Public Accounts Committee on Dec. 18th, 2024

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

Mr. Chair, I challenge your ruling.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Ms. Khalid, if you say “point of order”, you will get the floor.

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

On a point of order, I challenge your ruling.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

The ruling is being challenged, and we will hear from members on whether they wish to continue hearing from witnesses or wish to turn to debate on the matter about working in January.

(Ruling of the chair overturned [See Minutes of Proceedings])

I'm going to suspend the meeting.

Mr. Drouin, have you sent the motion to the clerk yet?

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

Yes.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

I'll come back to you in just a few minutes.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

I'll call the meeting back to order.

I'm going to ask our witnesses to just hang tight for a bit. I won't keep you here should the debate extend, but should it wrap up quickly, I would be remiss if I excused you right away. If you can just hold on for a bit, we'll see where this goes.

Mr. Drouin, I'm going back to you. The motion has been distributed to all members. You have the floor.

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

Mr. Chair, I will be extremely brief.

My motion doesn't preclude opposition members using Standing Order 106(4), just as we operate in other committees. They can call a 106(4) meeting if they want to on January 1 or January 2. I don't care about that. It's just that we need warning times. We've had this discussion before, and unfortunately I have to put guardrails around your chairing. I respect and know that you have a job to do—we all have a job to do—but this is the rationale for why we've moved this forward.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

I'm going to consult with the clerk, because you're now adding to your motion, and then I'm going to the next speaker.

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

I have a point of order, Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Go ahead on a point of order.

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

I don't think Mr. Drouin has added anything to the motion. The wording of the motion remains the same. He's just explaining the context of it, and I think there's nothing really to consult about. I'm hoping we can call the vote and move on with the business of the day.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

I'll come back to you in a second. Thank you, Ms. Khalid.

The motion is in order. Thank you, Mr. Drouin.

Mr. McCauley, you have the floor.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Thank you, Chair.

I should use my time to rail at our witnesses, and you can get back to us later. No, I won't do that.

I have to express my extreme disappointment with the government. I understand what they're trying to do here, which is, as we've seen in the past from the Liberals, using guillotine motions to stop us from studying the various scandals this government has been involved in.

This issue we have before us today, the so-called late meeting for the public accounts, is solely on the government. This is, from what I have seen, the latest we have had a tabling of the public accounts in history. I advise and welcome anyone to send me an email or text if I am wrong. I had the library of Canada look into this, and we have had December tablings before but never this late. Also, it's on basically the final day of the House of Commons. There is a legal requirement to have that done by December 31, but the House isn't sitting then. If the public accounts hadn't been tabled yesterday, they would have been tabled in the House at the end of January. As it is, I think it's 261 days after year-end.

For the three or four people watching at home—

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

At least he's honest.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Hi, Mom. I'm sure the other two are my wife and one of my two sons, because my other son has better things to do.

Canada's fiscal year-end is March 31, and we're now in December. The Toronto Stock Exchange, the TSX, requires any publicly listed company to have their accounts publicized, I think, within 30 days. If the Government of Canada were on the TSX, it would be delisted for not having the accounts open.

Why is this important? Well, there are several reasons. One is accountability, but parliamentarians are asked to and tasked with voting on expenditures. The supplementary estimates just came out—they're $26 billion—and we were asked to vote on them before we even knew whether there was any money in the bank. Can you imagine going to your bank and asking for a mortgage for $20 million for a house but telling the bank, “You have to tell me yes or no before I tell you whether I have a job, money in the bank, finances and the ability to pay”? That's what the government has done in delaying the public accounts. The supplementary estimates were reported two weeks ago, and we were forced to vote on $26 billion before we found out the government blew 55% past their previous guardrail.

Fired deputy leader and finance minister Chrystia Freeland stated that a $40-billion deficit was our guardrail. We would not go past it. It had as much credibility as Barack Obama drawing his red line in the sand about chemical weapons in Syria: “Oh, we went over that. Well, here's a new line in the sand over slaughtering Kurds.” They blew by it. We voted on it after being assured repeatedly that we would not go past the $40-billion deficit, yet what was the deficit, as we found out yesterday weeks after we approved the supplementary spending? It was $61 billion. We should have had this information long ago, and now we're asked to work an extra day in the House of Commons to examine this money—the $61 billion in spending, $21 billion of it blown past—but the Liberals say it's inconvenient for them; we shouldn't be doing it.

I'm happy to work today. I'd rather be back home. I had meetings planned in another city today that I've had to blow off again, but this is important. It's $21 billion. The Canadian dollar is cratering. It's lost four cents. If anyone around the table—or the three people, maybe four now, watching at home—is heading to the States over Christmas, the dollar has cratered four cents in the last couple of months.

Now we have a financial crisis. We have a finance minister—well, maybe we don't. Maybe it's François-Philippe Champagne or maybe it's not. Who's next up? Is it Randy Boissonnault? How bad is the government that they don't even know, before they fire their finance minister, to have the next one lined up?

Apparently, Mark Carney was lined up. It is twice that he's gone to the altar and then no-showed. How many more times is the government going to plan a wedding for Mark Carney just to have him show up and then leave all the guests waiting and wondering at the church what's going on?

They couldn't even update the required succession planning for who the finance minister would be. Maybe they couldn't put publicly on their website that it was Mark Carney because they had to hide it from Ms. Freeland at the time, but why was Randy Boissonnault on it, the disgraced former ESDC minister?

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

I have a point of order, Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Yes, Ms. Khalid.

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

I believe the debate is specifically on scheduling meetings from tomorrow onwards to January 26. I question the relevance.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

He is well within his right. This is relevant. It is not repetitive and he's not reading.

Mr. McCauley, you have the floor.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Thanks.

Again, you have to wonder. The government knew Friday that they were going to fire the former finance minister. I accept that Mr. Forbes wasn't told and wasn't preparing the transition binder, but you'd think they would plan a bit better when we're in a crisis right now, a financial crisis. The dollar is cratering, Trump south of the border is threatening 25% tariffs if we don't get our act together on the border and we have defence spending and other issues.

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

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair.

Just out of politeness for our witnesses, is Mr. McCauley planning to go on until one o'clock?

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Mr. Drouin, that is not a point of order.

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

I know, but let's—

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

This meeting has blown up because of you. Do not attempt to pin it on Mr. McCauley.