Yes, Chair, I'll make a few comments about it. Thank you for the opportunity.
This is a motion following Ms. Daly's explosive testimony today. It seeks to invite people her testimony implicates or addresses to come before this committee and respond to the important points she made. It's also about seeking material information that we need as part of our investigation.
Here is the context as I see it. What are we trying to do here at public accounts?
This committee is looking for the truth. We want to get accurate information to get to the bottom of what happened in the arrive scam affair. We clearly have different members or factions within the senior public service who are criticizing each other, accusing each other of lying, of covering up information, of trying to cover people at the political level, etc. We have these very serious accusations flying back and forth between senior officials within the Trudeau government. It's all a mess. Money has been wasted. There are accusations of intimidation, of cover-up, of reprisal that this committee has to get to the bottom of. This compounds the concern about the arrive scam affair itself, the tens of millions of dollars that were spent, the broken system of government contracting, but also the lying, the corruption, the cover-ups, the reprisals and the accusations back and forth between different officials to that effect.
Ms. Daly has had the finger pointed at her. She has come back and provided a number of points to counter that, including evidence about various senior officials and things they have said to her. Also, she has referenced a recording—a lengthy recording—involving her and people who were investigating her. I think that recording is critical for us in understanding whether or not she's faced intimidation, the tone of that, the expectations. What she has told us as a committee is that she was expected to point the finger at Mr. MacDonald and Mr. Utano. When she didn't do that, that led to a kind of aggression and pressure. We need to hear that recording to get to the bottom of whether or not her testimony in this regard is credible.
Here's how I see the process having unfolded. On November 7, Mr. MacDonald and Mr. Utano were before OGGO. At that time, they delivered critical testimony of the government. They called leading government witnesses liars. They gave scathing testimony. They identified that as part of the response to the ArriveCAN affair, Minister Mendicino had been seeking someone's head on a platter. He wanted someone's head on a platter. Later that month, these two—Mr. MacDonald and Mr. Utano—got letters indicating further investigation for bad behaviour, right after their committee testimony strikingly, and they were later suspended without pay.
Ms. Daly was brought in in December. She was, according to her testimony, asked to point the finger at Mr. MacDonald and Mr. Utano. She said no. Later that month, they started investigating her. Now you have another public servant, a third, who's under investigation, who appears to be brought under investigation in the same month where they were refusing to play ball with the government's narrative. This raises big questions.
On February 12, the Auditor General put out her scathing report on the arrive scam affair in which she said, among other things, that GC Strategies worked with government officials discussing the specifications of a contract they would then bid on, and obviously, that's a problem.
Kristian Firth came to OGGO on March 13. He refused to say who he sat down with, which officials were being referenced in the Auditor General's report. He was so committed to refusing to give that information that he was called to the bar of the House and admonished in order to give responses.
This brings us to late April, April 17. At that point, he readily gave the name of Diane Daly, a relatively junior public servant who already was under investigation, although he's not supposed to know she's under investigation.
The whole thing begs the question: Why did Mr. Firth give Diane Daly's name at that point? Maybe, after having covered up for so long, he finally decided to do the right thing. That's one explanation. He just decided at that point he was going to do the right thing. Another possible explanation is that Mr. Firth had decided to support the Liberal government's efforts to pin the blame for the arrive scam fiasco on a few officials while absolving others; that he was supporting efforts to help achieve Mr. Mendicino's sought after head on a platter by facilitating efforts of some in government to point the blame at other senior officials and effectively try to cauterize the wound to keep the discussion from actually digging all the way through to the answer. This really exposes a sharp division among senior public servants about who is responsible.
For what I think are obvious reasons, I am deeply suspicious of anything and everything that Kristian Firth has said in committee, in the House and in public. I certainly don't think we should take at face value his claims about Ms. Daly. I think we need to investigate them further, which is why, in the interest of answering the questions we need answered and in the interest of getting to the truth, I put forward this motion to bring in key witnesses who can respond to Ms. Daly's testimony, and to also get that recording.
I think this should be a fairly simple matter. This is about getting to the truth. These witnesses and that recording will allow this committee to get to the truth: Was Ms. Daly, in fact, someone who was deeper into this than her testimony suggests, or are other people within this Liberal government trying to point the finger at her to protect themselves from blame splashing back on them?
We want to get to the truth, and this motion will help us do that.
Thank you, Chair.