Procedure and House Affairs Committee on March 9th, 2017

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

Did you get your mandate letter on the date you became minister, or were you operating for some time as a minister without a mandate letter?

[Karina Gould, Liberal, Burlington, ON]

I was operating with the public mandate letter that was available until then.

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

I think you just lost me.

You're saying that you were operating under the mandate letter that had been issued to Minister Monsef.

[Karina Gould, Liberal, Burlington, ON]

There's a mandate letter. It's made public, and I was operating under what was public at the time.

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

Okay, there was a mandate letter that was made public on February 1.

Was that the mandate letter you were operating under? Alternatively, were you operating under the mandate letter that had been issued to Minister Monsef a year and a bit earlier, or were you operating under some third thing? I'm now totally lost here.

[Karina Gould, Liberal, Burlington, ON]

The mandate is public, and whatever was public is the mandate I was operating under at the time.

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

The mandate is what's in the mandate letter. Is there some other mandate?

[Karina Gould, Liberal, Burlington, ON]

No, that's....

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

Right, so you were operating under the letter that had been issued to Minister Monsef, and not under the one that became public on February 1.

[Karina Gould, Liberal, Burlington, ON]

Whatever was public was the mandate I was operating under at the time for that minister.

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

That means you did receive your mandate letter, the one that became public on February 1, on the date on which you became minister, January 10. That's the mandate you received on January 10, the mandate letter that became public on February 1, correct?

[Karina Gould, Liberal, Burlington, ON]

The mandate letter that was public at the time of January 10 was the mandate I was operating under.

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

So it was Minister Monsef's? All right. That's helpful. You did not receive your mandate letter on January 10, then.

Let me ask you this question now that we've established that you got a new mandate letter after January 10.

Around January 24 or thereabouts, the cabinet met in Calgary. There has been a leak about what happened in that meeting. We are told that you argued passionately in favour of moving away from a referendum on electoral reform, and that your arguments persuaded everybody in cabinet except one. There was one dissenting vote.

Did you have your mandate letter at that time, or were you operating under Minister Monsef's old mandate letter when that argument was being made to the cabinet?

[Karina Gould, Liberal, Burlington, ON]

I was operating under the mandate that was public at the time of those discussions, but I can't comment on cabinet conversations.

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

No, you can't, and neither can the person who leaked it, which raises the question of why there were two separate Liberal sources, according to the stories in which it was leaked.

I asked the House leader why there wasn't an investigation, and she just said, well, there isn't one. Of course, the answer is that the Prime Minister authorized this, which is a really unprofessional thing to do. It's not actually illegal, but it's certainly a breach of convention.

However, that doesn't answer my question. I think we've established, then, that you were issued your mandate letter—the one that was made public on February 1—sometime between January 24 or 25, whenever it was, and February 1. That now appears to be what you're saying. Is that correct? That's when you got the new mandate letter, not the previous one...?

[Karina Gould, Liberal, Burlington, ON]

You're putting—

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

You only have 10 seconds, Minister.

[Karina Gould, Liberal, Burlington, ON]

You're putting words in here, and what I'm saying is that the mandate letter was made public on February 1, and I was operating under the mandate that was public at the time.

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

Which must have been Minister Monsef's mandate letter—

[Karina Gould, Liberal, Burlington, ON]

Which is.... Yes.

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

—because there is no other.... I have the public information, too, and there's only that letter and the February 1 letter, so it has to be one or the other. I think you've just told us it was the Monsef letter, which I accept at face value. Am I wrong on that?

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Your time is up.

Mr. Graham.

[David Graham, Liberal, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

I want to start by responding to a point that Mr. Cullen made earlier about gender balance. There's more to it than that. There's the commitment to gender, and at this table, there are three women members at this table, and they are all Liberals. On the electoral reform committee, there were only two parties that provided women for that committee: the Liberals and the Green Party. I just wanted to put that out there, but that's not the line I want to go down.

In your opening remarks, you said that you would like our report on the electoral officer's report by the end of June, or preferably by May 19, which I can understand. For the benefit of those watching—this is a televised meeting—can you explain the process of what happens after that? Can you explain how we get to a bill, why it's important to do it then in terms of the process, both with you and with cabinet, and also with Elections Canada, to get this ready for an election, and, therefore, why a deadline like that is actually important to us?

[Karina Gould, Liberal, Burlington, ON]

It's not a hard deadline, of course. The committee is going to set the timeline for the work they're going to do. It's just that I do value the input of committee. I think you provide valuable contributions on these items and these issues. Therefore, to have that in its fullness feeding into the legislative process moving forward would be very helpful to me, and I think it would be helpful to Canadians to hear from the committee and to hear their reflections within that time period.

In October 2019 there is going to be an election. Elections Canada needs time to implement any potential recommendations or amendments to the Canada Elections Act in time to deliver them for the 2019 election. Though we don't have a set time frame, we know that it's likely a number of months, if not more. The more time available, the better it is for Elections Canada and the dedicated officials there to ensure they get that done right.

Moving back, that means legislation would have to be passed sometime within the next year or year and a half in order for this to be accomplished. For that to happen, legislation would have to be presented in the fall, perhaps, or by the end of the year at the very latest, in order for that to go through the whole legislative process and to have the time for the committee to study it and for it to be debated in Parliament. In order to do so, legislation would need to be drafted and would need to go to cabinet ahead of that.

All of that puts us within that two-and-a-half-year time frame. I know that this is important legislation. There are important elements of this—for all members of this committee—that we want to get done in time for the next election to ensure that all Canadians have a fair, accessible, and equitable chance to vote.

[David Graham, Liberal, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

So it's clear that if we're still doing this study a year from now it will be a little late to act on it.