Procedure and House Affairs Committee on May 28th, 2024

[Eric Janse]

Certainly not for the Standing Orders and the like. I don't know if we do in terms of some of the policies that are developed.

[Carolyne Evangelidis]

No, we don't. There is a best practice, of course, from a policy perspective. Usually it's to review things within three to five years, I would say.

That is something you might want to consider as you move forward. The current code was reviewed in 2018, and has not yet—

[Lindsay Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Mr. Speaker, you're responsible for all of the workers who serve this institution. Have they voiced any concerns to you about the impact of what we are seeing in the chamber and in committee in terms of the violence and the harassment, etc., against the workers who serve this institution with such incredible pride? Is there a mechanism to deal with that?

[Greg Fergus, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

I've been very fortunate in the time I've been in the chair to be able to make an effort to meet all of our 2,600 employees, chat with them and take time to learn more about their jobs and how they think we can improve. We have regular processes, and I'm very pleased that the House has also set up formal processes for us to do that.

Mr. Chair, I hope I'm not going too much over the time, but I've heard that the employees here love to work here. They're proud to work here. I've heard concerns they've expressed about the nature of the debate. I don't know if they can define exactly what's going on, but I think everybody feels it might be going a bit too far sometimes.

[Lindsay Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Thank you very much.

That concludes our last panel for today.

Mr. Speaker, thank you very much for availing yourself to the committee today on this important study.

Again, thank you to the other witnesses who joined us.

Colleagues, we're going to suspend for one minute, and then we will go right into committee business to deal with a few other matters. We're going to try to get through that quickly so folks can prepare for question period.

We're suspended for about a minute.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Colleagues, we are back. Could I ask everyone to take their seats, please.

I see you, Mr. Cooper. Please give me one second.

Colleagues, I received a letter a few days ago, as did you, from more than four members of two parties requesting an emergency meeting, which means that the committee must, according to the Standing Orders, grant permission for that meeting.

My understanding is there have been productive negotiations between the parties with the intent of addressing the nature of that emergency meeting.

Our collective hope is that we will be able to work through the substance of why that meeting was called in the next few minutes. If we can't, colleagues, rest assured that Standing Order 106(4), which refers to an emergency meeting, will be honoured, and we will come back later this afternoon to continue should we not get there. However, the goal of this exercise right now is to try to save us all from having to come back later this afternoon while still satisfying the nature of the emergency meeting.

With that, Mr. Cooper, I recognize that you would like the floor, so I pass it to you.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I will move the motion that has been put on notice. I'm going to read it into the record, and then I will make some brief remarks. The motion is as follows:

That further to the Globe and Mail report of May 23, 2024, which revealed that the Liberal cabinet is withholding an undisclosed number of documents requested by the commissioner of the Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference in Federal Electoral Processes and Democratic Institutions, and that nearly 10% of documents provided to the commission by the cabinet contain redactions, and in relation to its study of foreign election interference, the committee:

(a) Pursuant to Standing Order 108(3)(c)(iv), report to the House that, in its opinion, the cabinet should provide to the commissioner of the Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference in Federal Electoral Processes and Democratic Institutions all documents requested by the commissioner, without redaction;

(b) invite the following witnesses to appear:

i. the Honourable Dominic LeBlanc, Minister of Public Safety, Democratic Institutions and Intergovernmental Affairs, for two hours;

ii. the appropriate representative(s) from the Privy Council Office, for one hour;

iii. the appropriate representative(s) from the Foreign Interference Commission, for one hour;

iv. Dan Stanton, former manager at the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service, for one hour; and,

(c) after considering this witness testimony, report its findings on this matter to the House.

That is the motion that has been put on the table.

Mr. Chair, the cover-up continues. After the Prime Minister got caught turning a blind eye to Beijing's interference in our elections for months, he fought tooth and nail against holding a public inquiry. He went so far as to appoint a long-standing family friend as a fake rapporteur, to produce a whitewash report to shield him from accountability for failing to act on multiple briefings from CSIS and the Communications Security Establishment about Beijing's interference, including in the 2019 and 2021 elections, because such interference benefited the Liberal Party, and the Prime Minister was prepared to turn a blind eye to it. He did turn a blind eye to it and covered it up until he got caught and then appointed Mr. Johnston.

When the findings of the Prime Minister's fake rapporteur did not hold up to scrutiny, the Prime Minister finally, after months of calls from Conservatives, succumbed and established a national inquiry, and Madam Justice Hogue was appointed as the commissioner of that inquiry. At the time of the appointment of Madam Justice Hogue, Minister LeBlanc reassured us that the government would co-operate with the inquiry. Minister LeBlanc was quoted as saying, “Justice Hogue will have full access to all relevant cabinet documents, as well as all other information she deems relevant for the purposes of her inquiry.”

Mr. Chair, that has turned out not to be true. Minister LeBlanc said that the government would fully co-operate and that they would turn over all relevant documents to Madam Justice Hogue, but we now find out that this hasn't happened. In a report on May 23, 2024 in the Globe and Mail with the headline, “Trudeau cabinet withholding documents on foreign interference from inquiry,” a spokesperson for the Prime Minister's department, PCO, acknowledges that 10% of cabinet documents turned over to the commissioner have been redacted and that there are a further undisclosed number of cabinet documents that have not been turned over at all.

It is evident these are documents that Madam Justice Hogue has requested. It's evident, based upon the footnote in her first report in which there is mention of ongoing discussions about documents which Madam Justice Hogue has requested that the Prime Minister's department has not turned them over.

Madam Justice Hogue is to fulfill her mandate. It is important that she receive all of the documents that she has requested. I will remind members of the committee through you, Mr. Chair, that part of the mandate of Madam Justice Hogue is to look at what the Prime Minister and the cabinet knew, when they learned of it and the action or inaction that they took respecting Beijing's interference in our democracy.

In order to scrutinize, evaluate and report on that, as is the mandate of Madam Justice Hogue, it is important for her to know what information the cabinet had, not parts of the information but all of the information, and what decisions stemmed from the information that was before the Prime Minister and the cabinet, information that is being withheld from Madam Justice Hogue.

In short, contrary to what has turned out to be the false reassurance of Minister LeBlanc that the government would co-operate with the commission, what we have is a continuation of the cover-up, of withholding documents to obstruct the work of Commissioner Hogue.

This is completely unacceptable, and it is why we have brought forward the 106(4) letter and have put forward this motion to get to the bottom of this obstruction. It is imperative that we hear from Minister LeBlanc, that we hear from the Prime Minister's department and that we hear from the representative from the inquiry itself, because it is important that the obstruction end and that all documents relevant that are requested by Madam Justice Hogue are, in fact, turned over to her.

I hope that this committee can reach agreement in moving forward so that we can commence such hearings.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Thanks very much, Mr. Cooper.

We will begin debate on the motion that you have moved, if there are speakers, and there are.

Go ahead, Ms. Romanado.

[Sherry Romanado, Liberal, Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I had a conversation with Mr. Cooper, and I thank him for bringing forward the motion.

We have an amendment. I will read it:

That the motion be amended by replacing all the words after the words "the committee" with the following:

(a) invite the following witnesses to appear:

i. the Honourable Dominic LeBlanc, Minister of Public Safety, Democratic Institutions and Intergovernmental Affairs with Nathalie Drouin Deputy Clerk of the Privy Council and National Security and Intelligence Advisor to the Prime Minister, for one hour;

ii. the appropriate representative(s) from the Privy Council Office, for one hour;

(b) after considering this witness testimony, report its findings on this matter to the House and pursuant to Standing Order 109, the Committee request a government response.

I will send that to the clerk right now so that he can forward it along to committee members.

The rationale behind that is obviously with respect to the appropriate representative from the Foreign Interference Commission. The commission is sitting right now and is ongoing, and I don't think it's appropriate for the person to come to testify.

Obviously, we would like to have the government's response to this, so that's why we're including that as well.

With respect to (a), obviously, I can't agree with that, but I'm amenable to some feedback from colleagues on that. You should be receiving that momentarily, and I hope that we can get somewhere so that we can settle this today and start that study.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Mr. Calkins, it's over to you, and then Ms. Mathyssen.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Red Deer—Lacombe, AB]

I'm not surprised, but I'm disappointed that a well-thought-out, well-articulated and well-crafted motion by my colleague Mr. Cooper could not simply be accepted by the committee, because on the face of it, it looks completely reasonable and the arguments made by Mr. Cooper, I think, are valid.

The notion was made by so many members around this committee that we couldn't trust the parliamentary law clerk to go through unredacted documents and make a determination as to what documents could be received by this committee when we were studying the foreign interference matter, both in the context of the privilege motion for Mr. Chong and, writ large, the foreign interference election study that was happening at that time.

Here we are again. The notion would have been and the argument was made that this committee and this place are too partisan, so we need a public inquiry, even though that public inquiry was initially rejected ad nauseam until it became so obvious, through whistle-blowers, that this needed to happen. The argument was made that we can't trust the parliamentary law clerk and this committee, that we can't trust anybody but a commissioner, in this case, Justice Hogue. She has, to my knowledge, every security clearance that she needs to see all of these documents, yet this government still doesn't trust the madam justice they have actually selected, which we agreed to, to lead this commission.

One can only be left with the inescapable conclusion that the government has something to hide. They don't trust the parliamentary law clerk, who has, in my opinion, far greater experience in dealing with what parliamentarians can or can't see or what the public should or shouldn't see. However, now this has been offshored to the commission, and the same blocking of this information is evident by the proposed amendment to my colleague's motion.

I don't know why my colleagues presume to know whether or not representatives from the Foreign Interference Commission shouldn't come here. We're not compelling them to come here; we're simply saying they should be invited. I imagine that somebody from the commission, Madam Hogue or her representative, would be mature enough to decide whether or not it's in the commission's interest to come to the committee on this particular issue, but we're not even going to grant Madam Hogue or her representative that opportunity, based on the amendment by the Liberals in this case. We believe that Mr. Stanton has valuable insights to provide to this committee about what information the commission needs in order to fulfill the second mandate of the terms of reference that Madam Hogue has, which is to issue a final report by the end of this year.

Time is of the essence on this particular issue because this House will be adjourning for summer in a matter of weeks. These are four witnesses. That's a couple of committee meetings at most, committee meetings that our chair has aptly shown us he's able to get extra time and resources for, with all of the other workload we have.

I think we should reject the amendment by Ms. Romanado and proceed with the motion in its original form put forward by Mr. Cooper. There is nothing unreasonable about that motion, and we now find ourselves in this debate again.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Colleagues, I'm seeing there are some discussions, which I'm led to believe are productive and may get us to our ultimate objective. I'm going to suspend very briefly so that these conversations can take place more seamlessly. I hope that when we come back, we'll at least have some direction as to whether we're going to vote on the matter or whether we're going to have to move into the afternoon.

We're suspended for a very brief moment.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Colleagues, here's where we are. The time has really run out for us to be able to negotiate the proposed amendment any further. We have not satisfied the spirit of the emergency meeting that has been called.

What I'm going to do is I'm going to adjourn.

[An hon. member]

Suspend, and then you don't have to put everything down on the table.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

I understood there was a different direction from the clerk. Give me one second.

Colleagues, just for clarity, there are some logistics on the back end of the committee that make it a little bit more complicated if we suspend.

I want to reassure committee members that if we adjourn, which we are going to do in a moment, we will still have the emergency meeting, the 106(4). We have the resources allocated for that meeting later this afternoon.

On that note, we are expecting a series of votes this afternoon. We do have assurances that we still have the resources, even if those votes run long, because the chances of us coming at 3:30 to meet to honour the 106(4) are very unlikely, given those votes. Once the votes are complete, whether that's at 5:30 or whether that's at four o'clock—maybe they'll be applied, who knows—at that point, we will return here, and we will pick up where we left off, and Ms. Mathyssen will be first on that speaking list. It would be for us to resume debate on the amendment that has been put forward to Mr. Cooper's motion by Ms. Romanado.

Are there questions, colleagues? I realize that was a lot. I want to make sure everyone is very confident in the fact that the emergency meeting is being honoured. The resources are there. In a worst-case scenario, should we not have the ability to deal with the 106(4) this afternoon, for whatever reason, I have also secured resources for tomorrow.

I know that's not what we want, Madam Gaudreau, but we do have to honour the standing order that it's a maximum of five days. All I'm saying is that, heaven forbid, if something happens, tomorrow is available for resources to honour our responsibility to hold the 106(4) meeting.

Colleagues, I'm going to adjourn, and we are going to meet at the earliest possibility after question period and after votes today.

The meeting is adjourned.