Industry Committee on May 27th, 2024

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

I call this meeting to order.

Happy Monday morning, everyone.

Welcome to meeting number 125 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Industry and Technology.

Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the Standing Orders.

Pursuant to the order of reference of Monday, April 24, 2023, the committee is resuming consideration of Bill C-27, Digital Charter Implementation Act, 2022, and we are continuing clause by clause consideration of the bill.

Before we begin, I would like to remind all members and other meeting participants in the room of the following important preventative measures.

To prevent disruptive—and potentially harmful—audio feedback incidents that can cause injuries, all in‑person participants are reminded to keep their earpieces away from microphones at all times. As indicated in the communiqué from the Speaker to all members on Monday, April 29, the following measures have been taken.

All earpieces have been replaced. By default, all earpieces will be unplugged at the start of the meeting. When you are not using your earpiece, please place it face down on the middle of the sticker for this purpose that you will find on the table, as indicated. Please consult the cards on the table before you.

These measures are in place so that we can conduct our business without interruption and to protect the health and safety of all participants, including the interpreters. I would like to take this opportunity to thank them for their work.

Thank you for your co‑operation, colleagues.

On this Monday morning, we have with us three representatives from the strategy and innovation policy sector of the Department of Industry: Mark Schaan, senior assistant deputy minister; Samir Chhabra, director general; and Runa Angus, senior director. I'd like to welcome you back to the committee.

(On clause 2)

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

As you know, we were at amendment CPC‑9.

Mr. Perkins, you had the floor on debate.

I yield the floor to you.

Members, I don't have whoever was left on the list to talk about CPC-9, so please indicate if you're interested in speaking on the amendment.

Mr. Perkins, the floor is yours.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, everyone, and welcome back.

I know this is going to shock MP Turnbull, but I'd like to begin by moving the motion I put on notice with regard to SDTC. Hopefully we can dispose of this quickly.

As members will recall, as part of our work plan we had scheduled one more meeting on SDTC with four witnesses, which we had passed through a motion here. They were Veena Bhullar, the former liaison between SDTC and ISED; ADM Andrew Noseworthy; Navdeep Bains, minister at the time of the change of the chair; and Gianluca Cairo, the former chief of staff.

We asked for those witnesses to appear after the former CEO Leah Lawrence's testimony. She spoke quite a bit to the interaction she had with those individuals about the conflicts that the chair had and the objections and concerns that the management was expressing relative to the proposed appointment.

In fact, some of these departmental officials came back and said, well, that's okay, they'll manage through the conflict. Others of these officials were actually part of that process, according to the former president, in doing this. As well, ADM Noseworthy sat in on all the board meetings, and there has been, I think, a bit of contradiction between what he said versus some of the other testimony.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

For that, we said we would like to have these witnesses back for a meeting in May, and the clerk duly invited them. All of them declined to appear before the committee. When I tabled the motion to summons them and put them on notice, miraculously Mr. Noseworthy said, “Okay, I guess I will come. As an official, I won't get summonsed.” I think that's a dark comment on parliamentary respect, that these former ministers and chiefs of staff declined to appear.

I will read the motion that I have on notice:

That the committee summon the following witnesses to speak on matters related to allegations of conflicts of interest at Sustainable Development and Technology Canada:

(a) Veena Bhullar, former liaison between ISED and SDTC,

(b) Andrew Noseworthy, assistant deputy minister on clean technologies,

(c) Navdeep Bains, former Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, and

(d) Gianluca Cairo, former chief of staff to the Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry;

and that the witnesses be asked to appear at a time determined by the chair but no later than June 7, 2024.

The reason is that we gave them more than a month to appear. Mr. Noseworthy has agreed to appear, so we don't need to summons him, but we do need to summons the others who are refusing to appear.

I would hope that the committee will deal with this expeditiously and agree with me that it is a slap in the face to the parliamentary process that the other three, (a), (c) and (d), on that motion are refusing to appear and must be summonsed to appear on this important matter.

This does not add any meetings to our schedule. It was already scheduled as part of our approved steering committee report, which was approved by this committee.

Mr. Chair, I will leave it there, and there might be a few questions or comments, but hopefully we can move on. It would be (a), (c) and (d) who would be summonsed, not Mr. Noseworthy.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Thank you, Mr. Perkins.

I will yield the floor to Mr. Turnbull, but just before, as a small clarification, it's not clear that all the witnesses listed have refused to appear. Some have not yet replied, so I just wanted to clarify that. It's true that it has been quite the process trying to get this meeting on SDTC organized. We have been trying with the clerk for some time now.

Go ahead, Mr. Turnbull.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

That's what I was going to ask, Chair. I'd like clarification on what invitations have been sent out and when they were sent out, and a bit of information to provide context to Mr. Perkins' motion.

I think it matters, because I don't think that we should use summons lightly. I think it's a step to be taken only when the committee really feels that it's the only option left at its disposal. Often, in some committees, we have had multiple invitations before we summons individuals.

Thanks.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

I might yield the floor to the clerk, and correct me if I'm wrong, Madam Clerk.

We're still waiting for a response from Veena Bhullar. Andrew Noseworthy has agreed to appear on June 5. Mr. Bains is not available on June 5 due to a prior commitment, but that's for that specific date. In the case of Gianluca Cairo, we're still waiting for a response for June 5, but he has been invited. He was not available in May. We're still waiting for a response for June 5. That's where we stand.

I have to say that the witnesses were invited for different dates in May as well. We pushed it back to June 5 to try to accommodate them. So far, only one witness is confirmed. In the case, for instance, of Veena Bhullar, there's no indication that she has refused. We are just waiting for an answer. We haven't received anything.

Go ahead, Mr. Gaheer.

[Iqwinder Gaheer, Liberal, Mississauga—Malton, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

I guess I have a question regarding whether this is even the proper committee to be hearing this assessment. We have the AG's report that's going to come out on this issue. It's going to go to public accounts. I think that would be the proper committee for this to be discussed at. We have an important bill in front of us, important legislation, and this is just delaying our discussions on that topic.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Just before we get into a debate, we voted unanimously on a steering committee report that calls for one more meeting on SDTC with the witnesses listed. It's an agreement to have this meeting before the end of the session that this committee agreed to. Ideally, it was supposed to be in May. Now we're in June. To me, this meeting is locked in. We have agreed to it.

Mr. Garon, the floor is yours.

[Jean-Denis Garon, Bloc, Mirabel, QC]

I have one question. If I remember correctly, we agreed to hold two additional meetings, one on Rio Tinto and one on SDTC, and to hold them outside the committee's normal hours, which requires additional resources. Is that correct? That way, we would be completely on track with the agenda we had planned, without in any way impeding the progress of the study of Bill C‑27, as promised by everyone. Did I understand correctly? At the end of the day, the essence of the debate is whether we should call these people or wait.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Exactly.

As chair, I would like to make a humble suggestion. Now that this motion has been debated by the committee today, the message has been sent. We could wait until Wednesday's meeting to see if Mr. Perkins wants to move his motion again at that time. That would give the witnesses two days to come forward.

Mr. Perkins, you have the floor.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Look, we moved this motion. This is the second time under this study that we've asked former minister Bains to come. The first time he refused. Now he's been ragging the puck.

This is five weeks since we passed this motion. They were given all of May. The motion that this committee approved said to appear in May. I think we've been more than generous to these witnesses to try to accommodate them without further delaying. We do have another piece of legislation, MP Singh's bill. That is most of our hearings in June. We had an agreed schedule, agreed to in the steering committee, unanimously, including by the Liberals, that included this meeting before the end of May.

In order to accommodate, as the chair has said and as MP Turnbull and MP Gaheer have said, we've given them all this time. The first invitations went out at the beginning of May, when we passed the motion. It was public. They have been saying that they can't do this date, they can't do that date, they can't do this date. It's clear that they are refusing to appear through delay tactics, hoping that the summer comes and everybody will forget about this.

This has nothing to do, MP Gaheer will recall, with whatever it is the Auditor General is doing. We have our own inquiry, which we've done on this and which we still cannot do a report on until we've had these witnesses. That's part of the process that we all agreed to. It's amazing to me that the Liberals would want to go back on what they had agreed to in the steering committee before, that they would want to go back and not have the meeting that we agreed to when we passed this motion almost five weeks ago.

A summons is strong, but five weeks of trying to get these witnesses to appear has been more than accommodating. It's time to use that hammer. That hammer is the only thing that got ADM Noseworthy to agree to come.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Mr. Turnbull.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Mr. Perkins, I agree with you on one thing, which is that we agreed to have a meeting on SDTC. We didn't necessarily agree to these particular witnesses.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

They were in the motion that we passed.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

We said we'd invite them. We didn't agree to summons them. We all know that the Auditor General's report is coming out relatively soon and that this issue of SDTC and the discussion of what to do is not just going to evaporate into thin air. It's going to be a conversation that we need to continue to have.

Why do we need to summons these witnesses now, when one of them hasn't even gotten back on the June 5 date?

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

They refused to get back.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Well, it seems a bit heavy-handed, to me. I believe it is. I mean, I recognize that your desire here is to have those witnesses, but when I spoke to other committee members, they expressed that they weren't all that interested in studying SDTC until the Auditor General's report came out.

In fact, I think it's a bit heavy-handed to go with a summons at this point—

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

You're breaking the deal we had on the subcommittee agenda.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

I'm not breaking any deal. The deal we had was to have a meeting on SDTC and to invite—

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Before the end of May. That was the schedule. What's the date today? Oh, look; it's May 27.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Yes, okay, but the chair didn't end up being able to schedule the meeting until June 5. Is that my fault? That's not my fault.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

No. That's not the first—

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Colleagues, this is not how the committee works. If you want the floor, you'll have to—

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Mr. Perkins is suggesting that somehow this is as a result of my breaking some deal, which is not the case. That is absolutely not the case.