Public Accounts Committee on Aug. 8th, 2024

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 135 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Public Accounts.

Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format pursuant to the Standing Orders. Members are attending in person in the room and remotely using the Zoom application.

I would like to ask all members and other in-person participants to consult the cards on the table for guidelines to prevent any audio feedback.

Please keep in mind the preventive measures in place to protect the health and safety of all participants, including interpreters.

Use only a black approved earpiece. Please keep your earpiece away from the microphones at all times. When you're not using your earpiece, please place it face down on the sticker on your desk. Just as a reminder, all comments should be addressed through the chair.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(3)(g), the committee is resuming consideration of the Auditor General's report 1, 2024, entitled “ArriveCAN”, which was referred to the committee on Monday, February 12, 2024.

I would now like to welcome our two witnesses from the Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner.

Konrad von Finckenstein, commissioner, it's good to see you here today, sir.

Michael Aquilino, legal counsel, it's good to see you here as well.

Commissioner, you have a maximum of five minutes for your opening remarks, after which we will turn to our round of questions.

It's over to you, please.

[Konrad von Finckenstein, Commissioner, Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner]

Thank you for inviting me to discuss the Auditor General's report on ArriveCAN. As you mentioned, with me is my colleague Michael Aquilino, legal counsel at our office.

As Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner, my role is to help elected and appointed public officials manage conflicts of interest. We administer the Conflict of Interest Act for appointed officials like ministers, their staff, heads of Crown corporations, deputy ministers and members of various boards and tribunals. As you know, we also administer the Conflict of Interest Code for Members of the House of Commons.

Under the act, when reporting public office holders are first appointed, we gather information about what they own, what they owe and what they do. This helps us to see whether they have conflicts of interest and to advise them on how to manage or avoid them. This could include setting up conflict of interest screens or putting assets in a blind trust.

Throughout their time as public office holders, we receive updates from them and review their information. We give them ongoing confidential advice and guidance on questions like accepting gifts, when to step back or recuse themselves from discussions and the rules that will follow them after they leave office. Under the code, we go through a similar process with members. It is something you are all familiar with.

All publicly shareable information about reporting public office holders and members is available on our website's public registry.

Under both the act and the code, we focus on private interests that might affect financial or business decisions for personal gain. Essentially, the main purposes of our work are, first, to help elected and appointed officials recognize and manage conflicts of interest, and second, to facilitate the movement of qualified people in and out of the public service without issue.

Regarding the current issue of ArriveCAN, I understand that there are ongoing investigations by other organizations. To our knowledge, no persons subject to the act or the code were involved in this matter. Hence, we have no jurisdiction and I have no comments to make on that.

I am happy to answer your questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you very much.

I'll turn now to Mr. Genuis.

You have the floor for six minutes, please.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Thank you, Chair.

I want to thank the commissioner for being here. I look forward to asking him some questions very shortly.

As members know, we do have some unfinished business on the ArriveCAN issue from yesterday that I'd like to propose we quickly wrap up. I have sent a revised motion to the chair that builds on our work yesterday but incorporates feedback from other parties, which I hope will be able to facilitate us moving forward quickly.

If the clerk can distribute that motion now, I will read it as I move it.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Mr. Genuis, you sent that to the clerk, not to the chair. I just wanted to correct that for the record.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Yes.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Now that you're speaking to it, the clerk will send that out.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Mr. Clerk, it was labelled “V3” in the email, because I know I had some further thoughts after I initially....

The motion is that—

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Just one second, Mr. Genuis.

Mr. von Finckenstein, we're going to debate a motion for a few minutes here. If you could stand down during this, we'll get back to you very, very soon, I hope. We had a discussion on this yesterday. There is some agreement but not universal agreement, so we might have a debate around this. I'll try to wrap it up as quickly as possible and come back to you. In the meantime, if you do want to stand up and walk around, that's fine. You're not required to remain in your seat by any means. It's at your discretion. We will come back to you, and I'll give you plenty of notice on that.

Mr. Genuis, you have the floor, please.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Thank you.

I spoke to the motion yesterday, but I'll just read it out and articulate some of the differences with the new motion. The new motion is as follows:

In light of testimony and evidence provided by Diane Daly, the committee order the production from the government of the recording which Ms. Daly referenced in her testimony of her 3.5 hour interview with CBSA, and call the following people to appear before the committee on ArriveCan and particularly to respond to the new information Ms. Daly has presented: Lysane Bolduc, Tom von Schoenberg, Arianne Reza, Erin O’Gorman, and additional officials and experts with knowledge of TBIPS; further, that the committee write to Kristian Firth and ask him to provide information and evidence supporting his claims at the bar of the House regarding Diane Daly, including the time, location, and names of other participants at the alleged meetings with her, and that he respond to the committee’s request for information by Labour Day.

With regard to the changes that were made, I think one Liberal member raised a concern earlier about it not being clear which recording was being referred to. I thought it was clear from the testimony, but I added a bit more information to clarify which recording we're seeking.

Mr. Desjarlais made a very good suggestion about having officials who can speak to TBIPS. I thought that was a good suggestion, so I added that in.

Ms. Sinclair-Desgagné suggested that we not invite Kristian Firth. I have proposed instead that we simply ask Mr. Firth to send us follow-up information as evidence. We would not be calling Mr. Firth. We would just be sending a request to him to respond in writing to the committee, responding to Ms. Daly's testimony and his comments on April 17, and inviting him to provide some additional evidence to support his version of events.

Rather than having a flurry of amendments—I mean, people are welcome to propose amendments, of course—I thought I would try to speed up the process a little bit by incorporating the feedback we have received from various parties. The principle of following up on Ms. Daly's really groundbreaking testimony yesterday, to be able to more effectively assess her claims and put questions to others about that testimony, I think is clearly important.

I got the sense that there was majority support for the principles of my motion. Hopefully, with these modifications we'll be able to get it done quickly and get back to speaking with the Ethics Commissioner.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you, Mr. Genuis.

I have a speaking list already.

Yes, Ms. Shanahan.

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

I have a point of order.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Go ahead.

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

We're dealing with substantially an entirely new motion. Can we suspend so that we can look at this?

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Sure. I think we all heard Mr. Genuis speak to his proposed new wording. What are you thinking—five minutes, 10 minutes?

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

Ten minutes is good.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

I'll tell you what, let's start with five. We'll make it five to 10 minutes, but I'll look to you for a nod. If we seem to be coming to some agreement and resolution, we'll come back.

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

Very good.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Obviously, If there's a deadlock, we'll have to deal with that as well.

I'll suspend for five to 10 minutes.

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

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

I call the committee meeting back to order for the purposes of discussing this motion. It means that our witnesses can still stand down.

Mr. Desjarlais, you are first on my speaking list. I have Ms. Khalid after that and then Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné.

Mr. Desjarlais, you have the floor.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I'm happy to see that there have been amendments to the motion to include an amendment that I had sent to the clerk in relation to strengthening the original motion to include the officials of the TBIPS program. As members of our committee know, Ms. Daly did provide good testimony and recommendations as to the source of some of these issues. TBIPS in particular is something that we haven't necessarily looked at in terms of how qualifying consultants like GC Strategies could have ended up on a list that would have preferred them for certain contracts. I think that's a pretty serious issue that requires investigation. It's the reason I'm glad to see that we were able to include that.

I want to thank Mr. Genuis for including that. I will happily withdraw the amendment that I submitted to the clerk, as I see that the requirement has been satisfied here.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you.

Ms. Khalid, would you like the floor? No? Okay.

Ms. Sinclair‑Desgagné, you have the floor.

[Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné, Bloc, Terrebonne, QC]

It will be very brief.

I thank Mr. Genuis for making the changes we suggested to him yesterday and including Mr. Desjarlais' amendment, which I think is very important. Basically, our real concern is not to engage in a witch hunt, but rather to improve the federal government as much as possible, while waiting for Quebec to be removed from it, of course. In the meantime, we need to improve and overhaul the procurement system for task-based informatics professional services, or TBIPS, because there are glaring issues there. Next, if we send a letter to Mr. Firth, I feel we stand a better chance of getting answers regarding Ms. Daly's testimony, which contradicts Mr. Firth's.

So we will be supporting this motion as it stands.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you very much.

Go ahead, Ms. Shanahan.