Government Operations Committee on Sept. 23rd, 2025

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Yes—

[Charles Sousa, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

I have a point of order, Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Go ahead, Mr. Sousa.

[Charles Sousa, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

Just to clarify, there was no review date stated. The review was completed, but there was no—

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

That's not a point of order, Mr. Sousa, but thank you—

[Charles Sousa, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

But just to correct the record—

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

—for identifying that.

[Karen Hogan]

It was my understanding—

[An hon. member]

It's in the media today that the report date was missed.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

This is the last question. It relates to the GC Strategies questions.

We had an Order Paper question come back, and there has been an expanded number of files referred to the RCMP. I think it's up to 11 now.

In a previous public accounts meeting I was at, PSPC said they weren't actually forcing repayment of some of these accounts. They were just negotiating with some of the companies that had been found to be improperly charging or defrauding the government.

It may be not the role for you to opine on this, but do you think it tells people that the government is not serious about enforcing their own rules if we're not even forcing repayment—

[Karen Hogan]

I think this—

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

—even from companies that we're referring to the RCMP?

[Karen Hogan]

I really can't comment on files that have been referred to the RCMP, but in the case of the elements you're talking about, where PSPC is trying to recover amounts, I believe it's not linked to GC Strategies. It was linked to a bigger, broader—

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

It is—

[Karen Hogan]

—investigation around a a vendor charging multiple departments for what appeared to be the same seven hours in a day or the same piece of work.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

It's widespread, but the question is, do you think the government should be forcing immediate payment and not doing a negotiation for clearly identified...?

[Karen Hogan]

Once an investigation is done and it's clear that payment was made and services were not rendered, I would expect that overpayments will always be recovered. How the government goes about that is a decision they make, but I would expect that you shouldn't pay for things you didn't receive.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thank you.

Now we'll get to Mr. Sousa's comment on thanking all of you. It's wonderful to see all of you. We're going to suspend very briefly so that everyone can say goodbye.

Mr. Gaheer, please stay on the same Zoom call, because we'll be back in about two minutes.

We are suspended.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thank you for your patience, everyone. We are back.

We have a couple of housekeeping items before we finish for the day.

On the first one, you've seen—

[An hon. member]

Chair—

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Oh, yes. I'm sorry. I'll get to you. Can I cover this stuff first? Thanks.

You've seen the budgets for the two meetings. Can I have agreement?

Again, these are not the amounts that we're spending. They are “up to” amounts.

Can I have agreement for the two budgets?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

That's wonderful. Thank you very much.

Next, you've all received a copy of the recommendations that came out of the subcommittee from last week. This is our path going forward. We are going to keep it flexible, because we're going to work around the schedules for the two ministers, which are always, as we mentioned before, a bit more difficult to work around. Are we all in agreement on the subcommittee report?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

That's wonderful.