Thank you, Chair.
That has given me an opening to go further along this line. The Liberals did try to—I don't know if it was a mistake, or they didn't realize it—to change it at the last minute, but they actually wanted to take out another witness. They wanted to take out Andrew Noseworthy, which is why we, obviously, denied that, because there's a lot more we have to ask Mr. Noseworthy.
Just to remind our Liberal friends across the way, Mr. Noseworthy sat in those board meetings. I don't know if he was eating chicken fingers at the time and not paying attention, but there he was in those meetings not paying attention. He was not paying attention when all of these conflicts of interest were going down, when Liberal appointees were enriching their friends, enriching themselves in some cases, and voting on matters that they themselves benefited from. It was quite shocking.
Mr. Noseworthy was at that meeting as the assistant deputy minister. We've heard many interpretations of his role there, but the most important one was from the deputy minister himself who said that he was his “eyes and ears” on the SDTC board. He was the eyes and ears.
Obviously, he had neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak, because he did not report. We don't know. It appears that he didn't report these matters back. One would have thought he ought to have reported as the eyes and ears. You would have thought there would have been reporting structures. This is why I'm not entirely sold on his testimony or what, frankly, were the testimonies of others related to this matter. You had a senior official, number two only to the deputy minister, sitting at these SDTC meetings.
It was interesting when we heard from Ms. Verschuren, who was chair of the board. One of the comments she made, when I questioned her about the role of Mr. Noseworthy, was that he was actually to bring the viewpoints from the department. I think that was quite interesting and quite fascinating, that the department was actually using the opportunity of having Mr. Noseworthy on the committee to bring the point of view of ISED, the deputy minister and, potentially, the minister. Of course, that would have been Liberal minister Navdeep Bains at the time, but I found that interesting.
Point number four of this is that the Liberals would hear from Andrew Noseworthy, which we agree with. Obviously, we think it should be amended to include Mr. McConnachie, who was here for a meeting but was unable to testify at that point.
There is an important person who isn't there. It's another minister of the Crown, the Minister of Environment and Climate Change, the Hon. Steven Guilbeault. Why would Minister Guilbeault be pertinent to this testimony? My friend, Mr. Stewart, has many commentaries, and perhaps he'll get his name on the list to provide his commentaries on the record.
Mr. Guilbeault was a lobbyist and a shareholder in an entity called Cycle Capital. Why is that important? Cycle Capital was receiving funds from SDTC. While SDTC was making these funding decisions, guess who was lobbying the Government of Canada. It was Steven Guilbeault. Not only was he actively lobbying the Liberal government—for which he would later run as a Liberal candidate—he was a shareholder. To this day he still discloses on his ethics declaration this matter about his financial interests in a company that was being funded by a conflicted board of the SDTC.
Obviously, we as the official opposition demand that Mr. Guilbeault appear before this committee. It was agreed by this committee that he be on the witness list. He has failed to appear. He failed to grace us with his presence.
I'll be honest. I always prefer witnesses to attend in person. That's why I thanked our friends from Finance Canada for appearing in person. That's a show of respect. Do you know what? If Mr. Guilbeault actually wanted to appear virtually, I would take it. If he's willing to appear virtually, I would accept that. I wouldn't even force it to be done in person. He could appear by Zoom at a meeting of the public accounts committee. I'd take it.
That would be a fair compromise. We do have a couple of meetings left. I know they're currently designated to committee reports. However, if we could find extra time here or there, it would be super if he were able to appear. We cannot complete our study of SDTC without hearing from both those ministers.
Perhaps my friends across the way could take that message back to Liberal caucus this week and encourage Mr. Guilbeault to respect the accountability of the public accounts committee. We don't have a moniker like “the mighty OGGO”, but the public accounts committee is nonetheless one of the important committees of this place.
Point four then flows into point five of this motion, which says, “At the conclusion of the second meeting on Report 6, Sustainable Development Technology Canada, no more meetings be conducted to hear from witnesses in relation to Report 6, Sustainable Development Technology Canada”.
What I find interesting here, Mr. Chair, is that they want to guillotine this study before the House of Commons has even pronounced on the question of privilege related to the disclosure of documents to the law clerk in an unredacted form. It really begs the question of what could be coming down the pipe. What are the Liberals are so afraid of regarding what could be determined on SDTC and the scandals that are behind these unredacted documents?
They would rather allow the House of Commons to be paralyzed since September of this year than simply handing over the documents in the proper format, as ordered by the House of Commons, to the law clerk so that those matters could be referred to the RCMP. The RCMP can do with them what they wish. The RCMP can look at them. They can not look at them. They can put them in the shredder. They can lay criminal charges. They can do whatever they wish because the RCMP has that discretion, that authority and that independence.
No, rather than simply doing what is required of them by the House of Commons, they have decided to paralyze the House for, now, over two months.
It's interesting because we had the finance department here. If we'd had the chance to question them rather than have this Liberal guillotine motion, I would have had some questions for them as well as about the status of their enterprises specifically related to the fall economic statement, which we have not yet been given indication of. This is despite, I would note, the willingness of our official opposition leader to provide time this very afternoon to deliver said statement. It was not accepted. Even on opposition day we were willing to allow the Liberals to stand in the House of Commons, so that the Minister of Finance could tell us and tell Canadians just how bad the deficit numbers really are.
We are obviously seeing news reports about how they have blown through their deficit projections and blown through whatever fiscal guardrails may or may not have been left at this point. Obviously, with this particular Liberal government and this particular Liberal Minister of Finance, those guardrails have been long gone.
The Liberals aren't even taking us up on a fair option to come before the House and do that, all because they are bound and determined to prevent the lawful order of the House of Commons from being fulfilled related to Sustainable Development Technology Canada.
This is an enterprise that simply didn't have any care whatsoever for proper governance or management of taxpayers' dollars. It's just really unfortunate and it saddens me that we would have an enterprise of government that would not have that respect—but not for the Liberals. No, they're happy with just shutting this down and hearing from no more witnesses on SDTC, regardless of what may or may not come out of things.
This brings me to point eight of this motion. It's an unamended motion at this point, since the Liberals threw out my thoughtful amendment. It says, “The Chair schedule at least two meetings for the consideration of draft reports”.
I often hear from Liberal colleagues about how important it is to get draft reports done, yet a notice of meeting has already gone out for this coming Wednesday for a full two hours of draft reports and again next week for another two hours of draft reports. The Liberals, I guess, can't take “yes” as an answer and instead have come forward with this motion.
Of course, that leads us to point nine, the final clause of the motion.
It reads, “Notwithstanding a meeting called pursuant to Standing Order 106(4), no meetings of the committee or subcommittee be held during Parliament’s adjournment from December 18, 2024 to January 26, 2025.”
That's about six weeks, give or take, that this committee will be on ice and unable to operate, unable to fulfill our mandate as entrusted to us by the Standing Orders and also by Canadians. We will effectively handcuff ourselves, preventing us from meeting and preventing us from undertaking studies or anything, whether it's an emergency situation or not.
Mr. Chair, as you rightly pointed out, it actually puts us in a bit of a sticky situation if a Standing Order 106(4) is requested, in terms of whether that could actually be fulfilled, or, if the 106(4) meeting does happen, whether any outcome of that meeting could be fulfilled.