Thank you, Chair.
It's my understanding, upon conferring with you and the clerk, that in order to make this very important motion fly, for it to be technically correct, there needs to be a small amendment, which I will move.
I move to amend the motion to delete the entirety of the motion read after the word “and” in section (b)(viii). That would strike the following words from the motion:
That the committee report the foregoing to the House forthwith with a recommendation that it concur in and adopt the same, provided that
(c) references to “clerk of the committee” be read as “Speaker of the House”; and
d) references to “circulated to the members of the committee” be read as “laid upon the Table of the House and stand referred to the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration”.
It's my understanding that this amendment is necessary, but I will continue to speak to the main amendment. What the amendment functionally does is ensure that the production of these documents is made to this committee. I would like to talk to my colleagues about why it's so important for these documents to be produced to this committee. My colleague, I believe, is going to speak to this as well.
These documents came to light and these contracts came to light due to something called an Order Paper question that another one of my colleagues put forward, where it came to light that there were close to $30 million of contracts put in place with this consulting company—which is not an insignificant amount; it's a very large amount for a consulting company to get—specifically around the issue of service transformation strategy.
Now, this committee has spent a long time, Chair, reviewing the very large backlog in Canada's immigration processing system. We've heard from witnesses, experts, over the last session, really hearing about the impact of the backlog on the Canadian economy and on our social and cultural fabric. For me, when we see the amount of money that was spent to bring in an external consultant to transform service delivery, and then we see service delivery get functionally worse, part of our jobs as members of Parliament is our fiduciary responsibility to the taxpayer. We are the board of directors for the taxpayer, and to me it seems that service delivery got worse in spite of the government's paying tens of millions of dollars to a consulting company specifically for consulting that would ostensibly have made the backlog in the processing system better.
Something went wrong here. To me, on the surface there is a very big value for money issue that goes beyond just the taxpayer issue and actually affects lives. These are people who are languishing overseas; these are people who are unable to reunite with family members; these are businesses that can't get workers. The reason it's so important that this committee look at these documents is that we must be able to ascertain whether or not there was value for money that was spent, and whether or not the recommendations in this report or whatever deliverable this company purported to achieve actually would have made a material impact on the service delivery of immigration. I would argue at this point no, but I'm happy to be proven otherwise by this document. Also, if there were recommendations put forward by this company, where did they go? What happened to them?
This is a lot of money; this is an issue that is integral to the functioning.... For everybody in this room who does not have a government appointment, our number one job regardless of political stripe is to hold the government to account on issues like this so it doesn't happen again. We have the responsibility and the authority to produce documents as, in fact, that's one of the most important functions of parliamentary committees. We need to be looking at these contracts, we really do. The correspondence that my colleague has outlined in this motion is also integral to understanding how and why these contracts came about.
I'll close with this.
I would hope that everybody in this room understands that this company had to pay a lot of money in settlements due to its role in the opioid crisis in the United States of America. That is unconscionable. We also should be questioning whether or not it is right and just for our government to be giving taxpayer dollars to a company that has had a hand in activities like promoting the opioid crisis.
I understand that this company has also had other scandals abroad. I believe there are some issues around election interference allegations.
If we as parliamentarians do not request documents like this and do not undertake to correct situations like this, nobody will. The check and balance for public service officials who are involved in procurement is us. It's the people in this room. They have to know that they can't just rubber-stamp things and let tens of millions of dollars of contracts go through to a company with questionable ethics and then not have a deliverable and let service delivery get worse.
We are the check and balance. The public service is not managing to profit and loss in this situation, but it is managing to our diligence. That's why this is so important.
The amendment I am making here allows the committee to get these documents and this correspondence, to undertake this diligence and hopefully to provide some recommendations to the government to ensure better business practices, better value for money—for tax dollars—and some accountability for ensuring that service gets better and not worse in some of the most critical components of our government.
Thank you, Chair.