Thank you, Madam Chair.
Look, I do appreciate my honourable colleague at least speaking somewhat to the particular motion in question. One of the questions I asked was about the resources for the government and the fact that right now we are in a third wave in this country. We know that there are challenges. Indeed, there's a rising case count right now in my own province of Nova Scotia, unlike what we've seen since the start of this pandemic.
Before I became a parliamentarian, Madam Chair, I was a lawyer at McInnes Cooper in Halifax. I also have a public administration degree from Dalhousie, a master of management and public administration. I say this because I actually know individuals who work in the public sector, whether it be provincially or federally, and when opposition members go on what is not really a narrow motion....
I'll take the committee members back to Mr. Berthold's motion:
The committee request that the Department of Finance and the Canada Revenue Agency provide the committee [with] all studies, data and analysis used for the implementation of the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy.
We just talked about how this was one of the largest undertakings by the Government of Canada—the Auditor General's report says it—in the history of our country. Mr. Berthold's motion makes no mention of what exactly he needs from these particular reports and studies and analyses that he's trying to ask for. What exactly is he looking for?
It's very clear, at least from the testimony I've heard today, that the Government of Canada weighed the options between not putting out support as quickly as possible, thus risking large dislocation of employees from their employers and further impacting the economy and creating further economic turmoil, or we could go ahead and make some of these program choices, as the Auditor General has pointed out. Could there be issues? Absolutely. That's already been highlighted, but it was a better choice than the alternative.
There are lots of things we have to parse out. One is cabinet confidence and cabinet privilege. That is a legitimate convention we have in this country that we need to consider. There's no mention of that at all in this motion. There's no mention about protecting those documents. I have to assume that Mr. Berthold, as a senior and seasoned member of Parliament in this House, would know that. Perhaps that could be a friendly amendment that he would be open to as we start to discuss and debate this motion.
What exactly is it that he's trying to get to? I don't want to put the Auditor General in a difficult position, but she did not express that she was limited. In any other work that goes on, when there are elements that deal with confidence and recommendations to cabinet, those are documents that everyday parliamentarians are not necessarily able to see. Perhaps at some point, although it might not be today, we will have to ask the Auditor General to come back to this committee and testify to whether or not she was unduly limited, especially given that Mr. Fergus said in his testimony that there are powers under legislation for that information to be retrieved and found by the Auditor General.
This is so large and so vast. I'll go back to the point that I have some friends I went to school with who work in these public sector places. It takes weeks on end to go and get the information, scan it and create the books. We saw this with the health committee. We saw this with other committees. It is so large. It's not really focused on what the actual objective is. It's not clear to me from Mr. Berthold's testimony what exactly he needs.
I would be amenable to a motion that this committee could pass that tries to get that further information that this committee deems important, but not all studies—not everything, not this huge wide net, not this fishing expedition that we've seen in other committees that will poison the well of public accounts.
Other members want to speak, Madam Chair, so I will pass my time off to my colleagues, but this is the problem I have with these types of motions. I will listen to my other colleagues and take a look at the text of the motion. I think I'll probably be coming with some type of amendment, so I hope you'll watch for my hand before we even consider going to a vote. I think I'll have an amendment to propose.
Thank you.