Government Operations Committee on June 19th, 2025

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Exactly.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thanks.

Again, to be clear, they'll just be sent to the P9s. They're not to be shared and they're to be kept confidential for the time being, until we decide otherwise.

I have Ms. Sudds.

[Jenna Sudds, Liberal, Kanata, ON]

Thank you.

I have two questions.

One would be to ask—again, being new to this—whether there is an open study that we have on the table right now that these documents are feeding into.

Second, just to concur, I think a briefing would be super-helpful as we dig into this.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Yes, there's an open study, but it was from the motion for these papers that were supposed to be delivered to the committee.

Yes, I'm sure a briefing can be provided by the analysts.

On Mr. Gasparro's comment about the blues, it's quite easy to find it from the blues. They can provide those specific meetings, but it might be easier to do a separate briefing for you if you wish.

[Vince Gasparro, Liberal, Eglinton—Lawrence, ON]

Maybe what we can do is have a written briefing sent at the same time as the documents are sent out so that we're not receiving 100,000 documents with absolutely zero context, which is ridiculous. It really is, you know....

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

I have Ms. Jansen and then Ms. Rochefort.

[Tamara Jansen, Conservative, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

Yes, I'm new to OGGO as well, and I must admit that I wasn't watching OGGO, but I am fairly familiar with Dalian and Coradix just from the things we were hearing through the media. I mean, it's not terribly difficult to figure out what this is about, but I do expect that there's going to be a lot of work, and I'm excited to get started on that. I'm very thankful to the team for making sure that we continue to look at these very serious issues.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Go ahead, Madame Rochefort.

[Pauline Rochefort, Liberal, Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

My colleague, Ms. Gaudreau, spoke earlier about going over what has been done. I'm trying to understand the process. I'm a new member of Parliament.

I suppose that, when a Parliament ends, so do certain things. How far back can we go? Could we go back 10 years, 8 years or 6 years? When does a study end?

I thought that the study was finished. I would like to understand the process. The normal course of action isn't clear to me.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

He just explained that.

[Pauline Rochefort, Liberal, Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, but because I'm new, I did not quite understand. I'm hoping to maybe get additional details to have a better understanding, and I hope you'll be lenient here, given that I'm a new member.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Do we have anyone else on the speaking list?

Go ahead, Mr. Patzer.

[Jeremy Patzer, Conservative, Swift Current—Grasslands—Kindersley, SK]

As a committee, we can obviously restart the work that ended in the last Parliament. I think that's what we're getting at here, and Ms. Gaudreau has said that it's in her interest, as well as the interest of Quebeckers and Canadians, to continue this study and to get to the bottom of the root cause of the fraud that was found out. That's what these documents relate to, and that's the study that we are looking to continue.

As a committee, we have the ability to do that. Because of the nature of the documents and the way they were received, as the clerk explained, yes, it's perfectly within our scope to do that. Yes, it means a lot of work for those of us who weren't on the committee before to get up to speed for this, but that's our role as parliamentarians. Sometimes there's a lot of work needed for us to catch up and get on top of things.

I remember this one time on the industry committee when we passed a motion on a Thursday. When we came back on Monday, we—the Conservatives—had worked over the weekend, and we were ready to go with motions and studies. A member from the opposite side was complaining about people working over the weekend. Well, I mean, as parliamentarians, yes, sometimes we have to work over the weekend.

We have a lot of work to do over the summer, and we're fortunate that we have the entire summer to be able to catch up on what this study is. I mean, could you imagine starting on Tuesday next week and having to jump into this? Thankfully, we have all summer to do this work. I'm excited to do this over the summer at home. That way, we begin in the fall with this committee, and I'll be tuned up and ready to roll.

Yes, it's a lot of work, but it's not out of the ordinary.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

To be clear, the motion is just to release the documents to us, to our P9s only.

Go ahead, Ms. Rochefort.

[Pauline Rochefort, Liberal, Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Patzer.

This is simply to advise that I'm not afraid of hard work and I'm not afraid of working over the summer. There's no issue there at all, but I am concerned about process. Maybe it's my mistake, because I had not seen this item as part of the agenda for today's discussion, so maybe I'm not prepared.

I'd like to understand the process and at what point can we reopen things. I guess that's what I'm seeking to understand.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

I think we can reopen anything at any time.

This is just to distribute the documents; it's not to restart any study. I can have the clerk reiterate our ability, with the motion—

[Pauline Rochefort, Liberal, Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. That would be very helpful for me.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

It's almost moot, because the motion before us is to send out the documents.

[Pauline Rochefort, Liberal, Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON]

Yes, I just want to make sure as I vote.... I want to be informed and I want to understand.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

You're not voting on the procedures. You're voting on just releasing the documents, as the motion says. Perhaps we can continue that, and then he can explain it to you off-line or separately.

We've gone past saying that we're going to send them out. Now there's an actual motion from the committee saying to release these. It's a separate thing altogether.

[Pauline Rochefort, Liberal, Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON]

I understand. I understand here that the—

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

I'm going to continue with the motion. Again, the motion is now being taken separately from what I asked for UC on. The motion before us is to release the documents to the P9s because they're not redacted and there may be personal things. It's for the committee; it's not to continue a study and not to reopen it, but to release the documents.

[Vince Gasparro, Liberal, Eglinton—Lawrence, ON]

Mr. Chair—

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

I'm sorry. I have a speaking list.

I have Ms. Gaudreau.

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

I would like to speak to all the new committee members. I'm not a new parliamentarian, but I'm new to this committee.

The committee has the power to abandon a project or, on the contrary, to complete it.

The motion on the table is simply a guarantee that the documents won't end up in limbo and that we'll get on with the job.

In this case, we must cope with many delays, since the documents are hundreds of pages long. Obviously, for me, translation is key and can often take months. In this case, we should have completed this study. However, given the prorogation, we couldn't do anything before the election.

The motion isn't about what we'll do next, but rather about receiving documents in our P9 inbox. In September, we'll see whether this becomes a priority. At that point, we'll have had our briefing and time to carry out the full review. Like all of you, I'm planning to take a vacation. We'll be in a much better position to make a decision.

That said, Mr. Chair, I don't know whether people still want to speak on the matter. However, I invite my colleagues to vote on the motion if we don't obtain unanimous consent now.