Transport Committee on April 29th, 2021

[The Clerk]

If I could just jump in here for one second, it seems that we've lost the connection with the chair.

I'm going to ask you, Ms. Kusie, as vice-chair, if you can assume the chair and direct the debate at present.

Just for the edification of all members, we would need unanimous consent to withdraw an amendment. Then we'll begin over with the new amendment.

Ms. Kusie, I'm going to turn it over to you.

[Andrew Scheer, Conservative, Regina—Qu'Appelle, SK]

On a point of order, if I may just jump in, since Mr. Fillmore has proposed withdrawing his amendment and since the first round of speakers to that amendment seemed to indicate that there wasn't much support for it, could we quickly dispose of that and see if there's unanimous consent just to allow him to do that?

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Stephanie Kusie]

First of all, we're looking for unanimous consent for the withdrawal of the previous amendment of Mr. Fillmore. Are we in unanimous consent of that?

[Andrew Scheer, Conservative, Regina—Qu'Appelle, SK]

Yes.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Stephanie Kusie]

Okay. Excellent.

Pardon me. I'm in speaker view. I'm going to go to gallery view so that I can see all of the party representatives.

Mr. Bachrach, are you in consent of this?

I see a nodding head.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Yes.

(Amendment withdrawn)

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Stephanie Kusie]

Thank you.

We will go to the second amendment of Mr. Fillmore.

Mr. Clerk, could you please read the amendment of Mr. Fillmore once again so we can move to discussion?

[The Clerk]

Actually, if I could, I was going to request that Mr. Fillmore repeat his wording, because I didn't quite get the whole amendment for that.

Ms. Vice-Chair, you'll see the hands are up.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Stephanie Kusie]

I am looking at the hands. Thank you, Clerk.

[The Clerk]

If Mr. Fillmore could reread his amendment, then you can just direct debate. Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Stephanie Kusie]

Thank you so much.

Go ahead, Mr. Fillmore.

[Andy Fillmore, Liberal, Halifax, NS]

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Clerk, for the help.

I'm going to make sure that I do this in two amendments.

The first amendment is to delete the words “in an unredacted form” from the original motion and replace them with “and that the production of documents be consistent with relevant legislation concerning confidentiality”.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Stephanie Kusie]

That's your first amendment, Mr. Fillmore.

[Andy Fillmore, Liberal, Halifax, NS]

That's right.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Stephanie Kusie]

Okay.

We will take these amendments one at a time, I understand.

Could I please get a speakers list for the first amendment of Mr. Fillmore?

Mr. Rogers, I see that you have your hand up. Please proceed.

[Churence Rogers, Liberal, Bonavista—Burin—Trinity, NL]

Thank you, Ms. Kusie.

Actually, I like the second amendment better, and I was going to propose, if it's in order, that we would have these documents provided to the committee in both official languages, just to make sure that we have both official languages covered off.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Stephanie Kusie]

Thank you, Mr. Rogers. The clerk will verify, I believe, that all documents must always be provided in both official languages.

Could the clerk verify that, please?

[The Clerk]

We would have them translated if they weren't received in both official languages.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Stephanie Kusie]

Certainly. Thank you, Mr. Clerk.

I will move, then, to Mr. Scheer.

Go ahead, please.

[Andrew Scheer, Conservative, Regina—Qu'Appelle, SK]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Obviously I disagree entirely with the way that Mr. Fillmore has characterized this motion. I will give him the benefit of the doubt on the concerns that he may have about a third party group, a private company, being told that certain aspects of the legislation would apply. In that light, I'm trying to consider whether or not I could support that.

The concern I have is that we have seen in so many other committees and so many other instances that the government has used cover in that type of thing to prevent disclosure where disclosure is warranted, and it has kind of stretched the application and the meaning of that.

I really do believe that it's very important that we have a clean motion here because, as it relates to the project, the types of information that would have been provided to the CIB would have been linked to the project. This is a private sector company. This is a company that is owned by Fortis Inc., which is massive.

I don't want to repeat myself, but I want members to appreciate the fact that this is a company that clearly has a great credit rating and has strong revenues, yet they have been offered this kind of deal from the government. They've been given $655 million. We don't yet know exactly if that is a loan. Is that a loan at market rates? If so, why did the government have to be the one to offer that loan? We don't know if this is some kind of debt/equity swap here. There are a lot of different tools that the investment community uses to structure these types of deals. We don't know what the taxpayer exposure is on this. We don't know what the ownership structure is going forward.

I'm inclined to be supportive of a motion that would be less restrictive. I look at what other committees have done when they are looking to get things.... The law would allow for redaction. It is very important to home in on that. Any time a committee asks for unredacted information, it's because there are laws that allow the government to withhold that information from the public, and the whole purpose of having a motion calling for unredacted documents is precisely to say, look, the committee needs to get to the bottom of this.

Also, let me remind you that it was the government that wrote the Canada Infrastructure Bank enabling legislation. I don't believe it is appropriate to give that kind of cover to a structure, a $35-billion bank, where this government wrote into the enabling legislation elements to prevent full disclosure and transparency.

I think my NDP colleague and my Bloc colleague put it very well. When these deals are structured between other levels of government where it's public infrastructure, where the public owns the asset or operates it, there's a great deal of disclosure, because you have provincial, municipal and federal access to information and legislation. Here, we have a situation where it's exactly the opposite. We would not protect the Government of Quebec, the Government of Ontario or the Government of Saskatchewan from not having to fully divulge the information about their involvement in these projects, so why would we protect a private company?

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Stephanie Kusie]

Thank you.

Mr. Clerk, I see that Mr. Badawey has returned.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Thank you, Ms. Kusie, for jumping in there. My computer went off in its own little world, so I froze up. I apologize for that.

With that, I see many hands up. I'm going to go to Mr. Fillmore next. That's who's on my list.

I have Mr. Fillmore, Mr. Barsalou-Duval, Mr. El-Khoury.

Is that proper?

Ms. Jaczek, are you okay with that?

[Andy Fillmore, Liberal, Halifax, NS]

Chair, I would suggest you skip me and then come back to me after the others who have their hands up have spoken. I would like to have an opportunity once the other four have spoken.

[Helena Jaczek, Liberal, Markham—Stouffville, ON]

Mr. Chair, I was after Mr. Bachrach.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Okay.

Mr. Bachrach and Ms. Jaczek, we'll go with you two first.

Go ahead, Mr. Bachrach, you have the floor.