National Defence Committee on May 16th, 2019

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

MP Gerretsen on the amendment.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

I know, Mr. O'Toole, that you are new to this committee because you are not a regular member, and you're here as a fourth member when there are only three, but of course, any member of Parliament is welcome to come, and we're glad to have you here.

Our committee has not operated like that historically. We have worked through things when we have not had agreement to find compromise, so I apologize if we're dragging on and you have somewhere to be, but I am not here reading notes. I did not come here with a prepared speech. I have not read anything. I'm genuinely listening, trying to respond and asking questions so that I can further my position on this.

I apologize to you if this isn't moving along fast enough for you, but there is no charade here that we're just suddenly going to be whipped and vote a certain way. At least that's not my perspective.

I do think something that Mr. O'Toole said is extremely germane to this discussion. He said that this is politics. This is what happened. This is why it's been brought up in question period. The PCO did this and that. The PCO is not a political organization; it is a department of the Government of Canada. Its job, when stuff like this comes up, is to be able to respond, and what the PCO did was respond by contacting the RCMP, so I take great exception to the fact that you would suggest that this is all politics.

What we do is politics. We're supposed to create policy. We're in the middle of creating policy on inclusion in the armed forces. That's what we do. That's the policy that we work on. Our job is not to be political and to try to weigh in on the work of independent organizations of the RCMP and the PPS. For that matter, the Privy Council is a department of government.

I apologize if you don't see it the same way, but that's certainly the way that I have always looked at it.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Thanks.

I'm going to go to MP Bezan.

The clock is at 17:30. We'll continue the conversation and we'll stay here as long as it takes.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB]

Hopefully this is my last intervention. I have to respond to what Mr. Gerretsen was saying. He's saying that the Privy Council Office is not a political operation, yet what we learned from the SNC-Lavalin scandal and listening to Michael Wernick when he was sitting at the end of the table at the justice committee was that it was complete political operations and motive and political-speak. That also brings into question what his operations were during the Mark Norman affair. He was still the Clerk of the Privy Council during this entire process. Who actually went to the RCMP to lay the charges? Was it him? We also have the Prime Minister saying it was the chief of the defence staff.

There are a lot of different issues out there that we need to get to the bottom of. I would hope that when you look at the bigger picture of what happened to Mark Norman, the correlation of how it relates to what happened to Jody Wilson-Raybould in the SNC-Lavalin scandal, you will see that there is a need to have this investigation, and, at the very least, support Mr. Garrison's amendment to allow Vice-Admiral Mark Norman to come to a safe place where he.... As Mr. O'Toole just pointed out, he cannot get involved in the politics and the partisanship as a member of the Canadian Armed Forces, but we can provide him an opportunity to have a place where he can actually tell his story, and Canadians can make their own decisions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

MP Gallant.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Mr. Chair, it could be that Vice-Admiral Mark Norman has nothing political to say. The obstructions or whatever was hampering the project from going forward could be purely administrative. Right now there's a pall cast over this government, and it will continue to be cast over all of Parliament in the months and years to come unless we get down and finally crack this problem that we have with procurement. It could be that, by accepting an invitation, he could shed some light on what goes on behind the scenes and why it takes so long to, for example, get the EH101 helicopter, to get fighter jets. It seems like a decision is made and then delay, delay, delay.

That is what this committee could gain from the background knowledge on why it takes so long to get our women and men in uniform the tools they need to do the tasks we ask them to do.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

MP Martel.

[Richard Martel, Conservative, Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, QC]

We are all sitting here comfortably; none of us has been subjected to what Mr. Norman has for the past two years. The least we can do is allow him to tell his story, to say what he has to say, considering everything he has done for the country and the government. Let's put ourselves in his shoes. He spent the past two years backed into a tight corner. Just think about how awful that must have been for him. Now, we find out that the charges are being stayed. Setting everything else aside, allowing him to be heard would do him good.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Okay, I think the debate has collapsed on the amendment.

Do you want a recorded vote, James?

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB]

Sure, I'd like a recorded vote.

(Amendment negatived: nays 5; yeas 4 [See Minutes of Proceedings])

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Where we left off on the motion I had a speakers list of MPs Gerretsen and Spengemann. This amendment discussion may have changed that, but that's where we left off.

I'll offer the floor to Mr. Gerretsen.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

I'll try to be brief, because I know that this meeting has been going on for some time. However, I did want to address some of the other things that I had heard since I last spoke.

As discussed and responded to by other colleagues, Ms. Gallant questioned the motive behind voting in favour of a unanimous consent motion. If the government had not done something wrong, why would you vote in favour of that? We all voted in favour of it because we all recognized that the content of that motion was appropriate and it delivered a proper response from Parliament.

I know there have been some questions about certain members who weren't in the House during that time, but when you put forward a unanimous consent motion, there's no record of who's in the House and it is understood to be deemed adopted by all members of the House, regardless of their presence in the House. That is exactly what happened with that motion.

Another thing that Ms. Gallant touched on was why Norman was singled out amongst all the various people who had access to the information. Another thing that Ms. Gallant brought up was why there was so much time between the suspension and the charge. I think these are great questions, as well, but they're questions that relate to criminal activity and the best body to assess those is the RCMP. The best body to take the evidence from the RCMP and determine how or if to prosecute is the Public Prosecution Service.

I also heard Ms. Gallant talk about court documents and how they were heavily redacted and how there was a six-month delay. Do we know what the standard is for an ATIP of that size? Do we know if six months is too long or too short? Some people might say it is. Some people might say it's not. More importantly, as I pointed out earlier, it was not the government that redacted the documents. I know that it fits a political narrative to say that, but the truth of the matter is that the documents were redacted by the court and were authorized by the court to be redacted and then turned over.

Regarding the whole issue of code words, I took that to be very interesting because I said earlier that there were no code words that were used according to the chief of the defence staff. Then later Mr. O'Toole said that the chief of the defence staff never said that, but according to an article:

[General] Vance denied the use of codewords in an interview with CBC News in December 2018, when he said he was shocked by the suggestion the military was using them to deliberately withhold documents, and said he would be “disgusted” if it were true. That Dec. 21, 2018 article was entered as an exhibit in court.

Ms. Gallant also brought up issues of new evidence and what other evidence is out there. Again, these are great questions to ask but that investigation should be done by the RCMP—the proper body to be investigating these matters—and then turned over to the PPS.

Mr. O'Toole talked about the Privy Council Office in his comments, and he even said that the PCO sent their concerns to the RCMP and then the RCMP investigated. That's the way the process is supposed to occur. You talk about it as though it is something that should not have happened that way. That's the way the process should occur. If the PCO or any governmental department thinks that something illegal may have happened, their job is to turn that information over to the RCMP so that the RCMP can do that investigation.

I'm really glad that Mr. O'Toole brought up my riding and CFB Kingston. I never miss an opportunity to talk about my riding when it's brought up, so I'm really glad when another member does it. I do care very deeply about CFB Kingston and its members. I grew up in my riding. I've been there for almost 43 years. I've seen it evolve from a town, a community that had a military base on the outside, to a military base that has been infused into the community.

When I was the mayor of Kingston, I had the opportunity to travel to Fort Drum with the mayor of Watertown. Then he would come to Kingston and visit CFB Kingston. He was always so jealous of how CFB Kingston was so intertwined with the community. My children can be coached by a CFB Kingston member and you wouldn't know it, because they're so intertwined and they're part of the community. We're fortunate to have that.

My role here is to decide if what is being proposed today is genuinely in the interest of this committee and if the parliamentary resources to be used for it are appropriate, or if this is politically motivated by the opposition.

Unfortunately, and I keep listening and I keep responding to what I'm hearing, I haven't heard a shred of evidence that confirms the former. All I'm really hearing is hearsay and attempts to suggest that there was some kind of intervention, with no concrete proof that it happened. It's all hearsay, and it's all what people think may have happened based on an assumption. That's leading me to believe that there's not much more to this than the politics surrounding the Conservative narrative on this as of late.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

There are three more members to speak: Mr. Spengemann, Mr. Garrison and Mr. O'Toole. Just to keep it going back and forth, I might go out of order.

I'd like to yield the floor to MP Garrison.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

We're back to the main motion. I want to reiterate that the reason I signed the request for this meeting to consider this motion was primarily to give a voice to Vice-Admiral Norman. The motion we're considering is to invite witnesses to appear. We have a long list, and most of those, I would expect, would decline to appear. Even though we probably know the outcome, I would like to see the government members vote for this motion.

There are other people who might wish to take advantage of the opportunity to appear, such as the Minister of Defence. Once again, I know that the Conservatives asked lots of questions about Mark Norman during the estimates. I chose to ask about things more closely related to the estimates, in my mind, so I didn't have a chance to talk to the minister about that. I think he might want to come again and explain his regret statement.

Just to restate, apologies are about responsibility, about taking responsibility for something. If you apologize, you take responsibility. When you say “regret”, it implies agency, and maybe he would like to explain that.

The third person on the list who might like to avail himself of the opportunity to appear is, of course, Andrew Leslie, who had intended to testify at the proceedings. With the collapse of those, he is not going to have the opportunity to do that.

Again, mine is about allowing those people who wish to comment on this to have their say under the protection of parliamentary privilege. I would hope that the government members would vote for this, but I doubt that they will.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Thank you.

MP O'Toole.

[Erin O'Toole, Conservative, Durham, ON]

Mr. Chair, I admire my friend Mr. Gerretsen's passion and he is very direct, but sadly, most of what he was saying is actually wrong. It's important for the record to be reflected and perhaps for him to learn a bit more about some of these things.

He is right that the PCO is part of the government. It is the ministry that advises the Prime Minister. The PCO would act and advise the Prime Minister, but in terms of a determination about one name out of 73 to the RCMP, the Prime Minister would be part of that determination. This is not the Department of Fisheries and Oceans on some island; they're in Langevin Block for a reason. As a privy councillor, I know how that works and how they advise cabinet and the Prime Minister. Really the clerk, in many ways, is the deputy minister to the Prime Minister, if you compare it to other ministries, so I'd invite Mr. Gerretsen to learn a bit more about that.

On the UC motion, I've heard several members of the Liberal caucus say that if there's a unanimous consent motion, it reflects the will of the entire House. No, it reflects the will of the House at that time. It is a unanimous consent, and people who are not there are not part of it. It's the will of the House and the members present at the time. That's part of the Standing Orders.

When it comes to the redactions, I've been involved in litigation as a lawyer and I think it's important to note that the redactions are not picked by the court. The government will provide documents and will claim privilege over certain documents, and after months of prodding, they finally released them to the court to make the determination. The court would just respect or reject a claim of privilege or claim of redactions.

I personally believe the redacted memo from the Clerk of the Privy Council, had it not been redacted, would have a lot of answers in this story, but Mr. Gerretsen was suggesting that the court just reviewed all of them and decided to redact. No. There are claims made by the government when it presented the documents to the court and I think that's important.

On the code word issue as well, the CDS was shocked because he said the use of code words would not have been intended for the purposes. He did not dispute that they were used. In fact, he was challenged in court, and his comments were with respect to the intention behind the use of code words and that acronyms are used in the military. Therefore, we have to be careful not to make conclusions on things that aren't supported by the stories.

In my remarks, I was appealing to certain members of the Liberal committee because I do know they care about their military communities. I said that in my remarks. I know Mr. Gerretsen does and I like the way he described the community and the base being one.

Regarding the Norman family, I first met Mark Norman's father before I met Mark Norman, because General Norman was Commandant of the Royal Military College of Canada. Probably feeling that his dad was so closely connected to RMC, Mark went to Queen's University to stand on his own, which I admire, even though Queen's is technically the second-best university in Kingston.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

I don't have a comment on that.

[Erin O'Toole, Conservative, Durham, ON]

However, I know he cares about all those institutions and this is why I think there are a lot of questions.

I know the easier motion was just defeated, but I really have to appeal again. This is a time when, for us as members, sometimes communities have unique questions asked. When it was on the closure of the fishery, John Crosbie went and addressed them; it was a tough meeting. This is one where a lot of military communities are asking questions and I think this committee could help answer some of them.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Thank you.

Debate has collapsed on the main motion. I'll ask the clerk to call the question.

(Motion negatived: nays 5; yeas 4)

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

The meeting is adjourned.