Government Operations Committee on June 19th, 2025

[The Clerk of the Committee, Marc-Olivier Girard]

Hello and good morning, everyone, and honourable members of the committee.

I see a quorum right now.

Pursuant to the Standing Orders of the House of Commons, as the clerk of the committee, I will now preside over the election of a committee chair.

I must inform members that the clerk of the committee can only receive motions for the election of the chair. As you know, the clerk cannot receive other types of motions, entertain points of order or participate in debate.

Pursuant to the Standing Orders of the House of Commons, the chair of this committee must be a member of the official opposition.

I am now ready to receive motions for the chair position.

Go ahead, Ms. Block.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK]

Thank you, Mr. Clerk.

I would like to nominate Kelly McCauley.

[The Clerk]

It has been moved by Ms. Block that Kelly McCauley be elected chair of the committee.

Are there any further motions?

I see none. Therefore, I will now put the motion to the committee.

Is it the pleasure of the committee to adopt this motion?

(Motion agreed to)

It is agreed.

I declare the motion carried and Mr. Kelly McCauley duly elected chair of the committee.

We're going to proceed now with the election of the vice-chairs. We have two positions available.

The first vice-chair must be a member from the governing party, pursuant to the Standing Orders.

I'm now ready to receive motions to that effect.

Mr. Gasparro has the floor.

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

I'd like to nominate Iqwinder Gaheer as first vice-chair.

[The Clerk]

Are there any further motions?

Since there aren't any, I'll put the motion to the vote.

It has been moved by Mr. Gasparro that Iqwinder Gaheer be elected as first vice‑chair of the committee. Is it the pleasure of the committee to adopt the motion?

(Motion agreed to)

The second vice-chair must be a member from the opposition but from a party other than the official opposition.

I'm ready to receive your motions.

Ms. Sudds has the floor.

[Jenna Sudds, Liberal, Kanata, ON]

I nominate Marie‑Hélène Gaudreau for the position of second vice‑chair.

[The Clerk]

Are there any other nominations?

I'll now put the motion to the committee.

It has been moved by Ms. Sudds that Marie‑Hélène Gaudreau be elected as second vice‑chair of the committee. Is it the pleasure of the committee to adopt the motion?

(Motion agreed to)

It is agreed and so carried.

I declare Marie‑Hélène Gaudreau duly elected second vice‑chair of the committee.

I would like to congratulate everyone.

I'll now give the floor to the new chair, Mr. McCauley.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thank you.

It is a pleasure, once again, to be with OGGO.

Just briefly, we'll try to make it short and get everyone back to House duty.

Before we start, I just want to welcome back MOG, our clerk. I had the pleasure of working with him for several years, and he's one of the most experienced clerks in the whole system, so we're very fortunate to have him.

Our two analysts, Olivier and Ryan, are at the back. We've had the pleasure of working with them also for several years. We're blessed. They're probably two of the best analysts, and he's the best clerk—no offence—in our system. We don't always tackle the easiest things in this committee, and they're always here to guide us. I'm very pleased to have the team back with us again.

In the last go-round, we were also blessed with wonderful members on our committee. Several are not coming back. They were not successful in the election. I just want to recognize them: Majid Jowhari, our former vice-chair, a wonderful gentleman; Irek Kusmierczyk; Julie Vignola from the Bloc; and Taylor Bachrach. They all contributed greatly to the committee. I think I express, for myself and for Ms. Block, who was with us last time around, how much they worked together—not always agreeing, but they did wonderful work. If you're at home watching, thank you very much for your contributions to OGGO.

Just quickly, there are a couple things that were left over from the last time, and I'm hoping we can get consent to just reinstate them, so to speak. One is that we finished the New York consul general report, but we did not get it to report stage to send to the House. I'm hoping we can have UC to reinstate that, so we can get it to report stage.

[Jenna Sudds, Liberal, Kanata, ON]

Are routine motions happening prior to that?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

We can do that. I was going to get that out of the way first, but we can go right to routine motions. It's six of one, half a dozen of the other.

Everyone has received copies of the routine motions. They were sent out.

A couple have been added. One is similar to public accounts and other committees. We require officials to provide, in writing, promised documents or answers within 21 days. That's been added to our routine procedures. Second, for the estimates process, the committee had agreed that we require a CFO to accompany the minister to make sure that the deputy minister is there as well so that we have complete responses.

If we're fine with that, can we have UC to accept?

Go ahead, Madame Gaudreau.

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

Mr. Chair, I would like to find what you're talking about in the document. What section is it in?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

It was emailed out in two separate emails. The first was a two-pager containing the general ones that every committee is adopting. The second one was adding the two that we had adopted before—having CFOs attend and having the officials return promised documents or answers in writing within 21 days.

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

Mr. Chair, with all due respect, I also sit on another committee. I think that today we must adopt the routine motions negotiated with our House leaders. I'll vote against the items that we received and that aren't in the document.

I would like the House leaders to have a discussion, since it's a routine matter. You'll tell me that the committee is free to make its own choices. However, work remains to be done.

If an agreement is reached when the House returns in September, we can adopt them.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Is that something we leave to the next meeting?

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

Yes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Are you fine with that, everyone? Okay. That will give you time to look it over as well and discuss with your teams why we had passed it last time.

We'll proceed, then, with just the routine motions.

Do we have UC for that?

(Motions agreed to [See Minutes of Proceedings])

Perfect.

As for the two outstanding items, I'll ask the clerk to send them out again in September. They're on the 21 days and having the CFO attend.

There was another one. We didn't make it part of our routine procedures, but we did speak of it often when we had outside witnesses in. It was around a conflict of interest declaration. Again, we can leave that.

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

I'm sorry, Mr. Chair. Do you mind if I interrupt?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Go ahead.

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

I'm new to this. I apologize, everyone.

What is the process when we are voting? We just adopted the routine motions. Is that what just happened here?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

By unanimous consent, we adopted the typical routine motions that we all have in committee. There's another process whereby we actually go to a vote and ask the clerk to have a vote, or we do it on division.

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

Okay.

Just for newbies like me who are learning—and I respect my senior colleagues on this committee—can we try to be clear when that is actually happening? Obviously, you're very experienced and you're able to roll through this, but for newbies like me, can we be clear and say that we'll be moving this motion?

Again, I apologize if it causes any delay.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Sure. To be clear, we have adopted the routine motions. When we come back, we'll look at the 21 days as well as the request to have the CFOs attend. Quite often they do attend anyway, but we just wanted them to be there.

There are some briefing documents for today. I hadn't planned on going over them, but my esteemed clerk has suggested that perhaps the analysts want to go over them.

Go ahead.

[Olivier Leblanc-Laurendeau, Committee Researcher]

It won't take long.

I just want to explain the documents that the clerk sent out by email.

To set the record straight, the committee's analysts prepare briefing notes and work plans and suggest witnesses for our studies. They also prepare draft reports at the end of the studies and press releases when requested.

To keep things simple this morning, I'll give the floor to my colleague, Mr. van den Berg. He'll explain the main documents that we would recommend consulting from among the documents sent out.

[Ryan van den Berg, Committee Researcher]

I'll continue in English here quite briefly.

Given the volume of documents that we sent to your offices earlier on Monday through the clerk, we want to highlight a few of those for new members so that they can get acquainted with some of the subject matter of the committee.

First, we suggest that you might want to begin with “The Parliamentary Financial Cycle” publication, the working paper called “Frequently Asked Questions on the Financial Cycle and the Estimates Process” and the working paper called “Demystifying Federal Procurement”.

Those of you who are already more familiar with the estimates process may be interested to know more about estimates scrutiny by the numbers, which provides information on broad trends.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thanks very much.

I have a couple of quick housekeeping items. In the last session, we completed a report on the....

I'm sorry. Go ahead, Madame.