Transport Committee on April 29th, 2021

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

You can always move a subamendment, but we have only 14 minutes left in the meeting.

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

Okay, a subamendment....

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

You can do that, but I would prefer to keep it cleaner.

I see Mr. Iacono with his hand up. Let's go to Mr. Iacono.

Mr. Bachrach, let's vote on that amendment, and then I'll come back to you.

Go ahead, Mr. Iacono.

[Angelo Iacono, Liberal, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Yes, indeed, I move that we go to a vote.

First, I'd like to say that what's eminently unreasonable here today is that my Conservative colleague was comparing in his tweet the Canada Infrastructure Bank and the commercial banks. The notions of the basic economy seem to be confused in his mind.

He's smiling.

I'm glad that the common Canadian is more resistant to misinformation. This is what he continues to do. I'm able to re-establish the fact for my colleague's benefit that the CIB is actually there to invest in infrastructure in joint partnerships with private partners, and in no way is commercial profit part of its mandate.

I have to also add that, in the last five years, we've seen so much infrastructure being built or being renovated, more than we've ever seen during 10 years under the Conservative government. It's time to stop misinforming and misleading the public and stick to the facts.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think it's time to move on to having these votes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Thank you, Mr. Iacono.

We go back to Mr. Scheer.

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

I was all set to move on to the question until Mr. Iacono decided to use his platform, so I'll respond to that.

This government was the one that claimed that the Canada Infrastructure Bank would unleash a minimum of four-to-one, maybe even seven-to-one, private sector investment. We understand that there are lots of funding models where the government invests in infrastructure and does not expect to get a profit back. It was this government that structured it as a bank and told Canadians that they were going to get all of this money back from the private sector to leverage these projects.

When you look at the PBO report, and you look at the department's own disclosure, they are losing money, and they haven't completed a single project.

I don't know why these Liberal members keep trying to make comparisons with the previous Conservative government, which got the Asia-Pacific corridor projects built. They got the building Canada projects built in communities all across this country. Their P3 model completed projects within a four-year timeline.

All of that is to say that this is great material for debate on other things, Mr. Iacono. I think there's a willingness of the committee here to dispose of this amendment, and I suggest that we do that now.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Thank you, Mr. Scheer.

With no other questions or comments—

Mr. Bachrach, you have your hand up, I'm assuming, for another amendment.

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

That's correct, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Okay, thank you, Mr. Bachrach.

I see no further hands up, no further questions or comments. I'm going to ask for a vote on the amendment.

Mr. Clerk, it's going to be a vote that I believe you should take, because it's going to be all over the place, so it would probably be easier for you to take it versus my trying to count hands on two screens. Go ahead.

(Amendment negatived: nays 6; yeas 5 [See Minutes of Proceedings])

We are now going to go on to Mr. Bachrach.

Mr. Bachrach, go ahead to the main motion.

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

I would like to propose a separate amendment. I am going to amend it by adding the words, “and that the documents be reviewed for legality by the Parliamentary Law Clerk”, and I would also like to propose an extension to the timeline extending it from 20 days to 30 days.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Thank you, Mr. Bachrach.

Are there comments or questions to the amendment?

I have Mr. Fillmore and following him, I believe, Mr. Scheer.

[Andy Fillmore, Liberal, Halifax, NS]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Bachrach, on your amendment to have the documents reviewed, could you just repeat it? You said by the law clerk for legality. Is that it?

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

That's correct.

[Andy Fillmore, Liberal, Halifax, NS]

Okay, thank you.

I would love to hear from anybody on the committee as to whether or not this is tantamount to the previous amendment we just voted down. I feel like it achieves the same purpose. If there is a different purpose at work here, I'd like to understand that.

Second, thank you for the extension of days. It's a move in the right direction, given the fact that this inordinate and extraordinary volume of documentation is going to have to be translated and then redacted and reviewed for legality. Thirty days is an impossible ask of our excellent House of Commons staff and public servants, and I wonder if we could get unanimous consent to amend that to 60 days.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Thank you, Mr. Fillmore.

I'll go along with the amendment first, hear everybody's comments, and then, Mr. Fillmore, I'll go back to you to see about unanimous consent.

Right now I have Mr. Scheer.

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

Thanks very much.

I appreciate Mr. Fillmore's comments there. As I see it, the difference between the original amendment that Mr. Fillmore moved and the one Mr. Bachrach just proposed has to do with who is the decider of what is redacted. I would definitely support the move in that direction to take ownership of that on the parliamentary side and away from the bank itself. I think all of us, despite Ms. Jaczek's assertions, understand how the redactions process works, but I think we would all have a little bit more comfort knowing it was the Law Clerk and Parliamentary Counsel doing it. I think 30 days is a reasonable compromise. I think 60 is awfully far off into the future. They say a week can be a lifetime in politics. I can certainly attest to that. The sooner the better. I wouldn't want to have it delayed so long that there would be a risk that we might not ever get them back.

The other point I would make on that is that surely the documents must be readily available. The bank just made this decision. We're not asking it to go back 10 or 15 years into the archives and to send someone down with a flashlight. These should all be readily to it. All we're asking it is to give them to the parliamentary law clerk so the parliamentary law clerk can go through what should and shouldn't be redacted as the translators go through their process. I think 30 days is eminently doable.

With regard to the scope, I might suggest to Mr. Bachrach that maybe we'll have some time to chat, as I know we're coming to the end of our meeting here. Is there a way we could maybe narrow the scope a little bit on the lens that the law clerk would look at this through? I'm looking at examples of how other committees have passed motions whereby documents go to the law clerk and then they kind of give a few filters or a few instructions to the law clerk to protect private information or things like that.

If we give Mr. Fillmore the benefit of the doubt when he says he really doesn't want to put these companies in positions of having opened up their kimono on things they might not ever have expected to go public with, is there a way we can maybe give some guidance to the law clerk? What I don't want to have happen is to say that the law says something is privileged or confidential and so on, and so the law clerk will have to look at that, and there may be information on the bank's side that there's no need to protect, that this committee has no interest in protecting because the bank is a public institution and should be open and public....

Anyway, I'm throwing it over to you, Mr. Bachrach, about the possibility of maybe adding some filters or lenses around what we would be asking the law clerk to base his redactions on.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Thank you, Mr. Scheer.

We're now going to move to Mr. Rogers.

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

Thanks, Chair.

Chair, when we talk about time frame—30 days or 60 days—I'm wondering, if we're going to have documents provided in both official languages, I'd like to hear from the clerk as to what kind of a time frame we might be looking at in order to be able to provide documents that would have to be translated into either official language.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Mr. Clerk.

[The Clerk]

It entirely depends on how many documents. It's like the question, “how long is a piece of string?” It depends on how many pages of documents we receive. It depends on whether the documents are provided in both official languages, which they often are by departments. This is not a government department, but it operates under the Official Languages Act.

Once again, it just depends on how many documents are received.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Mr. Rogers.

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

Sorry, Chair.

In the case of documents, then, we don't know really if 30 days or 60 days would be adequate, Mr. Clerk. So I support Mr. Fillmore in suggesting that we would go to a minimum of 60 days.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Thank you, Mr. Rogers.

I'm now going to move on to Ms. Jaczek.

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

I'm just concerned a little bit about the workload of the law clerk. Obviously, this is not in their usual scope of activities and they have normal responsibilities to fulfill.

Clearly, we normally have redactions done by subject experts who are totally immersed in the subject matter that they're looking at, so they can truly appreciate where confidentiality is extremely important, whether it's privileged information and so on.

I have a concern on that front. Therefore, to echo Mr. Rogers to a certain extent, in terms of the time frame, is it reasonable for a law clerk to fulfill this responsibility within a relatively short period of time?

I would certainly think it might be more reasonable to give more time and consider something like the 60-day time frame because I'm sure this would be an additional and onerous responsibility.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Thank you, Ms. Jaczek.

I now go to Mr. Scheer.

Mr. Sheer, you have the floor.