Public Accounts Committee on Nov. 27th, 2024

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Okay, sir, very good.

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

Mr. Brock was allowed to go around in a big circle. I will go around in a big circle, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Very good.

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

I'll bring it back. Let me bring it back.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Mr. Nater.

[John Nater, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

Chair, out of respect for the interpreters, we should try not to yell into the microphone. As a former vice-chair of the official languages committee, I have a special interest in ensuring that we have the ability to participate in both official languages—

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

—as do we all.

[John Nater, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

—and without our excellent interpreters, that wouldn't be possible. Perhaps we could try not to yell into the microphone.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

As a second notice, I'm going to shortly excuse our next witness.

Mr. Drouin, you have the floor again.

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

If the Conservatives want me to repeat what I said in French in the name of official languages, I'll do it.

The RCMP is looking for evidence, not from the Liberal Party, the Bloc Québécois or the NDP, but from the Conservative Party, of course.

This reeks of corruption. The Conservative Party worked very hard to circumvent the laws. Who is in charge of all this? It's obviously the new leader of the Conservative Party, Mr. Poilievre, who I know is doing a lot to protect taxpayers. He's the only leader I know who moved from Ottawa to Ottawa. He sold his house to move to a taxpayer-funded house.

I'm going to come back to the subject, Mr. Chair, but we're talking about corruption. We're talking about misspent dollars, so let's talk about the dollars that were misspent. At least when I look at Ms. Sinclair‑Desgagné, I can say that her former leader, Gilles Duceppe, never had the audacity to move to Stornoway; he even lived very far from Stornoway. However, Pierre Poilievre moved from Ottawa to Ottawa to spend thousands of dollars. I don't need to remind Mr. Cannings, because Mr. Charlie Angus often reminds the House how many thousands of dollars have been spent.

Mr. Chair, you were the president of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. I know you're outraged by that. You can't say that right now, and I understand that very well.

For all Canadians, I'll now come back to what we want to know, which is the truth. We agree on that. We're not shutting down this debate. There have been a number of studies at the Standing Committee on Industry and Technology. In fact, the same committee members on the other side were at the Standing Committee on Industry and Technology.

The majority of the committee agrees to have Zoë Kolbuc appear; she testified at the last meeting. We also want to invite Leah Lawrence back, and we agree on that. We also agree on summoning the minister once again, because he does indeed have to be accountable, even though no testimony has established a direct link between the minister and SDTC, Sustainable Development Technology Canada. There was no testimony that made that connection. Several opinions have been expressed in the media, such as those of Brian Lilley of the Toronto Sun, but no testimony or evidence has shown a connection between the minister and SDTC. Despite that, I agree that the minister must come and be accountable before the committee. That's why we brought this motion forward.

However, there's another report in the works, which brings me back to the amendment that the Conservative Party has just proposed. The Conservative Party members proposed this amendment saying that they didn't want this study to end, knowing full well that other Auditor General's reports will be tabled as of December 2, next Monday.

I'm asking the members of the Conservative Party how many more meetings they want to hold as part of this study. Also, will these meetings be used to make more videos like the ones they made here, when the meetings were suspended? We've seen them on a number of occasions. Some members on the other side have encouraged people to call our offices. However, that will do nothing to help the committee get to the bottom of the truth, which is the purpose of this committee. The Standing Committee on Public Accounts has never been partisan. So let's agree on that.

The majority of the committee agrees to hear from certain witnesses. However, it's the Conservative Party that's filibustering, as it's doing in the House. Nothing has changed since then.

Mr. Chair, I'm ready to vote now, to welcome the witness now, and to move so that we can get to the bottom of this matter.

So I'm ready to vote now. If the Conservative Party is ready, let's go ahead and vote, and we can hear from the witness right away.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you.

I have a question before I turn the floor over to Mr. Perkins.

You'll understand this reference. Are you going to talk about elvers?

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

Elvers? I will do it by request.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

All right. No.

I am going to excuse the witness because I have a long list of members to—

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

He came all the way over here. It's not fair.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

I know.

I regret this, but we will endeavour to reschedule. I appreciate your patience and understanding. The clerk will be in touch. Have a nice evening.

Mr. Perkins, you have the floor.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

MP Drouin got me. I think that's it.

You convinced me. Actually, you didn't.

I sometimes feel sorry for the Liberals. Then I remember they're covering up a $400-million scandal. I give my head a shake as to why it is they want to cover up such a scandal.

What they're doing here is a closure motion. They try to do closure motions anywhere they can. They can't do them in the House. You can't shut down the fact that they are filibustering in the House regarding providing documents. It's 29,000 pages, if I recall what the government House leader said. They provided 29,000 pages, but not of words. It's ink blacking out the words. They view that as compliance. You might as well put in 60,000 blacked-out pages. For all we know, there are only 12 pages of information and 30,000 pages of nothing but Liberal black ink. That's the only time Liberals find black ink. Usually, they live in the world of red ink.

Finding MP Drouin concerned about the spending of millions of dollars is just beyond me. I wonder if this government, which has spent more money than all other governments combined, would actually be concerned about expenditures of dollars. Let's talk about the red ink and how they spend taxpayer money.

This organization called SDTC had a legitimate role helping pre-commercialized companies in the green space. That means it's fairly experimental stuff. Getting some money from the government allowed those companies to leverage others. It's like a good-housekeeping seal of approval. If the Government of Canada's arm said, “This is a company worth taking a risk on even though they haven't proven their technology or driven any revenue”, it allowed them to get a lot more money from other sources and other government departments. The recently disgraced chair of SDTC used the staff as her own business development agency for her own personal business interests. We've had lots of testimony on that from employees.

The agency was doing this work and had a chair who's very well known to most Canadians, a fellow who changed the world. His name is Jim Balsillie. Our chair here, as well, changes the world every day with his excellent work in New Brunswick Southwest. I'm referring to Jim Balsillie, the co-founder of BlackBerry, who was brought in to fix a lot of the administrative issues that existed. He hired a new president and they cleaned it up.

Guess what happened, though? This is from testimony of the former CEO of SDTC. Jim Balsillie didn't think the government was doing a very good job on what's called the surveillance economy. That's the big tech companies, including Google, Meta and Facebook, using your data in ways without your permission. They were making major data breaches with your personal information. The chair of SDTC at the time, Jim Balsillie, went before parliamentary committees exposing the failures of this Liberal government.

By Leah Lawrence's own testimony, one of the witnesses we had here today, ADM Noseworthy, communicated on behalf of the higher-ups. He doesn't remember any of their names now, for some reason. The higher-ups told him to ask Leah Lawrence if they could get the chair to shut up. They wanted to get him to stop talking about the failures of this government. After all, he's a Governor in Council appointee. He was appointed chair of the board but getting no pay. Multi-billionaire Jim obviously needed this job because he had no other income, I guess. They, with their pressure, said, “You should value that job more than your freedom to expose the government on their failures.” Guess what? Jim didn't stop.

According to the CEO, Leah Lawrence, it was communicated by Mr. Noseworthy, who again forgets the contents of these calls, that there was something in the water over at industry, that the CFO had just left and that he should be warned not to drink the water in that building over there because, apparently, former Liberal minister Navdeep Bains, when he appeared before this committee, couldn't remember anything.

He said that he made 100 appointments and that out of the 100, he appointed six people to that board. He said that he told them to appoint Ms. Verschuren to the board, even though she had conflicts of interest, but he didn't remember that. He did remember that he was in charge of the industry department. He did remember that he was in charge of reducing Canadians' cellphone bills, but then he left government to go work for the most expensive cellphone company in the world, Rogers.

He forgot what his responsibility was in government and said that he was going to get on the gravy train. He appeared before this committee and couldn't remember anything. We might think he was just another Liberal minister with maybe not a lot going on upstairs.

Unfortunately, his chief of staff—let's start with the chief of staff—remembered a number of things. He went off to great success from Navdeep Bains' office to be the salesperson for the Phoenix pay system, adding more Liberal competency to the public service and to Phoenix pay. However, he couldn't remember any of the phone calls, although he could remember the names. He didn't remember anything.

We had the former deputy minister here, who said that Mr. Noseworthy was his eyes and ears, but he didn't remember if he ever talked to him about it. He did give him bonuses, though, every year for his excellent performance of never telling him anything.

Then we had former deputy minister Simon Kennedy. He worked for the current minister, Minister Champagne, who sat there and said that he knew nothing for 40 months, even though his ADM sat in on every meeting. He was doing that Hogan's Heroes, Sergeant Schultz thing, too, when he spoke about this in the House, and he said that he “acted”.

A lot of you will remember an old Hollywood actor named W.C. Fields. Does everyone remember him? One of my favourite movies with W.C. Fields is David Copperfield.

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

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair.

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

That actor—

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

Chair, there's a point of order.

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

—on his deathbed—

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

I'm sorry, Mr. Perkins.

I did not hear the point of order.

Ms. Khalid, go ahead.

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

I'm just questioning the relevance of this. I'm not sure how this pertains to the motion and—

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

It's about the forgetfulness of Liberals, and you'll find out right now.

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

My sincerest apologies, Chair, on the forgetfulness, but I'm just not as old as Mr. Perkins, so I just don't know what he's referring to at all.

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

Well, you're clearly not as well-rounded and as well-educated as me, either. That's obvious as well.