Public Accounts Committee on Oct. 9th, 2024

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

Yes, it is for clause-by-clause.

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

It is for clause-by-clause.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

—and do participate.

Mr. Genuis, you have the floor, please.

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

Chair, again, respectfully to members, there are rules that are well established. I think the House of Commons does provide training opportunities for members who are interested in digging further into them.

Mr. Nater dealt very well with the one misunderstanding that's at the table. The other issue is that when a question of privilege is raised at committee, it is not for the chair to rule that, yes, privilege was broken. It's for the chair to determine whether or not it's a matter touching on privilege. It's for the committee itself to determine through a privilege motion in the same way that, in the House, when a question is raised, the Speaker does not determine whether there's been a violation of privilege. The Speaker determines whether there is a prima facie case that there's been a violation of privilege, at which point there is a privilege motion that's made.

Members seem to be surprised that it is a considered a matter of privilege when witnesses don't answer questions. There is a massive amount of jurisprudence verifying this. The Winnipeg labs document issue began when a witness refused to answer a question. The issues with Mr. Firth were privilege relating to a failure to answer questions. There was an issue with Minh Doan, where a question of privilege was raised regarding his failure to answer a question. The chair ruled that it was touching on a matter of privilege, although the committee voted against proceeding with the motion.

There are mounds of jurisprudence on this.

I'm not trying to be snarky at all. There's training available. There are documents established. Members can read the books. They can avail themselves of those training opportunities. The rules—

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

Mr. Chair, with all due respect, can you refer to the clerk with respect to an adult conversation as opposed to kid conversation?

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you, Mr. Drouin.

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

I'm not making this up.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Mr. Drouin, your comments reflect more on you than on this committee or the chair. You're welcome to conduct yourself.... You have a right to be here. I'm going to continue the debate now.

Mr. Brock, you have the floor, please.

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

I relinquish my time. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Mr. Cooper, you have the floor.

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

I relinquish my time.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Mr. Drouin, you have the floor, please.

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

All of these questions were asked at the previous committee four or five months ago.

I can read it into the record, but I won't, for your own sake, Mr. Perkins, because it would make you look...you know, whatever.

The quality of answers doesn't pertain to a question of privilege, and that's my issue. They're trying to fish for something, and they have been trying.... The pattern of the Conservative Party is not about finding the truth. It's about stalling what is happening in the House, and we can see it. There's already a question of privilege in the House right now, and there's another one on the docket.

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

This will be a third.

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

On this side of the House, unlike Mr. Brock, who is a lawyer and would be disbarred from the Law Society of Ontario if he spoke publicly like this, because he simply doesn't.... It questions what kind of Crown attorneys we have in Ontario when this man was able to serve, because he simply does not understand the separation of justice, the executive and Parliament. Parliament has its duty; the executive has its duty, and justice has its duty.

If Canadians are watching, the RCMP has all of the powers in the world to obtain the documents and, in fact, the commissioner of the RCMP has written, the Auditor General has written—

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Relevance....

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

Well, relevancy is relevancy, Mr. Chair, and I will talk about relevancy.

They're questioning someone who has already been a witness in front of another committee, and, by God, they didn't question what was happening. He gave the same answers that he gave at the previous committee. They didn't question his relevancy, and they didn't mention a question of privilege, but, of course, now they are doing that because they want to go into an election.

Mr. Chair, I just have a hard time understanding—

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

How did he know?

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

—when the other side is saying that they want to get to the bottom of this, how we can treat them seriously.

What they want is to ruin the reputation of someone who served Canada, someone who served his department well. They have heard over and over again that the minister, the former minister and the other ministers have nothing to do with SDTC.

As I wondered the first time I spoke on the committee, when is the committee going to stop with these never-ending investigations? I'm starting to wonder whether we are incredibly incompetent, because we've been discussing this for more than 10 meetings, if I count the other committees that have looked into this matter. There are people who have already given statements to the committee. This makes no sense. We need to be consistent.

Before partisanship reared its head in the committee's work and before the Conservatives had some wind in their sails, this committee always worked well together. Even though I wasn't on the committee, I followed its work. I was on the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates for six years, and we, too, had studies and issues we wanted the Office of the Auditor General to look into.

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

Chair, I have a point of order.

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

Again, the opposition members are raising concerns because they don't agree with the answers they got from a witness. They didn't hear what they wanted to hear. They gave their opinion repeatedly and even wrote editorials on Mr. Bains.

I don't know how things worked under the Conservative government, but I do know that Conservative ministers appointed members of certain boards and applied some pressure in that regard. However, that's not how we work on this side of the House. A number of witnesses have said multiple times that ministers did not apply any pressure and had absolutely nothing to do with the situation. We respect the decisions made by SDTC, even though there were violations. We acknowledge that, but it's time to stop with the witch hunts.

That's the problem, though. The Conservative members want a witch hunt at any cost. We understand that. They raised a question of privilege to try to stop what's going on in the House. It's funny since it happened right after Ms. Khalid proposed a very good motion to make clear that the committee respected the independence of the Office of the Auditor General in conducting its work. That's quite the coincidence. I imagine that the Conservatives don't respect the independence of the Office of the Auditor General when they aren't happy with its work. It's obvious that they aren't happy with the office's work.

Don't worry, Mr. Perkins, I'm coming back to the matter before us, but it's all connected. The committee has been going around in circles for months. Nothing Mr. Perkins, Mr. Nater, Mr. Cooper, Mr. Brock or Mr. Genuis have brought to the committee's attention in the past three months has been a big revelation.

Now members are asking questions about which witness consulted which witness. Witnesses who appeared before the committee under oath and told the truth have already been questioned, and now members are also accusing Mr. Bains of being dishonest because he was a Liberal minister. Members need to show some respect on this committee, Mr. Chair.

If they really want to know what happened, they need to respect all the reports that have been released and all the evidence the committee has received. I am calling on the members of the official opposition to ask sensible questions because their performance right now isn't at all impressive.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you.

Ms. Khalid, you have the floor, please.

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

Thank you very much, Chair, and just to start, if it's okay with you, I would like some clarification from the clerk as to what time she received the motion of privilege put forward by Mr. Perkins, and then I have comments to add to that.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Well....

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

I would like the clerk to respond to that, Chair, because she's the one who—