It says “Print”.
We tried that for a few days of my schedule. It took five seconds to print out a single day. I am making that offer right now to the department of industry, which can't negotiate good contracts with Stellantis because they can't figure out how to hit “File” and “Print” on the deputy minister's schedule. Mr. O'Brien will come over and teach the department of innovation, science, and industry how to use “File” and “Print” on the Outlook schedule.
Not to be outdone, the deputy minister is an important man, as we all know. He has an associate deputy minister who appears before the industry committee on just about everything we do. We asked for his schedule for a year too. We did. Clearly, he's much more important than the deputy minister. Do you know why? I made a mistake earlier when I said it would be 11 years for the deputy minister's schedule, rather than eight, but for his associate deputy minister it was 11 years, because he's a much more important man than the deputy minister. It would actually take another three years to hit “File” and “Print” for all the days in his schedule.
I have to tell you that this is the department that MP Masse wants to rely on in item (i) to release the contract and for the ATIP.
I might challenge it, but it would probably take 11 years. That may be a dilatory sort of thing that the industry department is trying to hide. The industry department is actually trying to hide the deputy minister's schedule for some reason. They made claims in Bill C-27 that they've had 300 meetings over the summer, and it turns out they had about 300 meetings with the Canadian Marketing Association and the Canadian Bankers Association, but nobody who actually cares about the privacy of individuals, just people who care about abusing an individual's privacy, so they're trying to hide things at every turn, and that's why we need the transparency of the amendments that Mr. Genuis put forward, or my genuine compromise motion that I put forward today, which has about 80% or 90% of MP Masse's motion in it. It has the idea of having a third party review it, which is a compromise on our part, and having it released publicly.
The only difference, aside from all the grammatical errors, is the issue of a public or a private release. We trust parliamentary officers to release it and make those judgments. Apparently the government doesn't. I wonder why. Now the NDP no longer trusts the officers of Parliament to make the decision and release things publicly.
This is a production of documents motion, or that's the intent of what we originally put forward. MP Masse's version is somewhat of a production of documents motion, but it actually asks for things that aren't documents, so I don't know that it actually qualifies. I've not challenged the chair on whether or not this motion is acceptable under the rules. It's not really a production of documents motion in the truest sense, because it's asking for things that are not in the contract. It's asking for things like the number of foreign workers who are building plants involved in equipment installation and technology transfer.
Well, do you know what? Why don't we just have Stellantis before the committee and ask them that? I can tell you that this is not part of the contract. The contract has employment stuff. It doesn't list out the foreign workers they're bringing in, so it's about asking for the production of a new document that does not exist.
There are ways to do that. The member could have asked and filed what's called an OPQ around here. We're in Ottawa. Ottawa, like all governments, lives on acronyms. We're in the OGGO committee—another acronym. I sit on the INDU committee. The industry department is called ISED, which actually doesn't bear any resemblance to the title of the minister: The minister is Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, and it's the Department of Industry, Science and Economic Development. They can't even get the title and the department straight and linked up, but we want to trust them that they're not hiding something and that they're negotiating a good contract.
He's asking for a document that requires special production, and OPQ means “Order Paper question”. Members of Parliament can ask what's called an Order Paper question. The government is compelled, in 45 days, to respond to those Order Paper questions. This is a perfect item for that, and I would recommend that MP Masse file an OPQ. You're allowed four at any given time. I've always had four, but I actually am so curious about what the government's doing that I generally have eight, 10 or 12 in at any given time, although you're only allowed four, so other MPs have to sign them.
You find out quite interesting information. The number of foreign workers who've been building the plants involved in equipment installation and technology transfer is a number. Numbers are what OPQs are best at exposing, so we don't need this here. In fact, that's not a document that is signed in the contract. I think it should be asked under an OPQ. That's not production of documents.
Number two is about the number of Canadian temporary and/or construction jobs to be created and how many permanent production positions are to be created as part of the contract guarantees. Well, the minister has said quite clearly, publicly, as has the Prime Minister, that there are 2,500 permanent jobs. I don't need to produce a document for that unless, for some reason, MP Masse doesn't even trust that number is correct. It says 2,500 jobs. That's the answer to the number of permanent production positions created as part of the contract. That's 2,500, or 2,300—we've heard a couple of different numbers. They're close. They've said both of those, so we don't need a motion to ask for that unless we don't believe the minister that it's even in the contract.
I trust the minister that when he said there would be 2,300 permanent jobs in the contract, that's what there will be. The minister just hasn't said that they're Canadian, or at least the company has said that they're not all Canadian. The minister has said they're Canadian, they're not Canadian, some of them are Canadian, a small portion are now in there—and then it's, “I really don't want you to know because I won't release the contract.”
Maybe MP Masse has a point. Maybe we can't even trust the number that the minister has put out, but again, that would make a classic OPQ. It's just a straight number. In fact, items one and two could be—wait for it—in the same OPQ, and they would have to respond within 45 days.
Item three is about the steps that will be taken to prioritize the employment of Canadians for building plants and equipment. Again, on the release of the contract, if it says that these jobs have to be Canadian, it would say that in the contract, but it isn't listed there.
In no contract that I've ever seen, and I was in large corporate businesses for 25-plus years.... I ran them. I was on boards of directors of publicly traded companies, private companies. You don't outline in a contract all the steps you take:
Number one, let's post an ad; number two, here are the qualifications; number three, let's do the interviews at this date; number four, let's interview the people; number five, here's how we'll score them. You don't put the steps that will be taken to prioritize the employment, as in, are they Canadian? Those steps on that hiring are not in a contract. It just says you're going to hire so many people to do so many things, and either they're Canadian or they're not.
One would expect that if you're putting up, in this case, $15 billion—the largest corporate subsidy in the history of Canada, for a single company for a six-year period, meaning $1,000 of taxes per household in Canada—you would put that requirement in the contract.
I think that could be very simply an OPQ, but it's not a production of documents question because that wouldn't be in the contract. They could have put in the construction schedule of the plant. That's in one of these contracts. There are two contracts for each of these. You could put that in the contract. You could ask for the steps of the construction schedule. That would be a legitimate element of the production of documents, but it wouldn't be the steps to be taken to prioritize employment other than saying....
I think what MP Masse is generally saying is that we want to know if it says you have to hire Canadians. If it does, release those clauses. MP Masse didn't ask for those clauses to be released. It's this liberalized, bureaucratized language that says, “Prioritize the employment of Canadians.” It sounds like the people who write acronyms wrote this up.
Number four says that the documents should be deposited with the clerk of the committee within—I have “one” blocked out—three weeks. I don't know if that's an old strikeout or not, but the redacted versions.... This again is where we had some confusion. Maybe it's a typo that we're trying to fix that's in the motion, because MP Masse said many times in the industry committee and in this committee that he wants it in public, and so does his leader in the House. He actually questioned—quite emotionally—the Prime Minister and the Minister of Industry on this issue, calling for the release of the contracts. I think that was probably a typo in the rush to get this done, and that's why, in all good spirit of assistance, MP Genuis has offered to help out to make sure that the motion is clearly consistent with the public position of the NDP.
Number five is that the “information related to the above specific areas not available in the contract be provided by the above mentioned companies to the committee in writing.” Here we go. It's the cone of silence.
There is a bit of grey hair around this table, but some people here may not remember, and some may, that classic TV series—I was a tiny little kid, I must admit—called Get Smart. Do you remember Get Smart? There isn't much Get Smart in this contract, but in Get Smart they had the cone of silence, and Max would go in and they'd have something secret to talk about, he and the chief. The cone of silence would come down over them. They'd try to talk to each other through the cone of silence and they could never hear anybody. That was the cone of silence.
This is the “cone of silence clause” here that MP Masse has put in. Do you know what happens when you put a cone of silence into this committee, in OGGO, in looking at the contracts? It's the same thing that happened to Max and the chief in Get Smart: It doesn't work. It doesn't provide transparency. Nobody can hear the contract. Nobody can see it. Nobody can prove it. It ties the members' hands to secrecy, and it's the goal of the Liberals to tie our hands to secrecy.
The only reason to do it is that they're hiding something. If they were proud of this contract, as they claim they are.... I've heard the Liberal members go on at length about the pride in these contracts. I've heard them and seen them do media. If you're proud of these contracts, release them. Obviously, you're not proud of the contracts; you're just proud of the rhetoric. If you were proud of the contracts, you'd release them.
Now that my assistant Graham O'Brien is back, I'd like to thank him again for all the work he did on exposing the secret society of industry that has decided that access to information doesn't apply to them and that it will take 11 years to produce a print copy of the deputy minister's and the associate deputy minister's schedules—Mr. Schaan. I would like to thank him for that work.
Graham, did you go back to the office to get the other 110 access to information request responses? I could really use them here.
I know the committee members would be fascinated with paragraph (i) on using access to information as the way to get this contract. That's just to give examples of how effective access to information is at getting secret government documents when the government doesn't want to do it.
Graham, maybe you could send.... We have a couple of part-time students. Maybe just give them a call and ask them if they'll bring them over. It may require a wheelbarrow.
I am prepared, in the hour of transparency, to demonstrate to this committee just how many access to information requests the Liberal government treats with a great deal of openness and respect in putting things forward.
I can tell you that I think the intent by Mr. Masse is right. I think he made some typos that Mr. Genuis is trying to fix in an earnest way—as my colleague always is—in trying to fix the motion.
If it would be okay, I'd like to make two more corrections, if I could, as a subamendment to Mr. Genuis's motion.
The chair proposed at the beginning of this meeting to clean up some of the language, so I would like to propose—