Evidence of meeting #34 for Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities in the 45th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was documents.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Bobby Morrissey
Please make your comments to the amendment, without referencing committee members.
Liberal
Natilien Joseph Liberal Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
We're aware that millions of documents aren't going to be read right away. I say it again, with all due respect to my colleagues, especially since here, on the topic currently under discussion, the Bloc Québécois asks questions every day in the House, and our government gives an answer every time. To bridge the gap effectively or for the people at home who are following our work, I'll note that there's ample evidence: It still concerns the motion.
In my riding, I ran into a 76‑year‑old woman who told me that she watches me every day, that she sees what I do in committee, that she listens to the Bloc Québécois, the Conservatives and the Liberals, and that she thinks she's going to become a Liberal. That's a small detail.
To bridge the gap effectively, or for the people at home who are following our work, I'd like to come back to the context that has led us to debate Mrs. Falk's amendment and, at the same time, Ms. Larouche's motion today. I'm going to read the latter so that the people who follow our work can hear the content and judge whether it's important.
That the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities request that the Department of Employment and Social Development, the Department of Public Works and Government Services, the Privy Council Office, as well as the Prime Minister’s Office, provide to the clerk of the committee, within 30 days of the adoption of this motion, all reports, correspondence, emails and documents related to the management of the benefits delivery modernization since January 1, 2017, and that the departments and offices responsible for producing the documents apply redactions in accordance with the legal obligations set out in the Privacy Act and the Access to Information Act.
You know, what matters to the people who are currently waiting for their old age security payments is paying their rent and stocking up the fridge. It isn't diverting public servants from their work to provide thousands of pages to the opposition parties. I'll say it, even if they don't like it, but they might not read those pages. Anyway, that's okay.
Do you know how many Canadians have talked to me about what we're discussing right now? There has been only one lady in my riding. I don't know if my colleagues have people in their ridings who are dealing with this situation, but I have always witnessed that when opposition members raise the issue to our government, in the House, the minister or her lieutenant always asks whether there are people in ridings in this situation and, if so, to bring the files to them. To date, no files have been submitted. I don't know if they're meeting anyone in this situation, but no files have been submitted.
It's really unfortunate to see that the Bloc Québécois, aided by the Conservatives, is slowing down Parliament's work by proposing motions that are unrelated to the subjects being studied.
When Ms. Larouche proposed her motion, there were witnesses from Quebec, experts who talked to us about student housing and homelessness. Ms. Larouche proposed her motion, which silenced the witnesses, which annoyed me because, personally, under no circumstances will I accept disrespect for someone who has come from Quebec to Ottawa to speak to the government. That's something I have never condoned.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Bobby Morrissey
That's not relevant. Monsieur Joseph, come back to the amendment. We're not on housing at the moment.
Liberal
Natilien Joseph Liberal Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC
Okay. I'll come back to it, Mr. Chair.
I would also say that I'm even more dismayed by the voices joining forces to slow down such an important bill. We can't discuss housing, so I'll move on, but bills are very important.
Minister Hadju, who is the Minister of Jobs and Families and Minister responsible for the Federal Economic Development Agency for Northern Ontario and member for Thunder Bay-Superior North, in Ontario, regularly says this during question period. While the Bloc Québécois systematically asks questions on the matter every day, the government invites opposition members to send it the files of Canadians affected by the situation. We have the resources and means to move the files forward, but, to date, there are zero files.
Once again, I want to take the opportunity given to me by the opposition parties to reiterate what the minister is hammering home: It's possible for my colleagues opposite to send us the files that are waiting to be processed.
Based on the Bloc Québécois's voting record, it would be nice if the party walked the walk. From what I understand, the Bloc Québécois has thrown its slogan in the garbage. For the sake of the discussion, I'd like to remind the party what it said: If it's good for Quebec, we vote for it.
Clearly, the frustration is continuing to spread among Conservatives as it no longer seems to be unique to the Leader of the Opposition. I would like to point out that the Leader of the Opposition was caught changing his tune recently—not to say that he was caught lying—given that he said he wanted to fire the Governor of the Bank of Canada during his party's leadership race, but he's now telling a journalist that that's false. I would invite those following our proceedings at home to go and see the social media posts of our chief government whip, the Honourable Mark Gerretsen, who clearly demonstrates those votes.
As I mentioned, and I'll take this opportunity to say it again, I held my first citizen forum on Sunday. Despite this great success, I have to admit that a conversation with a former Bloc supporter left an impression on me. This person admitted to me that she had voted for the Bloc Québécois her entire life, except in the last election, when she placed her trust in the Prime Minister and the Liberal Party of Canada. Do you know what that person said to me? She told me that the Bloc Québécois is now made up of watered-down Conservatives.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Bobby Morrissey
Mr. Joseph, please come back to the amendment before us, or I will have to move on. Referencing the last election is not relevant.
Liberal
Liberal
Natilien Joseph Liberal Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC
I was talking to the seniors in my riding. It's only right to listen to them. I'm the voice of seniors in my riding, Mr. Chair.
Liberal
Liberal
Natilien Joseph Liberal Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC
Okay, Mr. Chair, I'll do that, no problem.
It's clear that this is an amendment that will delay resources and divert the work of public servants. I'm putting myself in the shoes of a retiree who is waiting for their old age security, waiting for the opposition parties, the Bloc or the Conservatives, who are delaying the work of public servants with an amendment that will prevent public servants from working on old age security for seniors.
We're raising the issue in the House, but we're prevented from dealing with the issue in committee. We're being asked for documents that are going to cost millions of dollars. Those millions of dollars will come out of the pockets of Canadians and Quebeckers. I'm putting myself in the shoes of every Quebecker who is following our work today. That isn't the way to use the money here in Ottawa. I wouldn't want to see our money used that way in Ottawa.
In this committee, we deal with very important issues, including people living with disabilities, people living in vulnerable situations and people experiencing homelessness. We want to use this committee's resources for important purposes.
Opposition members have the right to move motions in committee at some point, but we're talking about worthwhile motions, motions that put Canadians and Quebeckers at the centre of the discussion. At some point, I ask the opposition parties to put their egos aside. Genuinely think about Quebeckers and Canadians. That isn't what politics is about. Politics is sometimes about putting ourselves aside to think about our constituents, our voters, the people who sent us here.
I'll leave it there. Maybe there are other people who want to speak. I'm very nice; I won't speak anymore.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Liberal
Bloc
Andréanne Larouche Bloc Shefford, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'll try to be brief.
I'd like to point out that what we truly would have liked was simply for us to agree to obtain documents, for us to be able to settle the matter and move on to reports and the study.
We could have continued our study today. There was a report on the agenda. We had a report here on youth employment. We wanted to talk about Bill C‑20. The Bloc announced that we wanted to work with the government.
I'll try not to needlessly lengthen the debate, as our Liberal colleagues are already doing, instead of simply responding to requests.
I'm also not going to get into personal attacks, as Mr. Joseph did, even though I have business people and people in his riding who come to me and say they deeply miss the former MP and are disappointed in the current MP. These are—
Bloc
Andréanne Larouche Bloc Shefford, QC
—people who aren't even Liberal supporters, but I won't go there.
Bloc
Andréanne Larouche Bloc Shefford, QC
I won't go there. I'll stop now, because I don't want to make personal attacks. I'll stop right there, Mr. Chair.
Liberal
Bloc
Andréanne Larouche Bloc Shefford, QC
As I said, Mr. Chair, in the end, I should have spoken up sooner. I was respectful, I let people have their say, I listened to them. I even put up with personal attacks. I should have spoken up, but I didn't feel like going there today.
Let's get back to the motion. If we are asking for figures and explanations, it is because this software is not just government computer code. It also serves people and has a tangible impact on their lives.
We are no strangers to IT scandals at the federal level. I'd like to remind you of a case I mentioned in a speech in the House and which made a deep impression on me. In 2019, when I'd just been elected, one of the first people to knock on my office door was a mother accompanied by her baby. I agreed to meet this woman in my office, and she started crying. It deeply troubled me. She was a mother who worked for the federal government and hadn't received her benefits because of Phoenix. She now had a baby and, instead of enjoying her maternity leave, she had to fight because the money wasn't coming in. So, software has real-world consequences for people. I realized this very early on.
There are people who, until very recently, were still having problems with Phoenix. During the pandemic, there was ArriveCAN, which went over budget and failed to serve people properly. It had an impact on people's mental health, and even on their physical health. So, these are examples of federal computer programs that have had an impact on the lives of Quebeckers.
I could also give you the history of the Cúram project. It is a very long story. Of course, the system for paying benefits to seniors needed to be modernized. However, there were orange and red flags a long time ago.
It was the Auditor General who first sounded the alarm two or three years ago, saying that there would be significant cost overruns with the Cúram project. It was my colleague Nathalie Sinclair‑Desgagné, then a member of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, who first alerted me, telling me that there would be problems for seniors because of Cúram, that the Auditor General had said so, but that no one was listening to her and no one seemed to care. We had discussions on this subject during the prorogation of Parliament in February 2025, but we were unable to bring it up in the House because Parliament had been prorogued prior to the election. This is extremely unfortunate, as we did not have the opportunity to highlight the Cúram issue earlier.
Last June, a public service union highlighted not only the cost overruns highlighted by the Auditor General, but also the fact that the program was not working and that there were problems with benefit payments. My Liberal colleagues opposite are trying to defend public servants by insisting that what we are asking of them makes no sense. Yet those very same public servants believe that what makes no sense is Cúram. In fact, they have given the project a score of one out of ten in the media. When you give a piece of software a score of one out of ten, you can't say it's a great success.
So, following all that, we were contacted. We tried at the end of last year to see what was happening with Cúram, but the government did not budge. It wasn't until the media began covering the Cúram issue in early 2026 that anything happened. So, years after the system was first rolled out, years after the Auditor General sounded the alarm, and months after public servants warned it wouldn't work and that there would be problems with benefit payments, it took the media—particularly in Quebec—to take an interest in this issue and highlight specific cases.
Of course, the Bloc Québécois has been at the forefront of this issue because it has listened to public servants, the Auditor General and the elderly people who were experiencing problems. However, we were not the only ones. It is said that the Conservatives are following this issue without understanding why. I think Mr. Lefebvre has once again shown that there were also cases in his constituency of senior citizens who had to wait for their benefits because of Cúram.
We questioned the minister in the House at the end of January, when we returned. Initially, the minister's response was that there were only a few cases. We continued to ask her questions. Her response shifted from a few cases to less than one per cent of cases. Once again, as for the clear answers from the minister that my colleagues are talking about, we'll have to wait and see.
We had to press the issue, because we hadn't received all the answers to our questions in the House. When the minister came to the committee—not even to discuss Cúram, but to discuss another bill—it took a question from a colleague on the other side for the minister to reply that there were 85,000 cases. So the cat was out of the bag. Although we had questioned the minister during several sittings in the House, it took a question from one of her own Liberal colleagues in committee for her to reply that there had been 85,000 cases.
We therefore asked questions regarding this figure. However, in the House, we were repeatedly told that 85,000 cases were no big deal. My Liberal colleagues told me that these people simply had to call them. Did they really want those 85,000 people to call them one by one, instead of trying to find a more comprehensive and effective solution? These 85,000 cases are not just a few cases that can be resolved by calling the department. It is more significant.
We would rather have sensed in the minister's responses a genuine willingness to devise an action plan, to seek answers to these questions and to find solutions. We would have liked to know what the game plan was, what the contingency plan was, and what we were going to do now that we had that figure.
Of course, the figure went down when we asked questions. Strangely, the following month, we went from 85,000 cases to, I think, 67,000 cases. However, even then, more effort was put into trying to sweep things under the carpet than into actually trying to shed light on what was happening with Cúram.
We also managed to get a motion passed here in the committee, because it hadn't worked at the time, I think. In the committee, we wanted the ministers to come. We proposed a motion for them to come for two hours each. That is the motion that was passed. However, instead of two hours for each minister, we were given one hour for both ministers. That is not respecting a motion voted on by this committee. In one hour, what questions can one really ask?
That is why I was forced to request documents and why I had to be very quick during my speaking slots. I had to table a motion to obtain additional documents.
If you do the math, you'll see that the ministers appeared for four times less time than they should have. It was supposed to be two hours per minister. In the end, it wasn't even an hour per minister. It was one hour for both ministers.
I want to say this because, despite the committee's willingness, it was extremely frustrating not to have received the information we wanted. That is why we tabled a motion at that meeting to obtain additional documents and further information.
I would also like to point out that in the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, a motion was proposed by the Bloc Québécois and adopted unanimously—even the Liberals supported it—to shed light on the matter and depoliticize it.
Now, the opposition is trying to accuse us of playing politics, whereas an independent public inquiry such as the one requested is exactly what the Bloc wants. We wanted to get out of this. We wanted people to be able to shed light on the situation as objectively as possible. We wanted to move away from the partisanship we are seeing.
There have been many attempts by the Liberals, both in the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills Development, Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities and in the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, to try to block information, to withhold details and to water things down. The proof is that, despite the fact that the Liberals voted in favour of a motion in the Standing Committee on Public Accounts calling for a public and independent inquiry, there was a debate in the House and, when it came to the vote, all the Liberals, including those who had supported the motion in the parliamentary committee, voted against the motion in the House.
So, when people talk to me about democracy, I find it extremely worrying. Where are their convictions? When, in committee, MPs vote in favour of a motion, but then, in the House, they vote against the very same motion they supported in committee, I find that an affront to democracy. My colleague Sébastien Lemire, MP for Abitibi—Témiscamingue, had done an extraordinary job to ensure this motion was adopted unanimously in his committee. He was very proud that the debate was moving to the House.
During this debate in the House, concerns were raised regarding the welfare of the elderly. Despite everything that was said, and despite the concerns expressed, it was ultimately the Speaker of the House who made the decision. Naturally, as the Speaker is a Liberal, he voted against the motion to establish an independent public inquiry. There was therefore no public inquiry, despite the unanimous adoption of a motion to that effect by the Standing Committee on Public Accounts.
That is where we stand today. Following this democratic affront by the Liberals, who voted against the motion in the House, even though they had voted in favour of it in committee, my colleague tried to table the same motion in the Standing Committee on Public Accounts that I had intended to table here, in order to obtain additional documents. There was then systematic obstruction in that committee. I found this out that very evening.
The next morning, there was a meeting of our committee. I had to request the necessary information to try again myself, because it hadn't worked in the Standing Committee on Public Accounts.
We were therefore forced to request the additional documents once more, this time from our committee, which was not the plan. If the Liberals had co-operated in the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, if they had answered the questions, if they had adopted my colleague's motion, we would not be in this situation.
Essentially, the motion calls for what a public inquiry might have done: obtaining documents, examining all the information. As this could not be done in the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, we were forced to table the motion here. Since then, there has been systematic obstruction. Yet this has real repercussions for older people.
It so happens that I currently also sit on the Standing Committee on the Status of Women, which is conducting a study on the situation of older women. I hear it said that no older people are concerned about this, that it is a waste of public money to take an interest in older people who are not receiving their benefits. Yet the implementation of a software system resulted in cost overruns of 277%, or $5 billion.
I have often been told that this is a waste of time. Other Liberal colleagues have also accused me of wanting to squander taxpayers' money. Yet taxpayers' money has already been lost in this $5 billion cost overrun, in this 277% cost overrun. Taxpayers' money has already been lost because senior citizens struggled for nine months to receive their pensions. This is a proven case. Of course, there is always a delay in the payment of the first benefit. Of course, when there are more complex cases, it always takes longer. Except that in this instance, nine months is starting to be a delay that goes beyond the norm.
We know that many older people live solely on their benefits, namely the guaranteed income supplement and the old age security pension. They have no other source of income. Moreover, these are fixed incomes that are already insufficient given the current inflation.
This is what is currently being discussed at the Standing Committee on the Status of Women, as part of the study on older women. Moreover, the former president of FADOQ, who is now the president of the National Association of Federal Retirees, appeared before the committee last week to say that delays in benefit payments were having major consequences. She said that older people were living on fixed incomes and that, for months, they were relying solely on that to pay, not for a holiday down south, but for their housing, their medicines and their groceries. She said it herself: This has major and significant consequences. She even said that, in some cases, it could be dramatic. We were discussing the situation of senior citizens and we returned to the Cúram software.
It was not pensioners, it was not a Bloc Québécois MP, it was not a Conservative MP who came to say this in committee; it was someone who represents senior citizens.
For all these reasons, this has consequences for senior citizens.
The Bloc Québécois has tabled our bill because the financial situation of senior citizens is already precarious. It is unacceptable that senior citizens aged 65 to 74 still do not have their income. Furthermore, these people are waiting for their old age security pension due to problems with the Cúram system. They are facing dire circumstances.
At food banks and in homeless shelters, I have heard that there is an increase in the number of seniors applying for food aid and ending up on the streets as homeless people.
Furthermore, the news over the weekend was not very good. Indeed, we are also seeing that older people are worried and are finding it increasingly difficult to make ends meet on their fixed income, and this puts them in extremely precarious financial situations. Imagine that, on top of not being able to make ends meet, these people do not receive benefits for months on end.
This is not a waste of time; what we are asking for is a search for information. I will stop there for now.
As I said, we are not the ones engaging in systematic obstruction at the moment. We in the Bloc Québécois would have liked to find a solution. If you want us to talk about democracy again, I will come back to that later.
I want to be clear: All we were asking for was information, which is simply legitimate in a democracy. What is not legitimate are all the Liberal moves at the moment, which are anti-democratic.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Liberal
Liberal
Conservative
Garnett Genuis Conservative Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB
Excuse me. I have on a point of order.
I hope this is not controversial. I'm looking at the time, and it seems as though maybe we need to have some off-line conversations. I wonder if there would be a willingness of the committee to suspend at this point.
Liberal
Conservative
