you're going to vacuum up taxpayer money to pay the cost of assembling batteries....
That's what these contracts do. It's in the IRA.
For those who don't know, for the many thousands who are watching this committee on ParlVu, the IRA is President Biden's Inflation Reduction Act. It's a bit of a misnomer, because when you spend a trillion dollars, that's actually an inflation act, so it's not an inflation reduction act—but I digress, and I try not to do that.
We have a contract that the minister and the Parliamentary Budget Officer say mirrors the Inflation Reduction Act. The Inflation Reduction Act is very public and clear, including a congressional parliamentary budget officer's estimate of what it will cost on the issue of battery assembly.
Remember, this is about battery assembly; it's not about battery manufacturing. There's a lot of talk that we're protecting auto manufacturing jobs here. There isn't one auto manufacturing job being protected here. These are assembly jobs. These parts are made in China.
Just ask the workers at the CAMI plant in Ontario that has been shut down. It's the only EV manufacturing plant in Canada, and it's been shut down after only six months because they can't get the parts from—anyone can guess it—China. China doesn't have the parts—or it does have the parts and won't give them to North American plants?
Because that got shut down, we expect that Chinese parts coming for the EV batteries to be assembled in Volkswagen, Stellantis and Ford will somehow magically appear from China. In this case, don't we want to have that transparency?
If, as the government says, we're making this up.... The Liberals keep saying we're making this up. They have two excuses. One is that they say we're making it up. I'm not, because I've read the contract and the government members have not. Certainly Kathleen Wynne's former finance minister, who sits at this table, has not read the contracts, but it doesn't stop him from talking about it.
In the case of these contracts, I would think that if we were wrong, the best thing you could do to prove us wrong is to release them. Won't we look foolish if these contracts actually do contain a job guarantee for Canadians? Prove us wrong. Release them.
My colleague Mr. Genuis, in his motion, talked a bit about the last item on MP Masse's amendment, which I find confusing too. It's item (i). This is the one that says we're ultimately going to ask for these contracts through an access to information request or we're going to have the Information Commissioner look at it.
If the Information Commissioner was looking at it and applying some sort of theory and saying, “Okay, this contract can be released publicly, but the terms say you can't release these commercially sensitive things,” and Stellantis has said, “We believe those things are commercially sensitive,” and the Information Commissioner agrees that those things are commercially sensitive and they're just not a political game to hide failures of contract negotiations, and then they would be made public, that would be great.
That's essentially the motion I proposed earlier today. The language is a cleaned-up version of what MP Masse was asking for, but it's a little more legible and understandable. It actually says, “Let's trust these officers.” However, this motion, I think, is trying to say, “We don't trust them, so we'll actually get them in some sort of secret room and have a political debate, with the cameras off, about whether we agree or disagree and whether the government wants to use the process in this committee to remove even more embarrassing clauses from the contract in order for it to be released.”
Mr. Genuis spoke eloquently about the efficiency of the access to information process. Far be it from me to say that this is an abuse, but let me give you the example of the 112 access to information requests that my office filed this summer, thanks to my assistant, Graham O'Brien, who did amazing work in trying to get some clarity and transparency from this government.
I'll give you an example of two of the 112. I can get him to bring over all 112 and the responses, just to give you a bit of clarity on this one aspect, and I will be speaking to the motion if I read all 112.
I think Graham has left the room temporarily. I'm sure he's gone to the office to get the 112 and the responses from the government.
From memory, let me give you two examples of the great transparency of the industry department, which is the department that signed these contracts. Let's talk about that.
I asked in an access to information request for the schedule of the deputy minister of industry for the last 12 months. I got a response, Mr. Genuis, and it did come back within the time, but here's what it said: The one year of schedule that I asked for from the deputy minister of industry would take 11 years for the department to produce—11 years.
I'll remind you that Mr. O'Brien, who did all this great work in my office, could be sent over to the department of innovation, science and industry, so this doesn't give you a great deal of confidence that this department can negotiate a good contract or actually understands what innovation and science are.
I'm sorry. I made a mistake. It was eight years for the deputy minister. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to exaggerate. Graham has reminded me that it was eight years for the deputy minister. That makes it better, because it was only eight years to get his schedule.
Graham knows how to use a Microsoft Outlook schedule. I think most of us do here. When you open up your day on the schedule, if you hit the button “File”, up comes a drop-down menu, and guess what it says on that drop-down menu?