Evidence of meeting #144 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 point.
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Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Williamson
—because sometimes these come together, and sometimes they don't.
Ms. Khalid, you had a point of order you wanted to raise.
Liberal
Iqra Khalid Liberal Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON
Actually, Chair, I see that Mr. Genuis has one, so I'm willing to yield the floor, as long as it comes back to me at some point.
Conservative
Garnett Genuis Conservative Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB
As a matter of order, where are we procedurally?
Mr. Desjarlais has sought unanimous consent on something. Fundamentally, it seems like there isn't unanimous consent. Can we see if there's unanimous consent? If there's not unanimous consent, then we're debating the motion.
I suspect that the Liberals are trying to use this moment of procedural ambiguity to simply delay. If they want to filibuster, they can filibuster, but they have to do the hard work of filibustering. They're either agreeing to this UC motion or they have to do the hard work of filibustering. It's got to be one or the other, and I think that's how we should proceed.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Williamson
Ms. Khalid, the last point of order is to you. I will then call the question.
Mr. Genuis said it. We are seeking UC. We're in that process right now.
Ms. Khalid, go ahead on your point of order.
Liberal
Iqra Khalid Liberal Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON
Thank you, Chair.
Speaking to that UC, my colleagues have raised very important questions as to the language that is being proposed here. I want to reassure Mr. Desjarlais that none of us are here with any nefarious thoughts or intentions. We are here to do the work of this committee, and the language of the motion presupposes the work we're trying to do.
I take exception to being accused of trying to hold things up, when I know what is happening in the House of Commons and I know what is happening on the floor.
Liberal
Conservative
Rick Perkins Conservative South Shore—St. Margarets, NS
There's no unanimous consent. Let's move on.
Conservative
Liberal
Iqra Khalid Liberal Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON
—but I do want to find a way forward.
We're looking at this motion here. If there is goodwill—
Conservative
Rick Perkins Conservative South Shore—St. Margarets, NS
I have a point of order, Mr. Chair. There is no unanimous consent, so it's on the amendment, and she has to speak to the amendment.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Williamson
Yes, I am getting that sense from both sides. There's no unanimous consent.
Mr. Desjarlais, the floor is yours again, to either debate Mr. Perkins' motion or to make amendments to it.
I have you on the list already, Ms. Khalid.
NDP
Liberal
Iqra Khalid Liberal Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON
Thanks very much, Chair.
As I was saying before, the language of the replacement motion that Mr. Desjarlais proposed—which was defeated, obviously—didn't address the challenges and issues that our committee members raised today. I think better language would be to give UC to withdraw this privilege motion completely and replace it with another motion that summons the witness in question within 14 days. Then, if members don't get their questions answered, we can decide the next steps.
I think that is the most reasonable proposition we can make. It would get all members' wishes and intentions met. Failing that, what is before us right now is a fishing expedition, or a witch hunt on a private citizen, which we've seen again and again.
Liberal
Iqra Khalid Liberal Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON
I have never said that before, Mr. Perkins.
This does not help us get to the bottom of what we're trying to do.
Absolutely, we have concerns about what happened at SDTC. Absolutely, we have concerns about trying to recover the monies that were misspent. Absolutely, the minister took action to try to get to where we need to be. Absolutely, our committee has a role to play in all of this. Is that role bringing a privilege motion before the House or this committee? It absolutely is not. That is partisanship to the nth degree and does not solve anything for anyone.
I would be more than willing to have the Conservatives withdraw their motion. I would be the first to propose a motion to bring in the witness again within 14 days, and then decide where we go from there.
As Mr. Drouin said, no committee member is precluded from writing to a witness when questions are not answered or when they feel questions have not been answered. Mr. Chair, I've heard you ask this many times of many witnesses: “If questions are not answered, can we write questions to you and then have you give us a written answer?”
Throughout this whole evening, as we've gone through this process, we discovered this privilege motion was drafted before the witness was able to answer all of the questions. The witness was not given the opportunity to answer all of the questions. The questions had not been posed to the witness. Mr. Chair, I know you usually do this. I know how difficult a meeting today has been, but the witness was not asked to respond to written questions.
What we've seen here is a consistent, deliberate approach—oh, my dad's calling—to delay. It's what's happening in the House of Commons, which is already stalled and delayed. Let's not do that in this committee, Mr. Chair. We have such important work to do here. This is not it. There are so many procedural ways around this.
I understand and appreciate that members may think their pretentious motions are the solution and they are the Messiah for how things are going to get resolved. They absolutely are not. Mr. Chair, at your discretion, you have the ability to get the answers these members need, whether it's bringing back the witness or sending questions in writing to the witness to ask for those answers. I'm not sure why we went from zero to 100 within the span of two or three minutes of the witness trying to answer questions and being consistently cut off.
Mr. Chair, at your discretion, I would propose, in quite a friendly manner, that we suspend for the evening, have cool showers, have discussions with each other and figure out the way forward.
That includes you, Chair, because I think it is your discretion to be able to get to the answers that committee members are looking for. This is not the way that we get answers. This is absolutely not the way.
If members wanted to submit in writing whatever questions they have that they feel have not been answered, they can tell you, Chair, and through the clerk, we can send those questions off to the witness, as we have done numerous times in the past.
I will park my comments there, Chair. I believe Mr. Drouin is on the list as well, but I will leave my two cents here for you, Chair.
Thank you.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Williamson
I have a few members on the list.
Ms. Bradford, we've kind of moved things around. You were on the list some time ago. Would you like to speak to this, or should I go over to Mr. Erskine-Smith?
Liberal
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Williamson
Mr. Erskine-Smith, you have the floor, and then I have Mr. Drouin.
Liberal
Nathaniel Erskine-Smith Liberal Beaches—East York, ON
Thanks very much.
It is not at all apparent to me, given the testimony we heard and the high threshold for a breach of privilege and the weaponization of process we currently see in the House, why the compromise isn't to invite Mr. Bains back with a summons to appear for an additional two hours and to then reconsider the question of privilege, which I'm more than happy to do.
I would note that this is important, because we just went through this at the committee last week, when Mr. Ouimet was at the committee. Mr. Perkins was asking questions and said:
...in your statement to the Ethics Commissioner and in other board director testimony before this committee, we found that there was a process, I think, when you were about to consider an investment. The process was this. A few weeks beforehand, board members would get a list of investments that were being considered. Board members would let the—
—and he went on:
Were you, the board members, recusing yourselves or abstaining 82% of the time?
Mr. Ouimet said:
...allegations of conflict of interest were made against me last year. A detailed and complex investigation was completed by the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner. All these issues of administrative misconduct and recusals—
He was cut off at this point, and Mr. Perkins said:
Sorry, I have limited time, Mr. Ouimet.
That was not my question, Mr. Ouimet. I would appreciate that you stick to answering the question out of respect for members of Parliament.
My point is that based on that interaction, could we have had a privilege motion last week on that basis? Is this the threshold we are setting for breach of privilege motions at committee and in Parliament?
It is an absurdity to me. I appreciate the desire to find some consensus, but when people are actively acting in bad faith for partisan ends, you're not going to find unanimous consent on issues like this.
The reasonable path here is that I think we can find unanimous consent on asking Mr. Bains to come back and on summoning him back within 14 days for two hours. People can have at it and ask as many questions as they like. We can revisit a privilege motion if there is high-handed conduct by the witness in saying, “I'm refusing to answer questions,” and completely sidestep accountability. So be it; revisit it, but we are nowhere close to that after less than an hour of testimony, given the number of interruptions and interventions.
It is incredibly frustrating, especially given the weaponization of process in the House right now, that we can't find a path to simply ask Mr. Bains to come back and then reconsider this as a committee in a reasonable manner.
