Public Accounts Committee on Jan. 25th, 2024

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

On a point of order, this isn't relevant to the motion.

I'm hoping Mr. McCauley will save his voice. It sounds pretty nasty, but yes...relevance to the motion.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Mr. McCauley, I'm turning it back over to you. There was a call for relevance, but I know you'll get back on track.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

I'm pretty sure the motion is about reporting to the House about the whistle-blowers, and I'm talking about whistle-blowers.

I understand that I'm under the weather with the flu, but I don't understand the relevance issue.

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

I'm sorry. Just to clarify, Chair....

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Just one second.

If you have a point of order, Ms. Khalid, say, “Point of order.”

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

On a point of order, Chair, to clarify, the motion talks about witnesses. There is no mention of whistle-blowers in this motion.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you very much, Ms. Khalid. You're coming off the speaking list as well.

Mr. McCauley, it's back to you.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

I think the Liberals are splitting hairs for a reason, and this clearly goes back to their disdain for anyone who dares challenge their narrative and anyone who comes forward and points out the truth. Here we have two Liberal members trying to interrupt me while I'm trying to present—

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

I have another point of order, Chair, on the relevance to this motion.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Mr. McCauley, I'll turn things back over to you.

Mr. McCauley is responding to the points of order, and I'm sure he's wrapping things up to get back to his point.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Yes. As I was trying to say before, the Liberals continue to try to interrupt any disagreement with their point of view or, perhaps, any investigation into their continued ineptness or corruption.

I think this is a very important motion that Mr. Genuis has put forward. This is something the House needs to hear about. We have very clear, explosive evidence that continues to come forward about this issue. There are people who have been suspended without pay. People's lives have been destroyed by this government, and I hope we will move forward with this motion and address this issue.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Genuis, for putting it forward.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you, Mr. McCauley.

Mr. Johns, you have the floor.

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

First of all, I'm going to say this: Mr. Genuis just brought to the government operations committee a very similar motion, which was defeated. It seems that he is moving along from committee to committee to try to move this motion to the House, when he knows full well that this can be included in the final report. He can raise these concerns in the final report.

Now I'm going to talk a bit about Mr. MacDonald and Mr. Utano, who not very long ago was testifying before the government operations committee. I'm sure—it sounds like it—he was at more than one committee, because the Conservatives have this study going at four committees, which, like I said, could be focusing on things like housing and other things that are a real crisis in this country.

I'm not saying that we don't want to get to the bottom of this. We have to get to the bottom of this, but the outsourcing issue that ArriveCAN has is reflected in many different contracts, I'm sure. It started under the Conservatives, when outsourcing doubled under the big six consulting companies. It's gone up 400% under the Liberals and it's out of control, but it started with cuts to the public service by the Conservatives. This was actually cemented by Michael Wernick, who testified at the government operations committee, saying that when the Conservatives gutted senior public officials in 2012, this caused huge problems when it comes to leadership, and now it's costing us in outsourcing to outside consultants to fill the void.

The other thing we heard when the Conservatives were on the witch hunt around McKinsey is that we couldn't get some information from redacted documents. That started with a government policy in the Privy Council Office that was set by the Conservatives. You can't make this stuff up.

Conservatives were upset because they couldn't get information. I support that documents shouldn't be redacted before a committee, but it started with their own policies. This was affirmed at committee by the Privy Council Office. They know full well that they implemented policies that were going to make it difficult for future governments. Then they tried to use that as an excuse for not getting access to information. This started with the Conservatives.

I'm going to go to what is going on with Mr. MacDonald and Mr. Utano, because I saw these two witnesses testify before us at our committee when we tried to get some answers. They were absolutely grilled by the Conservatives. They were attacked by the Conservatives when they testified. There is no way that anyone could watch the tape of those committees and believe now that the Conservatives have their best interests at heart. That is absolutely hard to believe when it comes to what really took place there.

Now I want to talk about reprisals as well. I want to talk about policies that we've seen and about the failures to address protecting people like Mr. MacDonald or Mr. Utano or any public servant who feels that they are under threat from government for coming forward. We know that brave Canadians who report wrongdoing or crimes in the workplace often experience consequences such as losing their income, health and happiness, all for speaking the truth. All Canadian workers should feel free and safe in reporting workplace crimes and negligence. Absolutely, as New Democrats, we support that. Canada has the worst whistle-blowing laws—we're tied with Lebanon—and the Liberals and Conservatives teamed up to make sure that doesn't change under a number of amendments to Bill C-290.

We heard from David Hutton, who spoke to The Hill Times. He said that when the Conservatives reformed whistle-blowing laws under the Harper government—actually, Pierre Poilievre, the leader of the official opposition, was the minister in charge at the time—they actually made things worse, so here we are, with whistle-blower laws tied with Lebanon's as the worst whistle-blower laws in the world.

The Libs and the Cons teamed up to defeat numerous amendments that would have strengthened protections for whistle-blowers. They voted against many amendments to Bill C-290 that we and the Bloc put forward. It's not surprising for the Liberals: Their rich friends are not worried about whistle-blowing, so they're not. Pierre Poilievre, like I said, and the Conservatives always prop up big bosses, not workers. Ask workers about that. Ask unions about that.

Canada needs stronger whistle-blowing protections so that there is more transparency and more accountability of government in the public service to protect all workers. New Democrats are committed to protecting the rights and safety of all workers. That's why we're pushing to make sure Canada has the strongest whistle-blowing protections possible. Whistle-blowing laws are important. Because of how weak our protections for whistle-blowers are, less wrongdoing will be reported and stopped.

Protecting whistle-blowers is necessary to protect Canadian lives and security. Whistle-blowing reports protect Canada's global reputation and relationships. We saw Luc Sabourin. He came and testified at the government operations committee. He reported that superiors at Passport Canada were destroying foreign passports and then logging that they had returned them to the foreign embassies. He endured eight years of harassment and abuse: hand sanitizer in his coffee, threats to his children's safety—

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

Mr. Chair, on a point of order, I had hoped that my motion would be able to just proceed quickly to a vote. I mean, there are parameters around relevance, and I know that if the NDP-Liberal coalition wanted this whistle-blower reform, they could have put it into their coalition deal.

However, it's not the motion in front of us. The motion is very specific to certain matters.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Mr. Genuis, this is a pure debate, and you know I do allow members latitude to express themselves—

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

It's all going to be tied to it, I promise, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Mr. Johns, I'm giving you allowance here. I hope you will illuminate for us what side of this motion you are on. I appreciate your view, but if you could also address the motion as well....

Thank you.

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

I would like to go back to Mr. Sabourin, because he endured eight years of harassment and abuse, and he deserves to have some time here on the floor today. There was hand sanitizer in his coffee and were threats to his children's safety before he lost his career in 2016 and almost lost his life. Whistle-blower reports save lives. In 1996, Michèle Brill-Edwards also lost her career after she reported that big pharma was influencing the drug approval process in Canada, endangering Canadian lives.

We put forward amendments. Our amendment to allow whistle-blowers to go to the public or media in specific situations in which, for example, the commissioner isn't dealing with the complaint or decides not to do anything to stop the wrongdoing.... Both the Liberals and the Conservatives opposed this. Now whistle-blowers are at a huge risk if they expose wrongdoing to the Canadian public, and it's because of the Conservatives. I'm going to underline that. Interim relief would have protected whistle-blowers from punishments like termination as soon as they reported wrongdoing. Instead, we're allowing punishments to happen then spending years investigating whether they were, indeed, punished. This is exactly what's going on: reverse onus. Right now, whistle-blowers have to prove reprisal. For example, if they were fired, they have to prove that it was because they reported wrongdoing, which is virtually impossible. This amendment would have forced their superiors to prove that there was a real reason to fire them. That's the amendment the Conservatives defeated.

In other jurisdictions, this brings the chances of success from as low as one in 100 to as high as one in three, but the Liberals and the Conservatives teamed up to vote against it. They didn't support it. These amendments were contrary to the advice of all experts and whistle-blowers who testified and submitted briefs to the government operations committee. This is relevant right now, Mr. Chair, to what's going on right here, because some of our amendments were not voted on because both the Liberals and the Conservatives spoke against them.

We got amendments passed and improved whistle-blowers' access to the tribunal. We did a lot of really important work. However, I want to highlight this, because this is exactly relevant to what Mr. Genuis is trying to say about Mr. Utano and Mr. MacDonald. If they were really in their corner, they would have supported those amendments to Bill C-290. He also knows full well that, back to the Auditor General's report.... We're waiting for that report. Then this committee can do its final report and include his concerns in that. This meeting is unnecessary. It's the charade. It's costing taxpayers money, which doesn't seem to be a problem when it comes to Conservatives at the public accounts, government operations, international trade and ethics committees. They're doing four different committees, tying them up on this very issue while people are homeless on the streets of our country. I can understand four committees being tied up because of homeless people. It's costing us much more than the economic leakage of ArriveCAN.

[An hon. member]

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

I'm sorry, Mr. Johns. You are now repeating, for the third time, something you previously stated under two points of order. It's not really relevant to the motion.

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

I'm fine. I'm done with my time, then.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you very much. I appreciate that, Mr. Johns.

Ms. Khalid, you have the floor, please.

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

Thank you very much, Chair.

I want to thank Mr. Hayes for taking the time to be here today. I also noted that your opening remarks were, word for word, exactly the same as on October 12, minus the last sentence.

Chair, we all knew that Mr. Hayes would not have much to contribute by way of answering questions in this committee. I think that we knew that. Now that we've received this table-dropped motion, I understand why, perhaps, we are here today. I find that to be a bit disingenuous.

I remember the last meeting we had the last year. We suspended the meeting. All members from all parties had gotten together and worked on a motion on this very topic. We had laid it out. We built consensus, because that is what our committee should be doing.

For us to be here, knowing full well that we have a witness who is not able to speak about a report that will not be tabled until February 12 and having spent a whole meeting working out a plan on this.... Now we go back to another emergency meeting, just like the one on October 12 when we heard from Ms. Hogan, who said, “[A]s you know, since this report has not yet been tabled in Parliament, I am not in a position to discuss our findings.” She repeated that consistently throughout the meeting.

If we wanted to discuss the motion that is being presented by Mr. Genuis, then why are we wasting Mr. Hayes' time in being here? We could have just called a meeting for this motion. Better yet, we could have called a meeting at the regular time our meetings arise, which is literally three or four days from now.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

I have a point of order, Chair.

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

I am speaking to the motion.