Public Accounts Committee on Oct. 9th, 2024

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Yes. Okay.

Go ahead, Mr. Perkins.

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

I must talk about how the Liberals and particularly Mr. Erskine-Smith, who is a newbie on this committee, haven't done their homework, haven't read the documents and haven't looked at the spreadsheet from the green slush fund of all the grants they made over the 20 years. I'm not surprised that he hasn't made the effort to do that. He's too busy interviewing the current finance minister, conflict carbon tax Carney, to do his homework on this committee. He's too busy promoting his podcast with the soon-to-be former Prime Minister and trying to rescue his career than doing his parliamentary work on this committee, which is to actually read documents, other than the PMO's speaking points he is given, that deal with the issue of the corruption and the $400 million of stolen money by Liberal appointees.

I thought Mr. Erskine-Smith had more integrity than that, than to not be worried about $400 million stolen from taxpayers.

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

This is absolute bullshit.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Whoa—

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

Come on. My integrity...? He can fuck right off.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

All right.

Mr. Perkins, first I'm going to ask you to get back on topic.

Mr. Erskine-Smith, I understand your irritation. First of all, your language, I am going to ask you to retract your language.

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

I'll retract when he retracts. He impugned my integrity. It's deeply unparliamentary.

We can both retract, Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Mr. Erskine-Smith, I'm talking about your curse words, not what you actually said.

We all have ample time to speak today. We can all see that when we interrupt a member, everyone gets wound up. Let's just let everyone have their time, and you're welcome to respond to it in your time. I believe that if we show each other the courtesy.... While we might not always like what's being said by other members, I think the thing we ought to do is just listen and get through this in a civilized manner.

Mr. Erskine-Smith, I'm not going to press it with you, but I will ask you to use parliamentary language and not curse in a committee setting.

Mr. Perkins, you have the floor again. Please stay on topic.

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

I will stay on topic.

Witness testimony, such as Annette Verschuren's, said—which obviously MP Erskine-Smith hasn't read—that she “never applied”—she said it three times—for a single job in her life, including this job. Conveniently, afterwards she filled out the application after the minister called her twice to ask her to do the job, after former minister Bains refused to answer the question on even those phone calls or the content. Perhaps MP Erskine-Smith could do some of that reading.

Perhaps he could also do some reading about Andrée-Lise Méthot, whom former Liberal minister Bains, overseeing the green slush fund, appointed in 2016 to the board, whose companies got more than $100 million of green slush fund money while she was on the board.

Perhaps Mr. Erskine-Smith could read the testimony of previous witnesses, including the chair of the fund, who admitted that when Andrée-Lise Méthot was moved by the Liberals to the Infrastructure Bank board for a new appointment, the first thing she did was approve $170 million for the slush fund chair's company, NRStor, but that would require a little research. It would require research to find out that, in 2023, the natural resources department gave Ms. Verschuren's company $50 million. That's after the staff were employed at SDTC to find her company more money, since her company was rejected, finally, for SDTC money because of conflicts.

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

I have a point of order.

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

These are the testimonies that the minister refused to answer.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Mr. Perkins, I have a point of order from Mr. Drouin.

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

I just want you to be fair when you're applying the rules. I didn't raise a point of order on this, but Mr. Perkins evaded the current motion on the floor. You allowed him to speak, so I'm expecting that you will not interrupt me when I talk about the same issues that Mr. Perkins is talking about. I just want the chair to apply the same rules to everyone. I'm taking notice, and I'm recording what he's.... We have blues, and I'll repeat them. If I find that you're not being fair, I will raise a—

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

That's fine, but again, it needs to have relevance, which I urge Mr. Perkins to get back to, no repetition and no reading.

Mr. Perkins, you have the floor.

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

The other thing, of course, is that these questions were asked of former minister Bains, the architect of the Liberal green slush fund. He refused to answer. He gave the same answer to every question. Regardless of what the question was, the answer was not relevant. That's what prompted the question of privilege. When we asked him about the issue of the appointment process for Ms. Verschuren, all he could say was that he made appointments and didn't remember. These things are why we're here talking about the privilege motion I moved. While it's true that witnesses can give answers to questions that members may disagree with, they have to be relevant to the question. He didn't give one single relevant answer to any of the opposition members' questions.

Mr. Erskine-Smith knows that, because he was here at the committee. He heard it. Now, maybe he had a challenge understanding when the member asked whether he'd talked to Annette Verschuren in a phone call about the appointment. He said it was an application process, a fair and open process. I guess he doesn't understand how to make the distinction between yes and no, I spoke with her or I didn't, versus saying some automaton, hologram-type answer he was preprogrammed to say. It's one line all the time.

I understand the Liberals are upset that every time we have a meeting—except with former minister Bains—we uncover and reveal more Liberal corruption. All the other witnesses have been here answering the questions and revealing shocking revelations about these Liberal appointees, who were hand-picked by the Prime Minister and put in by Navdeep Bains. Somebody told him to do it, because it's very clear he didn't know what to do. He was just told something. All he seems to do is repeat things other people tell him to say. We're trying to get to the bottom of that.

It's incredible that the privilege breach we saw yesterday with the former architect of the Liberal green slush fund, Navdeep Bains, was not seen by Liberal members as something to be troubled by. They're not troubled by the theft of $400 million. They're not troubled by the fact that it only represents half of what the Auditor General had available to look at. The Liberal members, including MP Erskine-Smith, have never once acknowledged the fact that, out of the $856 million in the audit period the Auditor General looked at, only half of the conflicts of interest were revealed, because she only looked at half the transactions. Shockingly, 82% were there.

Mr. Erskine-Smith would have us believe that an ADM sitting at every meeting never reported anything to Minister Bains. About 82% of the time, these Liberal appointees were voting on money for themselves. Never once would a senior bureaucrat have reported that up to Minister Bains or Minister Champagne, who was also silent on this for 40 months and never said anything until it was public.

These are the issues of privilege that former minister Bains breached. That's why we're here, and that's why the motion is on the table.

I will leave it at that for now, Mr. Chair. I'm sure we'll have great insight from the Liberal members, and perhaps an explanation from Mr. Erskine-Smith about his language.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Erskine-Smith is next.

You have the floor.

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

Rick, if you impugn someone's integrity, you deserve every language that comes your way. There's nothing more important than a member's integrity, and you have no business impugning mine.

What are you doing right now, Rick? You have brought a privilege motion, an incredibly high bar, and on what basis? Before Mr. Bains was even finished his testimony, you brought a privilege motion.

We're happy to have him back to answer clear questions. Look, I'm not even disputing.... You can say that you didn't like all of his answers, that he wasn't as forthcoming as you wanted him to be. However, you can't say that “I don't recall” isn't an answer. On the one hand, you're saying that he wasn't answering your questions, and on the other hand, you're saying that it's insufficient for him to say “I don't recall”. Unless you're accusing him of deliberately misleading you and members at the committee, unless that's the accusation, which I haven't heard, then your privilege has not been breached.

I want to run through just how high of a standard we are talking about here. I would love at some point—and I'll come back to this—for the clerk and analyst to clarify. I mean, when I run through the rights of members around free speech and the privileges of members, I see that a breach of privilege occurs when there's “Any disregard of or attack on the rights, powers and immunities of the House and its Members, either by an outside person or body, or by a Member of the House”. That's what a breach of privilege is, and “all breaches of privilege are contempts of the House”. A breach of privilege is always contempt, and I'm going to give you a few examples.

There is deliberately misleading testimony. In 2003, the former privacy commissioner was found in contempt of the House for providing deliberately misleading testimony during hearings of the OGGO standing committee. Is deliberately misleading testimony your accusation? I haven't heard it. If you're going to make an accusation of breach of privilege, make sure it's consistent with what a breach of privilege actually is.

In 2008, deputy RCMP commissioner Barbara George was found in contempt of the House for providing misleading testimony during the Standing Committee on Public Accounts' hearings on allegations of mishandling of the RCMP's pension and insurance plans.

We also know that impeding access to the House is a breach of our privilege. Denial of access and significant delays experienced by members of the House constitute contempts of the House. That's nowhere near where we are at the moment.

Another is refusal to attend in the face of a summons. In 2013, the RCMP failed to allow a witness to appear before a Senate committee that was investigating harassment in the RCMP. That was found to be a breach of privilege, and rightly so. It was refusing or failing to attend, or in that case, impeding the ability of a witness to attend.

I could run down a longer list. The United Kingdom, on parliamentary privilege, has a list of contempts here:

assaulting, threatening, obstructing or intimidating a Member or officer of the House in the discharge of their duties;

deliberately attempting to mislead the House or a committee—

I mentioned this. It continues:

deliberately publishing a false or misleading report of the proceedings of the House....

removing, without authority, papers belonging to the House;

falsifying or altering any papers belonging to the House;

deliberately altering, suppressing, concealing—

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

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair.

This member who's speaking right now just had a full-on meltdown where he used grossly and obviously unparliamentary language. He was asked by you to withdraw those comments. He refused to withdraw those comments.

Frequently, in the House, when you have even much more minor or marginal cases, members are required to withdraw, based on the authority of the chair. This member has just shown grotesque, flagrant disregard for the rules of the House, literally dropping an F-bomb and saying that it was deserved and that he won't apologize.

I believe it is within your authority to tell him that he cannot continue to speak, on the basis of his refusal to withdraw unparliamentary language. Obviously, that's within your discretion, but this is not an ambiguous case. This is a Liberal who is desperate, having meltdowns on the microphone and using gross, foul language in unparliamentary ways.

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

How about interrupting someone who impugns my integrity, Garnett? Get out of here.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Mr. Erskine-Smith—

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

I'm not going to get out of here. I know the rules, and you should follow them.

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

I didn't mention anything about bathtubs, buddy.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Mr. Erskine-Smith, Mr. Perkins was under a barrage yesterday in a manner that he thought was unfair. I would ask you to withdraw—

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

Mr. Chair, on that same point of order....

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

It's a request. I'm trying to keep things moving along here.