Public Accounts Committee on June 18th, 2007

[A voice]

It is just on the amendment.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Brian Fitzpatrick]

Okay. The amendment was to bring Anne McLellan to the meeting, to add her to this.

(Amendment agreed to)

[John Williams, Conservative, Edmonton—St. Albert, AB]

Now that we've agreed on that, Mr. Chairman, based on what Mr. Wrzesnewskyj has been saying to deal with the Brown report, I have no idea why Mr. John Spice is on here. Therefore, I suggest that his name be deleted.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

He's mentioned in the report. Mr. John Spice was an assistant commissioner at that time, in charge of ethics. My understanding is that all these witnesses we've heard from had discussions with Mr. Spice. He pushed really hard to have Deputy Commissioner Loeppky begin a criminal investigation. He is mentioned, as I said, a number of times in the report. There are many questions of relevance.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Brian Fitzpatrick]

Mr. Williams is satisfied with that, Borys, so we can move on to the next person.

Mr. Lake.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

I just want to clarify a couple of things.

On Ms. Sgro's point that this is a witch hunt, I do want to point out that, clearly, the letter as written is out of order according to the rules, and in good faith we've agreed to meet on Thursday about this. We are moving forward on that, so I don't think accusing us of a witch hunt is appropriate.

Secondly, now that we have this list and we're discussing the motion, are we actually going to have the current Minister of Public Safety sitting beside the former Minister of Public Safety, at the same meeting? Is that what we're talking about here? Maybe we could put Dave Brown in between them. Of course, Dave Brown was a famous enforcer for the Edmonton Oilers—

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

On a point of order, it's the chair's prerogative to decide where people get to sit. It's not the silly hour.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Brian Fitzpatrick]

The way I understand it, if this committee agrees that these people are going to be here, they're going to be here.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

But we're discussing the motion right now. So in terms of the discussion, is this what we're talking about, having these six witnesses all here at the same time?

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

On a point of order, Chair, seating arrangements are your prerogative.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

I'm not talking about seating arrangements. I'm asking, are we having them all here at the same time?

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Brian Fitzpatrick]

Order.

We're talking about the witnesses who will be at the meeting. That's what we're talking about.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

I just want to clarify, is this what we're agreeing to? I just want to make sure everybody understands that we're actually, right now, as this motion stands, agreeing to have all six of these witnesses at the same time. I would suggest that's probably not the proper way to go about this. It seems to me that in committees I've been to where ministers have been involved, they've been involved on their own. So I would suggest that possibly having the current Minister of Public Safety here as a witness on his own might be the proper way to go about it, whether it's two different meetings, one before the other.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Brian Fitzpatrick]

We have agreed to one meeting, on Thursday. The committee can agree to other meetings at later times to deal with things. We've been doing that all along, if I recall things quite correctly. So it's up to the committee to decide future meetings and future witnesses. But we're dealing with the one on Thursday, this week, and in the way I read it, we have the names that are already on the list with the amendment that has been put forward by Pierre, which has been accepted. So the way I would interpret things, unless I'm missing something, this is the witness list that we have at this stage.

In committees, sometimes it's not always so clear, but that's the way I interpret things at this point.

Mr. Poilievre, go ahead.

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

Are we on another issue now?

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Nepean—Carleton, ON]

No, we're still on this motion. We haven't agreed to the motion and I'm speaking to the motion.

Simply for administrative purposes, I think we can do this all in one day. What we've done before in these committees is have the witnesses appear in clusters--an hour and a half with one cluster and an hour and a half with a second. We have two parts that we need to discuss at this meeting; one is the scandal that happened, so I think it's appropriate to have the people who were around when that scandal happened. That would be Mr. Zaccardelli, Mr. Spice, and Ms. McLellan, who were there when this matter occurred. Then have the people who are here discussing where we go to clean it up, and that includes Mr. Brown, Mr. Day, and Ms. Busson, who are the forward-looking ones. I think that would be a good way to break down the discussion into parts that could be managed.

I do agree with Mr. Lake. I don't know the precedence, but I personally haven't seen former and existing ministers testify side by side or on the same panel, but I think it would be more procedurally and administratively eloquent if we broke into two parts on the same day, giving us the ability to zero in on the players. Again, Mr. Day, Mr. Brown, Ms. Busson, to deal with the future; Mr. Zaccardelli and Ms. McLellan, along with Mr. Spice, to discuss what happened when they were involved.

I put that forward as an amendment.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Brian Fitzpatrick]

All those in favour of the amendment.

[An hon. member]

Can you read the amendment?

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Brian Fitzpatrick]

I interpret his motion....

Order. Do you want to know what the gist of the motions are? He's basically proposing two clusters, two separate meetings--

[An hon. member]

No, the same meeting with two parts.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Brian Fitzpatrick]

The same meeting with two separate clusters. The first one would be former commissioner Mr. Zaccardelli, former minister Ms. McLellan, and Mr. Spice, who would deal, as I understood it, with what happened when things took place and so on. The second one would be Mr. Brown, Minister Day, and Commissioner Busson talking about what's being done going forward.

Mr. Laforest.

[Jean-Yves Laforest, Bloc, Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC]

Mr. Chairman, about two minutes ago, you gave a good summary of the situation; all you had to do was strike the gavel and the matter would have been settled. I wonder why you did not do so. It seems that everyone has agreed that there should only be one meeting. After all these discussions, we agreed on removing some names and adding others. So let's move forward and hold that one meeting with all the witnesses. Mr. Chairman, I think that is more than justified.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Brian Fitzpatrick]

Okay, but I do have an amendment on the floor and we have to deal with the amendment.

Did you want to speak to this motion, Ms. Sgro?

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

I only want to make sure we're clear here, because it wasn't.... I heard Pierre talk about the clusters, but I didn't hear him move it as a motion. I don't want us to mix it up with the amended motion.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Brian Fitzpatrick]

I am sorry, he did refer to it as an amendment. We have an amendment to a motion before this committee. We've had a discussion on it and now we'd like to have a vote. I don't have anybody else on the list.

Who's in favour of this amendment?