Evidence of meeting #143 for Public Accounts in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was sdtc.
A video is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Conservative
Rick Perkins Conservative South Shore—St. Margarets, NS
Good. Thank you.
Those articles were in there. The RCMP commissioner referred to those.
The fact is, and I'll say it again, you want to know why we're asking again for the minister. The minister discloses, as he should, on his public disclosure documents, as a member of Parliament and as a cabinet minister, that he still owns shares.
The normal course of business if you were made the environment minister would be to sell shares in companies that have a potential, perceived or direct conflict of interest, and he did not do that. He still owns the shares. That company has received almost a quarter of the $1 billion this government has given to companies they own.
If you can't see that there's a blatant conflict of interest there, when the minister sat in cabinet as they gave another $750 million to the green slush fund, and he owns shares in the company that's received 25% of all the money, I think we need to ask some questions about that. That's why we've put this forward.
Conservative
Liberal
Jean Yip Liberal Scarborough—Agincourt, ON
I'll just say again that neither Minister Guilbeault nor his department have any involvement with SDTC or its mandate. SDTC was at arm's length. Are the Conservatives suggesting that the Minister of Environment was taking decisions or influencing decisions on an arm's-length board?
There's been no testimony from witnesses regarding Mr. Guilbeault, saying that he has been involved in any matters related to SDTC, so I'm not sure why the committee continues in this vein except to provide more social media fodder.
As Mr. Perkins has noted, there have been eight studies on SDTC. I would rather we turned our attention to the outstanding Auditor General reports, of which there are many. Soon, the Auditor General will table new reports. We need to return to our work at hand.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Williamson
Thank you very much, Ms. Yip.
We're going back to Mr. Erskine-Smith, please.
You have the floor.
Liberal
Nathaniel Erskine-Smith Liberal Beaches—East York, ON
I just have, I suppose, a point of clarification for Mr. Perkins.
Is the suggestion here that the minister, as a shareholder, used his influence as a minister, exerting his influence over the arms-length SDTC board, or is it, as I heard him articulate just now, that there were past funding decisions where Cycle Capital had...?
I don't know. It's obviously not a 25% stake that they have in the funding, but you're suggesting that for 25% of the funding decisions, Cycle has some stake in those entities. I think that's how you're describing it, the idea being that Guilbeault should have known that SDTC is a big funder of companies that Cycle Capital has stakes in, and that, therefore, he should have recused himself from increasing the funding of SDTC itself. I'm just trying to follow the thread here of the conflict and what the conflict allegation is.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Williamson
Thank you very much, Mr. Erskine-Smith.
Ms. Khalid, you have the floor, please.
Liberal
Iqra Khalid Liberal Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON
Thanks very much, Chair.
I do understand that there are still a number of witnesses who we have yet to hear from with respect to this. I also understand that the RCMP has been very clear that they don't want committees like this to interfere with their ongoing investigations. They don't need the butting in on the important work they do.
Quite frankly, what happens after we hear from X, Y and Z witnesses here in the committee? What are we going to do with that information? It's tainted.
I've seen how Conservatives treat witnesses at this committee. I've seen just how much of a horrible time witnesses get put through when they come before this committee. I've seen businesses go through the ringer when Conservatives—whether it's this committee or any other committee—go through and interrogate them as though they were in a courtroom. This is not a courtroom. This is a place where we make policy decisions and where we provide recommendations to the Government of Canada as to how we are going to conduct our business going forward and how we can improve the business that we conduct.
We have all of these witnesses on the list who are going to be invited to this committee. I'm not sure why we need to suffer motion after motion that has literally zero impact on what we're trying to achieve here.
What we're trying to achieve here, Chair—I'll remind you and our committee members, all of us—is to find a better process for ensuring that the clean-tech sector can have the support that it needs to support Canada's economy and grow Canada's economy, and for that to happen in a transparent and an accountable fashion, taking into account what Canadian taxpayer dollars are actually paying for.
There has been wrongdoing. I don't think any of us on this committee disagree with that. There has been wrongdoing, but what are we going to do about it? Are we going to go down the rabbit hole? Are we going to try to hold a kangaroo court here in this committee, or are we actually going to find some reasonable, sustainable, concrete solutions that are going to help in fixing the problem?
I think we can be those people who are going to fix the problem rather than going down whatever avenue, whatever court, the Conservatives want us to go down.
Mr. Perkins spoke about his leader and how he's really into this issue. Well—and Mr. Perkins did allude to this—do you know what's another issue? It's foreign interference.
Conservative
Liberal
Iqra Khalid Liberal Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON
It would be so great for the Leader of the Opposition to finally get his security clearance, so that he can understand what kind of shenanigans are going on within his own party in terms of foreign interference.
Conservative
Liberal
Iqra Khalid Liberal Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON
Well, you brought it up, Mr. Perkins. I'm just continuing it.
Conservative
Conservative
Conservative
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Williamson
Okay, Mr. Perkins.
Ms. Khalid, I would gently guide you back to the motion at hand.
Liberal
Iqra Khalid Liberal Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON
That's exactly my point, Mr. Chair. We can throw whatever spaghetti at the wall—I would have used another term, but I know it's not parliamentary—to see if it sticks enough. Has it cooked enough? Have we found out enough things that we can perhaps add as sauce to the spaghetti that may or may not stick to the wall? The reality of the matter is that there are so many people who support us in these committee meetings; there are so many resources that go into these committee meetings.
There have been phenomenal reports by the Auditor General that hold the government to account that are pending our review, that are pending our recommendations, yet here we are, meeting after meeting, chasing after geese. I don't think that's appropriate, Mr. Chair. I think we need to do better things with how we conduct ourselves. If there is an RCMP investigation, let the independent RCMP conduct its investigation. It's not like we're going anywhere. We're right here. We'll come back to it if that needs to be a point to come back to.
At this point in time, why do we continue to waste our time? Why do we continue to try to pressure this committee through these motions that are redundant, that we hear again and again with the same topic again and again and that don't lead anywhere? They literally don't get us to where we need to go.
Mr. Chair, I would encourage my Conservative colleagues to withdraw their motion and maybe come back to it once we've heard from all of the witnesses who are on the list. Maybe we can come back to it once we've realized that the RCMP has done whatever investigation it needs to do. This makes no sense to me at this point in time. I don't think our committee should be spending any more taxpayer dollars going through this process. I don't think that our committee should be wasting any of its precious time going through this process.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Liberal
Francis Drouin Liberal Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
I think our committee should get a portion of the percentage of what the Conservatives are doing fundraising off this issue.
Liberal
Francis Drouin Liberal Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
I think we could be self-sustaining, Mr. Chair.
More seriously, my question is for Mr. Perkins, the author of the motion. We have an officer of Parliament who is responsible for looking after these matters, yet we chose a drive-by shooting, essentially, a drive-by smear, on this particular issue. I know he's not interested in asking Minister Guilbeault questions. There will be a five-minute preamble and a yes-or-no question at some point; I've seen the modus operandi on the other side.
My question is that I don't understand why, if he has evidence or so-called evidence, he wouldn't send that to the Ethics Commissioner. That's why we have an officer of Parliament: to look after these matters in a non-partisan way. If the Ethics Commissioner decides that there was a conflict, then maybe we would entertain the witness list. However, I know for a fact that the Ethics Commissioner probably won't look at the evidence that Mr. Perkins is claiming is evidence. I would strongly encourage him to send a letter to the Ethics Commissioner and perhaps, as my colleague Ms. Khalid proposed, if we do get a response from the Ethics Commissioner, then we could entertain adding more names to the list.
Right now, one of the names is already on the list—Andrée-Lise Méthot—but we're not supporting having Minister Guilbeault here in front of our committee because I don't think it's going to add any value to our committee. I'm sure we are all respectful of each other's time, so let's make sure that the witnesses who come before us are actually adding value to our study.
Thank you.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Williamson
Thank you very much.
We will call the question.
I will break the tie, so the motion passes.
(Motion agreed to: yeas 6, nays 5)