Public Accounts Committee on April 27th, 2026

[Kristina Tesser Derksen, Liberal, Milton East—Halton Hills South, ON]

To respond to that, I just talked actually quite at length about how sometimes dates can be arbitrary and you have to narrow the scope somehow, so we chose April. I'm speaking for my colleague now, but I presume he chose the first of April because it was tangentially linked to the anniversary of the start of the program but only contained the scope of a two-year window.

Monsieur Lemire, again I take his comment with a little bit of disdain, if I might say, because I think he's implying that we have something to hide, and that's not necessarily the case, but to follow through with Monsieur Lemire's argument logically, why wouldn't we choose April 1, 2022? Why 2024? If the document he's concerned about is dated March 27, 2022, I believe, he says we should expand the scope an extra year. It's a lot. It's still those years, but it's not capturing the date of that document.

In fact, we keep coming back to this document about Ms. Charette, which we've already voted on. Again, I'll point to the great length of time I spent discussing the article that my colleague brought up in his comments several hours ago, and how we already know essentially what is in that document. Ms. Charette said to the prime minister of the day that there were serious problems with the plan, that the critical knowledge and the ability to apply the system in a timely and cost-effective manner did not exist necessarily. These were all points that were already before the government of the day, based on that document, and we've already voted on that anyway.

I do take issue a little bit with my colleague's contention that we are trying to hide something and that we are somehow working this into the date that we chose. I'm sure if my colleague had an opportunity to maybe pick a different date, he would, based on some other recommendation that he would contemplate. However, the date we chose is the one we chose because we had to choose a date. Otherwise, we would have ended up with the lack of a temporal window—I believe that is the term I used.

Yes, we need to limit it somewhere. We have to start somewhere.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you.

We go back to Mr. McKinnon, please.

[Ron McKinnon, Liberal, Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC]

Okay. I'm not quite sure what I was going to say, but I think Mr. Osborne had a point.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Do you want to go again, Mr. Osborne? I wasn't sure if you were passing...?

Go ahead.

[Tom Osborne, Liberal, Cape Spear, NL]

For a 30-year veteran of politics, I'm actually envious of my colleague here because she can wax eloquently, perhaps maybe better than I can.

Mr. Chair, I too take exception to the comments of Mr. Lemire on the April 1 date. There's nothing that the government is trying to hide. We were going to take a date out. We realized that it would create concerns, and there has to be a window. We did land on the April 1, 2024, date. We were going to go back simply 24 months, but landing on a specific date gives greater clarity. It gives greater clarity to government staff and the bureaucrats who are going to be looking for these documents, because they have a date set that is the focus of their search.

We landed on this date, perhaps to some degree by accident. It is the start of the fiscal year as well. It does make sense that April 1 is the date upon which we focus because it's the start of the fiscal year. It gives clarity to bureaucrats and government officials to ensure that they have a date to focus on when they are searching and looking for documents. Narrowing the scope to a particular date only makes sense.

We have to have a defined date. We've determined that here, again, in part by accident, but we have to have a defined date for the search of documents, Mr. Chair. This date makes sense for a variety of reasons.

The assertion that this date was planted intentionally for some nefarious reason is not accurate at all. We put this date in. We have to have a date. We also need to narrow the scope, because we are still talking about thousands of documents, even with this date, for bureaucrats to go and search for. There's the cost of translation and redaction. Ensuring that the information is put to this committee and that the information is inclusive of those dates is important.

Mr. Chair, I know my colleague has more to say on this, so I'll defer to him.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Go ahead, Mr. McKinnon.

[Ron McKinnon, Liberal, Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC]

I also want to express my taking great exception to this innuendo, actually the slander, that somehow this means we're trying to hide something, that we, the government, are in fact trying to hide anything.

To start with, we're not the government. We're members of the governing party, but we don't know what's going on behind the covers. We don't know what's going on in all of those offices all over the place. Right from the get-go, I have said—and I think we've all said—that the main focus of our concerns, our arguments and our efforts is to make this into a study that is reasonable and can be done in a cost-effective and effective way. We'll get documents that we can actually read, we can actually use and we can use in a beneficial way to advance that study.

Not to mention, as mentioned before, it's a whole backward way of doing a study. Generally, in all the committees in Parliament, we call witnesses and we hear from witnesses. They give us information about more information we might need, and we can use that information to call for additional documents. That's the normal way things go. To go and get some massive document dump from way back when with very little regard to its import in any particular case, and then, on the basis of that, try to put together a study is, in my mind, ludicrous, because there are going to be far too many documents to get anything meaningful out of them. To wade through all of those documents and come up with a really clear picture of what's going on is going to take months.

Once we're done this amendment, we need to have another look at when we do our study once we get the documents.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

All right. We won't get ahead of ourselves.

Next, I have Ms. Tesser Derksen, please.

[Kristina Tesser Derksen, Liberal, Milton East—Halton Hills South, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I did see Mr. Lemire's hand up. Seeing that it's his motion, I'm happy to speak after he does, or I can go ahead.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

You can come back. I have other members, though, as well.

[Kristina Tesser Derksen, Liberal, Milton East—Halton Hills South, ON]

Do you want me to go ahead?

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

It's up to you. If you want to, you can yield, and I'll put you back on the list at the bottom.

[Kristina Tesser Derksen, Liberal, Milton East—Halton Hills South, ON]

I was just going to say that in the spirit of good-faith negotiations, and I might be sticking my neck out here a bit, I would be willing to move an amendment—I might be out of sequence here—to extend the production window back by another six months. That would potentially take us to September 1, 2023.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Mr. Lemire, you have the floor.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Mr. Chair, I'd like to remind everyone that the moving party cannot amend its own amendment. I therefore think this proposal is out of order.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

We can come back to this, Ms. Tesser Derksen.

[Kristina Tesser Derksen, Liberal, Milton East—Halton Hills South, ON]

Okay.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

I'm going to stick with this, because it's not meeting with agreement.

Mr. Kuruc.

[Ned Kuruc, Conservative, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Thank you, Chair, for allowing me to speak.

I want to thank my colleagues across the way for introducing me to my very first filibuster. Make no mistake about it. It was a very elegant one and a very polite one, but nonetheless a filibuster. This is quite concerning to me, considering that my colleague from the Bloc Québécois is trying to pass a motion to understand why there are cost overruns and why 60,000 seniors didn't get their cheques on time.

Today, we witnessed exactly what a Liberal majority will look like over the next three years. We've seen members across the way accuse my colleague of slander. They have accused him of saying that every hour spent filibustering is costing Canadians, as they filibuster, and they are questioning budgets when clearly we've wasted a lot of time and money here at the expense of the Canadian taxpayer, so much so that they are marching in other Liberals from the other committees they're filibustering to filibuster our committee.

Today is a stain on the clean track record this committee has had, and it's unfortunate that I had to witness it. It's clear that they're going to run the clock until eight o'clock. We're going to go in and vote. After that, they will change the committees. They will win that vote. When we come back here, they will have another member, and they will shut this down.

This is not democracy. In my very young political career, it's just unfortunate that I had to see it in this committee. A lot of good faith and a lot of goodwill, I think, were thrown out the window today.

Thank you, Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you.

Never count the votes before they're cast. Banana peels appear. You never know.

I know that we're all going to be there to vote. We won't draw any conclusions about how that vote will go.

Mr. Deltell, you have the floor.

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent—Akiawenhrahk, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

We're gathered here today for the common good of all Canadians, and we each have our own view on how to manage the country and the lives of its citizens—I say “manage” in the sense of supporting the citizens' choices—but also how to effectively manage the money Canadians are giving us, the state administrators, through taxes.

I'd like to start by acknowledging the work of my colleagues from the governing party when we moved a motion last March calling for the Minister of Finance and National Revenue to appear before this committee so we could hear his thoughts on the scandal involving the Canada Revenue Agency and the City of Laval.

We made a formal request on March 9, and on March 25, there was a debate, right here, at this committee. After some 20 minutes of debate where the governing party members tried to prevent the minister from having to appear, the proposed amendments were defeated and we agreed the minister would appear to explain himself to the citizens of Laval who were swindled, not to say robbed, by a former mayor, a criminal. He was actually sentenced to jail after stealing millions of dollars from his taxpayers. Today, CRA is asking those same taxpayers to pay another one million dollars. We don't think that makes any sense. We know discussions are under way, but for the sake of the people of Laval, we need to hear from the minister.

At first, our colleagues from the governing party didn't agree, but after 15 minutes or 20 minutes, they finally did. I want to thank them for that, Mr. Chair, because I assume that wasn't their intention, but after looking at the situation and for the sake of the people of Laval, they supported the motion. I thank them for that.

However, a request was made in another committee and, for 17.5 hours, members created obstruction. We literally wasted our time, as did taxpayers, because members wanted to prevent the minister from having to testify on the Alto situation. After 17.5 hours of completely irrelevant debate, it was agreed the minister was going to appear in committee. I want to acknowledge my colleagues across the way and thank them for finally coming to the right decision, after about 15 minutes or 20 minutes of debate. It is perfectly normal in a democracy to show support or opposition during a debate in Parliament.

That said, in this case, I'm a bit disappointed to see my colleagues falling into the same bad habits as their colleagues on the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics. The Bloc Québécois member is fiercely defending a willingness to get to the bottom of this terrible scandal involving the management of Canada's pension funds, and it's our duty here at the Standing Committee on Public Accounts to do so. If we don't do it, who will? That's our job. That's what we're here for. Canadians are paying us good money to be here and to shed light on this situation.

Now, we've been meeting since 11 o'clock this morning or noon, and still nothing's getting done. That's too bad. I invite my colleagues from the governing party to find inspiration in what they did when, after 15 minutes or 20 minutes of debate, they supported the common sense position to get to the bottom of this scandal involving the Canada Revenue Agency and the City of Laval. That's exactly what my Bloc Québécois colleague is doing right now. Unfortunately, my colleagues opposite are finding inspiration in the wrong approach used at the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics to try and prevent the Minister of Finance from testifying.

That's what I invite everyone to do, Mr. Chair, while reminding my colleagues of the irony that this debate on parliamentary democracy is taking place the day before we're set to celebrate the 2025 election. My colleague, Mr. Kuruc, was just getting started in politics, and he has done an outstanding job over the past year, to say the least. I know this is the first term for many colleagues across. I acknowledge and congratulate them.

However, it's unfortunate, not to say ironic or a sad coincidence, to see that a vote will take place in the House at 8:30 tonight and to know that, unfortunately, parliamentary democracy is going to take a damn beating. My apologies, it's going to take a beating. I withdraw the nasty word I used, Mr. Chair. Thank you.

Later tonight, parliamentary democracy is going to get one on the chin, and that's unfortunate, because the true citizen voting took place a year ago and people sent us a clear message that they want a minority government so everyone can work together for the common good, given the American threat.

A year later, we now have five parliamentarians who have dishonoured the mandate their constituents gave them and crossed the floor after being duly elected under a leader, whether it be the leader of the NDP or the Conservative Party, under a political stripe, whether it be NDP orange or Conservative blue, and under a campaign platform, whether it be the Conservative Party platform, which really made sense, or the NDP platform, which faced scrutiny.

That's why, Mr. Chair, we can only talk about a government of floor crossers. Indeed, the government now holds a majority thanks to those defectors. That wasn't the will of the people.

Someone reminded us earlier, and rightly so, that the Liberal Party won the three by-elections, but that only confirmed what had been done a year earlier. There was nothing new there, even though we witnessed a totally unprecedented and extreme situation in our parliamentary and democratic history when a candidate was elected by a single-vote majority, a situation that raised a lot of concern about the democratic process. We learned that a wrong postal code was given, a human error made in good faith, which led to the loss, no one really knows where, of 20 votes, if not more. That meant the election had to be held again and we know the result: All three by-elections confirmed last year's citizens' voting.

That said, five individuals have dishonoured the mandate their citizens gave them. That's why, from now on, we have to refer to this government as a government of floor crossers.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you.

I see several people want to intervene.

Mr. Lemire, you have the floor.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Those are very harsh words, Mr. Chair, and they're making me think.

That said, I wanted to come back to one point that was raised. Obviously, we want to agree on an arbitrary date, just about in the middle of everything, to simplify the work of public servants. However, I'll give the example of a number we're familiar with: $1.2 million. That's the amount spent on travel expenses for IT personnel from the companies that worked on the Cúram program. We've had that information since the beginning of the project.

Are we going to have to try and find out what bills were sent in before March 31 2024, so for six months or so? That's going to be a mess. It's going to cost a lot of money and we're going to have to come up with justifications for everything that's going on. I think we need to get back to basics and start from when the program was created. We know it was poorly designed, set on bad foundations and that costs are five times higher than expected.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Jean Yip]

Mr. McKinnon.

[Ron McKinnon, Liberal, Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC]

Thank you, Chair.

I just wanted to respond to Mr. Kuruc. He's very concerned that we've been talking for three hours. I would just as soon not have been here talking for three hours myself, but right from the get-go, as I've mentioned before, we were trying to keep this number of documents to a manageable level so that we could actually manage these documents and read them.

Frankly, as I've mentioned a couple of times, it's a backwards way of doing a study. We normally bring witnesses in here, we talk to them, we ask them questions and they give us information that we can use to drill into those documents and get the meaningful documents so we don't have to wade through millions and millions of documents and have the millions of documents converted, translated, redacted and whatnot. Right from the get-go, when we started tonight, this is what I said. We want to get this down. If we could have done that right from the get-go, we would be able to get this study under way with a reasonable number of document requests and a manageable outcome. I certainly take exception to Mr. Kuruc's concerns.

I also will take further exception to the notion that Canadians did not choose a minority government. Canadians elected individual representatives. They elected 343 representatives and different ridings elected people from different parties. There is no decision that was made by anybody out there who said, “I'm going to vote for a minority” or “I'm going to vote for a majority.” It's a bizarre way of looking at things to say that they voted for a majority or they didn't.

In terms of the floor crossers, I think I've worked with all of these people for very many years. They're all very conscientious and dedicated individuals. I think that they took a look at the world and where it is and where it's going and decided that this particular party was a better place to stand to move forward on the kinds of things they wanted to achieve. I don't think there's anything detrimental to say about them for that. I understand that people from their original parties might be unhappy about that, I fully understand that.

Nevertheless, I don't think there's any basis to impugn their integrity or their characters for what has to be an insanely difficult decision to make. You move out of one social structure in a riding with all of your EDA people and the people you've been working with for years, and suddenly you're in a new one. It's not an easy thing. I think we have to give respect to the people who have made those tough choices and absolutely make sure we respect them.