Procedure and House Affairs Committee on May 29th, 2018

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

No, but this is a public meeting and I want to make sure that people know how much Scott Brison likes me.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

That should get you re-elected, I think.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

It should put me over the top in my riding.

Obviously, he didn't design the legislation. We know from the Chief Electoral Officer's comments yesterday that he was in consultation with the department back when Karina Gould was the minister in charge, so Scott wouldn't have known all of that stuff. He does have other duties as well. It's a lot to ask of anybody, especially with a voluminous piece of legislation like this. Obviously, with regard to all of those things, it's helpful to have Karina back. I wanted to make that clear.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Mr. Richards.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

What I meant was that I wanted to be on the speaking list for the main motion if the amendment was to pass.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Okay.

On the amendment, Mr. Bittle is next on the list.

[Chris Bittle, Liberal, St. Catharines, ON]

I'll wait for the main motion.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

There appear to be no more comments on this difficult amendment, so we'll vote on the amendment.

(Amendment agreed to)

On the motion as amended, go ahead, Mr. Richards.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

Thank you.

I do want to speak to the motion itself. I appreciate the indulgence of everyone on that. It was obviously a mistake on my part to have done it that way to begin with, and now we've resolved that.

We had the task of taking a look at whether we would agree or confirm or give our recommendation to the House that the appointment be made. That duty is something we as a committee should take quite seriously. We have that duty.

In that spirit, we had the chosen appointee—sorry, it was the second appointee chosen. The first one, for some mysterious reason, was withdrawn. It seems that no one is yet aware of why that is, including, to my understanding, the person who was actually the original appointee. It's a very odd circumstance, to say the least, and is certainly suspicious. I would think that the minister would want the opportunity to clarify what occurred, what happened and why. I would think that would help us in determining whether the right decision was, in fact, made.

When the person who has been chosen, the acting CEO, has been before our committee, I've always been satisfied with his level of knowledge and so on, so that's not of concern to me. Certainly we want to make sure the right decision was made with regard to this appointment. Part of the right decision being made is ensuring that the process was proper and fair. When there is something as odd as what occurred in this situation in a process, that is in doubt.

It may well be that there is nothing all that odd or suspicious to the situation at all, but there's only one way to find that out and that's to ask. Obviously, the best person to do that with is the minister. That is the reason I am making this suggestion.

I'm obviously aware of the logistical challenges that are now created by the government trying to ram through this piece of legislation, Bill C-76, but I'm hopeful we can find some way to undertake this and do it properly. It would only make sense. I would certainly hope that all members of this committee would support it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Thank you.

Mr. Bittle.

[Chris Bittle, Liberal, St. Catharines, ON]

I'll speak very briefly to the motion.

I appreciate where Blake is coming from, but with respect to privacy and privacy legislation, the minister can only comment on the individual who has been appointed in seeking the House to vote on that. It would be two hours of “I can't comment on that because of privacy legislation,” and that's of no value to this committee. That's why I can't support the motion.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Mr. Reid.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

I had actually not meant to get back on the speakers list, but do I need to comment on that.

We have no way of knowing and I don't think we will wind up knowing, but perhaps there are privacy considerations relating to private information appertaining to either the initial appointee to this position, Mr. Boda from Saskatchewan, or some other individual being referenced here. However, given the giant gas cloud of it all being a big secret, the fog bank of “Gosh, we can't tell you anything”, to say it's unhelpful is putting it mildly.

I think it's designed to prevent us from doing our jobs. It may be designed in a way that is actually not permissible, but how do we know, since it's all a big fog bank of secrecy? The bigger the fog bank of secrecy, the bigger the curtain behind which the guy with the levers is doing his job—that's a reference to The Wizard of Oz, by the way—and the more the munchkins will be fooled and impressed by his or her ostensible grandeur.

Just to be clear, that was actually in reference to me, not to anybody else.

I do think that's an issue. There are many things the minister could share with us that, in my experience, much as I like her, she has not been sharing with us. As we saw just yesterday, by way of example, she didn't say “no comment”, but she found other words with which to say “no comment” or that she wasn't going to answer a question. Her words were, “I'm here and prepared to answer questions about the substance of the bill”, not about the timing of the bill, not about the rush to get the bill through.

The fact is, the decision to rush the bill through is one made at the cabinet level, and there was only one person in the room who was a member of cabinet and had any say in it, who had an awareness of what was being done or would have a chance to take the views of the committee back to the cabinet, who was involved in the drafting and scheduling of the legislation, the timing that caused it to come out so late. Having to rush this bill through the House by June 12 would have been an easy matter had the bill been developed, say, a year earlier, or six months earlier, and had it been divided into several slices so that the package we'd get at this late date would be much smaller. Several other pieces of the legislation, containing other elements of the bill, had been dealt with at some earlier time, and lest anyone make the claim that this could not have been done, I note that Bill C-33 was introduced some months ago.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

I believe it was almost a year ago.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

It might even be more than a year ago.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

It was 18 months ago.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

It was introduced 18 months ago.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Who's counting, though?

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

I think Maryam Monsef was the minister at the time, and the idea that the government might be introducing electoral reform was still a live issue at the time. Indeed, at that time, we were being told repeatedly by the Prime Minister and the then minister, Maryam Monsef, that they were firm, that 2015 would be the last election conducted under first past the post. It almost seems like talking about an ancient species that existed at the same time as the dinosaurs and remains unchanged to this very day when we talk about Bill C-33. Yet it sat there, unchanged, unmoved. Some of its provisions are contained in this law and would not be part of this ginormous bill if they'd been passed then.

The creation of an artificial crisis is something that is very relevant. Now coming back to the other artificial crisis created by the weird way in which one candidate was put forward and another was not does not convince me very much.

I note that in Mr. Bittle's comments—and I suspect this is precisely the sort of thing that makes Scott Brison not like him very much—he didn't say, “So the minister can't make it for two hours. I therefore am going to amend it to one hour, because instead of having all this empty space, we think there's enough to fill one hour instead of two.”

With that in mind, Mr. Chair, I'm going to see if that would make the whole thing more palatable to the Liberals, and I therefore move to amend this motion by removing the words “no less than two hours”, and change them to “no less than one hour” and see what happens in terms of Liberal acceptance of the motion when it's worded that way.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Okay, on the amendment.

Mr. Cullen on the main motion.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

This is kind of a mess of the government's own making, and I'm not referring to members here who are not in cabinet; it wasn't your decision. This is an officer of Parliament, and the rules require that, when an officer of Parliament is appointed or suggested, there are consultations with the other parties. That never happened. It didn't happen on the languages commissioner, which ended up blowing up in the government's face. It didn't happen in any of the other officers of Parliament, nor did it happen with Mr. Boda's nomination, nor did it happen with this recent nomination. All we're left with is confusion.

The interest I have more so is in the government explaining publicly what the consultation process actually was. I know what it was from our point of view. It was a letter, “Here's our nominee, you've been consulted.” Two weeks later, “Here's our other nominee. Congratulations, you've been consulted again.” It's laughable in its incomprehension and lack of respect. You talk about respect for these nominees, who are high-profile people with long, distinguished careers. It's not laughable in the sense of what these people are supposed to do, which is to govern our elections for 10 years in this case, audit the government for many years, and be the environmental assessment people for our country.

I take it quite seriously, and David Christopherson, who normally occupies this chair, takes it even more seriously than I do. We've made recommendations to the government of a better process that would consult with the opposition. By the way, that would innoculate the government, if we're interested in that, from the accusations that come by simply not consulting and being arrogant about it. Pardon my accusation, but it's true.

My interest is not saying what was wrong with Mr. Boda. I don't know what's happened to his reputation, but he was the nominee and then suddenly he wasn't.

I had a government member accuse me of leaking his name, by the way, which was ironic, since the leak came out of the office of the Minister of Democratic Institutions, but never mind that.

The ability of these people to do their jobs requires support from all sides of the House, and I know the chair would agree with that, that they don't work for the cabinet. They're officers of Parliament. We hire them. Only we can fire them, but this process has not been well done under this government, I think, by anybody's assessment, and I would hope by their own self-reflection.

Support for this motion comes from me directly, not with our interim CEO, the nominee per se, but to talk to the minister about what the consultation process was like. Maybe it was different for the Conservatives. I don't know, but I suspect it was not. Certainly anybody who believes in the idea of consultation, which this government talks about all the time, means that it should mean something. In this case, it meant nothing. It was not consultation at all.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Okay. We'll vote on Mr. Reid's amendment to change from two hours to one hour.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

Let's record the vote.

(Amendment agreed to: yeas 8; nays 1)

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

The motion stays the same, except it's for one hour instead of two.

Mr. Cullen, do you have anything more on the main motion, the amendment?

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

No, my comments reflect on the amendment, which is a reasonable one—to reduce to an hour—and reflect further to the main motion.