Public Accounts Committee on April 24th, 2023

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Good morning, members. We have a busy agenda this morning.

I now call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 59 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Public Accounts.

The committee is meeting today to discuss its work.

I'm just going to turn briefly to the COVID-19 vaccine contract.

PSPC produced the contracts to the committee unredacted, as per the motion adopted on Thursday, April 20, 2023. I know some of you have already had an opportunity to go in and begin your review.

I have just a couple of notes here. The committee received, from Public Services and Procurement Canada, all the contracts on Thursday, April 20, 2023, as ordered by the motion on March 23, 2023. There was a little delay, but I think it was in good faith to get the documents translated and to us in an orderly fashion. I will say that the department did work with me and the clerk to update us on timelines, so I appreciate the department's work to produce those documents in a timely manner.

PSPC sent a correspondence—signed by Lorenzo Ieraci, assistant deputy minister of policy, planning and communications, on behalf of Public Services and Procurement Canada—to the committee on Thursday, April 20. This correspondence was distributed to members earlier today.

As decided by the committee, the said contracts will be made available to members only under the supervision of the clerk.

I'm going to remark on a few things this morning.

Before you go in, I'm going to ask members, urge members and tell members to surrender their phones and any electronic devices outside the room, like any kind of budget lock-up, so that there are no problems with that. This is for your safety, as well as to ensure that we are in compliance with the motion.

As you know, in the room you'll have access to all seven contracts in addition to amendments that were made to said contracts. You're permitted to mark them up and take notes while you're in the room. Those notes should remain behind. You'll have access to them when we have our in camera meeting on May 1.

Going forward, either the clerk or another member of his team is going to be in the room as well. If you have a winter coat, there are hangers outside. However, in the room, limit your personal belongings as much as possible. You can have them there—except, please turn over electronic devices.

The clerk is available from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. every day, but I would urge you to set a time with him if you're able to do that. It just makes things a little easier, but of course you're not required to. It seems that somehow he's available here, and an assistant is available almost around the clock.

I think that's it. We're all honourable members here, and we know the motion we've passed. I'm reminding you of these things just to ensure there are no errors.

I'm now going to turn things over to Mr. Desjarlais, who has a motion. However, before I do that, I want to highlight a letter, which I think you've all received now, from the Auditor General this morning in response to both Mr. Blanchet, leader of the Bloc Québécois, and a request from the Trudeau Foundation. The Auditor General, as you'll see in this letter, which is available in either official language, is not convinced that a review by her office is appropriate. You can read the letter. I'm not going to try to redact it here.

Mr. Desjarlais, could I turn things over to you to address the motion you presented? We'll see where we go from there. You might want to read it—I know it's short—just so that members can consider it in light of this letter from the Auditor General.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

I'm just looking for it now. Okay, I think I should have the one—

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

I can read it, if you like.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Sorry?

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Would you like me to read it?

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

I have it here. It was sent by the clerk in both official languages. I would like to read it in relation to, of course, our discussion last week, Mr. Chair. Is that all right with you?

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Are you going to read the motion or the letter?

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

I will read the motion:

That the committee calls on the Auditor General of Canada and the Canada Revenue Agency to investigate the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation and that the committee believes it is in the public interest to prioritize this investigation.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Madame Sinclair-Desgagné, you have the floor.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to suggest an amendment to the motion.

In light of the response from the Auditor General of Canada to the requests from my right honourable leader, Yves‑François Blanchet, and another gentleman whose name I can't recall and who is from the foundation, I suggest that “the Auditor General of Canada” be removed.

The motion would therefore read as follows:

That the committee calls on the Canada Revenue Agency to investigate the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation and that the committee believes it is in the public interest to prioritize this investigation.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you.

I'll just repeat the exact motion in English now with the proposed amendment:

That the committee calls on the Canada Revenue Agency to investigate the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation and that the committee believes it is in the public interest to prioritize this investigation.

Is there discussion around this?

First I'll go to Mr. Desjarlais, and then I'll go to Mr. Genuis.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thanks to committee members. This is a discussion we have been trying to have since last week. I want to thank Mr. Genuis for tabling the original motion to allow us to begin this important discussion.

It's no secret that what we're seeing and what's happening with the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, given that it's a foundation supported by public funds.... Given the events that have transpired with the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, it is important and in the public interest to have an investigation into its finances and donations, and in particular into any possible misdealings the organization may have had.

It is important that the Canada Revenue Agency do this work, because it is, of course, an agency that has not only the capacity and tools but also a mandate to review aspects of this work that maybe the committee, in some aspects, wouldn't be able to do. I believe, given the amendment that was just noted by my colleague from the Bloc Québécois, it is important to make more narrow the role of the CRA in this work.

I accept the amendment, given the letter from the leader of the Bloc Québécois.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you.

Go ahead, Mr. Genuis.

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

Thank you.

Before I make my comments, I have a question of clarification for the clerk. The motion on the floor is the motion that was put on notice on April 18 in its entirety. Is that correct?

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

That's correct.

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

Okay, and the amendment is to remove the phrase “the Auditor General and” so it would just be the committee—

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

It's “the Auditor General of Canada and”.

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

Excellent.

The Conservatives are supportive of the amendment and the amended motion.

I want to underline our view that public hearings at committee are critical on this issue. It doesn't have to be as many hearings as we originally proposed last week. We're open to reasonable compromises given the various other issues the committee could be looking at. We feel it is reasonable to ask the Canada Revenue Agency to undertake this investigation, although it will ultimately make that decision independently.

We can't know for sure how the CRA will respond to this request, but it is reasonable for us to make this request. In the meantime, the role we have as parliamentarians for getting to the bottom of these kinds of issues should very much include a certain number of public hearings as well. I want to signal that while we want to be collaborative and we support this motion, we will be moving another motion that we think gets to the heart of the issue, which is the need to have public hearings here in Parliament that involve members of Parliament doing their job to get to the bottom of this. We need to have those hearings as well.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Go ahead, Mr. Fragiskatos.

[Peter Fragiskatos, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

Our side supports what Mr. Desjarlais has put forward with the amendment from the Bloc. I thank both members for being collaborative here.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Do I have approval, then, for the amendment from Madame Sinclair-Desgagné?

I'm seeing head nods and yeas all around. I'm going to call that passed.

I'm now going to ask for a recorded vote on the motion as amended, which I will read:

That the committee calls on the Canada Revenue Agency to investigate the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation and that the committee believes it is in the public interest to prioritize this investigation.

(Motion as amended agreed to: yeas 10; nays 0)

Thank you very much.

I will send a note, as the committee chair, to the CRA, informing them of this motion, which was passed unanimously.

Mr. Genuis, you have the floor.

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

Thank you, Chair.

As foreshadowed, I would now like to move another motion:

That, given that the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation received a $125-million taxpayer funded payment in 2002, the committee hold 3 hearings into the situation at the Trudeau Foundation and report its findings to the House.

Colleagues will recall that last Monday I spoke a bit about the importance of this investigation into the Trudeau Foundation. At the time, we presented a detailed motion that included specific suggested witness names and called for a somewhat broader study than the one we are proposing today. Debate was adjourned on that motion.

I'm hopeful that this motion will find the favour of the committee. Recognizing that there are competing priorities from different members, I think three meetings provide us with a good opportunity to look at this issue while at the same time leaving space for other things, and we'll start the work of identifying what we can identify in the context of those public hearings.

The background of this story I think members and the public know generally, which is that as soon as Prime Minister Trudeau took office, the foundation that bears his name started receiving substantial amounts of new money in foreign donations. The foundation said they had returned certain monies and that turned out not to be true. Subsequently, this provoked a kind of governance crisis in the board and mass resignations.

I think it's important to add today, in light of some new revelations from La Presse, that the Prime Minister has made claims about his relationship—or lack of a relationship—with the foundation that bears his name that have turned out not to be true. The Prime Minister has repeatedly told the House that he has had no connection, no involvement, with the foundation in the last 10 years, despite the fact that he is listed as a member of the foundation in their latest annual report.

In particular, La Presse identified that six months into his premiership, there was a meeting, an event, hosted by the Trudeau Foundation that happened in the office of the Prime Minister's own department. It was attended by the president of the Trudeau Foundation and was attended by five deputy ministers. It seems that not only the Chinese Communist Party but also multiple senior members of the bureaucracy felt that it was in their interest to have a warm relationship with the Trudeau Foundation at a time when a Trudeau was Prime Minister, at a time when that foundation was benefiting from significant amounts of foreign donations and while the Prime Minister was still listed as a member of the foundation.

This poppycock about a firm wall between the Prime Minister's Office and the Trudeau Foundation is, needless to say, hard to take. The Prime Minister's Office and PCO are in two separate buildings. There's a bridge between them, and I think that's maybe an apt metaphor for the relationship that may have existed between the Trudeau Foundation, itself a public institution in statute.... It's not a regular charity. It's a public institution in statute that has received massive injections of taxpayers' money.

I think all of these facts suggest that (a) the Prime Minister of Canada has been less than truthful in his explanation of events and (b) three public hearings at the public accounts committee is the least we can do to try to help the public understand and get to the bottom of what took place.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you, Mr. Genuis.

Mr. Fragiskatos, you have the floor.

[Peter Fragiskatos, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

Chair, I never doubt, of course, the sincerity of my colleague, but as someone who I think follows regularly the work of parliamentarians in committees, he will know that at the ethics committee, there was a motion passed to bring to the fore what he's calling for.

I think we have a lot of work to do on this committee—work that we had already committed to—and the motion we voted on at the outset of this meeting still allows us to live up to our responsibilities as parliamentarians by asking the Canada Revenue Agency to examine issues relating to the foundation. I wouldn't want to see a situation where the work of another committee is also taken on here. The ethics committee is going to look at this. I think we need to move on and work on the issues we had already committed to as the audit committee of Parliament.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you.

I have a speakers list going here.

Ms. Sinclair‑Desgagné, you have the floor.