Thank you.
For those who have the privilege of seeing the screen, you'll know that I've been quietly listening to all the interventions. I've heard a range of opinions and expanded thoughts on this particular issue.
I'll note that the reason I intervened earlier on a point of order that called into question the delay of this vote was particularly the way in which I've experienced COVID technologies as a hard stop on the democratic processes of our committee. I've had the opportunity to sit through a couple of pretty significant filibusters, some with you and others without.
Look, at the end of the day, I think people heard in my interventions the frustrations about not having basic analysis presented to committee in order to have a generative discussion on the benefits and the failures of the programs, so much so that it's my opinion that this particular government is taking this notion of cabinet confidentiality.... It's not just on this committee. I'll share with you that on OGGO, I've had this protracted conversation for about a year and a half about how all information is presented to cabinet, and it automatically disappears into the ether. It is not about protecting the national interests or security secrets of the state. It has been an absolute black hole for transparency and accountability, so much so that even when I've done my own order papers and motions at other committees, what I receive back are pages and pages and pages of redacted information, information that I believe in a non-partisan way should be made available to parliamentarians and most definitely to Canadians.
I have to say that I'm bemused by the way my colleagues have invoked the name of my predecessor, David Christopherson, who I could assure you would be lighting his hair on fire if he was expected to vote and make a decision on a public accounts report, on an audit report, without having access to basic answers to his questions under this procedural guise of cabinet confidentiality.
Look, if every single piece of government information is to be deemed cabinet confidence, then we might as well just pack up and let bureaucrats make reports, show them directly to the general public, and kind of rubber-stamp whatever comes our way. There is a significant and material non-disclosure by this government during a process that has provided them with unique powers to spend and to create programs.
I acknowledge that we're probably not going to get to this vote by virtue of process, which is why I have no problems expressing myself in the fullness in which I'm expressing it, because again we're limited by these technologies.
In the good old days, I'm sure my predecessor, David Christopherson, would have advised me to get a good seat. I have one. Get maybe a good pillow for your back support on a good filibuster, because he can filibuster with the best of them, and we would have just dug in and been here maybe until 8:00 or 9:00 tonight. Alas, that's not going to happen. It's likely that we're going to pick up on this debate later.
I'll share with members of this public accounts committee that I have no intention of creating some kind of mythology around co-operation, absent of access to basic material information. I take seriously the responsibility of this committee to make informed decisions on what's being presented to us through staff that will require disclosure of material information. That's what I believe to be the mandate of this committee.
I'll share with you that it is very rare in political spaces, by the way, in this talk of non-partisan versus partisan, that you could get a New Democrat from Hamilton, a Bloc Québécois and a Conservative to all agree on something. I happen to think that this non-partisan space exists, because we're looking at the face value of what's before us in ways that have very different political applications to the work that we're all respectively trying to do in opposition.
Now, I say all that to say this: I would love to see a time when this government does become open by default. We have had Auditor General reports that have enumerated and listed in depth the ways in which this government has refused to provide the most basic information not just to their office but to the general public.
To the members and the parliamentary secretaries who are present here, the staffers, the whips who are online, if we want to get into this space of having this committee work in the way it is supposed to work, then let's operate in enough good faith that if I ask a basic question around analysis—“How did you come to this decision?”—I'm not just shuffled off by being told it's cabinet confidentiality and they won't even tell me if they made recommendations on this particular topic.
For the lawyers who are out there, although I'm not a lawyer, I would call this a material non-disclosure. I would like to see government become more forthcoming with the required information, and I'm looking with interest to my friends, who I'm sure will present for the next 25 minutes, maybe 26 minutes. It will be just until after we're about to be cut off and before we can get to this vote, and we'll likely pick it up again sometime next week.
Thank you, Madam Chair.