Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Lévis-et-Chutes-de-la-Chaudière.
This morning, while preparing for this debate, I got angry all over again when I tried to examine the qualifications and competence of a former minister turned ambassador, and I am referring to Mr. Gagliano, in light of the existing Standing Orders.
I believe that if there is a case which illustrates well the inability of the House, in the current environment, to find out and make known the ability of a person to perform a job, it is that of ambassador Gagliano.
I would like to recall briefly that former minister Gagliano was not reappointed by the Prime Minister last January and that the latter promised him, as compensation, the post of ambassador to Denmark.
Incidentally, everyone else now in Denmark is a career diplomat who has come up through the ranks, and I believe that what they saw is not likely to incite them to change their practice.
For all intents and purposes, Mr. Gagliano was fired and subsequently promoted to a position as ambassador.
As is the case for the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and other committees, we are informed of appointments. Since we have 30 days to send for people, I used my parliamentary privilege but I had to introduce a motion for that purpose in committee. A majority of members could have refused to hear Mr. Gagliano, but the committee agreed. I was happy, considering the current wording, inadequate in my view, of Standing Order 111, which reads:
(2) The committee, if it should call an appointee or nominee to appear pursuant to section (1) of this Standing Order, shall examine the qualifications and competence of the appointee or nominee to perform the duties of the post to which he or she has been appointed or nominated.
As I recall, and this is a rather painful memory for me, when ambassador Gagliano appeared before the committee, opposition members were for all intents and purposes—this is what happened—prevented from exercising their right under Standing Order 111(2), which I just read.
We were prohibited from asking questions about the minister's experience and background. All this former minister had to say before us about his experience related to his political career, plus the fact that he was a chartered general accountant. We were forbidden to use all the information we had received—and there was plenty of it—on how he ran his department.
We were therefore prevented from exercising our rights under the Standing Orders.
This is an extremely serious matter for public opinion in general and for those who follow politics and care about it. We are talking about a person who was removed from office for obvious reasons, and all political observers commented on this. This person is then appointed to a prestigious position, an appointment considered as a reward.
If the elected parliamentarians, opposition members and members on the government side as well, who sit on the committee do not or cannot perform their role of ensuring transparency, ascertaining the accuracy of the qualifications of appointees and making sure they did not receive political favours and will be able to represent not only the country, the Liberal government, but the nation, and if ordinary citizens are not sure that their Parliament can guarantee this, there is something terribly wrong.
In this case, even if the government House leader got all hot under the collar about the fact that I succeeded in having former minister Gagliano appear before the committee—I still do not understand why he was so proud of that—it is not unusual. I only tried to exercise my right. I could have run against the committee majority with my motion to have minister Gagliano appear before us. It did not happen, but I ran against the committee majority when I tried to exercise my right under Standing Order 111.
Things are rather vague; indeed I was told that all the appointments made since the end of the previous session and the beginning of the new one cannot be reviewed by the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs or any other committee.
For instance, we might have liked to hear the testimony of Ms. Pamela Wallin, who was appointed Canada's consul general to New York. She is a distinguished person, a cancer survivor, but I understand that she does not speak French at all, which is somewhat of a problem for Canada's consul general to New York.
All this would be changed and corrected by the Bloc Quebecois' amendment, especially with regard to the meaning of the word “consideration”.
I would like to move an amendment to the motion. I move:
That the motion be amended by adding after the word “referred” the following:
“before confirmation of the said appointments”.
For such consideration to be meaningful, it must be possible for it to rectify anything that might appear in the course of genuine consideration by a committee to be an error on the part of the government.
This supply day is important and I hope it will have an impact.