Public Accounts committee  A request came in yesterday evening from the press gallery to have a CTV camera in the room to video-record the proceedings per the guidelines that were set out by the procedure and House affairs committee several years ago. It's actually a fairly routine thing. The main reason

Public Accounts committee  A recorded vote on Mr. Wrzesnewskyj's motion. (Motion negatived: nays 6; yeas 5) [See Minutes of Proceedings]

Public Accounts committee  From what I understand, the full motion would read: I hereby request that the Auditor General, Sheila Fraser, table the draft communiqué from the Privy Council Office, which contains the unprecedented attempt by the executive branch of government to vet all communications of th

Public Accounts committee  I'll verify to see if we have received anything from the Auditor General's office. We did get some correspondence from them over the Easter break. I just don't know off the top of my head if it was on that specific topic or not.

Public Accounts committee  I think it may very well have been, so we got something from them fairly recently.

Public Accounts committee  I'll read the amendment from Mr. Laforest from the start, in French. On February 4, 2008, the Honourable Jim Flaherty, Minister of Finance, admitted that he violated Treasury Board guidelines in awarding a contract to Hugh MacPhie for work provided in relation to Budget 2007.

Public Accounts committee  The new motion as amended reads: That the committee schedule a meeting with Claude Drouin and Don Boudria in relation to its study of chapter 7 of the Auditor General's May 2006 report.

Public Accounts committee  In the first instance, the clerk, on behalf of the committee, usually issues an invitation to the person. If the person can't be found or refuses to come and the committee nevertheless wants to proceed, they have the option of summoning the witness to appear. To help bring the pe

Public Accounts committee  The summons can only be issued by the committee. It can't be delegated to someone else to do it on their behalf, such as conditionalizing it to the chair, should Mr. Gagliano say a definitive no.

Public Accounts committee  Again, in that case, the summons.... Ultimately, if the committee didn't want to proceed with it, it would be up to the committee then to essentially remove the summons—again, not to the chair to do it. There would be a requirement to have a summons with a list of people, or an i

Public Accounts committee  There's a legal authority to compel them, and that's a summons. There's the practical issue of being able to find them, being able to locate them. Occasionally there is great difficulty finding witnesses, as everyone probably has experienced in other committees as well.

Public Accounts committee  The summons would require a motion from the committee that specifically says the committee is going to summon person X to appear on such and such a date before the committee.

Public Accounts committee  If he doesn't, then the committee can choose to report the matter to the House and you can get into, if the House then wants to move forward with it, going right back to issues related to contempt of Parliament again. The summons is an instrument that is similar to a summons tha

Public Accounts committee  I don't know 100%, but my educated advice would be that I don't think there is.

Public Accounts committee  Possibly, yes. I can definitely look into it. It has happened in the past, where some witnesses have been summoned to parliamentary committees and they couldn't be located.