Evidence of meeting #27 for Procedure and House Affairs in the 43rd Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was prorogation.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Karen Vecchio Conservative Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON
Ryan, it was supposed to have happened on Tuesday.
Conservative
Karen Vecchio Conservative Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON
Sorry, I just want to correct it. It was Tuesday that we asked for that, but that's good.
Liberal
Ryan Turnbull Liberal Whitby, ON
If I may finish, I was just saying that between meetings, I understood that was forthcoming. Based on a sincere effort to want to move forward, we sort of allowed the amendment that I had put forward, which was a compromise, or at least we felt it was, to go to a vote. It was voted down, and that is fine.
I want to clarify whether opposition members are really interested in working with us in putting forward a good faith amendment that we can work on. Is that forthcoming?
NDP
Daniel Blaikie NDP Elmwood—Transcona, MB
What we committed to do last day was to sit down together and to develop a proposal in writing for the government. We are working towards that goal. We didn't take that as being a deadline for today, because we weren't able to dispense with the amendment on Tuesday which was the sign of good faith we had asked for at that time. I'm pleased to see that happen today. I'll certainly be doing everything that I can, and I take from our discussion so far that other opposition members.... Not wanting to unduly speak for anyone, I think there is a real good-faith attempt on our part to develop a way forward, to propose something to government in order to break the logjam. I'm optimistic that we'll be able to deliver a written proposal for how to move past this before our next meeting.
Of course, if Liberal members of the committee are really anxious to get other things on the record today, they're certainly welcome to do that; but I think, given that we are on the cusp of trying to get to a new proposal, if members would prefer to suspend now so that we can get to question period on time and do other things in our day, I'm certainly happy with doing that as well.
What we can't do while we're listening attentively to committee, as we do, is have those discussions to try to get to a final conclusion on the opposition bench. It's really up to folks on the committee what they want to do, but I certainly would support a suspension at this time. I think you'll find there is a proposal in writing to government prior to our next meeting, unless we're unable to come to an agreement, in which case that will also be an interesting fact about this process.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ruby Sahota
Having heard two or three different points of view on this, unless there are any other points of view, is it okay if I suspend until the next scheduled meeting?
Okay. We'll suspend.
[The meeting was suspended at 1:17 p.m., Thursday, May 13.]
[The meeting resumed at 11:01 a.m., Tuesday, May 25.]
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ruby Sahota
I call this meeting to order.
Good morning, everyone. This is a resumption of meeting number 27 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, which started on April 13, 2021. Today it is May 25, 2021, at 11 a.m.
Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the House order of January 25, 2021. Therefore, members are attending in person in the room and remotely using the Zoom application. The proceedings will be made available via the House of Commons website. Just so you are aware, the webcast will show only the person speaking rather than the entirety of the committee. So far today, we don't have anyone attending in person. Everyone is attending virtually.
Just as a reminder, raise your hand using the tool function, which is located at the bottom of your screen. No taking photos of the screen or screenshots is allowed. I would remind everyone about that. Other than that, I guess we always need a reminder to mute and unmute ourselves. Somehow we all tend to forget that. Remember to turn your translation on if you need it. Before speaking, please wait until I recognize you by name.
I do have a speakers list. We are on Mrs. Vecchio's motion. There was a speakers list for that, when we suspended last time, consisting of Mrs. Shanahan, Mr. Turnbull and then Mr. Blaikie, who wishes to speak.
Mr. Blaikie also informed me, just before the meeting, that he would like to report on some developments, perhaps, so keep that in mind as well. There may be some new information that could hopefully progress movement in this committee.
We'll hear what Mr. Blaikie has to say, but first I will hand it back to the speakers list.
Mrs. Shanahan, you are first on that list.
Liberal
Brenda Shanahan Liberal Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC
Thank you, Madam Chair.
It's truly a pleasure for me to be here with my colleagues at today's meeting of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs.
My colleague Mr. Therrien spoke about what we in Quebec call National Patriots' Day which was celebrated on Monday. It's called Victoria Day in the other provinces, but we commemorate true patriots, and I always take pride in the distinction. I have nothing against Queen Victoria, who even played an important role in eventually, after five years, granting a pardon to our exiled patriots in Australia.
Quebec's patriots included merchants, notaries and doctors. These were educated and dedicated men who had been fighting for a democratic government. Their rebellions were not only in Lower Canada, but Upper Canada too, as you know.
These events were not spontaneous. At the time they occurred, there were British governors in the colonies. There was also a movement within Canadian society, more specifically in what was then called Lower Canada. Other colonies had been established in the meantime. Chèvrefils, Chénier, Nelson and others were demanding a form of justice and governance that met the needs of the citizens. Because they were still citizens of Great Britain who had rights, such as having representation and seats in Parliament, they were demanding the same rights here. Historians agree that reprisals against Quebec's patriots were much more severe, and some were even hanged.
Others were exiled to Australia, enduring a harrowing six-month trip to a prison colony in Longbottom. The British authorities rather than the Australians were at the time in charge of this colony, where the French Canadians were forced to do hard labour. When they realized that these men were educated, basically peaceful, and reasonable, they were gradually entrusted with administrative and even governance duties. In fact, the influence of these Canadians on Australia can still be seen to this day.
After five years in the colony, they were rather well off. They worked for merchants and for the government. They afterwards asked for a pardon and worked in order to pay for their trip home. Most of the Canadians finally returned to Quebec, although the governor had asked them to stay if they wanted, because he would have liked them to do so.
Joseph Marceau stayed, and he, along with his descendants, contributed to Australian democracy. An incredible account of this story was written by François-Maurice Lepailleur, one of the patriots who returned to Quebec from Australia.
Deke Richards made a documentary as a tribute to this democratic link between French Canadians and the creation of Australia's Parliament. As a result of these tragic events for the Canadians exiled in Australia, if you visit Canada Bay in Australia you can take a stroll along Chateauguay Walk. Here in Châteauguay, there's a museum dedicated to the history of the patriots. There is also a Marceau Road in Australia named after Mr. Marceau, who had 11 children in Australia and made a genuine contribution to Australian society. He played a an important role in Australia's history.
I mentioned all of that in order to talk about the principle of accountable government, which is central to our discussion today. How can we make sure that no matter what the situation may be, the government is always accountable to the people of Canada? When an emergency changes the circumstances, and if the economy, following an election, is no longer in the shape it was during the campaign, prorogation becomes a mechanism that allows the government to submit a new plan. It also enables parliamentarians, who represent all Canadians, to say whether they have confidence in the government.
As I mentioned already, I'm an amateur historian and I completed my first bachelor's degree in Quebec history at the Université du Québec à Chicoutimi in the 1970s. It was a rather turbulent period in Quebec's history, but our professors taught us that history is not always made up exclusively of major events and great men. I learned that it was not always the men in charge who masterminded key historical events, but rather the men and women who, on an everyday basis, generated activity and vigour in all sectors of society. They are also the people who decide whether or not it is legitimate to be governed by these great men and women.
Queen Victoria reigned over the British Empire. Before her, there was Queen Elizabeth I. Today, it's Queen Elizabeth II. It's interesting to note that women were on the throne during the greatest periods of the British Empire. However, that's something for another day, and perhaps even another committee.
I'd like to get back now to the prorogation mechanism contained in the April motion. The motion seeks to determine why the government decided to prorogue Parliament in August 2020. It's not the first time I've mentioned this motion. There is nothing the matter with looking into the government's reasoning, and it is in fact worth doing.
In the past, governments in power have sometimes been asked why they prorogued Parliament. Was it really because the circumstances under which they were governing had changed? Was it for economic or public safety reasons, a pandemic, or some other important reason, or was it rather for purely partisan reasons?
That's why the government, from the moment it took power, introduced a mechanism…
Bloc
Alain Therrien Bloc La Prairie, QC
Excuse me, Madam Chair…
I'm sorry for interrupting you, Ms. Shanahan.
I'm on the French channel, but I'm hearing the interpretation in English. Can someone check into that?
Liberal
Brenda Shanahan Liberal Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC
Excellent. Thank you very much, Mr. Therrien.
It's truly a pleasure for me to be able not only to discuss the motion before us, but also to recall the history of how our Parliament has evolved. Not only do we have a piece of paper to guide us, but the entire history of its development.
Let's get back to what we can already do to manage prorogation more effectively. We said that the government, through the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons or someone else, once the Prime Minister had decided to prorogue Parliament, had to provide an explanation within 30 to 60 days, as I recall. In any event, a report had to be written.
As I pointed out in a in another speech, I found the report really thorough. I was able to go through it and saw that the report had been tabled in the House as required. It explained the reasons for the prorogation to the House.
Don't forget that the confidence vote had already been held. When the throne speech was delivered was when the opposition parties had the opportunity to indicate that they were dissatisfied and did not have confidence in our government. The vote was held, and the report tabled and released.
However, some people were not satisfied with this process. So here we are at the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, looking at a motion introduced by Ms. Vecchio requesting further discussion and a review of all the reasons for prorogation, completely ignoring all the debate on the amendment put forward by Mr. Turnbull, which in my view was altogether reasonable. Using the original motion as a starting point, Mr. Turnbull made suggestions that would keep the essentials and make them acceptable to all members of the committee.
I am disappointed that the opposition parties did not agree to this amendment. We could have come to an agreement. We could have addressed the key components of what my opposition colleagues wanted to examine. We could have moved on to what is important, by which I mean the fact that we are still in a pandemic management situation.
If the opposition parties had voted against the throne speech in September, elections would have been triggered without any proper safety measures in place to manage the serious circumstances we were facing in 2020.
The situation is is still serious, even though the vaccination rate has risen to over 50%, and we are very happy about that. In Quebec, vaccination is going well and people are pleased about it. I spoke with my neighbours and some people who were walking, properly distanced, in the street this weekend and I did some cycling. I found that people were satisfied with the progress, but didn't want to do anything foolish. In fact, no one wants to go backwards.
I'm back here after spending a nice weekend celebrating our historical heritage in very pleasant weather. It was a harbinger of things to come. But back here we find ourselves exactly where we were a few months ago, studying the same motion from Ms. Vecchio. I'm going to keep my comments about the motion for later, because I have a lot to do. I already spoke about paragraph (a) of the motion. Having looked at the contents of the other paragraphs, I can tell you that I'll have a lot to say about each of them. As I just mentioned, I'm going to keep it all to myself for now.
That concludes my remarks.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ruby Sahota
Thank you, Mrs. Shanahan.
There are a couple of things I feel I should have probably said at the beginning of the meeting just as a refresher, because we were all on a constituency week as well. We have had Bill C-19 referred to the committee as of May 11. It's been some time. We had the constituency week in between, obviously, which took up time. This is a government bill, so there's no time limit for the committee to consider the bill, but generally, legislation is given priority by committees.
If the committee chooses to move forward on that, there are some things the committee will have to keep in mind. We would need to decipher how many witnesses to have, which witnesses and the dates for those witnesses. Those suggestions need to be sent to us. Just keep all that in mind so that we can schedule them. There are always scheduling difficulties, so we need to know that stuff as soon as possible if we wish to make any amendments to the bill. Then we would need to determine a date for clause-by-clause and basically an overlying deadline for that.
As another reminder to the committee, the next meeting, on May 27—today is May 25—would be the last date for us to consider the main estimates. Otherwise, on May 31, they will revert back to the House. That's just a reminder on the main estimates as well.
I will move to Mr. Turnbull, and then Mr. Blaikie right after that.
Liberal
Ryan Turnbull Liberal Whitby, ON
Thank you, Madam Chair.
I appreciate your reminder about Bill C-19 being a government bill. These usually take precedence in committee business, or at least I think that's the informal practice that's generally followed. I hope that today the committee will see some movement on Bill C-19.
That's my hope. I'm stating that outright. It might be because we had a constituency week, but I'm coming back to the committee with renewed optimism. A little bit of sun on my face and—I don't know why—it has invigorated me. I'm looking forward to today's meeting. It's good to see everybody.
I appreciate Mrs. Shanahan's comments. I especially appreciated the story she told about the significance of the holiday, which I think exists differently within different cultural contexts. I appreciated that very much. I thought that was insightful.
I also appreciated your speaking to the amendment that I had put forward, even though we're not on the amendment. It was an attempt to appease some of the opposition parties and, hopefully, to move forward. I know the committee voted that down, so I won't cover anything having to do with that today, but I do want to quickly frame where I think we are as a committee. Then I look forward to hearing from Mr. Blaikie.
I've said this multiple times, but I really think it's important to emphasize. From the very beginning of this particular conversation, which started a long time ago, we as a committee agreed to study prorogation. We heard from witnesses. We heard from quite a number of witnesses. I think the government in general has been very transparent when it comes to prorogation. I've said from the beginning that if a global pandemic is not a good enough reason to prorogue Parliament, then I don't believe any reason will satisfy the opposition parties. I have to keep stating that, because I really feel that's the grain of truth here that I'm holding on to: that eventually the opposition parties are going to realize that, yes, given a global pandemic, given a government that's been as responsive as possible, there was a need to re-evaluate and reset the agenda. That's exactly what happened.
I've argued this point over and over again, and I'm not going to go through all the data and the evidence I've provided for how the throne speech reflects all the consultation work and the incredible data-gathering that happened during prorogation. I already got that. The opposition parties, as far as I can tell, don't care about that argument. They're not listening to that reasonable explanation, which is, to me, a rational explanation that makes perfect sense, given the context of a global pandemic.
I also want to speak to the fact that, from my perspective, we are now debating a motion on WE Charity. Look at Mrs. Vecchio's motion. It has in it the Kielburgers, the Honourable Bill Morneau, Katie Telford, the Perelmuters and the speakers bureau. It has massive, huge requests for documents that would have to be produced and translated. WE Charity is mentioned multiple times. Sections (f) and (g) of her original motion specifically reference WE Charity. There's absolutely no doubt.... Well, there can be no doubt out there, for anybody watching or anybody on this committee, that the motion is to try to connect WE Charity to prorogation as some ulterior motive, which I think the opposition parties have been trying to prove.
We heard from witnesses. Some of them speculated. Most of them said that there has always been a potential political motive for prorogation throughout history, and that there are always multiple narratives on why prorogation happened, but most of them also claimed that, given a global pandemic and the context, it was actually a pretty good reason to prorogue.
What I find strange, though, is that we're still stuck on this motion after the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner's report has come out. I took a little time over the week that we were in the constituency, when I had a little time in the mornings in between meetings, and I read a good portion. I don't think I pored through every single page, but I read a lot of it, and I found it really interesting to see the analysis that was done by the Ethics Commissioner, Mario Dion.
What shocks me and surprises me.... The Prime Minister has been completely exonerated by that report of all counts that the opposition parties have been claiming over and over again, taking up committee business in other committees. Fine, I got it. They wanted to “hold the government accountable”, which is what opposition parties are supposed to do, so I got that. But, at this point, at this juncture, at this moment in time we're still in a global pandemic, and opposition parties are voting against the government, in many cases coming dangerously close to triggering an election, and yet they don't seem to be willing to move on to study Bill C-19, which would ensure that Canadians can vote safely, that their health and safety would be protected and their democratic right would be protected if an election were triggered.
I'm still feeling like, can we just face reality here? The reality is that the WE Charity supposed scandal is not a live topic anymore. It's a closed book. The Ethics Commissioner reviewed all the evidence and data. They reviewed it. I'm going to read you the conclusions here, just in case people haven't taken the time to read that document.
There are three major sections of the ethics code, or the Conflict of Interest Act, that were said to be the sections that were pertinent to the study that was done, or the report that was written. Section 7 is one that “prohibits public office holders from giving preferential treatment to a person or organization”. Now the Ethics Commissioner.... This is in the executive summary, so I'll just read the quick conclusion. I could go into more detail if people want, but I don't think that will be necessary per se. This is on page 2.
The evidence also shows that Mr. Trudeau had no involvement in ESDC’s recommendation that WE administer the CSSG. I am satisfied that Mr. Trudeau did not give preferential treatment to WE.
That's one conclusion. Now the other section, subsection 6(1) of the act, “prohibits public office holders from making or participating in the making of a decision that would place them in a conflict of interest.” On this one as well, the Ethics Commissioner concludes, “I am satisfied that there was no opportunity to further Mr. Trudeau’s own interests or those of his relatives from WE’s role as administrator of the CSSG or from its Social Entrepreneurship proposal.”
That's one conclusion. There's another related to this:
WE’s private interests would have to have been furthered improperly. In my view, there is no evidence of impropriety in relation to Mr. Trudeau’s decision making in relation to WE’s Social Entrepreneurship proposal or WE’s administration of the CSSG.
Those are two quotes that demonstrate that there are clear conclusions that the evidence has been reviewed. This is the Ethics Commissioner we're talking about, who has done the due diligence and found and ruled that the opposition parties.... I know this is disappointing to the opposition parties, because they wanted a scandal out of this, but there is none. The Ethics Commissioner's report is very clear.
The other section I would just quote quickly is section 21, which requires recusal “only in instances where the public office holder would be in a potential conflict of interest.” In this one as well, the Ethics Commissioner says, “I therefore found that Mr. Trudeau did not contravene subsection 6(1), section 7 or section 21 of the Act.”
Just take a step back for a second, please, committee members. I'm appealing to your better interests here. Take a step back.
For months and months, opposition parties have been trying to claim that prorogation was tied to WE Charity. We now have conclusive evidence, and all the due diligence has been done, that says there was no conflict of interest. The conclusions are clear, based on a really in-depth assessment of all the evidence and facts.
How, then, can we possibly continue to debate a WE Charity motion at this committee, when we have business that this committee needs to attend to, to protect the health and safety of Canadians? Members of this committee, tell me, do you feel that's responsible for us to do?
All of us are responsible for this work to continue forward. We have a government bill that has been referred to our committee, Bill C-19. We need to get on with studying this bill. That's my plea to you. I don't know how we can not face reality and debate this whole WE Charity and prorogation link, because it's non-existent. If there was no conflict of interest, does it even make sense for opposition parties to try to tie the two together? It doesn't even make sense anymore. Give it up, and let's move on to Bill C-19, please.
I move that the committee proceed to study Bill C-19.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ruby Sahota
Thank you, Mr. Turnbull.
Mr. Clerk, can you help us with a vote on that, please?
The Clerk
The question is on Mr. Turnbull's motion to proceed to another order of the day, which would be Bill C-19.
(Motion negatived: nays 6; yeas 5)
Conservative
Karen Vecchio Conservative Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON
Madam Chair, excuse me. Before we get started—I'm sorry, Daniel—I am beginning to have a technical challenge, because I can't get my video on. I want to let you know that I'll mess around with it. I don't know if you can see anything in the room.
Conservative
Karen Vecchio Conservative Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON
I'll continue to play with that, just as an FYI.
Liberal
The Clerk
Mrs. Vecchio, we'll have an IT ambassador reach out to you to assist with the problem.
NDP
Daniel Blaikie NDP Elmwood—Transcona, MB
Thank you very much.
I wish Mrs. Vecchio the best of luck in correcting technical difficulties. I had one of my own this morning. That certainly has been a frustrating feature of virtual Parliament. I hope she's able to get that sorted out.
I thought I might begin by addressing some of the comments that have been made already this morning. I will start with Mrs. Shanahan in terms of responsible government.
I took the gist of the argument that Mrs. Shanahan was making to essentially mean that if opposition parties don't vote to have an election in the face of things they don't like about the government, it means there's nothing to criticize or that the government can do whatever it wants. It effectively has carte blanche until opposition parties decide to trigger an election.
I want to propose to Mrs. Shanahan that I think this is an important misunderstanding of the principle of responsible government. We have question period. We have committee work. We call ministers to committee. We have all sorts of tools to interrogate the government about its course of action. We do that because there is more than one way to hold the government to account.
In fact, sometimes an election is exactly the wrong way to hold the government to account, particularly if you're trying to focus in on specific decisions of the government. As we all know at this table, elections are very general affairs. There are a lot of issues that come up in an election. There are many kinds of issues that rightly preoccupy the attention of voters during an election. While voters may be very dissatisfied with the government in respect of some of its decisions, that may not ultimately be the vote-determining issue.
Just because a particular instance of government wrongdoing isn't the ballot question at the ballot box, that doesn't mean the government's behaviour is justified. It doesn't mean there isn't still a need to hold government to account. In fact, that is the function of Parliament.
The function of Parliament isn't to cause elections. The function of Parliament is to hold the government to account between elections. A number of mechanisms have been developed to do that, including calling ministers to testify before committee about decisions they have made.
What's been tying us up hasn't been the fact that the opposition refuses to call an election. Even in ordinary times, it's not clear to me that that would be the right solution for this particular scandal. What's been tying us up is that government members haven't been allowing a committee to proceed in using some of the normal tools of accountability in order to hold decision-makers to account for something they have done.
In this case, the thing they did—that the Prime Minister did—was prorogue Parliament in the wrong way for the wrong period of time. That is not to say that it was wrong to prorogue at all, but we have heard that there are different ways to do a prorogation and there are different periods of time. We have heard very clearly in a number of ways that this was ultimately the Prime Minister's decision.
We have heard, as Mr. Turnbull indicated earlier, that it's a decision that is often political all the way down. I think that means that it stands to reason that members of Parliament would care to interrogate the only decision-maker about his political reasons for prorogation.
What's at issue is whether the predominant concerns had to do with the pandemic or whether they had to do with getting out of the political heat on the WE Charity scandal. The only person who can answer those questions is the Prime Minister.
Nothing untoward has been going on here at committee with opposition members supporting a motion to get the Prime Minister and a number of other players who were involved in what is also quite plausibly a major reason, not just for the prorogation itself. I agree there can be multiple reasons for prorogation. Often in government there's more than one thing going on in a decision. In fact, the art of government, arguably, is to balance competing demands and competing interests. Very often, when government makes a decision worth taking note of, it's because it is complicated because there are a number of things at play.
I do think it is quite reasonable that even if the WE Charity scandal wasn't the only reason for the prorogation, it affected the nature, duration and timing of that prorogation. That's fair game. The only person who can really settle that question for the committee is the Prime Minister. I submit to you that the government House leader did a bad job of that, and people are free to disagree with that. I'd love to hear from the person who made the decision, and I really don't think that is unreasonable. It's just not something I can accept, that, first of all, it's unreasonable to insist on hearing from the principal decision-maker with respect to a file.
The last time Mrs. Shanahan spoke about responsible government, prior to today, I tried to highlight for her some of the ways a decision about prorogation or dissolution is a special.... I mean, this is the language right out of the order in council; I'm not making up new terms. Since 1935, at least, decisions about prorogation and dissolution have been a special prerogative of the Prime Minister. That is something that, by order in council, that is, by a decision of the entire cabinet, has been set aside for the Prime Minister to make alone. That's in keeping with the Prime Minister's special role as an adviser to the Crown.
There are many people, I'm sure, who would have loved to be in the meeting in one controversial prorogation I can think of, where former prime minister Harper met at length, for hours, with the Governor General on the eve of a prorogation. There was some debate in the lead-up to that meeting, and in fact during the many hours of that meeting, live on radio and the 24-hour news cycle and all that good stuff that politicos watch with fascination at times like that.
There were lots of people who would have loved to be in the room. The government House leader wasn't in that room. Staff from the whips' offices weren't in that room. I'm not even sure the Prime Minister's chief of staff was in the room. That was a meeting between the Prime Minister and the Governor General. To me, that just highlights the nature of that special relationship and the nature of the special decision-making authority of the Prime Minister and the extent to which nobody can stand in for the Prime Minister when it comes to decisions having to do with either the prorogation or dissolution of Parliament.
I thought that was important to state, if I haven't been clear enough about that in the past. I don't think that's a viciously partisan interpretation of the facts. I think that's a pretty good exegesis of parliamentary process and a little bit of parliamentary history, for that matter.
The idea that, when the opposition is dissatisfied, responsible government calls for an election is a broken idea. It's broken at least because it would mean that we have no responsible government in majority parliaments. I think that's a pretty clear implication. If responsible government demands that the opposition trigger an election any time they think there's something seriously wrong with the way the government has behaved, and they don't have that power in a majority Parliament, then that means we have no responsible government in majority parliaments.
I'm sure that's not what Mrs. Shanahan intended to imply. That would certainly shed a different light on the last Parliament, I would think. Although I could appreciate it if some people wanted to maintain we didn't have a proper kind of responsible government in the last Parliament, I doubt it would be Mrs. Shanahan and her colleagues in the Liberal Party. I'm happy to be corrected on that point at any time if someone would like to claim otherwise.
Those are some things I think are important to say.
With respect to Mr. Turnbull's comments, I would say this. The timing and the nature of the prorogation are important to me for a couple of reasons, as I've said before. They're important because there was a pending deadline for CERB, and millions of Canadian households were depending on that program and didn't know what was coming down the pipe. The government made an announcement about what it intended to do at the end of CERB the day after prorogation. That is to say, they chose when to prorogue, and they chose when to announce that package. They chose to announce it at a time when there could be no meeting of Parliament for parliamentarians to ask questions in the House.
We had another scheduled summer session. In fact, it was going to be within seven or eight days of the Prime Minister's announcing that prorogation. I can't for the life of me, in any of the testimony that we heard or any of Mr. Turnbull's best arguments, see why that prorogation couldn't have at least waited until the day after the last scheduled sitting of Parliament in the summer.
Those four sittings of Parliament were negotiated among the parties, recognizing that there was a pandemic, recognizing that there was an important role for Parliament, not just the government but for Parliament during the pandemic. The Prime Minister unilaterally decided to break that all-party consensus to have Parliament play that role and cancelled the last scheduled sitting of Parliament in the summer. I think that was a serious mistake. I think he did something wrong when he did that.
I am not satisfied by the answers of the government House leader as to why. It's not an on/off switch, prorogation or no prorogation. The Prime Minister also made decisions about when to prorogue. I want to ask him about those decisions, and I do believe that the WE Charity scandal, and trying to protect himself and his government from that fallout, played a role in the timing of the prorogation. I'd like an opportunity to press him on those issues, because I think they matter.
I think it matters that an all-party consensus to have Parliament meet biweekly during the summer was unilaterally quashed by the Prime Minister. There would still have been weeks for the government to consult, when Parliament wasn't scheduled to sit. Why was that last summer sitting cancelled, after the work of getting all the parties of the House on board? That was something that was done, if I recall correctly, by unanimous consent. Not only were the recognized parties on board, but that meant that the independent members and members of the Green Party also supported that consensus.
I don't think it was appropriate for the Prime Minister to act against Parliament in that way, and that's the way I see it. Frankly, that's not something that's really been addressed in the hours of debate that we've heard from Liberal members. Nobody has spoken directly to the issue of why the prorogation had to occur on the day it did. That's fine. I don't really care to hear Liberal members opine about that, because I know who made that decision. The Prime Minister made that decision, so I'd love to hear the Prime Minister opine on that.
I'd love to hear him give his reasons, not for prorogation in general but for prorogation on that day and why he saw fit to upend a unanimous decision of the House of Commons to meet twice in August—four times overall over the course of the summer—and why he would choose to cut that sitting off to announce the package for the replacement of CERB, which was likely to be controversial, in the non-pejorative sense of that term. That is to say, it was very reasonable to expect that there would be different opinions about what that would look like from the various political parties and that there would be some discussion required in order to get to something looking like a consensus.
Why take away the opportunity for parties to question the government about what that consensus might look like, with enough time for that to actually be hammered out, not at the eleventh hour when households are wondering what the heck they're going to do next month if they can't make rent? It could have been done progressively over the course of four or five weeks, or at least there could have been an initial conversation on the record that allowed the parties to stake out their preliminary positions and thoughts on the government's proposal.
To me, that's a matter of significance. It cuts to the question of how the Prime Minister handles the prerogatives of his office—dissolution and prorogation—and it's quite topical. I know the Liberals want to say that everybody has moved on. There are still people, incidentally, who are upset about the WE Charity scandal. If the Liberals don't hear much about them, then I think they should at least do a little more listening in western Canada, where I'm from, because I certainly hear about it, and I know it's a common criticism of the Liberal Party that they don't listen enough in western Canada. Maybe it's just a regional thing and you guys aren't hearing it, but if it's the case that Ontario has moved on—and I doubt that too—it's certainly not the case that people west of Ontario, I can tell you, have moved on from concerns about the WE Charity scandal.
It's topical even if people have moved on from the WE Charity scandal—which, as I said, I don't think they have. What they haven't moved on from is wondering whether we have a Prime Minister who's going to act unilaterally to call an election at a time when Canadians really don't think we should.
I've been part of efforts to demand an answer from the Prime Minister on this. The NDP asks very openly in the House whether the Prime Minister will commit to not calling an election unless he actually loses a vote of confidence. I've seen him sidestep that issue repeatedly.
If Canadians don't have confidence in the Prime Minister's ability to use that prerogative well, then I think having him at the committee is an opportunity for him to better explain how he used the prerogative of prorogation. That might give Canadians some insight into how he intends to use the prerogative of dissolution. It's very much a topical conversation, because those two powers are intimately connected. They're both mentioned in the order in council from 1935 that I made reference to earlier today and in my remarks on the last day of the committee meeting.
We are very much in a time when Canadians have every right to wonder at the way in which the Prime Minister uses those special prerogatives of his office. I think examining his decision on prorogation is an important part of examining his use of those special prerogatives overall.
Again, I don't think this is a viciously partisan argument. I think it's actually pretty straightforward. I think it makes a lot of sense, if the committee is able to put the focus squarely on the Prime Minister, instead of this becoming about WE Charity writ large, in the kind of investigation that Mr. Turnbull has rightly mentioned has been pursued at other committees—in fact, with more success than we've seen here. A number of the requests that are in this motion have already been made successfully at other committees. The sky didn't fall and the world didn't end. Frankly, with the benefit of hindsight, although I have supported the motion all along, I think we could say that if we had just passed the motion and heard from those witnesses who were willing to appear, we'd be a lot further along by now than we are.
Putting the focus on the Prime Minister means making it about prorogation. It's not about an on/off switch—prorogue or not prorogue—but about why he chose the timing that he did. Why did it follow immediately upon the resignation of the finance minister? Why didn't he give it several extra days to ensure that Parliament could get the additional sitting that was agreed to unanimously by all members of the House? Those are good questions.
Mr. Turnbull has suggested that we don't need to explore any of those questions because the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner has ruled that there was no conflict of interest for the Prime Minister. I wish he had also read the conclusions of the second report that the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner filed at the same time. I'm sure members of the committee know that report has to do with the role of Bill Morneau, who, at that time—and through the entirety of the last Parliament, I think it's fair to say—was the Prime Minister's right-hand man. I think there's clearly an affinity between them in terms of how they think about issues. Bill Morneau was trusted to lead many aspects of government. We know the importance of finances. We know the importance of money. We know that the person who's put in charge of that for the government is somebody who has the total trust of the Prime Minister.
I can also tell you that many times during the pandemic when there were negotiations between New Democrats and the Liberals, it was very clear that many things were going back to the finance minister. In fact, the finance minister was often cited above the Prime Minister in terms of whose sign-off was really needed. I think there were some good things that didn't happen, as a matter of fact, as a result of that particular finance minister's involvement.
One of the things that didn't happen was getting students on CERB at a rate of $2,000 a month. One of the reasons was that there was going to be this great new jobs program that was going to help top up the lower CERB rate under the CESB that students received. That was a great idea that came out of the Department of Finance and former minister Morneau, among others.
Those extra jobs and that extra funding never came to pass, because a scandal developed. How did the scandal develop? Well, it had a lot to do with the involvement of the finance minister, who, incidentally, as was omitted in Mr. Turnbull's earlier intervention, was found to have breached the Conflict of Interest Act on three separate counts.
The idea that somehow the Prime Minister isn't politically responsible for that kind of mismanagement by his own government is wrong. I accept the finding that there was no personal conflict of interest in the case of the Prime Minister, but that doesn't mean there's no political accountability.
I think this ties back to what I would say is a mistaken concept of responsible government on the part of Mrs. Shanahan. Political accountability is not the same as a narrowly defined legal sense of accountability. That's why we have a Parliament. That's why we don't just leave it to the courts. If the only way people could fail in political leadership was according to the law, then we would hardly need a Parliament for the accountability function. We might still have a Parliament to supplement the legislative intentions of a government and challenge some of the legislative initiatives that it intended to move forward with, but in terms of accountability, we would just leave that to the courts. I think that would be a deficient system, because it would fail to capture a lot of really important things.
This is something we've seen develop over many decades. It used to be the case that, if you had a serious case of mismanagement under a file, you would see ministers take individual responsibility for that. Individual responsibility for that, most often, would look like a resignation. That would happen when things went really wrong. When or if a government took a position that somebody seriously disagreed with, it used to be that you would more frequently see the resignation of individual ministers. You don't really see that anymore. Instead, there's more of an emphasis on collective responsibility, but somehow the guy at the top doesn't bear responsibility. It becomes quite unclear who is responsible for the bad decisions of government.
When Bill Morneau left—although I truly believe that he left not to pursue a new executive position with an international organization, but because of the way he had mishandled the WE Charity file—he didn't take responsibility for it, though. You saw that again, the failure of a minister to accept individual responsibility beyond the collective responsibility.
As it is, by the Liberals' own telling, nobody has accepted responsibility for the WE Charity scandal. There's been no minister who's left government as a result of that scandal. That's what I hear from Liberal colleagues, anyway. If that's not true, I'd love to hear it. I'd love to hear that Bill Morneau left because he had mismanaged the WE Charity scandal. They recognized there was a problem, and he accepted responsibility for that, and that's the reason his political career ended, but I haven't heard that. I heard he was off chasing a job with OECD, which he quietly announced a little while later, to no one's surprise except maybe some Liberal Party faithful. He was abandoning that pursuit.
We are in this awkward situation where there was a major mismanagement of a big file that had serious material consequences for thousands and thousands of Canadians who were registered as students, who really ought to have seen themselves rolled into the CERB program, but instead were offered a discounted program on the promise of jobs that never came, because the finance minister, who did breach three sections of the Conflict of Interest Act in terms of his own conduct on this file, mucked it up. He made a political mess of what should have been straightforward aid to students, particularly in light of the fact that the government already runs the Canada summer jobs program, which is a perfectly acceptable way to provide employment to students. It was never clear why a third party organization was required, when the infrastructure for administering Canada summer jobs was already there and could have been supplemented instead.
Excuse me if I think it's too much to call coincidence the fact that the finance minister appeared at committee and wrote a $40,000 cheque to WE the night before, because he suddenly remembered that he owed $40,000 to an organization, which is not the experience of most people. Most people I know who have a $40,000 debt are very aware of it and they don't have the ability to write it off in an evening as an afterthought off the side of their desk. I think that showed to a lot of Canadians just how out of touch one of the principal decision-makers in Justin Trudeau's government really was. I think that was unbearable and he had to go. That just happened to coincide with prorogation.
Yes, a pandemic can be a reason to prorogue Parliament, but the timing? Mr. Turnbull acts as if this is some kind of terrible surprise. I've said this before. In fact, he's repeatedly misquoted my attempt to say that before and he likes to bring it up, where I've tried to indicate that there can be more than one reason, that the pandemic may have been important in the decision to prorogue, but there are many of us who feel that the timing and the nature of that prorogation, which unilaterally busted up a consensus in Parliament to meet four times over the summer, had everything to do with the WE Charity scandal and getting out of political accountability for the WE Charity scandal.
Political accountability and legal accountability are not the same thing. If there was an opportunity to see some political accountability over the WE Charity scandal, it would have come if Bill Morneau had fessed up in terms of his real reasons for leaving government. He didn't do that, so we're still in this place where there hasn't been any political accountability for a major mess-up by the government that had real material consequences for a lot of students from coast to coast to coast.
So yes, I've been happy to support Mrs. Vecchio's motion. I continue to be happy to support Mrs. Vecchio's motion, but I also recognize that there's an imperative to get on with studying Bill C-19.
Why is it important to study Bill C-19? It's important to study Bill C-19 so that, hopefully, we can make some changes to the way elections unfold before the summer, because it's very likely that the Prime Minister, just as he used his special prerogative for prorogation last summer in order, I think, to further his political interests, which incidentally aren't covered by the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner's report, because they're out of scope by law, as they should be..... That's fine. We're not asking the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner to weigh in on questions of political accountability. That's what Parliament is for.
Last summer, the Prime Minister used his special prerogatives to prorogue Parliament at a time that was in his political interest. We're now coming up against a summer where there's some real suspicion he is going to use a similar special prerogative to call an election because it furthers his personal political interests and the political interests of his party, even though Canadians don't want an election. All we would like the Prime Minister to say is that if we get to the end of June without his government losing a confidence vote, he's not going to call an election in the summer. He won't say that.
The question is, how can Parliament not be working in the summer, when it's not meeting? It seems to me that a Prime Minister who was really interested in listening to Canadians, who overwhelmingly are not interested in having an election right now, would be willing to say that if the opposition gets us to the end of the session in June without triggering an election themselves, he'd be happy to do his part and not trigger an election until Parliament resumes and we see how it goes after the summer.