Evidence of meeting #36 for Science and Research in the 45th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was procurement.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Vincent Ho Conservative Richmond Hill South, ON
I have copies of the motion to distribute.
I move:
That the Standing Committee on Science and Research undertake a study of the Government of Canada’s space procurement practices, including how federal departments and agencies acquire space-related infrastructure, technologies and services;—
I have some copies for all members, including the clerk and analysts. It was put on notice on May 5.
—That the study examine the effectiveness, transparency and value for money of these federal procurement practices, including the use of public funds, contracting models and risk-management frameworks;
That the study also assess the extent to which federal space investments support the retention of intellectual property, commercialization of Canadian innovation and long-term growth of Canada’s space economy;
That the committee consider whether current procurement approaches adequately prioritize domestic capability, industrial development and the safeguarding of Canadian-developed technologies;
That the committee invite the president of the Canadian Space Agency, the chief science adviser, the Minister of Industry, the Minister of National Defence, relevant departmental officials, representatives from the Canadian space sector and any other witnesses the committee deems relevant;
That the committee hold no fewer than four meetings; and
That the committee report its findings to the House.
It sounds like a pretty reasonable study, well within the mandate of the science and research committee.
I think copies have now been distributed to everyone, just for their reference. I know that a number of motions were moved by a number of members on May 5, so now you know which one I'm referring to. I believe it's been translated into French as well.
In light of the government's space bill—I believe it's Bill C-28—procurement is very important, and in light of the $200-million gravel pit procurement that ended up being a money pit, on which, of course, the Liberal members of this committee had shut down any debate in previous meetings....
I would now like to move on to debating points on how important procurement is.
Before I even get into procurement, it's the job of the legislative branch of government. We live in a country where there's a separation of powers in our democracy. There's the judiciary, the legislative and the executive. The legislative is there to put in safeguards and restrict the powers of the executive, but what we see with the Liberals, time and time again, including in Bill C-28, is the opposite. They give more powers to the executive branch. They remove safeguards and remove the checks and balances to give themselves more power.
The executive branch has 400,000 and some bureaucrats. We've lost track of how many there are. It has grown so much. It's grown by a magnitude of 50% in the 10 years since this Liberal government has been in power, which, by the way, has grown faster than the rate of population growth in Canada. It really has ballooned on a per capita basis.
Instead of keeping these 400,000 unelected bureaucrats.... Many of them are doing good work. Many of them are good people. We're not trying to alienate this group of people, who are hard-working and facing the affordability challenges that the Liberal government has put them through and facing the immigration crisis and the public safety crime crisis that the Liberal government has unleashed on them in the last 11 years.
That's why we're talking about procurement. The executive branch needs to buy things and contract. There's nothing wrong with procurement, but we need to investigate when procurement is not working.
A case in point is the gravel pit in Nova Scotia for $200 million. The firm involved in the contract had a registered lobbyist who is a former Liberal staffer. It was not even buying the gravel pit. It was just a 10-year lease for $200 million. It wasn't like it was a fully developed space pad. It was a gravel pit, so you still have to spend money to develop it.
All we want is the production of documents to see what the contracts are. There's nothing partisan about that. We understand that the Liberal ministers.... There are something like 40 of them. I've lost track of how many there are, because the size of the government has grown so much. We're talking about Liberal members of this committee who are not ministers of the Crown. It's incumbent on you to investigate, to produce those documents.
I understand that sometimes, a bureaucrat might make a bad procurement decision, and it might not immediately be the fault of elected Liberal members. You folks have to deal with constituents' concerns and advancing your constituents' interests. There are a lot of noble, admirable things, and you don't have the oversight to watch over 400,000 bureaucrats every minute, but guess what. Instead of investigating these procurement failures, you decide to hide them under the rug. You sweep them under the rug. Instead of finding the truth, you block the truth from being investigated.
Maybe we can find out the truth. So that we don't have to point any fingers, we can say, “Look, maybe there was a bad apple in the army of 400,000 bureaucrats”, but what we saw was the shutting down of debate on the space pad procurement fiasco not once, but twice. First, it was to turn off the cameras. There was a vote. Every Liberal member voted to turn off the cameras and turn off the ability to have transcribed—
Liberal
Taleeb Noormohamed Liberal Vancouver Granville, BC
On a point of order, Madam Chair, we have less than 20 minutes left in this round. We have witnesses who are waiting. If this is going to go on, perhaps we can do the courteous thing and ask the witnesses to leave and invite them back to a different meeting. It's disrespectful to them.
It's clear that Mr. Ho has a number of things he thinks are important that he would like to share with us.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Salma Zahid
Thank you, MP Noormohamed.
We'll continue because this panel goes until 12 o'clock.
Let's not get into debate. We'll have one person at a time.
MP Ho, please go ahead.
Conservative
Vincent Ho Conservative Richmond Hill South, ON
Thank you, Madam Chair.
We have to be mindful of the witnesses' time. We wouldn't be here if we were able to investigate.
We have this motion that we're debating today about space procurement, which is a very important one in light of the fiasco that happened weeks ago in Nova Scotia that we learned about and in light of Bill C-28. It's a bill. I don't want to get into too much debate on that. I know it's being studied at the transport committee. Arguably, it should also be studied here at the science committee. If we're not talking about space at the science committee, what else are we going to talk about?
Conservative
Vincent Ho Conservative Richmond Hill South, ON
Yes, science, and you mean Liberal talking points. It seems like we're just spinning over and over again.
It just sounds like this is not a new government at all. The Liberals like to say, “This is a new Liberal government.” It's really a rebranding exercise. It's the same as we saw with PrescribeIT, which is being held up in the health committee. We have seen it here with the space pad money pit for $200 million. It's the same type of Liberal scandal, Liberal corruption and Liberal cover-up that we saw in the last Liberal government under the last Liberal prime minister. It seems that nothing has changed.
We talk about rockets, satellites, launch capacity, our sovereign access to space and Canada's role in the frontier of science and technology. These are all noble pursuits, well within the purview of the science and research committee, but when you look beneath those glossy Liberal press releases, which are quite....
I know that members opposite are going to say, “You can't say that's partisan. How can you say that of press releases from the minister's office?” Okay, let's take a look at the budget in 2025, the costly credit card Liberal budget that's smacking billions and doubling our deficit. You thought that Justin Trudeau, the last Liberal prime minister, had an inflationary spending problem. Well, the new Prime Minister, who touts himself as the economist, has managed to double the deficit. We didn't think that would even be possible in the Canadian imagination, yet they did that.
Let's look at the cover of the two Liberal propaganda booklets. One is called “Canada Strong for All: Spring Economic Update 2026”. What is the Liberal Party's slogan? It's “Canada Strong”. If you go to the Liberal Party convention, which is a partisan activity—of course, every party has its own convention—they literally have “Canada Strong” as their slogan, so now we're conflating party lines with the government.
Of course, the Liberals love to blur lines. They blur the lines of partisanship and government, which should be separate. They blur the lines of private interest and public interest to the point where NGOs, these public sector organizations, as they call them, are really just funded by the public. You think they're private—some of them are privately owned—but they're fully dependent on handouts from the Liberal government, and they're staffed by former Liberal staffers and former Liberal MPs, which blurs the lines. They also blur the lines of the executive branch and the legislative branch.
They also blur the lines of the judicial branch of government. I don't want to get into that, but for example, 20% of federal judicial appointments are Liberal Party donors. Given that fewer than 1% of all Canadians donate to a political party at all, which is pretty high, something like 1% of donors, according to the study, are Conservatives who are judicially appointed.
Conservative donors who get appointed to judicial benches seem to match up with the public.... Fewer than 1% of Canadians donate to any political party. Fewer than 1% of them are Conservative donors, and 20% of judicial appointments are Liberal Party donors, so they are literally paying into the re-election funds of Liberal members of Parliament and the Liberal Party, and then they get a judicial appointment.
I'm not saying that they're getting it in return, but one can make that characterization if they connect those dots. They blur the lines of the judiciary, which is supposed to hold this government to account. They put in activist judges. I have a great respect for judges, as I'm someone who is a lawyer by training, but not when they're staffed by activists and they're decided by political appointments.
Liberal
Liberal
Liberal
Taleeb Noormohamed Liberal Vancouver Granville, BC
Under the Simms protocol in the PROC report from the 42nd Parliament, I would like to use my prerogative to intervene and ask questions while the member has the floor. This doesn't require Mr. Ho to cede the floor, but it does give me right to speak and, indeed, address some of the points that he has made.
Conservative
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Salma Zahid
MP Noormohamed, let me just check. Just give me one second.
The clerk is checking on it. If we can just wait, I need clarification. The clerk is checking on the point of order that has been raised by MP Noormohamed. I will suspend the meeting so that we can look into it.
The meeting is suspended.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Salma Zahid
I call the meeting back to order.
Thank you for your patience, especially our witnesses. I apologize for all of this and what's happening.
On the question raised by MP Noormohamed, I would like to provide exactly what that Simms protocol says:
A. The Simms Protocol—Interventions When a Member has the Floor
At its 55th meeting, on 21 March 2017, the Committee developed a convention allowing a member to raise a question or comment related to the topic immediately at hand, without the speaker formally ceding the floor or losing his or her place on the list of speakers. Once the intervention is concluded, the speaker once again has the floor and the existing list of speakers continues unimpeded. It is up to the member who has the floor, along with the Chair, to decide whether to permit the intervention. The original speaker may also take back the floor at any time and resume speaking. The Committee named this convention the Simms protocol, after Mr. Scott Simms, member for Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, who first employed this convention at the meeting on 21 March 2017.
Based on this, I will ask Mr. Ho if he would allow what MP Noormohamed said about questioning.
Conservative
Vincent Ho Conservative Richmond Hill South, ON
Thank you, Madam Chair.
I respectfully decline his request. He can speak when he puts his hand up and gets the floor. Every member has the right to speak when they have the floor. I'd like to continue on with the point I was making.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Salma Zahid
Okay. MP Noormohamed is not here right now, so you have the floor. Please go ahead.
Conservative
Vincent Ho Conservative Richmond Hill South, ON
Thank you, Madam Chair.
I will get back to procurement.
Part of the procurement we see with the Liberal government is the issuance of Liberal press releases. It's a rebranding exercise. That's where I left off. If we look deeper into it, it's something familiar. It's Liberal spending. There's almost always—I won't say “always”—a Liberal insider involved. There are more Liberal excuses for why the problem exists. They can't look at themselves in the mirror. They have contempt for taxpayers and the everyday Canadians who are struggling to get by. They are giving a significant percentage of their hard-earned money to the federal government as taxes.
I'll go back to the example I was using. The Liberal government announced a 10-year, $200-million agreement to lease a dedicated space launch pad at the space port in Nova Scotia, near Canso. It is operated by Maritime Launch Services, which has a former Liberal staffer for a lobbyist. The government says that the facility will support the Department of National Defence—which is why we want the defence minister to come—as well as the Canadian Armed Forces and wider federal needs. It will support the defence industrial strategy, which is why we want the Minister of Industry to come. They say it's about sovereign launch capacity to address Canada's future needs in space.
Of course, sovereignty matters. I want to be very clear: As Conservatives, we support sovereignty. We also want to make sure we play a meaningful role in Canada's future in space. We support sovereignty to the point where we introduced a Canada sovereignty act as a motion a couple of months ago. It was voted down by every one of the Liberal members. We support Canadian science, but, again, we've seen our motions voted down at this committee, time and time again, by each and every Liberal member. We support Canadian research, but, of course, we see Liberals injecting their ideology, like DEI requirements.
It's gotten so bad now that it's about not just DEI requirements but also DEI quotas. If you're not a specific race or gender, you cannot apply. Explicitly excluding people on the form is a discriminatory hiring practice. The Liberals say they want to promote research excellence. How can you have research excellence if you're excluding a significant chunk of the population? How are we going to compete with other global actors in the space race?
Of course, we support real Canadian industry. Under the Liberals' own buy Canadian definition, which the government sets, you can say “buy Canadian” and put the buy Canadian label on something even if the vendor to the government, which is taking taxpayer money, is foreign-owned. How is that buying Canadian? Is it just because there is a domestic presence?
By the way, we've seen in contribution agreements that “domestic workers” doesn't mean hiring Canadian citizens. Let's say there's a foreign-owned firm that has a branch in Canada. We've seen this with many manufacturing contracts and contribution agreements the government has done. Not only is the firm foreign-owned, but it doesn't even have to hire Canadians. It just has to hire workers in Canada, so it can hire non-citizens—temporary residents or temporary foreign workers. The Liberals call that “buy Canadian”. The ownership is not Canadian, and the paycheques are not going to Canadians. That is something—
Liberal
Guillaume Deschênes-Thériault Liberal Madawaska—Restigouche, NB
I have a point of order, Madam Chair.
Liberal
Liberal
Guillaume Deschênes-Thériault Liberal Madawaska—Restigouche, NB
Madam Chair, I don't see the relevance of what my colleague is saying, especially since we are in favour of the motion. We are all in agreement. He's just running down the clock. We have witnesses waiting.
Liberal
Conservative
Vincent Ho Conservative Richmond Hill South, ON
Madam Chair, they're very relevant. The point I was making just now was about buying Canadian, and this is about procurement. It's—
Liberal
Liberal