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.
A video is available from Parliament.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Williamson
Order, please. An honourable member has the floor right now.
Mr. Drouin, you may continue.
Liberal
Francis Drouin Liberal Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
I don't know what was put in the coffee, but it makes you laugh.
I would have agreed with the Conservatives' strategy. The problem is that they went from zero to 100 miles an hour right off the bat. We didn't even get a chance to finish questioning the witness. We had to let him go. My colleague put forward a motion that I thought was honourable. Right after that, Mr. Perkins moved his motion, which is actually a question of privilege. A question of privilege is serious. This is an abuse of parliamentary procedure.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Williamson
Mr. Drouin, you are repeating yourself. There are other colleagues who are on the list. Perhaps we could turn to them.
Liberal
Francis Drouin Liberal Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
Mr. Chair, I'm not going to be in this place for a long time. I like to hear myself talk once in a while, so I'm sure—
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Williamson
You have the right to do that as long as you just stay on the motion.
Liberal
Francis Drouin Liberal Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
I can see that Mr. Nater, Mr. Perkins, and especially Mr. Cooper and Mr. Stewart are appreciating my comments as they are laughing on the other side.
Mr. Chair, I said it in English and I said it in French, so I will conclude. All I want to say is that I would have preferred to let Mr. Bains finish his testimony. On our side, we were open to the idea of inviting him back. A number of people had other questions to ask him. Now, we know in advance that Mr. Bains did not answer the questions. That's kind of what we see as the problem. We have to finish our investigation. Afterwards, we can determine who among the witnesses may not have told the truth or may have given evasive answers to the committee.
Thank you.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Williamson
Thank you very much.
Mr. Erskine-Smith, you have the floor again, followed by Ms. Khalid.
Liberal
Nathaniel Erskine-Smith Liberal Beaches—East York, ON
I've mentioned this a few times. I want to speak to the threshold for questions of privilege and related questions of reporting to the House.
Chair, you mentioned the instance of Mr. Firth as a precedent, which seems incredibly offside to me. I want to go through that instance, if that is to be the precedent that we're setting here and holding ourselves to, because it's wildly different, and people should know.
You'll know that OGGO, the government operations committee, did report to the House in relation to Mr. Firth. This is the level of evasion that we saw from that witness.
On Monday, October 17, the committee agreed to undertake a study of the ArriveCAN application. In the course of this study, the committee chose to invite Kristian Firth and Darren Anthony to appear before it. The committee reported the following to the House:
On November 2, 2023, and February 9, 2024, subpoenas from the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates were issued to the owners of GC Strategies, Kristian Firth and Darren Anthony. The latter refused to testify before the committee.
(ii) The Auditor General revealed that GC Strategies might have received nearly 20 million dollars in government contracts for the ArriveCAN application.
I'll skip ahead a little bit:
According to Bosc and Gagnon, “If a witness declines an invitation, the committee may issue him a subpoena by adopting a motion to this effect. If the witness still refuses to appear, the committee may refer the matter to the House, which may then order the witness to appear. If the witness disobeys the order, he or she could be found in contempt.”
In order to see the witnesses in committee to testify, the committee recommended the following:
...an order of the House do issue requiring Kristian Firth and Darren Anthony each to appear before the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates...with such accessibility accommodations the witnesses may request and the chair agrees to arrange.
If the chair of the committee informs the Speaker and Sergeant-at-Arms in writing that one or both have failed to appear as ordered after those 21 days:
(a) the Sergeant-at-Arms shall take Kristian Firth, Darren Anthony or both of them, as the case may be, into his custody for the purposes of enforcing their attendance before the committee at dates and times determined by the chair of the committee, for which the Speaker shall issue his warrant accordingly;
(b) the Sergeant-at-Arms shall discharge from his custody a witness taken into his custody, pursuant to paragraph (a)....
The point of going through this is that we have a situation here that is more akin to Mr. Ouimet's than Mr. Firth's: We have a situation of a witness who attended but didn't answer questions to the satisfaction of Mr. Perkins or of my colleagues from the Bloc and the NDP.
I don't know if Garnett wants to check his dictionary once or twice again, but if the synonym is “fabricate” and “to lie”, then yes, the language of “prevaricate” is a problem, because this isn't just clever. There are any number of instances in which I see politicians being asked questions and then pivoting. They move to acknowledging the question. They move to answering it in a different way, in an unsatisfactory way for many of us who might be asking the question.
That is very different from a refusal to attend. Mr. Bains attended of his own volition. We asked; he attended. My understanding from the chair is that he was willing to attend again. Instead, our response, heavy-handed as it is, is to suggest that he has breached a member's privilege.
I'll get back on the list to run down a number of examples of breaches of privilege, not only in Canada but in the U.K., and the severity of this is significant. We should not be watering this down. This isn't “I didn't like the answers, and I'm going to throw a tantrum about it and then point to privilege.” That's not what privilege is about.
Honestly, I don't love speaking until 9:30 or 9:50 at night on this and I don't love when witnesses don't give us the answers that we want. We should go after them as we deem fit. I've been known to do that too. I find that in committee is the one time I get to act like a lawyer again and cross-examine, but that's wildly different—wildly different—from suggesting that one's privilege has been breached and elevating it to that standard, akin to Mr. Firth refusing, absolutely refusing, to testify in the face of a proper summons, let alone an invitation. We didn't have to summons Mr. Bains. He attended on an invitation.
I'm going to get back on the list, Chair, and I'm going to run down a lengthy list of examples of privilege being properly breached so that members can understand the significant threshold that this reaches, and we are nowhere near that threshold.
Please put me back on the list.
Conservative
Liberal
Iqra Khalid Liberal Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON
Thank you very much, Chair.
Listening to all of my colleagues from all sides of the aisle today on this motion has really helped me to understand how procedure can be used to stop the important work that this committee needs to continue to do. As we go through this motion of privilege, I know I said this before and I apologize for repeating myself, but I think that building on that point—
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
On a point of order, Chair, Ms. Khalid herself is mentioning that she's repeating herself, so it goes to repetition.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Williamson
It is a pretty big giveaway, Ms. Khalid, when you self-confess the infraction. If you could maybe get—
Liberal
Iqra Khalid Liberal Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON
I love it when a man tells me what I can or cannot say. It's awesome. Thank you so much.
Conservative
Conservative
Garnett Genuis Conservative Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB
On a point of order, Chair, there is a convention around respect for chairs in committee.
Ms. Khalid is trying to accuse you of making some kind of gender-based limitation to her ability to speak. The rules are the rules. You're the chair. Frankly, she diminishes the many instances in our world of real sexism when she throws out these casual accusations.
In any event, it's a violation of the rules to treat the chair with such disrespect.
Conservative
Liberal
Francis Drouin Liberal Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
When somebody says, “I'm going to repeat myself” but doesn't necessarily repeat themselves, is there an issue? We haven't heard what Ms. Khalid was going to say. There was an interruption right away.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Williamson
Thank you, Mr. Drouin, but I think it was fair to say where things were going.
Ms. Khalid, you have the floor, please.
Liberal
Iqra Khalid Liberal Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON
As I was saying before I was interrupted and then mansplained to, I was going to start with a point that I was going to make to build on that point—
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Williamson
Ms. Khalid, in all seriousness, would you prefer that the clerk read you the Standing Orders?
Conservative
Liberal
Iqra Khalid Liberal Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON
I'm not sure what Standing Order you're referring to, Chair, so I would love for the clerk to read me the Standing Orders.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Williamson
About repetition, you imply that I am somehow explaining myself when it's in the Standing Orders. We all follow the same rules here.
Ms. Khalid, you have—
Liberal