Public Accounts Committee on Nov. 4th, 2024

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

I just want to say that having a CPA is no easy feat, so I appreciate all the expertise you bring to the Office of the Auditor General. Thank you for your contributions.

Now, I just want to go back to Mr. Rahme, if that's okay. We're talking about the whole sector of clean technology and the impact that freezing of funds has had on that sector. Can you talk to us a bit about what the industry and the sector is saying with respect to having frozen funding for the past year?

[Ziyad Rahme]

Mr. Chair, I know that this is in the current economic environment. Liquidity has certainly been an issue for companies, small and medium-sized enterprises operating in the innovation space, not just in the clean-tech sector but across the board. Certainly, the freezing of our funding has had an impact on companies who have existing project funding agreements and who have met all the eligibility criteria. In some cases they've had to slow down their work or take other actions. We've heard a lot from companies that aren't able to access this funding, as they would be new applicants, to help them launch their new developments as well. Again, whether it's been a slowdown, etc....

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

Thank you for that.

Ms. Hogan, can you help us understand and clarify why the independence of your office is so important to how you function with Parliament, with government and in fulfilling your role as the Auditor General as well?

[Karen Hogan]

I think having an independent Office of the Auditor General is a cornerstone to a good democratic system. You know that you can rely on the information I provide as being free of influence and being based on fact. That also requires us to have clear access to information so that we can provide factually based information to support Parliament in holding the government to account.

As soon as you impede that, potentially, it either reduces the importance of our organization or impedes our ability to continue to provide fact-based information to Parliament.

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

Do you think your office's independence is right now being impeded by the activities of Parliament, especially in relation to this production order in the House?

[Karen Hogan]

As I've said, the dispute that's going on between Parliament and the government is one for the government to resolve. I respect the will of Parliament, and I am trying to comply within the parameters of my act, which means that I have to allow the owner of the information to tell me how I should treat it before I can hand it over.

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

Thank you very much for being here today. I appreciate that.

Thanks, Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you, and again, I apologize, Ms. Khalid.

I think that concludes everyone.

Thank you, Ms. Hogan, and your officials from the Office of the Auditor General, for being here today.

Thank you, Mr. Rahme, for coming in today as well. I know it was under some difficult circumstances, so I do appreciate your making time for us.

Several bits of information have been requested.

You can provide additional information to the clerk. You can also refer to the clerk should you have any questions.

I'm now going to suspend for two minutes, but before I do that, I'll just say a note. There's a bit of a new system here in the Commons with requesting time. I know that it's quite lengthy on the notice. I'm hoping it's not going to take as long as I have, but I suppose we'll find that out upon our return.

I'll suspend for two minutes to allow our witnesses to exit, and then come back right away.

This meeting is suspended.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

All right, colleagues. Let's bring this meeting back to order.

I'm going to pick up the motion that we had left on Halloween eve last week. There was a request by a member to delay the discussion.

Mr. Perkins, I want to hear from you and then I want to hear from Madame Sinclair-Desgagné. Then we will see where we are.

Do you want to be on the speaker's list?

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

Yes, please.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Certainly.

Mr. Perkins, yes, go ahead.

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

I'll make this uncharacteristically quick, since we know we want to get to question period in House.

Just as a reminder, we had some mysterious testimony by former Liberal minister Bains about a number of issues, which I personally felt we didn't get the answers to. There were a lot of implications for the management team and the former president, Leah Lawrence, in terms of her responsibilities in this and different testimony between her and what former minister Bains said.

I'm suggesting that we call Ms. Lawrence before this committee as part of the ongoing study of the Auditor General's report.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you, Mr. Perkins.

That was brief. It's almost unheard of.

Ms. Sinclair‑Desgagné has the floor to speak to her amendment to the motion.

[Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné, Bloc, Terrebonne, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

In light of what the committee has heard from the various witnesses, I'd like to propose the names of two highly relevant people, Zoë Kolbuc and Doug McConnachie. I think they would be great witnesses to hear from at this point in our study.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you very much.

I am going to suspend at 2:00, regardless of where we are, for question period.

Mr. Drouin, I saw Ms. Khalid first, but we'll go over to you.

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

Mr. Chair, based on what Madame Sinclair-Desgagné has presented and what Mr. Perkins has presented, can we zoom out?

Can you inform me on where we are at with the original motion, the witnesses we have invited and how many meetings we have left? That will inform our side on how we we shall proceed.

Can you inform the committee? That's that's all I'm looking for.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

I might need the clerk's assistance. I'm going to send out a schedule right after this meeting, depending on what happens with the motion today.

There are between six and eight witnesses remaining. The clerk will double-check that.

What I'm preparing for, Mr. Drouin, is really the high likelihood.... Hold on for one second: I'm going to keep this somewhat vague because I don't want to.... The Auditor General is expected to table a new round of audits in the fall before Christmas. The Auditor General doesn't generally drop those right before Christmas, so I'm expecting those sooner rather than later, at which point the committee is going to look at those reports and likely prioritize some of them.

That's not as precise as I would like because I think the Auditor General needs to announce when the tabling is going to happen.

The motion also listed a number of witnesses. I'm trying to prioritize those whom I think are of most interest. Some we might get to and some we might not.

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

Are we respecting...? I'm not sure if it's the way you function in here, Mr. Chair, but normally we submit lists of witnesses, the opposition submits lists of witnesses and we make sure that both sides are getting their fair share, understanding that they're.... That's why I'm not sure if we are yet supportive of this particular motion.

It's just a time issue. If the Auditor General is going to present some new new reports and the committee will decide to move forward on them, then obviously we just want to make sure that we get through the list first before accepting new witnesses, because now it's just maybe too much.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

That's a good question.

The motions jump the subcommittee process where we do have that rule in place of witnesses being balanced.

If this is something you would like to see here, I would encourage and suggest to the committee that, in the willingness not to belabour this and not to create a situation where you feel there are names that you would like to present but haven't, if you signal that you'd like to add two witnesses to be determined, we would accept that. That's my recommendation.

In the normal course of matters, the subcommittee looks at things. I do look for witnesses from all parties.

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

I don't know if the opposition will agree, but maybe we can park the particular motion they've just presented until we see the work plan. They can reintroduce the motion whenever they want, but at that time, we'll be able....

We just want to make an informed decision on what's coming ahead. I'm just wondering.

I mean no offence, but this isn't urgent. I want to make sure that the witnesses who were proposed a few months ago are going to be invited.

If we can park that for now, until you come up with the work plan that you'll submit to us, we can make a better decision.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

I'm going to have to look to the committee for direction on that.

At this point, I'm going to step back and the members are going to debate this because I'm getting a signal, Mr. Drouin, from one opposition member that this is not something he wishes to pursue. At this point, I'm going to remove myself from the debate. I tried to answer your questions as best as I could.

Ms. Khalid, you have the floor and then I'll look to others for discussion.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Respectfully, I really take what Mr. Drouin has outlined. I think it's really important for us to be able to make informed decisions. Also, I know that this is not the first time that I have made requests to at least see what the work plan is. What are we looking to do here? Where are we going?

With the amount of time you had scheduled for the committee, I was under the impression today that we were going to walk in and have drafting instructions. I thought it would be amazing that we would actually get somewhere with what we're doing.

Also, I just want to highlight that we don't always know who is coming to the committee. Yes, we've all had opportunities to present the witnesses we have. Right now, I don't know how many witnesses are left on that list. It would be really helpful for me, as well as all of our colleagues at this table, to understand who is left, what our work plan looks like, what that schedule looks like, how long we going to continue this and what the end game is here.

I was just looking at all the meetings that we've had so far. We've had 14 meetings on this. Based on my nine years in Parliament, the average time is usually about four to six meetings per study, and we're hitting our 14th meeting.

We've seen the same witnesses coming in again and again at different committees, depending on the angle that the opposition wants to take, which is absolutely fine. This is an important issue. I'm happy to discuss it, and I'm happy to move forward with it. However, I feel right now that we're just going round and round in circles without really getting to where it is that the committee as a whole wants to get to.

We've had 31 witnesses so far. I don't know what the total number of witnesses on that list is. I don't know how many are remaining. Out of those 31 witnesses, we've heard from SDTC four times. We've heard from the Office of the Auditor General three times. We've heard from Navdeep Bains twice. We've heard from the Privy Council Office twice. Going back, we can see all of the meetings with all of the people who have been invited to come either as individuals or as part of organizations—the NRC, the Office of the Auditor General, the Department of Industry, the Privy Council Office, and then even people as individuals.

What I don't see is why there is a continual effort to add more and more names to this. I don't have an objection to that, but what I do want to know is where we are on that witness list. Are we going to be just producing witnesses and asking people to come in without ever getting to a report stage? I mean, what is the ultimate goal here?

Also, Mr. Chair, I would like to know what other committees are doing on this. I know that a lot of the Conservative members ask similar or the same questions to other committees as well on this topic, and I'm wondering if there's any committee that has gone to or moved forward on report stage. Otherwise, are we just going to be stuck, continuing to go down a path of saying that we need this witness or that we didn't find anything from this witness and so now need this one and now need that one, etc., without actually getting to the crux of what it is we're trying to get to?

I really take note of what the Auditor General said today: that, based on her report and her 12 recommendations, 11 have already been implemented and that the one remaining, which is the project review, is in the process of being implemented. She spoke at length about it.

We've also heard from many witnesses over these past 14 meetings with regard to the amount of work that has been done in that transition process from SDTC into the NRC and what that transition has looked like. I think members all across this table here have had opportunities to ask a really diverse group of witnesses ample questions into these technical challenges as to where it is that we're going with this.

Therefore, Mr. Chair, I just want to, again, agree with Mr. Drouin and say that it doesn't make sense for us to continually move more motions when we haven't seen what the work plan looks like and when we have no idea which witnesses are left on the list.

I think it is really prudent for us to have a look-see as to what exactly the vision is—your vision, Chair, because all of these witnesses do get called at your discretion—and then to see where we are going to go from that point onwards.

I'm not sure if any of my colleagues have their hands raised, but I will park my comments there, Chair. I look forward to hearing what my colleagues have to say on this, and especially what you have to say on this as well, Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

I will say a few points before we get back to the debate on the Bloc amendment to the motion.

This is, I think, partially a reminder. When the committee passes a motion like this to call witnesses, that's very much information that all committee members know, and so we all have the ability to certainly make ourselves aware of where we are at on that list. I say that because it's important. The committee has deemed it a priority that I only call witnesses who have been approved by the committee.

Ms. Khalid, you went through all the witnesses that we have heard of. One of two options...you're certainly welcome to contact the clerk for the full list or to just go back to the motions that were passed by this committee. That's available, and it's available anytime. Just do what I do: I just go through and tick it off.

Next, you asked a question about what other committees are doing. That is definitely not up for this committee to answer. That would be a question for the Library of Parliament.

I want to address those, because those I think are beyond the question of what this committee could and should answer. We're looking at these witnesses.

I do see your hand, Ms. Khalid, and I see yours, Mr. Perkins.

I just wanted to kind of round that out. This is something that the committee has begun to do, which is to push motions here calling forward witnesses. I do my best to bundle them in a way that is relevant to members.

I'll return to the debate.

Mr. Perkins, you have the floor.

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

Chair—

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

I saw Mr. Perkins first, but then I saw you out of my other eye, Ms. Khalid.