Public Accounts Committee on Oct. 9th, 2024

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

Yes, how about that? It is very unfortunate that our democratic institutions—our parliamentary committees—have come to this. This is a very low point for us, as public accounts committee members. I remember that, when I first started on this committee, we were able to work together. We were able to collaborate and find good resolutions to the issues at hand. We did that cordially. We did that respectfully. However, here I sit a year later with a privilege motion over a witness being accused of not answering a question. Somehow, this has led to the privilege of Mr. Perkins being violated in the House and in this committee.

Can you imagine, Chair, what privilege means to democratic institutions? Canada is lucky to have that privilege.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

[Inaudible—Editor]

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

Don't heckle me, Mr. Cooper.

Canada is privileged to have the ability to call privilege and to have democratic institutions that make sure all Canadians have their rights enshrined in our Constitution and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, yet here we are calling privilege because a member felt he didn't get a proper answer to his question. What are we doing here? We're wasting government resources, taking time away from the important issues and Auditor General reports we should be reviewing, and discussing this bogus privilege motion.

What exactly is the privilege? It's “Oh, I didn't get the answer I wanted from a witness who was called before this committee” on another bogus motion. That witness should never have been here in the first place. What does he have to do with how we are going forward with SDTC? It makes no sense, other than the fact that the Conservatives are holding up the work of this committee and the House of Commons.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Your government shut down—

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

Don't heckle me, Mr. Cooper. I am making a point here. Don't do it. Just don't...not today.

The Conservatives are holding up everything to be somebody, rather than to do something. What's worse is that the Bloc and the NDP are propping them up to do it. I think that's even worse because, at the very least, Chair, the Conservatives are honest about what they want to do. They want to delay government work. They don't want any work to happen within this committee. They don't want any semblance of functionality within our democratic institutions.

What is terrible is that the Bloc and the NDP prop them up, and this motion is blatantly, obviously, a jamming tactic to delay and just stop the function of all of the work that we are able to do within our committee. It is deplorable that we are not able to get to the work that we should be doing on this committee. It is deplorable that the Conservatives think that it is their privilege to stop the work that we have spent hundreds of years building within our democratic institutions and to set precedents that we should not be setting, all because they want to be somebody.

Can you imagine?

Chair, I do not agree with the premise of this motion at all. I do not agree that, when witnesses don't provide the answers that the opposition is looking for, it leads to a violation of the privilege of a member. I do not believe in the genuineness of this motion.

As I have outlined, this motion was drafted way before it was presented, way before the Conservatives had even finished asking their questions, so this is all a ploy. I refuse to buy into this ploy. I will continue to stand up for the democratic values of our Parliament.

Mr. Cooper can snicker at it, as he has been doing all evening. However, unlike him, democratic values mean something to me, and unlike him, the work that we do in this committee means something to me. I will continue to stand up for the work that we do. I will continue to ensure that this work is protected and that the sanctity of this place is maintained, regardless of who wants to be somebody, as opposed to doing something for Canadians.

Thank you, Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you.

Up next, I have Mr. Brock, please.

[Larry Brock, Conservative, Brantford—Brant, ON]

I'm relinquishing my time.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Mr. Brock is relinquishing his time.

Ms. Yip, you have the floor.

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

Once again, we are taking up valuable committee time when we could be studying the Auditor General's report—

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Ms. Yip, just a reminder, you are not permitted to read notes at this time. You need to....

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

That's fine. As Ms. Bradford has mentioned, thousands of dollars have already been spent and really for what? It has already been determined—

[Larry Brock, Conservative, Brantford—Brant, ON]

On a point of order, Chair, she continues to read from prepared notes.

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

Chair, just on that same point of order—

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Go ahead, Ms. Khalid.

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

Not everybody is as eloquent as Mr. Brock, and if someone needs to rely on notes to speak to the issue at hand, then I think that she should be absolutely within her right to be able to read notes.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you, just one second, please.

Ms. Yip, you're permitted to refer to notes. You just cannot be reading. Okay...? I appreciate it.

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

These are my own notes. They're not, you know—

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

You can refer to notes. You just cannot read, whether they're written by you or someone else.

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

I've heard others read whole paragraphs.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

You have the floor, Ms. Yip.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Mr. Chair, just on that point of order, the standing order in the House, as you know, is that we are not able to refer to any notes. That is the particular standing order, but the practice has completely changed and I would expect that it is the same thing in committees.

I understand the ruling. The standing order in the House says that there should be no reference to any notes, but that practice has completely changed over the last 40 years.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you.

Ms. Yip.

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

As I said, so much committee time has been wasted and so many hours have gone to the same thing, yet the Conservatives have not been able to determine that a minister has been involved.

Why do we continue with this? Maybe the Conservatives don't care about the issues that matter to Canadians. After all, the Auditor General selects topics that are of concern to Canadians in her selection of the reports that she presents, and the Conservatives seem more interested in posturing for social media than going back to issues that matter to Canadians.

We did have consensus, at one point, to study reports like cybercrime and like professional services contracts. I thought, “This is good”, but the consensus was short-lived because we never went through with studying those reports. Instead, we've done over 25 studies of ArriveCAN and now nine studies on SDTC.

We really need to return to what our original mandate of public accounts is, which is studying the reports of the Auditor General, and not taking up time and second-guessing the Auditor General. We should be able to trust in her reports and not have the Auditor General feel compelled to write a letter asserting her independence. It proves that this committee, like some of Mr. Perkins' comments, has gone too far.

Some of the reports we could have been studying also include contaminated sites in the north, looking at the board of directors of Canada Lands Company or the greening of building materials in public infrastructure. These are all important reports that need to be studied, and I hope that we would return back to them before the year is ended so that we would actually have something to show. In fact, we have not even finished our draft reports, and they've been waiting since January of this year, like the GBA+ report.

I hope that we would be able to focus on what really matters to Canadians instead of going on witch hunts.

Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, Bloc, Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné]

Thank you, Ms. Yip.

Mr. Erskine‑Smith, you're next on the list. You now have the floor.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Thanks.

I understand, obviously, that the Conservatives brought this motion. They're going to support this motion and they have bought into the partisan procedural games of all this. That is what it is. That's the environment we live in.

I understand Nathalie from the Bloc was quite frustrated. Her questions seemed reasonable as far as it went with respect to Ms. Batool. It was a fair line of inquiry and she was frustrated with it. I think it's still premature, and it doesn't make a lot of sense to buy into this motion as a result of that frustration, but I at least understand it.

In terms of Nathalie and Blake, given they've not bought into the partisan games of all this, my comments are mostly to both of them.

I'm not opposed to the idea that, if we have a former Liberal minister and he's incredibly evasive—if he just stalls and if he refuses to answer questions and it rises to a level of impropriety—we report back to the House. I'm not opposed to that in principle, but that's not where we are at. What we saw here....

Look, I've reviewed the testimony of Mr. Bains at the industry committee, and Mr. Perkins already knew what the answer was going to be. It was “I don't recall”, in reference to the conversation about Ms. Verschuren. He mentioned that there were over 100 GIC appointments in his time, and he didn't recall how the conversation went in terms of Ms. Verschuren. He pointed to the fact that there is this independent process via the Privy Council, which gives him a short list. He knew what the answer was going to be, and the answer was, frankly, the same. Whether Mr. Perkins thinks it's a sufficient answer or not is beside the point.

The threshold here that we ought to be dealing with when it relates to a matter of privilege is whether a member's privilege was breached by virtue of the fact that, like with Mr. Firth, there was a complete and total refusal to engage such that he was called to the bar and forced to answer questions, and only then was he properly forthcoming with answers.

This is not the same kind of case. It's not even close. This is more akin to an abusive process in keeping with silly partisan games.

To Garnett's question, why not just send this to the House because it's going to get dismissed by the Speaker. It's going to get dismissed by the Speaker, so Blake, you might be sitting there thinking, “All right, that seems reasonable. Kick it over to the House and just have at it.” My challenge with that is what we already see happening in the House. We see privilege motions being abused to stall, delay and undermine the ordinary workings of the House.

If I knew for certain that what we would see here is Mr. Perkins standing up and speaking for 20 to 30 minutes on this motion in the House and the Speaker then taking it back for consideration.... What I know would happen is that he would turn it down because there's not a prima facie case. If I knew that this was limited to wasting 20 or 30 minutes of House time, I wouldn't be so opposed to the idea of kicking it to a vote right now.

However, why is it actually a problem right now? It's because what we are seeing in the House is not privilege motions that are being abused to have a 20- or 30-minute debate and then kicking it over to the Speaker. We are seeing repeated amendments and repeated duplicative interventions in order to simply waste House time.

I do not think we should take a matter that does not rise to a prima facie case and deem it to be that on the basis of partisanship, and then kick it over to the House so that Conservatives can waste additional House time and delay, stall and undermine the ordinary workings of the House.

My appeal, especially to my colleague from the NDP, but also to my colleague from the Bloc, is that Mr. Bains can come back. In fact, that was the basis of the opening to all this: The chair said Mr. Bains was “here for about an hour.” He said he was tight on time and there was an understanding that he might be called back. We heard the very same thing when he concluded and when he was excused.

I fundamentally don't understand why we would entertain a privilege motion, which should be a very high bar, when this is not even close to meeting that bar. This is going to be dismissed by the Speaker. However, to get there, we are going to waste endless hours and days, not only of our time here at this committee, obviously, as we are, but of valuable House time. That can't possibly be what we came to Ottawa to do.

My appeal is to have former minister Bains back and let him answer the questions. You have a number of other opportunities to ask questions.

Don't buy into this premature privilege motion. Let's not waste our time further on this, but let's not waste valuable House time on a motion that isn't even close to meeting the standard of a breach of privilege.