Industry Committee on Sept. 19th, 2024

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Thank you, Mr. Généreux.

There seems to be a bit of an issue.

I'm informed by the clerk that, technically, the one who gave notice of the motion should be moving the motion. However, I'm willing to just—

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

I'll move it, and...what he said.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Okay. It's been moved by Mr. Perkins and eloquently supported by Mr. Généreux.

I now give the floor to Mr. Garon.

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

Indeed, as my colleague Mr. Généreux said, I think the minister probably needs to recharge his batteries. I think an appearance before the committee might be a good opportunity for him to do so.

There are also a number of issues we want to discuss with him, such as Bill C‑27. In this regard, the minister has a parliamentary secretary who is doing an excellent job, but at this point, given the significant blockages we're experiencing, it might be appropriate to discuss this with the minister as well.

As a result, I'm going to vote in favour of this motion.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Thank you, Mr. Garon.

Mr. Turnbull, you have the floor.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

We're certainly more than willing to have the minister be invited to appear. My only issue is that he may not be able to appear within the 14 days specified in the motion.

We can amend. I would propose an amendment to this that removes “within 14 days following the adoption of this motion.” Then I think we would be able to get unanimous consent to support it, or full support.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Okay.

There is an amendment by Mr. Turnbull to remove “within 14 days”.

I have Mr. Perkins and then MP Rempel Garner.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Obviously, the concern is always that, if it's open-ended, it will be some time in the distant future. The minister travels a lot, I know, but I'm sure he can find it within his schedule to appear on his mandate within the next 14 days. I see him in the House. Given the state of Parliament and where we are with votes, I suspect he'll be a little closer to home for the next little while than he has been, perhaps, in the past. I think we should continue with the 14 days on the understanding that, if he needs 15 or 16 days, we're flexible on that. It gives a statement of intent about when we can do it. We're flexible if he requires another couple of days past that.

Therefore, I would oppose the amendment on the understanding that this committee has always been flexible in looking at these things when we put a deadline on things.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Thank you, MP Perkins.

I have MP Rempel Garner.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Just to try to pull these conversations together, Mr. Garon had talked about how there's probably time for the minister to come here to talk about the state of the bill. I think Mr. Masse had alluded to this in previous discussions as well. There are clearly flaws. There are clearly impasses. There are other issues to discuss.

I've had colleagues from the Liberals today say that we need to move forward with this bill. If we're going to move forward with the bill, then we probably need the minister here. In order to bring the bill forward in a productive way, I think we should have the minister here within the next couple of weeks.

I would just implore colleagues to support that amendment. I see the minister in the House regularly, on a daily basis. I'm sure he can find an hour for the Standing Committee on Industry. That seems reasonable given the important piece of legislation that's in front of it and other matters.

I would ask colleagues to support that amendment. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

I'm sure, MP Rempel Garner, you don't mean to say that you support Mr. Turnbull's amendment to remove the “within 14 days”.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

No, I support the original. I did say I support the original motion.

I know Mr. Turnbull likes to dunk on me from time to time—or attempts to. I will do my best to prevent that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

At this committee, we're very collegial. Under my stewardship, I hope that's so.

Mr. Masse, the floor is yours.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

I do have a suggestion.

I understand the difficulty with the parliamentary secretary not having access to the schedule. We want to get this going. I would just say that we will defer this vote, at this point in time, for a week and have you come back to us with a date from the minister. It gives you a full week.

You've been able to deliver on that in the past in terms of giving us a schedule. I have a feeling the minister is going to have to be here a lot more often than in the past. My preference would be to avoid having to do a vote right now and leave it in your hands to come back to us. If we don't have a date coming forth, then we could deal with the motion.

I just think that would be an easy way to go forward.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

However, there is a motion on the floor. It can't be withdrawn at this point unless I have unanimous consent.

Truth be told, from my experience with the minister, as chair of the industry committee, it hasn't been so hard to get him to come to committee. He actually likes it. It's hard to get him out of the room once he's done.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

I don't think that will be much of an issue.

We're still on the amendment for “within 14 days”.

Mr. Perkins.

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

This is more of just a technical question to MP Masse's point in addition to what you said, Mr. Chair. I don't think we can get the minister unless we formally invite him. I don't think we can just quietly go to him and say, “Hey, would you like to come?” I think we need to have an invitation.

I think we should stick to voting on this, so we have the formal invitation. He'll find the time in the next two to three weeks, I'm sure, if he's around.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Okay. On the amendment, it's still to remove the “within 14 days”. Are we going to vote on that?

I hear “within 14 days” and then Mr. Perkins says within two or three weeks. I understand we all want to invite the minister. You're willing to give me some flexibility, so I don't think there's much more time to be....

Mr. Turnbull.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Perhaps we should adjourn debate on this now and then see if we can just invite the minister, as Mr. Masse suggested, and get him scheduled. Then if that doesn't happen, we can move back to this motion, obviously, and have a vote on it.

I'll move to adjourn debate on this particular matter. That way we can see, as Mr. Masse suggested, whether you can just work with us to find a time that the minister can appear and come back to the committee with a date and time that's already been scheduled.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

That sounds reasonable to me, but do you want it to be put to a vote?

Let's have a vote on the motion by Mr. Turnbull to adjourn debate.

(Motion negatived: nays 6, yeas 5)

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

We're still debating the motion. The amendment is still on the floor and is removing “within 14 days”.

I have no more speakers, so I will put the amendment to a vote.

(Amendment negatived: nays 6; yeas 5)

Okay. We're back to the motion as originally proposed by Mr. Perkins.

I have no more speakers, but I understand from the debate we've had that there is general consent, unanimous consent, on this motion. I see heads nodding.

(Motion agreed to [See Minutes of Proceedings])

Now we should be back to Bill C-27, but I see Mr. Perkins and Mr. Turnbull.

I saw Mr. Perkins first.

Mr. Perkins, the floor is yours.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I gave this notice several days ago of this motion for another study:

Given that a former federal public servant at Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED) pled guilty to criminal breach of trust for directing 72 sole-source contracts worth $231,663 to a company he owned, the committee hold two meetings on this topic, and invite the minister, RCMP and ISED officials to better understand this fraudulent billing scheme that took place under this Liberal government.

As you may be aware—I'm sure you are—this former public servant funnelled taxpayer money to companies he owned through a procurement process that clearly is faulty at ISED. I think it's an indication that we don't know, as MP Rempel Garner said earlier, what is happening to the spending controls at this department. This is perhaps the bare surface of the iceberg.

We've seen the big iceberg of the billion-dollar Liberal green slush fund, which, as the Auditor General indicated, had $390 million that was either conflicted or misappropriately spent by Liberal-appointed board directors. Now we have the department that was meant to oversee that not even able to manage basic procurement processes to ensure they're not being abused by their own employees. According to the RCMP and international internal accounting record-keeping practices, that's what led to it. What wouldn't have led to it was stopping it in the first place, when they had a procurement process in place in the department that allowed this kind of abuse.

I think this is an urgent matter. This department is one of the biggest-spending departments in the government. It has many programs, some of which have very loose terms—I would put it that way—like the strategic innovation fund, SIF, which is a nondescript multi-billion dollar fund that's used to fund anything the government wants. It doesn't really have any parameters other than “hey, let's reach in and pull out a ton more money for this government priority.” It seems to be a mystery out there, other than that they have rounds of funding, any company can apply and there doesn't seem to be any consistent terms or records.

There appear to be very lax standards by the CFO of ISED, and by the now former deputy minister of ISED. They've changed the deputy minister. I'm sure it had nothing to do with SDTC and taking the fall for the inadequacies of the minister, who has been in place for 40 months and can't seem to get his hands on understanding where the money that his department is responsible for is going.

It's incumbent upon us as a committee, as a parliamentary body, to provide that scrutiny on the expenditure of these critical tax dollars at a time when the government is running up a $50-billion deficit and says they can't find any savings. Maybe they should find savings by actually having proper accounting standards within their own departments. A couple of meetings on this right now I think are timely, given that the department is, I'm sure, intent over the next few months, as we head into 2025 with a shaky Parliament, on spending a little more money for some reason. We need to make sure it's not being spent in ways that either particular individuals within the public service or those the Liberals have appointed to things are going to abuse.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Thank you, Mr. Perkins.

Mr. Patzer.

[Jeremy Patzer, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

It's quite remarkable when you look at timelines. We look at the more recent scandals that have come through the SDTC in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

You go back to this one here, and the criminal conduct that we're looking at was between 2016 and 2018. This was obviously in the earlier days of the current government's administration. Just look at the way things have progressed.

This was a source of contracts of about $230,000, something like that. To me, that's a lot of money. To the taxpayers that's a lot of money. Then you look at how grand the scandals and the grifting have become when you start looking at the hundreds of millions of dollars that are being misappropriated through SDTC. It's absolutely remarkable just how brazen the insiders and folks well-connected to the Liberal government have become.

I think studying this one would be very important because I think it will give us a good snapshot of just how this has all gotten out of hand so quickly, because this was early in this government's administration. I think it's going to show us just exactly the way the snowball has really gained momentum, has gained size. When you look at just how many different ways the taxpayer is being fleeced these days, I think this is a good way to show how that started and how that began and how that overall sense of entitlement, I would say, seems to have permeated throughout the public service with Liberal insiders.

This is another urgent matter. We heard today that there are all sorts of urgent matters because there is no end to it with this government. I would implore colleagues to take serious consideration of this one. I think we should get on to this one as quickly as we can because, as we've heard, we're at a bit of an impasse here now with BillC-27, with the Liberals filibustering for several meetings on the current provision that we are at on the meeting.

It's helpful that for once somebody has been criminally charged. He actually pleaded guilty, which is good, but I think we still need to figure out how this happened, why there was not accountability within the ministry. There are a lot of angles we can take on this to try to figure out how this is happening and being allowed to happen. It continues to happen in greater amounts to this day.

I look forward to us hopefully getting onto this study and making sure that taxpayers know that we take seriously the stewardship of the money the government takes from them.