Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on Nov. 28th, 2022

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

Thank you, Ms. Idlout.

That concludes our opportunity to speak with you, Auditor General Hogan. Thank you for coming for almost a full two hours today, and thank you to Mr. Wheeler and Ms. Deveen as well for answering our questions and telling us about your report. It falls very well, because we're looking at emergency preparedness in committee at this time.

We're very grateful that you gave us this time today.

Thank you.

[Karen Hogan]

We thank the committee members for their interest. We appreciated being here.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

With that, committee, we have about three or four minutes. Does anybody have anything they want to...?

Ah. I see. Who is first?

Go ahead, Mr. Zimmer.

[Bob Zimmer, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River—Northern Rockies, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to put forward a motion. It's already been brought to the clerk for translation and distributed.

The motion reads as follows:

That, pursuant to Standing Order 81(5), the committee invite the Minister of Northern Affairs, the Minister of Indigenous Services, and the Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations to appear as soon as possible for two hours in consideration of supplementary estimates (B), 2022-23.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

Thank you.

That has passed the 48-hour test.

Does anybody have any comment to make with respect to Mr. Zimmer's motion?

Not seeing any comments, do we have unanimous consent to do this?

(Motion agreed to)

[Bob Zimmer, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River—Northern Rockies, BC]

Thank you, Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

I see that Ms. Atwin's hand is up....

No. I'm sorry. Mr. Vidal is next.

[Gary Vidal, Conservative, Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I have a motion to propose as well, but it just got circulated a few minutes ago. I don't know if you need to ask for unanimous consent or if I can read it first.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

You can read it, but adoption would require unanimous consent.

[Gary Vidal, Conservative, Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK]

All right. Thank you.

My motion is simply in response to today's meeting, that the evidence received by the public accounts committee on “Report 8: Emergency Management in First Nations Communities” of the 2022 reports of the Auditor General of Canada, on Friday Nov 25, 2022, be taken into consideration by the committee in its study of Arctic sovereignty, security and the emergency preparedness of indigenous peoples.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

Fellow members, this would require unanimous consent to adopt. Having heard this motion, does it have unanimous consent?

I see that Mr. Weiler's hand is up.

[Patrick Weiler, Liberal, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I have concerns about this. We weren't able to actually hear the evidence ourselves and have the opportunity to ask questions of the witnesses. Not having had the ability to do that, I have concerns about that being taken into account as evidence for the report that we are working on in this committee.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

I would have perhaps a couple of extra comments on what you've just said, Mr. Weiler. Do you still hold that position, considering that the actual report is public and that it is a fairly common process to do what Mr. Vidal is suggesting today, to incorporate the record from another committee into this one? Would that—

[Patrick Weiler, Liberal, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

Those are the concerns I have about it. We're tasked with the issues that we're dealing with on this particular study. I can't speak for what would or would not have been asked at that point.

I'm concerned that they wouldn't have had the expertise that we have on this committee to ask the proper questions to elicit the right evidence that we would want to have incorporated into this study.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

Who was first? It's Mr. Schmale.

[Jamie Schmale, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

I agree. It is fairly routine, what we're doing here. I don't think it's out of the ordinary. It is a public document. I am very concerned about why the government would not want to include this.

Having said that, if we need to, let's put this to a vote.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

It requires unanimous consent, so we could put it to a vote.

Does anybody else have anything else they want to...?

Go ahead, Mr. Badawey.

[Vance Badawey, Liberal, Niagara Centre, ON]

It's a question for Mr. Vidal, who's putting the motion forward.

Is the intent here to include this information from another committee into our final report?

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

Go ahead, Mr. Vidal.

[Gary Vidal, Conservative, Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK]

Yes. The intent was to do two short meetings. There's a whole bunch of evidence, as you heard in my testimony today. I referred to that evidence probably 10 times, saying let's gather as much info as we can to create as fulsome a report as possible, considering we're having only two meetings on this part of this study.

I think it gives us that much more testimony. It was a very similar conversation at the public accounts committee to what we had today. There was testimony there that wasn't here, and I couldn't ask all the same questions and get all that same stuff on the record here without seemingly wasting time.

[Vance Badawey, Liberal, Niagara Centre, ON]

I agree. We can bring that in as information—

[Gary Vidal, Conservative, Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK]

That's all it is.

[Vance Badawey, Liberal, Niagara Centre, ON]

—but not as testimony. The reason I say that, and I agree with Mr. Weiler, is that I find it not proper, with the committee not having these folks in front of us to ask them questions, to have that testimony brought into this committee as testimony.

As information, I have no problem with that. We can use that information through the process of providing our drafting instructions to the committee. I have no problem with that.

However, what I have a problem with is that this would be injected as testimony into the committee's process. Therefore, the analysts would use that as part of the testimony we've received, when we, in fact, did not receive it; another committee did.

That's my concern.

[Gary Vidal, Conservative, Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK]

My question to the clerk was simply whether we can have that testimony included, so that when we are doing the drafting instructions on the report, we have that considered as evidence. That way, it can't be excluded just because it wasn't heard at this committee. The advice was that this is a very common practice, and this was how to word it.

All I'm asking for is to consider the evidence—if you like that word better—to ensure that it can be included in our report when we are done drafting the final instructions on it, so we have that much more evidence to consider.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

Thank you very much.

If there's no other comment, we're going to put this to a vote. It requires unanimous consent.