Industry Committee on July 31st, 2024

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

No. Very simply, we could have been meeting next week if the Conservatives' motion had passed. We could have been meeting the following week—

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

On a point of order, I just want to make sure.... He's just agreed with the motion again. Maybe we can get clarification. He insisted that it was two weeks, when it's not two weeks, but four weeks. I hope the member can at least—

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

It's “within four weeks”, not in four weeks.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Yes. It's “within four weeks”, so it could happen at the end of the four weeks. We're not talking about two weeks.

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

It could happen tomorrow.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Yes, but it won't. If you put it ending in four weeks, it means you're actually willing to do it within four weeks.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Thank you, MP Masse.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

It's not tomorrow, because you want to go back to your event.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

The reality is that “within four weeks” allows the chair and the clerk to invite witnesses. The chances of it happening tomorrow are very slim.

Mr. Cooper, the floor is yours.

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

We wanted it to be within two week”. That's what we initially wanted. We were prepared to provide for within four weeks, but it certainly means that the committee could be at work. This notion that it's nine days is nonsense.

What is sad and irresponsible is that the NDP take their marching orders from Justin Trudeau. Here you have $400 million that improperly went out the door, including $330 million to companies in which Liberal insiders padded their pockets. What are the NDP doing? They're doing the bidding of the Liberals. They're doing the bidding of Justin Trudeau to delay hearings and to delay the ability of this committee to do its work—to hold a lawbreaker, Ms. Verschuren, accountable; to get answers about the 20 additional conflicts that the Auditor General identified and that perhaps the Ethics Commissioner ought to start looking into; and to see that taxpayers get a refund, that taxpayers get their money back.

The current Minister of Industry, who professes to be so concerned about this scandal, did nothing. He did absolutely nothing as his assistant deputy minister sat in on each and every meeting, in which there were 186 conflicts, until it hit the media. Then he said, oh, well, I'm now concerned. Then, in the face of the Auditor General's report, what does he do? He starts releasing funds back to the very same corrupt Liberal insiders. It's a total and complete racket.

It's disappointing that Mr. Masse is going along with the Liberals to delay the work of this committee, which could be meeting as early as next week to, as a starting point, hear from the Auditor General.

Mr. Chair, it's very disappointing.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Thank you, MP Cooper.

I have Brian Masse, René Villemure and MP Brock.

Mr. Masse.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I just want to reconfirm what we are actually doing here. It's the “within four weeks” and the difference between then and when we could go. I would be interested to know the procedural tactics that would be employed to actually get the Ethics Commissioner or somebody else here tomorrow, with less than a few hours' notice. It's almost sad to hear as an argument, because I think the member is better than that, suggesting that we can somehow have the power to do that, especially given the fact that we had to actually assign this as a special meeting. I don't know how we would subpoena somebody within a matter of hours or days for that. Why we would do that to a commissioner of the Crown who reports to all of Parliament and who has been co-operative in doing their job related to this seems rather abusive, that's for sure.

If we want to talk about scandals, if the Conservatives want to do that, I have a whole list here. We have the Nadon issue. We have the illegal transfer of funds. We have the Phoenix pay system. I could go on for hours and hours and hours, because I lived those Harper scandals. We have Dean Del Mastro. We have others of electoral fraud from the east coast in particular. We have a whole series of different things.

Again, this is something that we want to get to, and I think we're being responsible in doing so. To then be attacked for it is unfortunate, because I think it just cheapens the entire issue. I'm rather stunned in some respects that there wasn't an interest to actually co-operate to get what they could have achieved. I guess maybe they're having a tantrum right now, because they came into the meeting with probably a stronger position. What they're getting now is because they played their hand so poorly. That's the end result, at the end of the day.

There were actually two meetings with two hours. That was agreeable. I spoke to it at the beginning of my intervention, suggesting that I wouldn't reduce the time for the other request. Then we went to another attempt to have a sincere approach to getting this committee moving and getting things done, which was offered by the Bloc. That's where we landed and where hopefully we'll land here today and move on. If not, if we don't get this done in the next few minutes with regard to this, then I guess we have to call another meeting—or do we extend? I'm not sure of the procedure for that, but that's where we could end up, if that's where the members want to go, and continue the process.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Thank you, Mr. Masse. We still have resources, I believe, until 6:40, more or less.

Just as a reminder, colleagues, we're still on the amendment. I thought we were about to get this meeting over with, but we're still on the amendment by Mr. Villemure, as subamended by MP Damoff.

Mr. Villemure, you have the floor.

[René Villemure, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to try to calm things down so that we can turn bad faith into good faith.

We all agree that something has to be done and that it's important. What we don't agree on is when to act. My friends in the official opposition can block any proposal, but I urge them not to filibuster.

No one is saying we shouldn't hold these meetings, or that they're not important. We're simply suggesting that they be held when our constituents will be more attuned to them. This is no time to create sound bites by trying to make them look like the bad guys. This is too important, and we all agree that something needs to be done.

So I urge all my colleagues to take a deep breath, show some wisdom and accept the proposed amendment.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Thank you for that comment, Mr. Villemure.

Mr. Brock, you have the floor.

[Larry Brock, Conservative, Brantford—Brant, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

To address Mr. Villemure's latest comments about the utility of a meeting when Parliament resumes, because presumably people are paying more attention, they really belittle the issue that's before this committee right now.

We have an explosive scandal that is some seven times the size of the ArriveCAN scandal, which I still get commentary on and Canadians are still talking about. The government is doing nothing to try to recoup the lost tens of millions of dollars.

Now we have a scandal that is, according to the deputy minister for industry, akin to the sponsorship scandal at close to half a billion dollars. If that doesn't cry out for some degree of urgency, I don't know what does. In my view, it certainly attracts the attention of Canadians. Yes, most Canadians are on holiday right now, but Canadians could be on holiday throughout the entire year.

This scandal strikes at the core of good governance. What we have right now is a failed Liberal government that simply disregards the interests of the taxpayer time after time after time. I've lost track of how many active RCMP investigations are currently under way with respect to the actions of this government, so I find it appalling, quite frankly, when my NDP colleague Mr. Masse displays his anger and disgust at our wanting to insist on an earlier meeting.

The wording of our motion was abundantly clear. It wasn't “after four weeks”. It was “within four weeks”. We are here in Ottawa today. We are here to press upon our colleagues and press upon the chair that this matter is of some urgency and it needs to be addressed.

Yes, I, too, would like to be back in my community. I've missed two very important events in my community. I'm missing events with my family right now.

The nice thing about our roles as politicians is that we are politicians for the entire year. Our work doesn't end in the middle of June and resume again in September. We can walk and chew gum at the same time. We can fulfill our obligations on this committee to ensure that taxpayers are receiving good value for their money, hold the government to account and be there for our communities as well.

Therefore, I take offence to some of the comments made by Mr. Masse. We are not playing games here. We all want to get to the heart of the matter. We want to shed true light on this scandal to find out what exactly has transpired over the last three years with SDTC, and how taxpayers can expect to receive some portion of that money back.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Thank you.

Mr. Masse, you have the floor.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'll respond when my name is brought up.

I'm sorry that Mr. Brock finds it offensive, but Mr. Brock wasn't here when his colleagues filibustered this committee for hours and days and prevented us from getting to this issue and other things that were on the table. That's on the public record, and it was done within the House of Commons' time.

Yes, what we're discussing here is within the four weeks, which is what the request was. After that, if it is at the end of those four weeks, there will be only a few business days left before starting. This will be the first time, I believe, in my 18 years here at this committee that we will have business on the first day. In my 23 years in Parliament, this will be the first time we will deploy this committee to have meetings of substance immediately. That has never happened before. It might be the first time in the history of this committee.

I'm sorry that Mr. Brock is disappointed by that, but at the same time, when you're looking at trying to get public servants to come forward to do this properly and continue the studies that we have, why would we then try to force something to happen in the short term and re-employ everything right now versus in the few days that will be left over, when we could have this, we could start again and we could do it properly? We'll also have access to all of the features of the House of Commons to deal with it, which is going to be important because we're going to have an officer of Parliament here who's responsible to all of Parliament, not just this committee. We're also going to be able to provide enough time and a place to get a response from Ms. Verschuren. I can't remember if it was her or someone else we were close to having to subpoena to get them to this committee.

Given that we have those obstacles practically in front of us, that is one of the reasons I still believe it was reasonable to come here today to lay out our meeting. If we don't get this done today, then we will have to have another meeting or plan for that first meeting when we come back if we don't pass this.

I thought that was a decent compromise for everybody. It was a guarantee that this was going to happen. The full thing that we could have done today—and we still can—was to guarantee that when we resumed this House we would have gotten to an issue where there had been all-party support in many respects. There would have been different shades of it, but it would have still been there, and we could have made it happen right away and we could have had the full resources of the House.

I'll keep responding if we want to and if people are disappointed in me, because I'm not going to let it stand that we didn't come here and that we haven't been responsible. In fact, we've been consistently calling for further supports for this, including for the whistle-blowers. What I'll be looking for when we return is how we're actually going to make improvements for them.

I've had motions in the past that dealt with their situations, and I'll raise those on a continuing basis and try to employ opportunities for them to be heard as well.

This was a start, and I didn't even raise that component to add it here because I wanted to make sure we were going to get those meetings done right away. We're going to be able to hear from them in the meantime. They're going to hear this. Whether they're going to be interested in participating.... I have been in touch with a couple of them to hear what they're thinking. They're seeing what's going on here today. I'm going to be focusing on that and letting them get prepared to see what's going to happen. Those are the families of the people who, at the end of the day, we need to protect. Those are the people I'm most interested in, as well, because they've been left out there. They will get an opportunity now to see what has happened today, to see what's on the public record, to prepare themselves and to see what we're going to do as a committee. If they want to come forward at some point in time, I'll be proposing an opportunity to do so, but I want to make sure they are protected and they have the opportunity to do that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Thank you, Mr. Masse.

Mr. Perkins, you have the floor.

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

Thanks.

MP Masse is not the only one who's been in contact with whistle-blowers. I've had a lot of conversations with them since this became an issue and they went public on it after their unsatisfactory response from the government. In fact, we've had them in. On the subpoena you referred to, I don't know if it was in this committee or another committee that we were doing that.

Just to be clear, I will reiterate that we've had great conversations to try to get to today. As some of the members know, or at least the opposition members, our original proposal was for two weeks. In the spirit of compromise, we said, well, let's give the clerk and the committee a little more time, but be somewhere in there. It could happen next week. It could happen two weeks from now. It would provide a little more flexibility, also given the schedule of some members, to allow that to happen. Through that process, we've now gotten to a position where two meetings for four hours have been put down to one meeting and been pushed off.

I think there was a lot of compromise going on before we got to this meeting to try to accommodate everyone, so for anyone to suggest that I or anyone else played political games.... I think the political games have gone on here. Amendments that were proposed were contrary to the conversations we had before that with the parties in the opposition about what would happen. All of a sudden, on both sides of the opposition table in terms of the other parties, contradictions have happened here in the committee.

I'm just pointing out that I'm more than willing to prepare and do all those compromises and work on that stuff together beforehand in the meetings as we do, but only if people live by those things when they come to this meeting. They don't seem to do that. It happened here through supporting amendments to my motion that are contrary to the compromise motion we agreed to.

If you want to air dirty laundry in public, we can air dirty laundry in public. I don't want to do that.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

You've got a text right here saying the Bloc supports your motion.

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

Well, I'm just going by what you're telling me. If you want to get the floor, you can get the floor. I know you'll put your hand up, MP Masse. If you want to start doing that stuff in public, we can, but you're the one who raised it in public and said that those...and flipped on some of the things we talked about. I don't appreciate that you are denying the conversations we had.

Anyway, at the end of the day, this isn't about you and it isn't about me. It's about the corruption that's gone on here and trying to get to the bottom of this in a timely manner. That was the simple request. It was to get to this in a timely manner. The timely manner is not two months from now when we have it before us now. The extra time was just to allow a little more flexibility than my original two weeks.

Some of the government members, but not all, have recognized that there is a problem here. Some members have said even today that there's a problem and they're willing to do it. Others have made different comments.

At the end of the day, our first business back, as I understand it, was not a steering committee or business meeting. It was the continuation of clause-by-clause on Bill C-27, the privacy bill. That's already on the schedule. I'm not sure what filibusters were referred to, because we had 21 hearings on Bill C-27, followed by 10 meetings so far on clause-by-clause on Bill C-27, which was where we were at the end of the day, and a bit of time on the NDP leader's private member's bill that had to be dealt with by this committee.

With that list since last fall, I haven't seen filibustering in this committee, except for the last five meetings on clause-by-clause, where the Liberals basically continued to talk about one amendment through five meetings. Maybe it's the Liberals you're referring to about the filibustering that was going on in committee, but it wasn't us over those 21 meetings, plus the six meetings for MP Singh's bill.

I'll leave it there.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Thank you, Mr. Perkins.

Seeing no further debate, we will proceed to a vote on Mr. Villemure's amendment, as amended by Ms. Damoff's subamendment.

(Amendment agreed to: yeas 7; nays 4)

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

We will now go to the vote on the motion as amended.

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

Can you read the motion again?