Public Accounts Committee on March 7th, 2024

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

I have to go through the speakers.

Ms. Khalid, your hand was up but then it came down. Do you want to speak to this amendment or shall we proceed to a vote to remove “within three weeks”?

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

I think it will pass unanimously, Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

I think it might.

We are not hearing from Ms. Khalid, so, Clerk, call the vote on this, please.

Ms. Shanahan, I'm afraid your amendment is defeated, as, obviously, I'm now voting to break the tie.

(Amendment negatived: nays 6; yeas 5)

I'm now returning to the speaking list.

Ms. Idlout, you have the floor on the motion that was presented to us. Go ahead, please.

[Lori Idlout, NDP, Nunavut, NU]

Qujannamiik, Iksivautaq.

It is a pleasure to represent the NDP, and I share the sentiments that were shared about my colleague, Blake Desjarlais. I do wish him well during his time of grief.

I have complete faith in our whole party, what we've heard and the advice given to us by our staff, so when I'm sharing my feedback, it is because of what I've heard. Unfortunately, what I'm hearing during this debate at committee is a lot of partisanship, when we should be demanding accountability.

What I've heard from the witnesses, the officials—and I appreciate that it was based on a new motion regarding this study—is that the officials were not able to answer my questions. Inviting them back will mean that even if I repeat those questions to those same officials, they will not be answered. I understand that there were officials from the Treasury Board Secretariat. I'm pretty sure that if I ask those officials those same questions, they would not give the information that Canadians deserve. I say “that Canadians deserve” because the original intended cost of the ArriveCAN app was supposed to be about $80,000, and to hear that, over time, $55 million, at the very minimum, was spent to have this app operate for the so-called protection of Canadians' health is completely unacceptable.

It was only recently that I learned that the recipients of this contract claimed to have indigenous identity and used that in this contract, so there are still a lot of unanswered questions. When I asked my questions, instead of the officials responding or accepting responsibility, they diverted that information to be answered by another department. I think, given the huge losses that this program cost, it deserves the scrutiny that it's received.

I'm not convinced by other interventions in which we've been told how many hours have been spent on this, especially when there are still lingering questions about the colossal failure of what has happened. We need to make sure that the officials aren't the final stop in seeking answers. We do need to hear from the President of the Treasury Board, because it is the president who can give us the bigger picture that we're looking for on where those miscommunications cost Canadians so many millions of dollars.

I need to say this again. Nunavummiut are suffering. With the level of poverty that exists in Nunavut, for Nunavummiut to continue to be ignored and for Nunavummiut to continue to lose profits to CEOs is completely unacceptable. We need accountability. We need answers. Because of that, I support this motion to get those answers from the President of the Treasury Board.

Qujannamiik.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you very much.

I'm going to go to Ms. Yip next and then Mrs. Shanahan, because Ms. Yip was on the roll call earlier.

I am seeing agreement from Mrs. Shanahan.

Ms. Yip, you have the floor.

[Jean Yip, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

I agree with my colleagues on this side that the minister has already been invited to the government operations committee on the same issue, so I don't feel that there's really a need to repeat the invitation here. That would just tie up more time and more resources.

This public accounts committee has so many outstanding reports to review. In fact we have barely moved on the completion of the reports we were looking at last year. We have certainly had many, many meetings on ArriveCAN, and now the Auditor General is about to table new reports, but we haven't even completed the work we set out to do last year.

I feel it's also been clear that the part about referring the report to the House is a political tactic by the Conservatives to clog up the House, to waste time and resources, and to stop us from passing legislation that supports Canadians, such as that on pharmacare. I really don't think it's right to take all this time away, so I'd like to propose an amendment to remove the part about reporting it to the House.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Ms. Yip, because that fundamentally changes the nature of the motion, I'm going to rule that out of order.

You're welcome, of course, to vote against it, which is effectively what your amendment is doing.

[Jean Yip, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

I'm sorry, but I don't believe it's out of order. I'm going to challenge that.

(Ruling of the chair sustained: yeas 5; nays 5)

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

The decision of the chair is sustained.

Ms. Yip, you still have the floor, or you can turn it over to your colleague, Ms. Shanahan.

[Jean Yip, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

I guess I can't go back to it, but I want to say that we are just trying to remove something; we're not causing the motion to be out of scope.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you.

Ms. Khalid, you had your hand up some time ago and it's not up now. I just want to confirm whether you're speaking after Ms. Shanahan or you'd like to speak at all.

[Iqra Khalid, Liberal, Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON]

Of course, I love speaking, Chair, and I will continue to speak. That's what my constituents sent me to Ottawa for, so, yes, I do reserve the right to speak after Ms. Shanahan.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Very good. You'll be up after Ms. Shanahan.

Ms. Shanahan, you have the floor. Thank you.

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

Chair, I would actually like to have some clarification on your ruling, on your decision to call Ms. Yip's amendment out of scope. Because it is simply deleting text from the motion and not taking away at all from the invitation to have the minister come before this committee, I think it is entirely within scope, so for future reference I would like to have that clarification from the clerk.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Well, the clerk will tell you what she just told me. It has been decided by this committee.

The debate is back to the motion.

You have the floor, Ms. Shanahan.

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

It's very unfortunate that we were not able to discuss this further because, again, the practice of this committee has been to discuss witness lists.

Indeed, I've sat on other opposition-chaired committees. It was always the practice of the opposition chair for an upcoming study to reach out to all sides for a witness list and to discuss the scope of the study and a work plan, and the witness list would indeed be proportionate to the membership around the room, although I can remember that in both the government operations and ethics committees, members were generous with the allocation of time. If a witness was deemed to be of interest to other members, regardless of who had suggested the witness, that witness would be heard. It is unfortunate that we are.... I have a feeling that it's unfortunate but deliberate to put us in this position that we have to basically be defending what would be the normal respectful procedures of this committee.

We have already stated that we are gripped with—I'm going to say it in French, ampleur—the depth of this problem, of what happened here and how horrific it is that in trying to put together a tool that would effectively collect information in a digitized form.... We're all going to that technology. It would have been preferable if it had been developed before the pandemic, but there you have it.

We were in an emergency situation, and there were bad actors that took advantage of that time, however they did it, with the cozy contracting arrangements or fraudulent representation or whatever it was that they were engaged in during a time when people were of course physically isolated and communication was limited. This is an issue that, rightly so, we should be looking at. Indeed, the Auditor General had already signalled that ArriveCAN was of concern to her when we heard her after the first ArriveCAN report, which had to do with the actual value of the application itself. It did serve to save lives, because it did speed up and more accurately send out the information to provinces and territories regarding travellers who needed to be quarantined and so on.

You had us, Chair: We wanted to study this as well, especially when the Auditor General presented us with her report on the whole contracting process and the lack of proper documentation. We were all horrified, but apparently, that was not enough for.... Some of the members here have been subbed in and out so many times that they actually forget which committee they're speaking at. They refer to testimony that has occurred in other committees. I'm not even sure if they were right in doing so. It's a flagrant disregard for the way this committee runs.

Chair, frankly, I expected better of you in this respect. To put us in this position time and time again, where we could have very easily had this discussion in a subcommittee, although that's not normally a practice of this committee.... Normally, these discussions of witness lists and so on would be in the—

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Yes, Ms. Idlout. You have a point of order.

[Lori Idlout, NDP, Nunavut, NU]

Yes. I would like it if you could ask the member to get back to the motion we're trying to debate. This is not a motion to question the process or the committee.

Could you please ask the member to get back on point?

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Ms. Shanahan, I am the servant of the committee. Motions come before me. I don't often have advance notice. I would ask that you come back to the question at hand.

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

Well, Chair, I'm sorry the member feels this way, because I have enormous—

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Ms. Shanahan, so does the chair, so I'd ask you to stay focused on the question at hand.

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

The question at hand is that this motion could have been dealt with in a consensual way in the committee, whereby we would have invited the minister. If that was the will of the committee, we could have invited the minister in the normal way, as we have done in the past. Indeed, we have had occasion to have a minister, including the minister of indigenous affairs, in front of this committee, and that was at the express request of the NDP member. I can't speak for the other side, but for this side of the committee, we were very happy to support that request and allocate that time. Indeed, it is something we would be happy to do in the future, but right now, what we have before us is a motion that is going to waste valuable committee time and valuable House of Commons time.

This reporting to the House of Commons, make no mistake, is a showboat exercise whereby we will be wasting time in the House—time that could be spent on valuable legislation, such as pharmacare—and that will hurt Canadians across the country. I think we know what the official opposition's intentions are in that regard. It doesn't want pharmacare for Canadians, so it's doing everything it can to block it.

Mr. Chair, I will finish on that.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you.

Before I turn things over to you, Ms. Khalid, I've been able to secure resources until 8:00 p.m. I've had a few members ask me on the side. Just so everyone knows, we have resources because no other committees are sitting today.

Ms. Khalid, you have the floor.

[Iqra Khalid, Liberal, Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

As talented as I may be in my speaking, I doubt that any one of us wants me to go on until 8:00 p.m. with the arguments here today.

As I said before, I have no problem with the minister's coming in. If that's the will of the committee, so be it, but I'm trying to ultimately get to what our end goal is here. What are we trying to achieve as a committee? That was the nature of all the points I was trying to raise today.

Why are we doing this? What can we do to be helpful, not hurtful, to the process and to the public trust, to ensure that, going forward, the procurement process is done in a better way, that we don't see things of this bad nature happen again, and that we see people being held to account?

I am more than happy to go to a vote on this now, Chair. I'm looking forward to whatever the will of the committee is at this time.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you, Ms. Khalid.

(Motion as amended agreed to: yeas 10; nays 0 [See Minutes of Proceedings])

Thank you. The motion is passed and referred to the House.

This concludes the business before this committee. We'll see one another bright and early on Tuesday, March 19. We have the lock-up with the Auditor General's team from 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. At 9:00 a.m., there will be an in camera briefing from the Auditor General of Canada on the reports that she is tabling that day. I will actually just give you the titles of those, so that you and the public have them. The three report audits will be on transportation corridors and supply chains, housing on first nation reserves, and first nations and Inuit policing programs. Those reports will be tabled at 10:00 a.m. or soon thereafter, and there will be a special meeting of this committee at 10 o'clock, where the Auditor General will publicly pronounce on those reports and take questions from members for approximately one hour.

Does it please the committee that I adjourn?