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Mr. Chair, I'm going to start where Mr. McLeod ended off.
A key point is that we at finance committee can't assess what we have not yet received. That's the first point.
The second point is that I have heard a couple of comments from Mrs. Jansen and other members of this committee about transparency. I will tell you those are not just quotes about us being transparent. I think we sometimes have a bit of a short memory and the prorogation might have shortened our memory even more.
There was an enormous amount of transparency around the dollars we have spent through this COVID crisis. There was an extraordinary effort by our former minister of finance to ensure that we had a biweekly report on every single dollar that we spent. It was given to us every two weeks, On top of that, our minister of finance came before this committee to answer any questions about the spending. Then we had government officials stay an extra hour, which was extra time to answer even more detailed questions.
There has been accountability. I don't want any Canadians listening to think that the federal government has been spending upwards of $300 billion with zero accountability. There has been a lot of accountability, and there will continue to be. It will be accountable; it will be transparent, and it is a huge commitment of our government. It's not just in words; it's also in action.
I will also say that we gave a lot of time to the Canada service grant matter. There were some very legitimate questions about whether or not there was wasting of money and whether there was any attempt by certain government leaders to select WE Charity on the side. There were some legitimate questions about why WE was selected.
An extraordinary number of hours were spent on answering those questions. We brought senior bureaucrats before this committee. For a historic moment in time we brought the of our nation before this committee.
We have heard very clearly—it is documented in the record of this finance committee—that there was no money wasted. It all came back. There was no money misspent. Even in the agreement that was signed with WE Charity there was no way for them to profit from it.
It was also very clearly stated that the and the ministers had zero hand in selecting WE Charity. We heard from the Clerk of the Privy Council, Ian Shugart. We heard from Rachel Wernick and we heard from Gina Wilson, who are both very senior bureaucrats within our civil service. We also heard from the Kielburgers under oath that none of the ministers, nor the Prime Minister, nor anybody, directed anyone to pick WE.
We responded to every single point that was brought forward. It was responded to. It is documented and it remains as part of the official record.
Did we behave in an ethical manner? I believe that the people who should make that determination are not a partisan committee such as ours. A couple of very important people, who are independent, highly competent and outstanding public servants, are looking into this matter. Can I please remind everyone that we have the Auditor General looking at our finances and how we are spending it; it's an independent person who is doing that. We also have the Ethics Commissioner looking to see whether or not any unethical actions were committed on behalf of our as well as our former minister of finance, or anyone else.
On the issue of the redaction, it seems like what has come up in the last go-round is that there is a desire from some members for us to convene another special committee, external to this body, to further investigate the WE Charity matter. I think this may be a good idea. If there is a group that believes this needs to be looked at even further, my humble and personal belief is that there is not one person who has approached me over the last few weeks who has any more questions about the WE matter right now.
What people care about right now is their kids going to school, keeping them safe, having a safe Thanksgiving, being able to continue to keep their jobs, and somehow being able to give someone a hug after this.... That is the hope. That is the stuff they care about right now. If there is a desire for a special committee, that is something that needs to be decided outside of this committee.
At committee, I proposed a motion to begin pre-budget consultations, which is what Canadians want us to focus on. They want us to focus on how to restart our Canadian economy in the best way possible, and to listen to over 800 groups. People are knocking at our door and saying they have some really great ideas. They want to make sure we have the information we need, so we can not only restart our economy in the strongest fashion possible but also build a better, more equitable, more sustainable future for our country.
I will leave it at that. I really hope we can get back to my pre-budget consultation motion, and back to work on what Canadians are asking this committee to focus on.
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Okay. I just needed to clarify that the clerk is not currently in any sort of position to have these documents and does not have these documents.
This leaves me, in listening to this conversation today...and I do believe in transparency and accountability on all levels. Obviously one of the reasons I ran to be in politics and to be a public servant is that I believe in representing my constituents to the best of my ability and obtaining all the answers I need to obtain.
Having participated in the proceedings in the time we spent over the summer, a lot of information came out. I believe a lot of information came out that the Prime Minister's Office did a lot of due diligence on the Canada service student grant. It asked a lot of very, very tough questions, a lot of secondary questions, I would say. Where I worked in a prior life we would say it was a “data room”. You went through the data and you answered and made some tough questions and looked at things from top to bottom.
The impetus for this committee, I believe, is to really get at these documents that are related to the pre-budget hearings, to start looking at that. That should be the focus for the committee, to look at the submissions from all of these organizations from coast to coast to coast, at the submissions from our wonderful energy sector, how we can ensure a competitive energy sector as we move forward in Canada, whether it's in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Newfoundland or northeastern B.C.
I grew up in Prince Rupert, where we have the grain elevator and coal port. Also, Pembina has a facility there. AltaGas has a facility there, exporting liquefied—what are they—the secondary condensates, the secondary derivatives. There are a lot of good things happening in our economy.
At the same time, we need to ensure that we remain competitive. The world is changing and innovation is driving that. The onus is on the committee members to continue on that track even more so. We've seen across the world, in developed and developing countries, fiscal policy, monetary policy working to support our economy, support Canadians.
I reference this, and I'm understanding that there's been some noise about forming a special committee, in terms of looking at programs that were put in place. This takes me back to a conversation I had with the committee when I sat in a few months ago when they were looking at investments we were making in the corporate sector. I brought up one sort of investment that we made in Mastercard, creating several hundred high-tech jobs in Vancouver, and how it was important for us as a government to partner in that.
Fast forward to today, and I don't think any of the opposition MPs would complain about or object to the investment made by the Province of Ontario and our government into the Ford motor facility in Oakville, Ontario.
I look today to the pre-budget submissions we've garnered here on committee, and the number of ideas and suggestions is incredible. I look at the programs we've put in place, which have been referenced by our opposition members, and suggestions that have come from constituents across this country, coast to coast, not just public servants, not just elected officials. I look at the Canada emergency response benefit, the Canada emergency wage subsidy, the regional relief recovery fund. I look at all of those programs and how we've supported business—the Canada emergency business account—and how we continue to support businesses.
As a finance committee, we need to go through those submissions to now, in this recovery phase, move forward. I think that should be the focus of the committee. Nonetheless, if there are questions asked on what this government has done in the last seven or eight months for Canadians, again from coast to coast to coast, I'll be very happy to participate in that endeavour. I'll be very happy to point out how we've helped Canadians receive benefits of $2,000 a month on an advanced basis, and how we transitioned the income support system we have here in Canada, the recovery benefit on the EI side, the sickness benefits.
As someone who's an economist and has worked in the financial markets for 20-some years doing many things, I'm very pleased to see what our government has done not only in terms of the supports on the income support side but also in terms of making sure our economy is competitive and moving forward in the right way.
Mr. Chair, with regard to the motions today, first going back to what Mr. Poilievre was referencing this afternoon, I always find Mr. Poilievre to be a very eloquent individual from whom I learn quite a bit and for whom I have a great deal of respect. We're friends and so forth, and I always wish him the best in all of his endeavours, but sometimes I think that the focus needs to be on what everyday Canadians are thinking and experiencing and what their worries are when they go home to their families at night.
Their worries are about where we are going with this economy and how all levels of government can work together. We're seeing that happening with the Ontario government headed by Premier Ford and our and our all working together with our regional partners and our municipal partners. We continue to do that. That's what the focus should be for the finance committee. It should be how finance committee members can generate ideas to move this committee forward, drive the economy forward and create those good middle-class jobs, independent of sector.
It doesn't matter to me where we create those jobs, but we need to be creative and we need the private sector to grow. We need them taking risks and we need them investing. We need to ensure that those conditions are present in this economy. Yes, we have opened up our fiscal firepower to assist Canadians and assure Canadians that we've built a bridge, and we've solidified that bridge until we come out of COVID, but we are seeing the second wave, Mr. Chair, across the world, whether it's Europe, the United States, or Southeast Asia, and we need to prepare for that. Our testing is ramping up today in the province of Ontario. There were 48,000 tests completed. We are doing that. We are working expeditiously. Obviously we are in a brave new world. That's why you're seeing this fundamental co-operation.
I keep referencing that, Chair, because I think the committee, in its endeavours over the next few months.... I've done pre-budget consultations, I believe, for five years in a row on this committee. I enjoyed every single minute of it, because I got to travel the entire country and see it from coast to coast to coast, and I say literally from coast to coast to coast, because we did go up to see Deputy McLeod, and I want to congratulate him on becoming a grandfather; that's awesome. We did go there and listened to those stakeholders. It's important that we continue as a committee to do that.
Now, if the opposition members—and I don't blame them, since that's their job—wish to ask other questions and focus on things that Canadians are not focusing on, that's their prerogative, and they make those decisions.
I am an MP who tries to work across party lines, chat and have conversations with all members of Parliament. I see Ms. Jansen.
Ms. Jansen, you seem to be on my screen. It's like you're looking at me right now. It's kind of weird. Everybody else has gone, so I'm not sure what's gone on, but you seem to be there. I tend to work well with everyone. I think that's what this committee does.
Mr. Chair, I can go on for a while longer, but I'm hoping that we can continue this conversation. I would like to suggest that we suspend for five minutes, Mr. Chair. Would that be all right?
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The meeting is suspended.
I officially call the meeting to order.
We are now resuming the meeting that started on Thursday, October 8, of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance. The committee is continuing the consideration of committee business.
Today, we are going over a few things in case we get rusty, since we haven't been at this for a while. Today's meeting is taking place by video conference, and the proceedings will be televised and made available via the House of Commons website.
I would like to mention a few rules. Interpretation will work much like a regular meeting. You have the choice of floor, English or French. It's critical, to get the best sound for those doing the interpretation, that members wear their headsets. If you plan to alternate from one language to the other, you do need to change the interpretation channel to the language you are speaking. It may be best to pause briefly when you're switching over to give the interpreters time to catch up.
I know all members knew these points in the spring, but as a refresher, all comments should be addressed through the chair. Should members need to request the floor outside of their designated time, for questions or comments, they should activate their mike and state they have a point of order.
If members wish to intervene on a point of order that has been raised by another member, they should use the “raise hand” function. That will signal to the chair and the clerk your interest to speak. In order to do so, you should click “participants” at the bottom of the screen. When the list pops up, you see, next to your name, that you can click “raise hand”.
Please mute your mike when not speaking. If technical problems arise, like audio, translation or other, please advise me, and we will wait until that is resolved.
I will now turn to the suspension of the meeting. There was some confusion over this. You will recall I stated on Mr. Poilievre's point of privilege that there was a procedural technicality with his point, and the motion following his point.
We suspended for a few minutes, and I did not get complete clarity on what was really an unusual development to a great extent related to the fact that this is a new session of Parliament. I'll get to that in a moment. The meeting was not adjourned, as some implied, but was suspended by the chair. House of Commons Procedure and Practice, third edition, page 1098, states:
Committees frequently suspend their meeting for various reasons, with the intention to resume later in the day. Suspensions may last a few seconds, several hours, or span even more than one day.
On the question of privilege, some people have asked me, “How can you interrupt a motion and go to another motion?” When you're discussing a motion, the question of privilege does take precedence, and the chair has an obligation to deal with that. The chair, under parliamentary procedure, must hear the point. House of Commons Procedure and Practice, third edition, page 1060, states:
If a member wishes to raise a question of privilege during a committee meeting, or an incident arises in connection with the committee’s proceedings that may constitute a breach of privilege, the committee Chair allows the member to explain the situation. The Chair then determines whether the question raised in fact relates to parliamentary privilege. If the Chair determines that the question does relate to parliamentary privilege, the committee may then consider presenting a report on the question to the House. The report should:
clearly describe the situation;
provide the names of the people involved, if applicable;
state that there may be a breach of privilege; and ask the House to take such measures as it deems appropriate.
Ordinarily, presentation of a report to the House is a prerequisite for any question of privilege arising from the proceedings of a committee.
Mr. Fraser did raise a point from parliamentary procedure during the discussion, but he didn't challenge the chair on that point.
It's not in the rules, but running through my mind at the time was the problem that a point of privilege could be used to jump the queue on motions.
You'll recall at the beginning of the meeting that I stated the order of motions would be Ms. Dzerowicz's motion on pre-budget consultations. We operate under a standing order of Parliament that we must do those in the fall and report by December. That's an obligation for the committee.
I spoke with Mr. Julian and I told him I would have his motion dealt with second at the committee, as the proposals came forward. His motion was on privilege and documents as well. Mr. Poilievre's staff emailed me to say that Mr. Poilievre would be putting a motion. It didn't say it would be a point of privilege. That was the way the motion came to me.
My thinking was to get to the pre-budget consultations, so that our staff, the clerks and others, could start the process and line up witnesses and meetings while we continued to discuss these other issues.
Finally, the reason I said that the motion had a technical procedural problem related to the fact that we're in session two of the 43rd Parliament and there was prorogation of session one.
On prorogation, the House of Commons Procedure and Practice, third edition, pages 975 and 976 reads, “as soon as Parliament is...prorogued...parliamentary committees (with certain exceptions) lose their orders of reference, mandates, powers and members.” All studies undertaken by committees lapse.
Also in House of Commons Procedure and Practice, third edition, page 977, under the topic “Resuming Proceedings in a New Session”, it states:
Standing and joint committees that wish to resume a study they initiated themselves can do so by...adopting a motion to this effect....
If occasion arises and they consider it appropriate, committees that have the power to do so may re-adopt orders for the appearance of witnesses or the production of papers.... It is quite common for the House or a committee to adopt an order stating that evidence heard and papers received in a preceding parliamentary session be taken into consideration in the new session.
That leaves us with the current motion from Mr. Poilievre on his point of privilege. It doesn't technically have the evidence to make his point, because the evidence doesn't have a motion in it and there hasn't been a motion to bring that evidence forward from the previous session. Therefore, the Speaker could kick it back to us and say that the evidence isn't there.
I see Mr. Julian shaking his head, but those are the facts of the matter. We all know, those of us who were on the committee, what it means, but technically that's where we're at.
I'm going to go with a couple of options.
I'm going to rule the current motion as written out of order and ask Mr. Poilievre to bring it in order by putting in an amendment or bringing it back with a proposal to bring forward that evidence from the previous committee. However, I would rule it out of order as written.
I think that these are the options. Mr. Poilievre can take the motion back, sit in position three, and we'll go back to where we were, with Ms. Dzerowicz's motion first, and then come through the line and deal with his motion as amended. He could challenge the ruling of the chair. We'll see where that goes. We would have to deal with it in that respect.
I'll give members a moment to think about that. As I said, as written, I have to rule it out of order. It can be fixed, and I would suggest that Mr. Poilievre bring it back later in the meeting.
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If anybody walked into Ted's office, I don't think they'd be yelling at him. It's quite all right.
The first point is just to reiterate the question about whether there is in fact an issue of privilege to be dealt with.
My view upon reading the section immediately following the portion you quoted from Bosc and Gagnon is that because the committee has the ability to deal with this grievance or issue in another way—namely by reaching out to the government and saying we're not satisfied and that we can do this a different way—I think we have the ability to deal with it that way. It would make it not a point of privilege but instead an ordinary motion of the committee or a point of debate or grievance, which would negate the possibility of this committee's hearing a point of privilege.
If, however, I am incorrect on that particular issue, I don't view this to be a violation of the committee's privilege. There may be issues concerning the disclosure of documents we want to prod further into, but following the adoption of the motion in July at finance committee, the motion gained—to speak to Mr. Julian's point—significant support from all parties. Public servants got together to work really hard to gather relevant documents. They provided the committee with literally thousands of pages.
The motion adopted by the committee stipulated:
that matters of Cabinet confidence and national security be excluded from the request; and that any redactions necessary, including to protect the privacy of Canadian citizens and permanent residents whose names and personal information may be included in the documents, as well as public servants who have been providing assistance on this matter, be made by the Office of the Law Clerk and Parliamentary Counsel of the House of Commons.
Later I'll get into who was responsible for dealing with which aspect.
Exemptions were, in this instance, applied by our professional and non-partisan public service. The deputies at ESDC stated in their transmittal letter that the approach adopted was to disclose as much information as possible within the scope of the committee's motion.
No exclusions were made on the grounds of national security. A substantial amount of information that would normally fall under cabinet confidence was provided to the committee in keeping with public disclosures made by members of the Queen's Privy Council of Canada. Information that would fall under cabinet confidence but that was not related to the Canada student service grant request and, therefore, was not relevant to the committee study was in fact withheld. This was reiterated in the transmittal letter sent to the committee by relevant deputy ministers.
The motion clearly states that cabinet confidence should be excluded from the request. That's as clear as day in the way it's written. When I read the motion as it is written, it doesn't say that those particular exemptions should be made by the Law Clerk and Parliamentary Counsel of the House of Commons. Cabinet confidences were never in fact requested by this committee, so there would have been no duty upon the government to disclose them—which is obvious: I think we all want to protect cabinet confidences.
As outlined in the other transmittal letters to this committee, departments are obliged to protect personal information under the Privacy Act, unless the individuals to whom that information relates consent to its disclosure or disclosures otherwise authorized in certain specified circumstances, or the public interest in disclosure clearly outweighs any resulting invasion of privacy.
Information that would have constituted personal information was released in certain instances when these documents were disclosed, wherever it was determined, including by the Clerk of the Privy Council, that the public interest outweighed the invasion of privacy.
The clerk also made the decision, as was communicated in his transmittal letter, that for personal information in certain instances, such as the names of a public servant's family members and the phone numbers of employees at WE who were not Craig or Marc Kielburger, the public interest did not in fact outweigh the invasion of privacy in those circumstances.
The deputy minister of finance, for his part, noted, “The type of personal information that remains protected consists of the identity of unrelated third parties where their opinion or view relates to an unrelated matter to this inquiry, as well as personal e-mail addresses and phone numbers.”
The deputy minister went on to note with respect to page 190 and pages 194 through 213:
...further to consultation with the originating stakeholder, authorization to disclose this information was not given as it constitutes personal information as defined under Privacy Act. Furthermore this information is considered proprietary to the third party. The contents of this information is not relevant to the funding agreement or the Student Grant Program therefore, it has been severed in its entirety.
Additionally, the transmittal letters from the Clerk of the Privy Council and the Department of Employment and Social Development note that a limited waiver of solicitor-client privilege was issued because they believed it was in the public interest to do so.
The question of parliamentary privilege is not a black and white question. Committees no doubt can request what documents they wish, but they can't compel their disclosure. The public servants who have custody of these documents have a duty to hold in confidence some of the information that comes into their possession in the course of their duties. There is legislation that binds them.
As outlined in the document “Open and Accountable Government”, a natural “tension” exists “between that obligation and the request of parliamentarians for disclosure of that same information” that the public service feels the need to protect. They further note in that document that, “In practice, officials should endeavour to work with Members of Parliament...to find ways to respond to legitimate requests for information...within the limitations placed on them.” This comes back to my earlier point that I think we can engage in a conversation with government, rather than jump to a question of privilege before the House.
Members of the committee should also note that in 2010, the previous government reaffirmed the long-standing principle from 1973 governing the production of documents as part of their response to a report to the public accounts committee at the time. Those principles include criteria under which documents should be exempt from production, which, of course, include cabinet documents and those that include Privy Council confidence. Cabinet confidentiality, for what it's worth, is not some label you stick on something to prevent disclosure of documents. It's fundamental to our system of parliamentary democracy. It allows ministers to have candid conversations and, when appropriate, to shift their minds and be persuaded by others. It's essential that these deliberations remain private. That's recognized by the privy councillors oath. The Supreme Court of Canada has affirmed the importance of cabinet confidentiality. In fact, the court noted that judicial independence, parliamentary privilege and cabinet confidentiality all contribute to the ability of each branch of government to perform its respective role without undue influence. It's a natural tension.
On personal information, while parliamentarians are not subject to the Privacy Act restrictions, it does apply to the government institutions from which the committee sought information. This also creates tension. Providing unredacted personal information, even to the law clerk, would consist of a disclosure under the relevant legislation. As such, it requires the care and attention afforded to it by public servants. This personal information might lawfully be disclosed under certain scenarios, including when the individual at issue authorizes the release of the information and when the public interest clearly outweighs the privacy implications, as was the case, as referenced previously, in this instance.
Additionally, the information could be released for the purpose of complying with an order by a body with the jurisdiction to compel that information, but we made it pretty clear previously, as I think everybody would agree, that a House committee doesn't have such jurisdiction, so it doesn't fall under that scenario.
With all of this in mind, I find it important to note that the committee's motion asks the law clerk to make redactions in relation to information about public servants above and beyond what the government, in fact, made. These are redactions that officials did not make and would not have made in accordance with the Access to Information Act. Despite what's being suggested, this isn't a breach of our privileges as committee members.
The opposition seems to be claiming that the only option in front of this committee right now is to report the matter to the House. With great respect, I don't view that to be correct. The committee has not yet asked the government for the information that public servants applied exemptions to—and that are outlined above, in the remarks I just gave—under very narrow and specific grounds. For example, if members of the committee want information pertaining to family members of public servants, they could ask, but we haven't done that as a committee. Parliamentary privilege in no way, shape or form absolves the government of its obligations to protect personal information and cabinet confidences. In fact, the motion we put forward specifically excluded a request for cabinet documents. Despite this, the public service made a serious effort, and I would say a sincere effort, to provide as much information as possible.
In light of this information and the examples I've used, this doesn't appear to be a breach of privilege, let alone raise a matter of privilege at all.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
If I offended Mr. Julian I want to take the opportunity to say I can understand how he would be offended by that. There's probably a little bit of truth to what I'm saying that's getting to him and he feels the need to lash out against that. I understand that, but Mr. Julian perhaps should have consulted a little bit more and thought about this a little bit, or, when it was his turn to speak to it, he could have actually taken the time to tell us why he thought it was procedurally incorrect. He didn't. All he did was tell us why the motion was so important to pass.
That's why I started this off with my introductory comment by saying that you did an incredible job as a chair of not only ruling it out of order.... You could have just left it there, but you provided a path and an avenue to make this motion in order. Rather than take you up on that offer, which would have been extremely easy to do, the opposition members of this committee chose to instead use it as an opportunity to overturn your ruling.
In my opinion, that shows a fundamental lack of understanding of the importance of the chair's position and what the chair is supposed to do. Much like the Speaker, they're getting their information and they're making a ruling based on where, procedurally, things are deemed to be correct and incorrect. was able to see that in the PROC committee. She did take a lot of heat for that in the media. I imagine that Mr. Julian was concerned about the same thing. He was worried that even if it was procedurally correct, if he went down this road he'd end up looking like he was trying to support a cover-up or something like that. I understand politically why he did it. It makes perfect sense.
It's extremely disappointing to see that not just Mr. Julian—I know I'm picking on him a little bit now and I don't want to hurt his feelings as I clearly did a few minutes ago—but all members of opposing parties here would use the opportunity to challenge the chair to advance a political objective. That's exactly what they did and it's extremely discouraging to see that.
As most members know, I've only been a member of Parliament for about six years now. Before that I was involved with our city council here in Kingston. I was a city councillor and I was the mayor. At times I was in the position of having to vote on a challenge of the chair and on the receiving end of being challenged. I can honestly say that I cannot remember a time when there was a challenge that was successful. At the end of the day most members understood that the chair's job is to use the information and the advice that they receive from their clerks in order to make the best decision on behalf of the committee.
What we see today is that all members of the opposition, despite the fact that the chair laid out the reasons very clearly and the chair provided an avenue and a path to make it procedurally correct, still voted to dismiss the chair's ruling because they're motivated purely from a political agenda.
I don't know if we're going to see more of this, quite frankly. I don't know if it is indicative of parliamentary process that this happens quite a bit. This is my first time being in a minority Parliament situation, where I'm actually getting to see this unfold, but I can say that in all my years of being involved in politics and sitting around not-for-profit boards, committees and council tables, I've never seen people use a challenge of the chair in such a politically motivated way, especially when you have a chair who takes the opportunity to not only explain in detail but also provide avenues and paths to get out of this later on.
Like I said at the outset—and I have a lot more to say on this—there's a great deal to be discussed in this. I will definitely come back to it.
At this time I really want to address this point. I really find it discouraging to see members do this, especially after being on the PROC committee. There I witnessed the NDP standing up for parliamentary procedure the way that chairs are supposed to engage and the way that procedure is supposed to be interpreted, not using procedure for political motives.
:
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair; and thank you to any staff involved with the comparison.
One of the things that's really important is that the transmittal letters in particular are included in the package of documents that will find its way for consideration by the committee.
You'll recall the original motion back in July that, again, gained support from both sides of the aisle, which said:
That, pursuant to Standing Order 108(1)(a), the Committee order that any contracts concluded with We Charity and Me to We, all briefing notes, memos and emails...from senior officials prepared for or sent to any Minister regarding the design and creation of the Canada Student Service Grant, as well as any written correspondence and records of other correspondence with We Charity and Me to We from March 2020 be provided to the Committee no later than August 8, 2020;
This next part is key to the importance of the transmittal letters, and forgive my taking a bit of time to get there, but this piece is important:
that matters of Cabinet confidence and national security be excluded from the request;
Before I read the rest of the motion, I think it's important for it to sink in that the government was not requested to give documents that touched on cabinet confidence or that compromised national security.
It went on to say:
and that any redactions necessary, including to protect the privacy of Canadian citizens and permanent residents whose names and personal information may be included in the documents, as well as public servants who have been providing assistance on this matter, be made by the Office of the Law Clerk and Parliamentary Counsel of the House of Commons.
I argued earlier in this meeting that it doesn't relieve the non-partisan public service of their obligations to comply. In any event, I'll set that argument aside for now.
The point here is that, for items that are not relevant to the committee or motion request for documents that were redacted by the professional public service, those redactions took place for good reasons. They may have involved items that were on the agenda of a cabinet meeting, the cabinet meetings in fact, perhaps, that the and his chief of staff testified to at the finance committee in the previous session; matters of national security and sensitive procurement that could hurt the government's ability to act in the national interest; or matters that, if released, could be damaging to Canada, which is frankly what we're trying to avoid the disclosure of under ordinary circumstances.
I am always in favour of protecting our national reputation and our national security before anything else and allowing government to make decisions knowing that they can have, in certain circumstances, confidential conversations.
In my view, the redactions that I've seen strike the right balance between releasing relevant information as the committee has requested and protecting cabinet confidence, which, again, this committee did expect would be respected.
In the Privy Council Office document release that the clerk circulated today, there is a synopsis of a cabinet meeting. Frankly, it's an extraordinary document, when you think of it, that would rarely be released. I don't think previous governments would have allowed that type of document disclosure of things that should be subject to cabinet confidence. The synopsis here of an entire cabinet meeting has been made public, though there are obviously items that are protected by cabinet confidence.
Items that related to the Canada student service grant were still disclosed. I don't know what other topics were discussed. There could be national security issues—we'll never know—and cabinet confidences that are not related to any of this ought to be protected for good public policy.
This was determined by the Clerk of the Privy Council, in reference to my point, in his transmittal letter specifically. These transmittal letters give context to the documents to explain precisely why certain things were redacted or not redacted.
Frankly, there are reasons that documents such as this are not normally public until long after a government's mandate has come to an end. Ensuring the confidence of cabinet deliberations is essential to peace, order and good government, which our colleagues often reflect upon publicly in their comments.
These confidences are essential to the operation of responsible government, yet in a rather extraordinary move the Clerk waived privilege on sections of this particular document as they related to cabinet discussion on the Canada student service grant. These confidences are amongst our country's most protected information. Here it is for everybody to read.
If opposition colleagues want to view documents that are subject to cabinet confidence, they should form government and be appointed to cabinet and they will have their access to cabinet confidences there, and frankly, I would defend their right to have those confidences, even in opposition.
Until then, Mr. Chair, the release of this relevant cabinet information as it relates to the Canada student service grant is going to have to suffice.
Through the PCO release, once again, what do we actually find redacted? It's a personal phone number of a staff member, an item that never would have been released in an access to information request. I think that kind of protection is important and necessary.
To conclude the point in support of the subamendment, the transmittal letters we now know were not included amongst a few other documents that were just referred to, and are not actually captured by the motion. It's difficult to imagine how we can determine the appropriateness of disclosures made by the government when we simply accept the documents but purposefully exclude the government's explanation as to why certain redactions may have been in place. As such, I would be supporting my colleague's subamendment that he's placed before the committee.
:
Here is the problem with what Mr. Poilievre just said. He is basically saying, Mr. Chair, that he recognized that Ms. Dzerowicz's motion was on the floor, but didn't like the fact that we had to deal with hers, so he tried to use some procedural moves in the last meeting to jump ahead of her so we would just vote on his motion to get it out of the way, and he is happy to go back to hers.
If he can't see the problem with that, Mr. Chair, then I think he really needs to reassess his participation in this committee. It is not all about him. Maybe it is just about him on the Conservative bench, because he seems to be running the show there, which is very respectable, and his soldiers are doing a great job on his behalf.
The reality is that there was already a process in place with Ms. Dzerowicz's motion and Mr. Poilievre tried to jump ahead of it. Now he is trying to use the rationale of us voting on it to push it out of the way and then we can go to her motion, as long as what is important to him is dealt with first. I find it extremely unfortunate that he has chosen to go down that road. If he has an issue with members of the Liberal caucus taking a position on that and being offended by that, I would assure him it is a legitimate position, in my opinion at least, for Liberal members to be taking.
That is how I end up supporting the fact that maybe it is in the best interest for Mr. Poilievre to withdraw his motion, to get in the queue where he belongs and let his motion come forward properly. I believe that even Mr. Julian had one in between the one that was on the floor and his, but somehow he is the most important asset to this entire committee and the parliamentary process writ large and therefore his issues should be dealt with in great haste.
I'll just go back to the amendment we are discussing, which is my amendment to the amendment, Mr. Chair. I want to emphasize why these transmission letters are essential.
It's already a rare occurrence that cabinet confidences of a sitting government are released. The clerk took the extraordinary step to release all information as it relates to the CSSG while also maintaining that he would protect necessary and unrelated cabinet confidences. He detailed that process, as did other deputy ministers in their transmittal letters. Everything present here has been done in the spirit of that promise while respecting the committee's motion for information.
Let me give some examples of that. In the PCO release we have a summary of a full cabinet meeting. The discussion could have been related to a vaccine or PPE procurement, national security or other matters. A cabinet document such as this is rarely, if ever, made public. Cabinet confidences unrelated to the Canada student service grant are redacted per the terms of the motion adopted by the committee. Keeping with the spirit of this committee's motion, the CSSG items in particular were visible.
The second example of this is in a PCO release. We have a second cabinet note, Mr. Chair, where the document is redacted. It is the latter cabinet meeting in May of 2020. The CSSG implementation was discussed and is unredacted as ordered by this committee and agreed to by the Clerk of the Privy Council; however, the rest of the information is still redacted as it falls under cabinet confidence. Again, we do not know what the topics of discussion were. There could have been talks related to national security matters, legal discussions that are under solicitor-client privilege or key discussions related to further personal protective equipment and vaccine procurement that would have put our competitiveness at risk if released.
Mr. Chair, in conclusion, I think we have demonstrated, in an exhaustive manner, that the redactions the opposition members have been turning into political theatre are, in fact, in line with the motion that they proposed at this very committee.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
:
Thank you very much, Chair.
I'll respond to the comments made by Mr. Julian a few moments ago. I think he raises some legitimate points. I will disagree on the substance of the points he raised, but when he does make general arguments about the need for all of us to stay focused on Canadians, I think that is a perfectly reasonable point of view. It's one that I wish was adopted unanimously at this committee.
We are facing as a country right now our most difficult moments, the most challenging time the country has seen since the Second World War. That sentiment was reflected in a tweet Mr. Julian put out very recently calling for support to be given to Canadian food banks. I applaud the government for standing with food banks, not with just one announcement for financial support but two, as we've seen in recent days. Those are the sorts of issues we should be debating at this committee.
There are Canadians in need. I did notice that Mr. Julian failed to mention the importance of the CERB and how that has assisted folks, and the CEBA. The CECRA program has assisted, with admittedly some gaps. Let's talk about those things. Let's recognize Ms. Dzerowicz's motion to begin pre-budget consultations, which, I remind this committee, is absolutely mandatory. It is not a choice that we can make. Standing Order 83.1 specifically mentions the Standing Committee on Finance, our committee here. It calls on us to take pre-budget consultations that have to commence at a particular time and end at a particular time. It's not a choice. We are mandated to do that.
I very much hope we can move towards that. Liberal members have wanted to move towards that particular outcome. Actually, it's not just Liberal members: Let me commend our colleague Gabriel Ste-Marie from the Bloc, who has made it clear the he wishes also to put forward a motion that would move this committee towards pre-budget consultations. We need to commence that. There's no way around it.
I know the opposition wants to raise matters on the WE Charity issue. As I've said at the committee before, we're not trying to push those questions aside. They ought to be raised. Mistakes were made by the government. That is not being denied here. When you're flying a plane and building it at the same time, it's going to be the case that errors will be made. The government has been forthcoming in a desire to release thousands of documents. I know the opposition still continues to raise its arms and wants to put forward motions that relate to those documents that, frankly, only the opposition understands.
We have an amendment to an amendment here that I think is very, very reasonable. It provides greater certainty and greater clarification. It calls on the opposition to compromise, to put some water in its wine. The opposition will not get its way every single time at committee. What they were originally proposing was inappropriate. It was coming very close to breaching, if not entirely breaching, the privilege of members on this committee.
What has happened? Mr. Gerretsen has very correctly put forward an amendment to the amendment suggested by Mr. Kelly. I think it was suggested many hours ago, and here we are, still debating. I fail to accept the rationale for the amendment. As we heard from Mr. Fraser as well, there are deep challenges with that amendment, for a number of technical but very important reasons. This amendment that's been put forward can move us forward in a way that provides a lot of certainty and greater comfort for members of this committee, who want to make decisions but in a way that matches with recognized parliamentary procedure. If we were to accept Mr. Kelly's amendment as it stands, on its own, then I worry that we would be going down a path that would set a very negative precedent for this committee. That's not something that I want to see happen. I know it's something that every member would be concerned about, and quite rightly.
Yes, this is a matter that we need to decide upon, but when we've seen close to 800 submissions from Canadian stakeholders from right across the country—and later I'm sure we'll be continuing this discussion—I do want to talk about some of those stakeholders.
The Federation of Canadian Municipalities has an interest in seeing support for municipalities continue. The federal government has stepped up in remarkable ways to support our cities and towns, but that needs to continue. That renewed federal-municipal relationship that took shape beginning in 2015 needs to proceed with even more vigour, particularly now as cities and towns face great difficulties. The Canadian Chamber of Commerce, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business—
:
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I had just finished going through some of the information included in the letter from the deputy minister of finance that the amendment to the main motion would exclude and that is the subject of the subamendment.
The next letter that was submitted in the government's disclosure package, which would not be adopted before this committee under current circumstances, came from the deputy minister of innovation, science and economic development. It was sent to Mr. Gagnon. Perhaps I'll spare some committee members the pain of hearing this next part again, which is repetitious. It began with copying and pasting the language from our July 7, 2020, motion, which I previously read into the record. Ms. Jansen, I'll spare you a few minutes of the voice you've indicated you enjoy so much.
In any event, after the copy of the motion, the text of the letter reads:
Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada has retrieved all records from within the Department that respond to the Committee’s motion. You will find the results of that search enclosed for the Committee’s consideration.
It should be noted, however, that in the preparation of this package, care was taken to obtain consent to disclose certain personal information from exempt staff referenced in the material and, in collaboration with other government departments, the staff from WE Charity in accordance with the provisions of the Privacy Act.
In addition, the Committee’s motion stipulates that Cabinet confidences and national security information are to be excluded from the package. No information is being withheld on the grounds of national security, since the information does not so pertain. With respect to Cabinet confidences, you will note that information on the Canada Student Service Grant that was a Cabinet confidence is being provided to the Committee. This is in keeping with the public disclosures of information on this matter made by members of the Queen’s Privy Council for Canada. A principled approach was adopted to this information to ensure a non-selective application of the protection afforded by Cabinet confidentiality. Information not related to the Canada Student Service Grant that constitutes a Cabinet confidence is withheld and identified as not relevant to the request.
This came from Simon Kennedy. ISED, too, made the point that they were providing disclosure in accordance with what the committee had asked. They explained, in instances where there was differentiation, why that may not be the case, and, in fact, explained that documents that would otherwise have been subjected to cabinet confidences were nevertheless disclosed.
If we look at the letter from the secretary of the Treasury Board, also sent to Mr. Gagnon, it started out similarly. It reads:
In response to the motion adopted by the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance (FINA) on July 7, 2020 concerning any contracts concluded with We Charity and Me to We, all briefing notes, memos and emails, including the contribution agreement between the government and the organization, from senior officials prepared for or sent to any Minister regarding the design and creation of the Canada Student Service Grant, as well as any written correspondence and records of other correspondence with We Charity and Me to We from March 2020, please find enclosed bilingual copies of Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat records.
It should be noted, that in the preparation of this package, care was taken to obtain consent to disclose certain personal information from relevant exempt staff referenced in the material.
Similar to the other letters, this one from the Treasury Board indicates:
The Committee’s motion stipulates that Cabinet confidences and national security information are to be excluded from the package. No information is being withheld on the grounds of national security, since the information does not so pertain. With respect to Cabinet confidences, you will note that considerable information on the Canada Student Service Grant that were Cabinet confidences is being provided to the Committee. This is in keeping with the public disclosures of information on this matter made by members of the Queen’s Privy Council for Canada. A principled approach was adopted to this information to ensure a non-selective application of the protection afforded by Cabinet confidentiality. As a result, considerable information on the Canada Student Service Grant that would otherwise constitute Cabinet confidences is being released. Information not related to the Canada Student Service Grant that constitutes Cabinet confidences is withheld and identified as not relevant to the request.
This same principled approach was also applied to the second enclosed package of TBS documents, which is provided in support of the commitment by the Clerk of the Privy Council to provide additional information on due diligence on the Canada Student Service Grant subsequent to his appearance on July 21, 2020. Additionally, because I believe that it is in the public interest to do so, this package includes information being made available as a result of a limited waiver of solicitor client privilege as it relates to the information that is being provided by Employment and Social Development Canada.
While many TBS employees continue to work virtually, guided by public health measures and focused on curbing the spread of COVID-19, these two packages provide, to the best of my knowledge, as of August 7, 2020, the TBS documents in response to the above-noted request for production of papers and due diligence line of inquiry.
We're seeing a pattern here. One is that these transmittal letters, which are the subject of the subamendment, provide the necessary context. They refer to the committee's request for information from the different government departments.
These transmittal letters, which would not be part of the evidentiary record going forward under the proposed motion or the proposed amendment to the main motion, nevertheless continue to drive home the point that we have made redactions in accordance with what the committee has requested and in fact, particularly when it comes to cabinet confidences, we have nevertheless disclosed material that would ordinarily be subject to Crown privilege or cabinet confidence. There are various other departments as well, Mr. Chair.
I just finished with TBS. If we look at the letter from the deputy minister of ESDC and the senior ADM of ESDC and chief operating officer for Service Canada, as well as the senior associate deputy minister of diversity, inclusion and youth, that letter makes similar points. This evidence shouldn't be excluded from the record because it provides important context. They, too, wrote on August 8, to then clerk Mr. Gagnon of the Standing Committee on Finance.
They said:
On behalf of Canadian Heritage and Employment and Social Development Canada, please find enclosed, electronically, all records, in the original language of drafting, requested under the Motion for production of papers related to the Canada Student Service Grant (CSSG) and the We Charity and Me to We, adopted by the Standing Committee on Finance...on July 7, 2020. Due to the significant volume of documents requiring translation, a partial package containing the translated records is here enclosed. Over 400 translators have been working on the documents for some time and we will provide the rest as soon as possible.
As discussed during Committee testimony, Canadian Heritage, with support from Employment and Social Development Canada and Service Canada, are working diligently to ensure that students negatively affected by COVID-19 receive much-needed support as they seek to further their studies in a time of reduced employment opportunities.
As you will see from the enclosed documents, the approach adopted by the Departments is to disclose as much information as possible within the scope of the Motion, to further the Committee's breadth and depth of understanding of the design and creation of the CSSG.
The Committee's motion stipulates that Cabinet confidences and national security information are to be excluded from the package. No information is being withheld on the grounds of national security, since the information does not so pertain. With respect to Cabinet confidences, you will note that considerable information on the Canada Student Service Grant that were Cabinet confidences, is being provided to the Committee. This is in keeping with the public disclosures....
I won't repeat that portion because it simply goes on to make the exact same point as the previous letters that in fact, because the committee requested national security and cabinet confidences be respected, the government nevertheless took the step in its redactions to make public certain measures that in these transmittal letters they've indicated their desire to keep public matters that would ordinarily be subjected to cabinet confidentiality.
The letter continued after that same paragraph we had seen before:
Recognizing the significant public interest we have included relevant personal information in the collection but not personal opinions, in accordance with s.37 of the Department of Employment and Social Development Act and s.8(2)(m) of the the Privacy Act. We have communicated this decision to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner. Similarly, because we believe that it is in the public interest to do so, we are prepared to issue a limited waiver of solicitor client privilege as it relates to the information that is being provided by Employment and Social Development Canada.
The information enclosed consists of four parts:
1. The Contribution Agreement signed between the Government of Canada and the WE Charity Foundation;
2. A list containing the names of Government of Canada representatives who received a proposai from WE Charity for funding to deliver a 3-month youth summer service program and a 12-month youth entrepreneurship program for youth 16 to 29;
3. A set of documents that illustrate key moments in the design of the CSSG; and
4. A larger collection of communications, documents and meeting notes connected with the development and decision-making processes for the CSSG.
ln addition to the request from the Committee, Canadian Heritage and Employment and Social Development Canada have also received a significant number of Access to Information requests related to the CSSG. Sorne of these requests go beyond the scope of the Committee's Motion. We will make the Committee aware of ATIP releases related to the CSSG as they occur.
We trust that the Committee finds the enclosed material useful for its work.
That was signed by the deputy minister of ESDC, Graham Flack; the senior associate deputy minister of ESDC and chief operating officer for Service Canada, Lori MacDonald; and the senior associate deputy minister of diversity, inclusion and youth at Canadian Heritage, Gina Wilson.
As it's been made clear, Mr. Chair, by these transmittal letters following the adoption of the motion of the finance committee, our public service worked really hard to gather the relevant documents and provide the committee with literally more than 5,000 pages.
As has been noted, the motion adopted by the committee stipulated that matters of cabinet confidence and national security be excluded from the request, and that any redaction necessary, including to protect the privacy of Canadian citizens and permanent residents whose personal information may be included in the documents as well as public servants who have been providing assistance on this matter, be made by the Office of the Law Clerk and Parliamentary Counsel at the House of Commons. The exemptions were applied by our non-partisan public service. Deputies at ESDC stated in their transmittal letter, which is the subject of the subamendment, that the approach that was adopted was to disclose as much information as possible within the scope of the committee's motion. No exclusions were made on the grounds of national security.
The other subject about which the committee said, “government, we don't want documents from you” was on cabinet confidences. The government decided, nevertheless, where it was appropriate to waive cabinet confidences and disclose those documents, even though the committee never asked for them. A substantial amount of information that would normally be under cabinet confidence was, in fact, provided to the committee, information that would fall under cabinet confidence but was not related to the Canada student service grant and therefore—
:
No, I'm sorry, Ms. Jansen. You're misunderstanding. I'm not reading from the documents that you're raising here. I'm giving context to the entire discussion, so let me continue.
Let me turn your attention to pages 105 to 110 of the PCO release.
A number of programs listed are unrelated to the CSSG and have nothing to do with the motion at hand. The committee explicitly did not ask for this, but still, where relevant, if there was mention of the CSSG, it was disclosed. An example is on page 107. Documents like this are a prime example of the documents that Mr. Poilievre was waving around, as you remember, many weeks ago in what some have termed, quite correctly, a stunt at a press conference. Items requested by the committee were related to the Canada student service grant, and this cabinet confidence document, I might add, was released with all information related to the CSSG contained therein. The non-partisan professional public service redacted matters that were not related to the committee motion, which was not only to be expected but was also both appropriate and prudent.
Another example, Mr. Chair, is on pages 189-190 of the PCO release. We are looking at an email between Rachel Wernick at ESDC and Ms. Tara Shannon from PCO. As the motion expressly stated, unrelated cabinet confidences were removed. As well, Ms. Wernick's cellphone number was removed. I hope we can all agree it wouldn't be appropriate for that number to be public. That is absolutely vital. The more we push this, the more I worry that certain members of the committee might not take that into account, but I'll leave that aside. In fact, the motion that was passed by this committee requesting these documents asked for this type of redaction to be made.
Again, here on page 191 of the PCO release, we have another email between Ms. Wernick and Ms. Shannon. Again, only a cellphone number has been removed. Yet another example is on pages 192-193 of the PCO release. There's another redaction to protect the cellphone number. I think we can all agree that the removal of such information is reasonable. Again, this is all adding context to the discussion here at hand, Mr. Chair. I find it interesting that while the public is battling a second wave of COVID-19, my opposition colleagues are chasing down private cellphone numbers.
Let's look at pages 219-221 of the PCO document that was released. Frankly, this is a truly extraordinary document, a document that would rarely be released, a document that we would never have seen released under the Harper government. The synopsis of an entire cabinet meeting has been made public. Obviously, there are items protected by cabinet confidence; however, items related to the CSSG were still disclosed. Who knows what other topics were discussed? It could be national security issues. We don't know. It could be cabinet confidences that are unrelated to any of this and that should be protected. This is determined by the Clerk of the Privy Council and referenced in his transmittal letter.
Frankly, Chair, there are reasons that documents like this are not normally public until long after a government's mandates have ended, ensuring the confidence of cabinet deliberations essential to the peace, order and good governance of the country, which my colleagues across the aisle always talk about, I believe sincerely. Cabinet confidences are essential to responsible government, and in an extraordinary move the clerk waived privilege of the sections of this document as they related to the cabinet discussion on the CSSG. Cabinet confidences are among our country's most protected information, and here they are for everyone to read.
My opposition colleagues are not satisfied with only seeing the relevant information in question that they asked for in their motion—
Here's yet another example. It's on pages 192 to 193 of the PCO release. It's another redaction to protect a cellphone number. We can all agree that the removal of such information is reasonable. It's interesting that while we are battling a second wave of COVID-19, my opposition colleagues are choosing to chase down private cellphone numbers. I do remember reading that already in to the record, Mr. Chair. Let me just skip down here.
On page 268 of the PCO release, we have an exchange between Ms. Wernick and Mr. Philip Jennings from PCO. In it, they are discussing an attachment that Ms. Wernick has forwarded to PCO. I know the opposition has a lot of interest in Ms. Wernick, but the only item redacted here is her cellphone number. I don't think they need that, Mr. Chair.
Here's another example. On pages 348 to 352 of the PCO release, we have another one of Mr. Poilievre's fully blacked out documents, if you can remember that famous press conference. If Mr. Poilievre were a sitting minister of the Crown—the overall result he is maybe looking for from all of this—he would have access to this entire document. However, seeing as how he is not, and following the motion passed at this committee, we have below the relevant portions of the document as they relate to the CSSG. In an extraordinary move, the relevant parties in this document were unredacted by the Clerk of the Privy Council.
Items that are not relevant to the committee's motion requesting documents were redacted by the non-partisan professional public service. The redactions were for good reason. For example, many items were likely on the agenda of the cabinet meeting as matters of national security and sensitive procurement that would hurt the government's ability to act in the national interest, matters that if released could be damaging to Canada. I don't know about my opposition colleagues, but I am always in favour of protecting Canada's reputation and national security before anything else, Mr. Chair.
These redactions clearly strike the right balance between releasing relevant information and ensuring necessary cabinet confidences are protected.
Mr. Chair, turning to a very important document, the actual funding agreement between WE and the Government of Canada, which is on pages 364 to 380 of the PCO release, again we see that the professional public service redacted personal contact information. That is it. Nothing more. This entire funding agreement is public, not redacted, and available for public and parliamentary scrutiny.
I think it bears repeating that while we sit here discussing the redactions of private cellphone numbers, the second wave of COVID-19 continues to rage through parts of Canada. While our focus should be on assisting Canadians to get through the second wave and conducting pre-budget consultations to see how we can help to build back better, we are focusing on missing phone numbers, and again I remind my colleagues that there is a standing order pushing us, forcing us, to commence a pre-budget consultation.
Below is a Finance Canada proposal—not below; excuse me. Let me talk about a Finance Canada proposal on pages 394 to 401 in the PCO release. It discusses the implementation of the CSSG in full unredacted detail. The only information removed is again the private cellphone number of a public servant.
Next we have a very interesting document, Mr. Chair. I think my colleagues will find this quite interesting. We are looking here at page 404 of the PCO release, which is an invitation to a meeting to discuss the WE contract. The redaction is of a conference call login ID. These are all simple things that need to be redacted for privacy purposes.
From the PCO release, pages 417 to 419, we have cabinet confidence documents stamped “Limited distribution”, a document called a “Memorandum to the ” seeking his decision regarding the CSSG and other matters.
As is noted in the motion from this committee, matters related to the CSSG were requested, and here we have them released. However, items unrelated to any confidences were redacted, as we expressly permitted by the motion that was agreed to by members of this committee.
Next there is a very interesting email in the PCO release on pages 426 to 427, an email from Ms. Rosanne MacKay at PCO to one of her colleagues, Alain Beaudoin. The topic is a cabinet meeting note from the . It's not unusual whatsoever. The redaction, again, is a public servant's cellphone number. There's a pattern here, Mr. Chair.
Let's take a look at other pages, 428 to 432, from PCO. Again, we have a document with a conference call ID redacted, an item that is clearly not related to the CSSG. These items were redacted by the professional and non-partisan public service.
Below we have another release that I'd like to talk about, further to my comments, on pages to 433 to 434. Again, what is my opposition colleague's complaint? It is a public servant's cellphone number. What exactly is the opposition hoping to find with the cellphone number of public servants?
Another redacted page in the PCO release is page 456. Mr. Poilievre seems to take issue with a redaction on this page. I see that he's present at the meeting, or at least his screen is on, but he's not there to hear this. In any case, I'll continue by saying that we're looking at an email among public servants who are involved in the CSSG file. I'm sure colleagues on the other side would really decipher this email if they wanted to. I'll give them a hint. The email is of a private citizen.
There are more examples. Just for the information of Canadians watching, we are focused on getting you through this pandemic. That is our obligation now, and I think that will come to define what we do as parliamentarians in the weeks and months ahead. I hope that this committee is allowed to engage in that work. Unfortunately, we continue to see opposition colleagues focused on cellphone numbers of professional public servants.
Here's more from the PCO release. On pages 491 to 495, we have an email from Mr. Kielburger to Ms. Fox at PCO. The entire content and attached information from Mr. Kielburger are included. There are no redactions on content, other than the names of private citizens and personal contact information, which is not at all relevant.
Now let's turn our attention to the documents provided by the Department of Finance. I'll add that they've done an amazing job. They came to committee time and again in the previous session to answer committee members' questions about the pandemic, and I'm sure that will continue if this committee is allowed to do its work.
On pages 1 to 3 of the release, once again, all content related to the CSSG is present. The only redactions relate to third parties not associated with the program. Let's take a look at pages 51 to 54 of the Department of Finance release. We're looking at an email between Ms. Kovacevic from the Department of Finance and minister's staff. The content is all here, all visible for public and parliamentary scrutiny. The only redactions present are of cellphone numbers, information that is not relevant and should not be in the public realm.
In keeping with my opposition colleagues' predisposition to light their hair on fire, if I could put it that way, over what they call unreasonable redactions, let's turn our attention to page 189 of the Department of Finance release. We have a meeting invitation, with all information visible. The redactions are a conference call ID. I'd love to hear my opposition colleagues explain why this redaction is at all inappropriate. The redaction was completed by the non-partisan and professional public service, who, as I have mentioned throughout my remarks here, were following all relevant guidelines to ensure that the documents conformed with the committee's motion, which states that redaction of private information is permitted.
Now let's look at page 190 of the Department of Finance release. This same email from Craig Kielburger to then Minister Morneau was also part of the WE documents submission that was received by this committee. In that email, we see the same email with all information present. As we see there, the information had nothing at all to do with the CSSG and thus had no relevance to the motion of this committee.
On page 216 of the Department of Finance release, there's an email from Ms. Marquez at WE to officials in the public service who were responsible for the CSSG. The only redactions present are of personal information of Ms. Marquez.
Again, on pages 222 to 223 of the Department of Finance release, we have all content of the email between Ms. Marquez and relevant department officials fully visible. What could the redactions be that my opposition colleagues are up in arms about? They are an email address and contact information for Ms. Marquez. This is not exactly anything shocking.
We're looking now at page 224 of the Department of Finance document. We have here a meeting invitation from Ms. Kovacevic to a minister's office staff member. All content is present. What redactions are Mr. Poilievre and the Conservatives taking issue with? These were a conference ID and Ms. Kovacevic's cellphone number. We can go on and on.
There's a similar story on page 226. Again, the only redaction present is a conference call ID. All content as well as the names and emails of relevant officials are present for Canadians and the opposition to see.
I will certainly be accused by some members of the committee, some of whom are smiling at me right now, of sounding like a broken record, but it bears emphasis that when we're looking at the Department of Finance release, we continue to see patterns. All content of this agenda and the notes for a meeting between members of the PCO, PMO, ESDC and the Department of Finance are included.
This is a cabinet confidence document, Mr. Chair, and it's been released for review—
:
He'll be able to speak soon, Mr. Chair. As I said, I'll be wrapping up shortly.
Let's take a look at an email from Ms. Wernick to officials across the public service, including PCO and the Department of Finance, on pages 326 to 330 of the Department of Finance release. The redactions that the opposition is taking issue with include Ms. Kovacevic's cellphone number. It really is absurd here, Mr. Chair.
On pages 411 to 426 of the Department of Finance release, we seem to be looking at a decision document of some kind. On pages 411 to 426, again, what you'll notice here is that all the information relevant to the CSSG is unredacted and present for everyone to see. The redactions are unrelated cabinet confidences, as determined by the non-partisan and professional public service. As was expressly permitted for in the motion from this committee, all cabinet confidences that are related to CSSG would be released, but unrelated information was to be redacted, and it was.
There's nothing too complex here, Mr. Chair. It's not rocket science. It's already a rare occurrence for cabinet confidences of a sitting government to be released. The clerk took the extraordinary step of releasing all information as it related to the CSSG, while also maintaining protection of necessary and unrelated cabinet confidences. Everything present here has been done in the spirit of that promise and while respecting the committee's motion for information.
I'll conclude in a moment, but let me look at two more examples of broad redactions. These are the famous blacked-out pages that Mr. Poilievre wanted to bring to the attention of the country, again at a time when the country was focused on COVID-19 and not the musings of, with all due respect, Mr. Poilievre. Beginning on page 219 of the PCO release, we have a summary of a full cabinet meeting. The discussion could have been related to vaccines, PPE procurement, national security or other matters. A cabinet document such as this is rarely, if ever, made public. Cabinet confidences unrelated to the Canada student services grant are redacted, as per the terms of the motion adopted at the committee. In keeping with the spirit of the FINA motion, CSSG items are, however, entirely visible.
As a second example, on page 348 of the PCO release, we have a second cabinet note that is redacted. This is the later cabinet meeting in May of 2020. CSSG implementation was discussed and is unredacted, as ordered by the finance committee motion and as agreed to by the Clerk of the Privy Council. However, the rest of the information is redacted, as it falls under cabinet confidence. We do not know what the topics of discussion were here. There could have been talks related to national security issues or legal discussions with solicitor-client privilege, protected as such. There could have been discussions related to further PPE and vaccine procurement that, if public, would have put our competitiveness at risk.
To sum up, Mr. Chair, I think I've demonstrated here—and I'll admit I was exhaustive, but again, we have to put everything into proper context—that the redactions the opposition have been turning into political theatre are in fact in line with the motion they proposed at this very committee.
Mr. Chair, I'll now turn to you. I know that there are other speakers on the list. I'm glad to put this on the record, where it needs to be.
:
I also want to say a huge thanks to you, Mr. Chair, and to everyone, for the 10-minute break.
I too am going to go through a fairly detailed speech. It's not quite as long as my colleague Mr. Fragiskatos's, but I can assure you, Mr. Chair, it is related to the subamendment. It highlights the issues that we have to look at in the reconciliation of any discrepancies, and why it's important for us to have analysis from the clerk to compare the two versions we've been talking about.
I'm going to continue from where my colleague Mr. Fraser left off by providing a detailed examination of the package of the documents provided by ESDC. The transmittal letters read into the record by Mr. Fraser provide us with some good context. I'm going to be providing a few more examples of why it was very good context. I'm going to use the page numbers that were stamped on the documents, as they are the only indicators I have from the packages provided to the committee today. Again, this is all related to the ESDC documents. I'm going to start with pages 159 and 161.
At the very top right of the page a designation reads “secret”, and then there's another designation that reads “confidence of the Queen's Privy Council”. These are key designations that one would find in a document with cabinet confidences. Confidences of the Queen's Privy Council are defined in the following way:
Cabinet ministers are collectively responsible for all actions taken by the Cabinet and must publicly support all Cabinet decisions. In order to reach final decisions, ministers must be able to express their views freely during the discussions held in Cabinet. To allow the exchange of views to be disclosed publicly would result in the erosion of the collective responsibility of ministers. As a result, the collective decision-making process has traditionally been protected by the rule of confidentiality, which upholds the principle of collective responsibility and enables ministers to engage in full and frank discussions necessary for the effective functioning of a Cabinet system.
The Supreme Court of Canada has recognized that cabinet confidentiality is essential to good government. In the decision Babcock v. Canada, 2002, SCC 57, at paragraph 18 the court explained the reasons for this:
The process of democratic governance works best when Cabinet members charged with government policy and decision-making are free to express themselves around the Cabinet table unreservedly.
To preserve this rule of confidentiality, subsection 70(1) of the Privacy Act—and from hereon in I'm going be referring to the Privacy Act as “the act”—provides:
This Act does not apply to confidences of the Queen's Privy Council for Canada.
For convenience, in the following, “material confidences” will be used to refer to confidences of the Queen's Privy Council for Canada. Matters classified as secret are considered secret because their release would cause serious injury to the national interest, yet here we see that one of those essential confidences was redacted with only a conference call ID redacted. Clearly, the government and public service have been proactive in releasing as much information as possible, even information that's typically closely held and privileged to allow for the proper and effective management of government.
Maybe I'll pause for one second. I think that sometimes when we us lingo for who's doing the redacting—I know it's been mentioned a few times, but it's always been said that you have to repeat things six or seven times for it to stick in someone's mind—the redactions were done by our independent civil servants and under very strict rules. These are rules that have been followed for years. They were not new rules that were created for these documents. I want to remind all Canadians who might listening that this was done by independent civil servants to decide what should be redacted, what should not be included.
I'll provide some more information about what we continue to.... I want to highlight a few more redactions.
If we look to pages 414 to 429, you will see an email between relevant public servants responsible for the CSSG program. For those who have forgotten, CSSG is the Canada student service grant program, which WE had originally been awarded to deliver by ESDC. The only redactions we see here are of personal information and unrelated cabinet confidences, which were permitted under the FINA motion. However, our government was forthright. All information as it relates to the CSSG is here in plain sight. The entirely blacked-out pages that Mr. Poilievre has referenced several times are nowhere to be found. I want to make sure I point that out.
On pages 544 to 545, if we look at those pages of the ESDC release, we once again see redacted phone numbers. The only redactions we have found on these particular pages is in reference to a conference call ID.
On page 621, again we show redactions of conference call access information, which, Mr. Chair, is very reasonable. These are active conference call lines, likely used by by Ms. Wernick or the minister's staff. There's no reason that the public should have access to it, for any reason. It is a security issue.
Chair, if we look at pages 622 to 628 of the ESDC release—and if you had it in front of you, you would see on the top right corner that this document is marked “secret”. For those Canadians who are following from home, Treasury Board Secretariat and our security services count any information that could cause serious injury to the national interest as secret information. I'm sure Canadians can understand that cabinet confidences are information critical to the national interest and government decision-making. They are, rightly, never disclosed lightly, yet here in this document we have a prime example of the level of transparency our government went to in order to ensure that documents related to CSSG were released to parliamentarians.
Where we do see redactions in these secret cabinet confidence documents, they are for information unrelated to our motion, and which are clearly in the critical national interest and therefore should remain protected. Our non-partisan public service went about ensuring that the national interest was respected.
We turn to pages 631 to 638. As mentioned earlier on, Mr. Chair, there are reasons why we're marking many of our documents secret or at a higher classification and why they're so closely guarded. I want to provide an example where the non-partisan public service did make some redactions.
Here we are looking at pages 631 to 638 of this ESDC release. Colleagues will note that it's only one page. This is due to the fact that the public service redacted the section due to relevance and to protect cabinet confidences, which is in our national interest.
I know, Mr. Chair, that my opposition colleagues sometimes will think that we have a negative intent when those redactions are done by our independent civil servants. I do think they've been very responsible. I think they've done their best to try to disclose as much information while honouring secret or non-disclosable information, as per how I've defined it earlier on when I started the presentation.
If we turn to pages 888 to 889, the only thing that's redacted here is a private cellphone number of public servant.
Again, if we turn to pages 958 to 966, it looks to be a cabinet document to discuss the implementation of the CSSG. Again, these are not the types of documents that, on average, are made public. In respect of the motion we have, it is almost entirely unredacted, with unrelated personal information and cabinet confidences removed.
If we turn to pages 975 to 979 from the ESDC release, we see minimal redactions. Only personal information was removed; 95% of all these pages are visible for anyone to read.
On pages 1056 to 1057, here we have an email from Ms. Wernick to several other officials. Clearly, all items are related to CSSG. They are unredacted. They're visible. At the time our government was busy delivering a number of programs to help Canadians through the pandemic. These redactions are likely discussions around those programs.
If you were able to turn to this and look at pages 1092 to 1098, this is an example of what a complete page redaction looks like.
As you could see from some of my previous examples, complete page removals like this are rare and are directly related to cabinet confidences, which, as the original FINA motion stated, were expressly excluded. Again, these pages were removed by the professional non-partisan public service, who were carrying out their duty to protect cabinet confidences.
Here's also an interesting redaction, Mr. Chair. Somewhere between pages 1262 and 1275 of the ESDC release, we see that the non-partisan public service has redacted a document password. Of course, we do that for security reasons, and for very valid reasons.
On pages 1784 to 1788, you'll see that there is communication between Ms. Wernick and several department officials, with minimal sections removed due to cabinet confidence, which is, again, expressly permitted under the FINA motion.
When we look to pages 1959 to 1960, we're looking at an email from Ms. Wernick to Ms. Shannon at PCO. We see that over 95% of the email is visible, with one minor redaction due to the cabinet confidence. As we've mentioned, that is completely allowable.
Let me see if I can give you a few more examples, and then I want to wrap up with a couple of comments.
On pages 2176 to 2181, we're looking at an email from the deputy minister at ESDC. We see a majority of the information is included as it relates to CSSG, but again, any cabinet confidence or private information is removed.
If we look at page 2191, we see it's an email from to her deputy minister. We see there's no redaction other than the minister's private email address. Typically these types of correspondence are kept in confidence, but it was waived as it relates to CSSG and is here for all of us to see.
I think we can see from these examples that our public service did its very best to try to put out as much information as possible, as long as we were honouring anything that might be deemed a cabinet confidence or part of cabinet discussions, as long as we were honouring any secret information like telephone numbers or any personal details that might be completely irrelevant to the CSSG contract, to the CSSG program and to WE being selected to deliver the CSSG contract.
I'm trying to see if there is anything else that's relevant, other than telephone numbers being redacted and other bits of information. Largely, I have about another 10 pages where I could say, well, for the most part we haven't redacted the information. We've done our very best to try to provide information, or the civil servants tried to make sure that as much information was going out...as per the instructions of the July 7 motion.
I'm going to end with probably one more comment, Mr. Chair. One thing that I think we might have forgotten is that when our made the announcement that there was going to be a prorogation of government, I think he—
:
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
It's unfortunate. We had what I thought was a very elegant solution on the table because of Mr. Gerretsen's initiative to put forward an amendment to the amendment. We are seemingly running around in circles. Either way, sometimes that's what you have to do to get to a good outcome. Mr. Gerretsen had put forward something that I thought was quite reasonable. I wonder why opposition colleagues have not supported it. Here we are again debating an amendment that a number of us were rightly concerned about—an amendment that comes close, if not entirely, to breaching privilege.
With that said, Mr. Chair, I still have great hesitation here. I think we have to think very carefully about the way to proceed.
Let's not forget that all of this debate is obstructing what must be the fundamental focus of this committee, especially right now. That is COVID-19, pre-budget deliberations and inviting the nearly 800 stakeholders who want to come to this committee and make their case as they see it. We are continuing to dither on that.
As I've said here before today and I'll put on the record once again, Standing Order 83.1 calls on the committee to commence pre-budget deliberations, which should take place over a number of weeks with a defined timeline. It has to end by a particular date.
Mr. Chair, perhaps you could confer with the clerk on this: What happens if that standing order is violated? The more we continue to see the opposition play politics in this way, the more likely it is that standing order is violated. What happens if the committee is in violation of 83.1? What are the consequences for the committee? I think that needs to be understood by all members.
This is not an effort to sidestep issues around WE Charity and some of the mistakes that happened on that particular issue. I've been a member of this committee for some time, including during the summer, when we had a number of hearings on the matter. These are important questions no doubt, but I can tell you, and I think every single member of this committee would echo the sentiment, that there are people in our communities who want this committee to be serious about the work that it's doing. There are any number of questions that we would look at. I would think that we examine very closely issues related to COVID-19 without any hesitation.
The more the opposition wants to put forward amendments—or motions, to begin with, and then amendments to motions—that really have nothing to do with the issue of our time....
When I get up, I'm thinking about constituents. I know that MPs around the table are thinking about constituents, too. What are those constituents thinking about, Mr. Chair? They're thinking about the challenges they're facing because of COVID-19. They're thinking about paying their rent. They're thinking about paying their mortgage. They are thinking about putting groceries on the table. We have seen government programs really provide a lifeline. They have helped in so many ways to serve as a safety net for Canadians across the country, whether as individuals or as Canadians who own businesses.
The CFIB, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, says that it wants to see this committee be serious about moving forward with thoughts on and advice to the government based on expert testimony, which it would be included within. I would love to hear from the CFIB, even though it's been critical of the government on a number of points. It has made some cogent points throughout this entire experience of COVID-19.
That is also true of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, which is another organization with an important voice that I know my Conservative colleagues certainly respect. Where is it on this? It wants to see this committee carry out very important work.
Restaurants are ailing right now. The more we debate amendments to motions and motions to do this, that and the other around the WE Charity issue, the more we are obstructed from helping those folks on the ground. I mentioned restaurants in particular. My family has great experience in restaurants. My parents recently retired from the sector, but I know that family members and friends who are still in it are facing real problems.
Take a look at what Todd Barclay recently said. He is, as you know, the president and CEO of Restaurants Canada. He said, “We appreciate the federal government acting on this critical recommendation” of stepping up to support Canadians during COVID-19, “among other new support measures announced—”
:
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I take a bit of issue with Mr. Julian's characterizing what's happening here as a filibuster. I think it's a spirited debate. A filibuster carries certain connotations. I don't doubt the sincerity of Mr. Julian, as he is a sincere person. I disagree with him a lot of the time, but he is someone who has added a great deal to committee deliberations. However, it's a spirited discussion that's happening here.
It's nice to see Mr. MacGregor at the committee. I also disagree with him on a number of issues, but he adds a great deal to Parliament. I know he has been the justice critic for the NDP in the past. I've sat on the justice committee in the past, though not as a formal member, and I've heard his thoughts on a number of issues relating to justice and human rights. He always adds something to the discussion, and I know he'll do that here tonight.
The point I was discussing earlier, before the intervention by Mr. Julian, was about restaurants. Again, Todd Barclay, the president and CEO of Restaurants Canada, has welcomed the various programs. Many programs that have been introduced at the federal level are benefiting restaurants, but they need ongoing support, as he has said, to help restaurants “pull through the ongoing pandemic.”
Isn't that true, Mr. Chair? If you talk to restaurant owners and their workers and hotel owners and their workers, in the tourism sector in particular, you hear these are ailing industries.
One of the sectors we all too often ignore is the meetings and events sector. As I mentioned earlier in today's meeting, yesterday I had the chance to sit down with a local business owner. It was a tour actually, a socially distanced one. He operates a meetings and events business that basically builds different stations that you would see at trade shows. Obviously trade shows are not happening right now. He employs well over 30 people—close to 40, actually—but right now his number is down to 10. He was very thankful for the wage subsidy. It's the only thing that is keeping his business going.
Those are the folks we need to hear from. We don't need to continue to go in circles in the way we have, debating issues we already talked about in the summer. It's not as if the government and the Liberal members here at committee are trying to ignore what the opposition is saying.
Again, we had a very good, reasonable solution, if not a compromise—but that's politics, isn't it?—when Mr. Gerretsen put forward something I thought really would have worked. Now here we are back to Mr. Kelly's motion, which—as we have put on the record, ad nauseam, I'll admit, but perhaps needs to be put on again so I'll do that here—is a problematic motion.
That all has to be kept in mind, Mr. Chair.
I continue to look at things that key stakeholders have raised, and I wonder what those stakeholders are thinking when they see us debating amendments to motions as we are here today and continue to do.
The YMCA, obviously a well-respected and well-recognized organization, wants to see pre-budget deliberations carried out. Nature Canada wants to see pre-budget deliberations carried out.
On the specific point of Nature Canada, let's not forget that issues of the environment have to remain front and centre. We should address the issue of the environment and make sure that it's not put on the back burner as it so often has in modern Canadian history, make sure that it is front and centre, that we do build back better and that a COVID-19 economic response plan takes into account the importance of the environment.
Take a look at what has been said at this committee previously, if not by my Conservative friends, then certainly the NDP and the Bloc Québécois, talking about the need to not ignore the environment. That's something we embrace as a committee. Liberal members feel the same way. We will disagree, perhaps, on the nuances, on the details, but I share the sentiments of Mr. Ste-Marie, who is an extraordinary member of this committee and regularly contributes. I know he has a background in economics and has taught economics. When I hear him talk passionately about the environment, I take that very seriously.
Mr. Julian has very insightful thoughts on the environment. Yes, we will disagree on particular matters relating to pipelines—and I won't get into the specifics of that—but I know I've heard Mr. MacGregor as well speak in a very passionate way in Parliament on issues relating to the environment.
When we continue to debate amendments—we're on the amendment to the motion—the point holds that it means we are not discussing the environment. It means that we are not discussing the issue of how to build back better, which is an interesting idea, this whole body of thought that has emerged that says we have a new opportunity to embrace an agenda that allows for the environment to be front and centre and to be—
I appreciate the intervention of colleagues. It's not my intent here to obstruct the discussion, to stand in the way of what has been proposed by Mr. Kelly in the form of an amendment to a motion. Of course, we need to deal with that as a committee. I've said at length here that when we continue to debate matters that have been dealt with in so many ways, maybe not to the pure satisfaction of opposition colleagues, it obstructs us from dealing with the substantive matters at hand. Those relate, of course, to the environment. Those relate, of course, to COVID-19.
Provinces are dealing with the issue from a health perspective. I'm very happy to see the federal government step up to support provincial governments with the safe recovery announcement that we saw a number of weeks ago: $19 billion for provinces. How those provinces put to use that, admittedly, very large amount of money—but necessary amount—is up to them. However, let's continue to hear from the Federation of Canadian Municipalities. We're not only mentioning provinces here but also hearing from the FCM on what cities and towns require during this time.
Notice that I'm putting on record what I'm hearing from constituents. What I'm hearing from constituents is not relating to anything that the motion and the amendment to the motion has brought up. I'm hearing from constituents about their everyday challenges, and those challenges have only been accentuated because of COVID-19. This is where the country is.
Let's not also ignore the very important issue of indigenous affairs and how the Canadian government seeks to continue to put forward an agenda that is in line with the general ethic of reconciliation in this country. We could be raising all of those matters right now at committee in pre-budget deliberations. I don't know when we'll be able to do that when we have the opposition continuing to raise, in this committee and in other committees, issues that are not really in line with the desire to advance the interests of Canadians, and that are completely in line with a desire to promote political interests to exert as much—and if I can paraphrase my learned colleague, Mr. Gerretsen, here—as much “political carnage” against the and the government of the day as is possible.
At no point have I heard Conservative members in the motion and in the amendment to the motion bring up how either seeks to advance the interests of Canadians. There's been no argument put forward to that effect. That's very disappointing because my constituents, all of our constituents, Canadians across the country, deserve better. They deserve a finance committee that recognizes its fundamental role. We need to be very serious about gathering ideas that will, if not binding, certainly serve as important advice for the , the and the wider cabinet. Will we have our way on every single point of advice? No, we will not. That's not the expectation at all, but certainly we've seen this government listen to this finance committee in important ways. There have been a number of things.
In fact, I would.... Perhaps I'm overdoing it here, Mr. Chair—I could be accused of that—but I don't think so. If you look at the programs that have been introduced and the changes to the programs that have been introduced as we've dealt with COVID-19..... I'm thinking about CEBA. I'm thinking about the need to support Canadians with rent through CECRA. I'm thinking about the payroll subsidy that the government put forward and very thankfully renewed, as we saw in the throne speech, so that it will continue until the summer of 2021. That's another point that I continue to hear from business owners: how thankful they are for that.
This committee had a central role in suggesting a lot of those ideas. They were based on what? Not on our own musings but on the thoughts, ideas and analysis of expert witnesses, whether in the form of organizations like the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives—which I know Mr. MacGregor will sympathize with—the Chamber of Commerce or the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, not to mention a number of business owners, small business owners, and also large business owners. I think my Conservative colleagues sympathize with them, or at least I certainly hope so. They're not behaving in that way right now, though, at this committee. Certainly, we on the Liberal side have paid attention to this.
Those programs have kept the country going. There's no exaggeration there. They've kept the economy going. They've kept individuals going. What are the results? We've seen Canadians, yes, struggling, but at the same time the country, when we compare ourselves to other G7 partners, is doing rather well. We still have a very sustainable debt-to-GDP ratio at in and around 48%. I know the Conservatives—and they're free to do it—when they want to get back to the issues that genuinely matter to this committee, will bring issues of debt and deficit up. What they ignore is that at 48% we're still at a very reasonable debt-to-GDP ratio. This is something that can't be ignored. In the mid-1990s, the IMF called us an honorary—and I'm quoting here from The Wall Street Journal of the day, in 1994 I believe—member of the third world because we had a debt-to-GDP ratio of 67% at that time. We're not even close to that.
Let's debate these matters in a meaningful way at committee. I know witnesses want to come and tell us that, but here we have opposition colleagues continuing to go round and round and round on all of these particular issues. That's the challenge I have.
Let me also say that there are so many sectors that want to make the case. I've talked about the importance of the environment. I've talked about indigenous issues. I've talked about everyday people working in restaurants, hotels, meetings and events, in the tourism sector, but the building sector too, which is such an important economic driver. I remember seeing very recently the view of Canada's Building Trades Unions that they are ready to listen to the government, to work with government on infrastructure programs and shovel-ready projects that would stimulate the economy. I'd love to hear from them, but I can't do that right now. None of us can do that right now.
We are where we are on this issue, and that's the sad reality.
I'll leave it there for now. I thank the committee for indulging me. Again, we have to have pre-budget deliberations.
In the time that I've taken to speak, which I know has been some time, I wonder if you, Mr. Chair, or the clerk have an answer on what happens if the committee is found to be in violation of Standing Order 83.1? What would the consequences be? That's something that I've looked at in House of Commons Procedure and Practice. There is confusion on that point. I think I know the answer. What a book it is for new members at the committee, and I'm looking at Ms. Jansen who's smiling at me now, as I can see on the screen, in a very collegial way, and I'm sure is agreeing with me on my points. I would advise Ms. Jansen if she hasn't already done so, and other new committee members, to take a look at House of Commons Procedure and Practice by Bosc and Gagnon to familiarize themselves with the Standing Orders.
Under 83.1, as I've said, we have an obligation as a committee, but what happens when Standing Orders are broken? I know that mention is made in that book about “parliamentary agents”, which I take to be MPs. If MPs are found to be in violation of the Standing Orders, the consequences are quite serious. I was a bit confused about whether “parliamentary agents” refers to some other specific category, or whether it is referring specifically to MPs. Clarity on that point would be appreciated, but that's a related point.
The key question I started with was “What happens when we have a violation of Standing Order 83.1?” All these issues that I've raised relate to that need to begin a set of pre-budget hearings. Those deliberations are.... Well, I've made the point. You know how I feel, Mr. Chair.
Anyway, Mr. Chair, thank you.
I'm going to repeat a little of what Mr. Gerretsen had mentioned. I think if you step back and look at what Mr. Poilievre's motion is about, and really from what I've heard from Mr. Julian, and we haven't heard a lot from Mr. Ste-Marie but my understanding is that he has this worry as well, if there is a belief that the redactions within the 5,600-page WE documents that were released towards the end of August were made because the Liberal government was deliberately trying to hide something, then this motion gets directly to the point.
The other thing I've been hearing, I've been hearing from Ms. Jansen and I've been hearing from Mr. Julian today, is that we should get going on stuff that matters to Canadians.
If we're trying to get to that, and if we need as a government to be able to prove that civil servants independently redacted this, and if we could actually bring them to committee, have them respond directly to the committee, directly provide the documents relevant to the committee, actually ask those questions ourselves in the public light, then I think we should be able to clear this up and move on to the business of why it is that we exist right now.
Let's ignore the fact for a moment, because we forget that the documents were just one part of the whole looking into the concerns around the selection of WE to run the CSSG, and recall that we had almost two full months of meetings on this committee, never mind the other committees and never mind that the Ethics Commissioner is looking at it, as well as the Auditor General. We have already proven, and we can go through all the people who want to remind themselves of this, whether they are new members or old members, or new or old members of this committee, that there are actually minutes that show this wasn't corruption. There was no misuse of funds. WE was independently selected by civil servants. We didn't do a sole-sourced contract. We selected a contribution agreement for very deliberate reasons, with clear parameters, and we absolutely did this for students.
I would say to you that this is an amazing opportunity. What this motion basically says, and I hope people have had a chance to look at it at this point, is that it's suspending the original motion that Mr. Poilievre put aside and the amendment, both of those, in order for us to be able to provide the two sets of documents we've been talking about today, as well as to bring forward the relevant civil servants who are in charge of doing the redactions. That would allow the committee to hear directly from them. This would all be done in the public context.
If for some reason the opposition is really unhappy with what they are hearing or they don't think it's enough, we can come back and we can make a decision to come back to the original motion of Mr. Poilievre as well as the amendment, although I would hope that we would be able to get past this, because as my colleague Mr. Gerretsen had indicated, then we will see this is just a game and this is just a way of our opposition members being able to say, “Well, you know what? We just want in some way to make the Liberals look bad.”
Right now, we are in an unprecedented pandemic. Canadians are asking us to be our best selves. Canadians are asking us to be the government they need us to be at this moment. That means we have to get past this partisan stuff. We have to get past these games, if only for the moment, if only for this year, because we have some really important work to do.
If this is what it's going to take, that we have to bring the officials who did the redactions, if we have to spend a meeting or two on discussing it, then let's move forward and do it so we can get on as fast as possible to the important work we have ahead, and to rebuilding our economy and to supporting Canadians through this most unprecedented pandemic.
Ms. Dzerowicz raised a number of pertinent points. I certainly agree with what she said.
I also think it's important to remind opposition colleagues exactly what the subamendment is that Mr. Gerretsen is calling for, just in case there is confusion. I would have thought by now that we would have unanimous support for something that is quite reasonable.
It says that“after the committee reviews the two different versions of documents, the committee invite each of the relevant deputy ministers or the signatories of the transmittal letters as well as the Law Clerk and Parliamentary Counsel of the House of Commons to give testimony regarding the redactions applied to the documents that were requested and granted in the motion adopted on July 7, 2020.”
I fail to understand, Mr. Chair, what exactly the opposition has a problem with. The Liberal members of the committee and the government.... There's no obstruction here. You can't say that we, as Liberal members, are being obstructionist. In fact, we're trying to find a compromise.
We have a pretty good subamendment here. It's a very strong one; it is reasonable and it responsible. It would allow for committee members to give public servants and the law clerk the opportunity to tell us why particular redactions were made.
What is the opposition worried about? Are they worried, perhaps, that when public servants are questioned, they might say that the personal information of individuals is not something that should be revealed in public? That much is obvious—at least it should be obvious, but opposition members continue to have a problem with that, apparently—particularly the Conservatives. Are they worried that the law clerk would agree with that perspective? Perhaps they are, Mr. Chair. Let's allow those meetings to take place.
In the meantime, let's start planning for what is our chief responsibility right now, which is to abide by Standing Order 83.1. It's absolutely paramount, Mr. Chair.
So many things can be said on that front. When we look at our responsibility as members of Parliament, we not only think about what our role is.... Ms. Jansen put it very well. I had her quote in front of me, but it has since disappeared, so I won't look for it. She made the case this morning that she was elected by her constituents to go to Parliament to serve and to fight on behalf of the people in her community. Every single member of Parliament will echo that.
I humbly suggest to my opposition colleagues that they put some water into their wine, if I can use that analogy. Mr. Chair, Victor Hugo said, “Being good is easy, what is difficult is being just.” I would add to that by saying that to be just, one must be fair. One must be open. One must be open to compromise.
Here is an opportunity to recognize that Liberal members and.... I speak for all of us here. Mr. Gerretsen has put forward a really credible amendment. It would allow us to move forward. It would allow the opposition to have their concerns heard, but in a way that is absolutely fair and, therefore, just.
Opposition colleagues were smiling when I brought up Victor Hugo. It's a famous quotation, and one that is quite relevant. We can't talk about fairness without talking about justice. He, obviously, had a great deal to say on the matter of justice.
What is wrong, in the spirit of fairness and justice, to bring public servants to the committee to put on record why they did what they did? I think it's fundamentally—
:
I don't know how I'm supposed to follow that. That was a very enlightening quote Mr. Genuis provided.
Let's get back to what I am proposing. I put up my hand when Mrs. Jansen was speaking. This amendment hadn't been distributed yet, although I thought it had gone out. Fair enough. I don't know if she fully understood—and I'm just interpreting this based on what she was saying—what this is asking for.
I want to very quickly go through it again, now that everybody has it in front of them.
The first part says, “That the committee requests the complete package of documents provided to the Office of the Law Clerk and Parliamentary Counsel of the House of Commons by relevant Deputy Ministers or the signatories of the transmittal letters, as well as the final package of documents that the Law Clerk and Parliamentary Counsel of the House of Commons approved for release”. It's asking for those documents.
Then it goes on to say that “both the documents and packages be provided no later than October 19” and further, “that after the committee reviews the two versions of the documents, the committee invite the relevant deputy ministers, the signatories of the transmittal letters, as well as the Law Clerk and Parliamentary Counsel”—which is to the point that she raised—“of the House of Commons to give testimony regarding the redactions”.
Then it goes on to indicate various dates in there, and that Mr. Poilievre's motion be picked up after that fact.
I am having a very difficult time letting this go. Quite frankly, Mr. Chair, I'd love to hear from Mr. MacGregor or Mr. Ste-Marie as to where they are on this. I know they would not want to put themselves in a position of voting on something that basically deems these officials to have breached privileges of Parliament without even providing them due process.
Because we haven't heard from the NDP and the Bloc, I am really curious to know where they are in terms of supporting it. It's important for people to know that we're basically casting judgment based on some work that was done without asking for information as to how and why the work was done in the way that it was. Although I can appreciate the political need to not support my previous two motions, I think that members should pay a lot more attention to this one, because what we're saying is to give them....
I see that Mr. MacGregor has raised his hand to signal you, Mr. Chair. I know you're on a really small screen there, so hopefully you'll give him the opportunity to chime in at the appropriate moment. Maybe Mr. Ste-Marie wants to as well.
No, he doesn't. Okay.
We're basically saying that these officials, who are independent and work for Parliament, have breached privileges of members. What's worse is that you're not even giving them an opportunity to explain how and why they did their work before you deem that to be the case. If you really have an interest in defending the institution and the individuals, which I know the NDP and the Bloc do, you would want to at least explain, and put on the record, why you don't think they should be afforded the opportunity to defend themselves before casting this judgment on them.
The next part of it is.... It doesn't leave it there. This amendment doesn't just say, “Okay, that's it. That's the end of the story.” The amendment goes on to say that if the committee is still not satisfied, it can take further actions it deems necessary—i.e., for privilege being breached—so there is still the opportunity to go back to Mr. Poilievre's motion and enforce that later on.
It's easy to assume that people out there don't understand the nuances of how this stuff works. Mr. Poilievre brought out documents that had been redacted, and he waved them around. When he did that, he was, of course, trying to imply that they had all been done by the PMO, that the sat there and blacked out all these things, or got his people to black out all these things, before they were turned over to Parliament. Come on. Nobody in this meeting right now thinks otherwise. Everybody knows that this was Mr. Poilievre's intention. Nobody believes that he took the time to explain to people, while he was flashing these documents around, that legal counsel and the officers of Parliament were the ones who blacked out the necessary portions of them. Nobody thinks that anybody took the time to do that.
Therefore, we have to let these people have their say. This is like trying an individual before a court without allowing that individual to put forth their defence. I can't understand how any member of Parliament wouldn't support more openness and accountability—unless of course, going back to what I've been accused of so many times today, the motive has nothing to do with openness and transparency and getting the information out there, but rather has to do with grandstanding and using this opportunity to once again, as Mr. Fragiskatos said, do nothing more than attempt to inflict political damage on the in particular.
We know that from day one, the Conservatives, in opposition since 2015, have spent very, very little time bringing forward policies and motions. I hand it to the NDP, because quite often, although not all the time, when they bring forward opposition motions, they are actually about policy. As we've seen from the Conservatives, every motion they bring forward has always been about how to make the look bad, how to paint him in a bad light. It has always been about personal attacks on the Prime Minister.
I apologize if I'm jumping to the conclusion that motives exist here, but it's all that I've witnessed from the Conservatives for five years. It's the only thing I've had the opportunity to see. There's no interest in policy. There's no interest in bringing forward anything that would advance the agenda of Canadians. They never do that. They just bring forward opposition motions, and take various opportunities during question period, to try to completely annihilate political careers, as opposed to advancing things that Canadians care about right now.
This is germane to the discussion, Mr. Chair. I'm trying to highlight why they're not interested in supporting something like this, or at least why I perceive they're not supporting something like this. I wholeheartedly believe that the NDP and the Bloc are in a different place in terms of worrying about how we are affecting public servants through this process and what a motion like this would be inflicting upon public servants. I think they should be extremely careful when going down this road.
Mr. Chair, I know that Mr. Badawey has something to add to this, so I will conclude my remarks by saying that I have a very, very difficult time letting this go. We're talking about more openness, we're talking about more transparency and we're talking about allowing people to defend themselves against accusations of a breach of privilege. We should be affording them the opportunity to do that.
Maybe Mr. MacGregor or Mr. Ste-Marie see this a little differently and have problems with this particular amendment. Maybe they can find an amendment to the amendment that would make it more palatable in terms of their being able to accept it. However, I really think that at the end of the day, we need to make sure these individuals have the opportunity to have a say in what they're basically being accused of through this motion.
I'm really hoping that, as Mr. Fragiskatos said, in the spirit of collegiality, we can find a way to allow them the opportunity to do that. If you're are genuinely interested in getting to the bottom of this, I think that people will support that idea.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I have to say, just jumping into this fray—although I've been watching it for a bit today—that it's been quite a journey. I also have to say that I'm not going to be here to give anybody any lessons or any preaching or any quotes; I'm just going to get right to the point.
I guess somewhat of a benefit, Mr. Chairman, is that I'm coming from the perspective of being outside the box for the past day, in comparison to many of you who've been at this for quite some time. What I've witnessed, quite frankly, Mr. Chairman, is something that has disturbed me since becoming an MP in 2015, compared to my former life as a mayor for 14 years here in a small community in Niagara, in Port Colborne.
I've always had a certain attitude or mindset. It's an attitude that was progressive on behalf of the people I represented and a mindset that we put the business of good government ahead of the business of good politics. Quite frankly, that's what I can see here happening.
I say “good government” because we have priorities that are a heck of a lot more important to deal with today, like COVID and the pandemic and many of the files that many of you work on on a daily basis on behalf of each and every individual and business in your ridings.
When I look at this, I see two words that resonate in my mind, one being “accountability” and one being “transparency”. It's that simple, quite frankly: accountability based on what we're discussing and transparency on how to come out with decisions based on the motion that's before us. Equally as important, if not more important, is to get to the amendment that's been presented to us and that we're now discussing.
Mr. Chairman, it is about team and it is about respect. I bring up my former life as a mayor because one of the things I didn't demand but commanded was just that: a respect for our team. That's the respect for the people who are elected, but equally, if not more importantly, it's the respect for those people who work side by side with us on a daily basis who, quite frankly, make us look good.
Make no mistake about it, members: It's not you who does much of what is read about you or is the reason your name or face is in the paper. It's the people you work with on a daily basis. It's your staff. It's the team. In this case in the House, it's public servants, the law clerk, and the list goes on. Let's not dismiss that. Let's remember that. Quite frankly, they deserve your respect as much as they respect you. They're passionate about being in the business of good government, not in the business of good politics.
With that said, there are many opportunities that come out of that mindset, opportunities for you to best represent the people who are in your ridings and, quite frankly, even outside them, across Canada, as we get out of our ridings sometimes. In my former life, I also made it very clear to my council that we were not sitting around a horseshoe to bully the people we worked with. We were sitting around to listen, to learn and to make proper decisions because of what we heard and what we learned. This is no different. Here we are with an opportunity to make a good decision for the people we represent, a decision for good government, which is the business we should be in, and to take into consideration what our public servants and our law clerk have to say in explaining their decisions before we inform the House that they have breached members' privilege, your privilege.
I say “bully” because without that opportunity, quite frankly, that's what we're doing. We're taking on a decision that, in fact, is not fully informed.
I'm currently the chair of the Standing Committee on Transportation, Infrastructure and Communities. Frankly, I'm blessed to date—although we've only had one meeting with many discussions—with the committee members we have in place. What I hear from the sincerity of committee members, both at the meeting as well as off to the side, is that we all have a desire to get on with business and to get on with good government as opposed to good politics. With that said, it's political gain that you'll get, based on results.
When it comes election time, those results come from that narrative, on how hard you worked and what you brought back to your people.
I've talked to many people throughout the past many weeks and many months on this very issue, and quite frankly, what people are concerned with is putting food on their table, paying their bills and being healthy.
Quite frankly, this is, to some extent, rhetoric. It's noise, and as was mentioned earlier, it's just a ploy by the opposition party to gain a narrative, after the good work that has been done by this government, and not just by the government but by all of us working together for the past many months.
That said, it's not just about us; it's about the people we work with on a daily basis. It's the different organizations: the United Way, seniors organizations, our Legions, the people who help the homeless, people who put food on people's tables, and the list goes on, including our municipal councils. That's what we should be discussing right now. That's the priority. That's the business of good government.
I've always considered myself a riding MP, someone who will not get caught in the Ottawa bubble, in all the rhetoric and the attempts to capture the narrative and get that word out there. No, it's all about “simple”. It's simply dealing with the residents, with Mrs. Jones in Thorold, Mrs. MacKinnon in Welland, Mr. Polc in Port Colborne and residents throughout the region. That's my priority. That's what I'm about. That's what I spend my time on.
Now I'm pulled into a meeting such as this, which, by the way, I fully appreciate. I feel very privileged, actually, to be with many of you, who I see almost on a daily basis are doing good work.
Why are we going down this road? If, in fact, we're going to go down this road, why are we not doing it properly? Why are we not doing it in a way that the people we represent expect us to, as MPs, and being accountable and transparent? Why are we not allowing the process to be accountable and transparent, and therefore allowing this amendment to move forward?
Again I go back to my former life, which I try to learn from when I'm in my current life as a member of Parliament and trying to inject better government into the process, versus better politics. As many of you may know, at the municipal level it's about the person you talk to in the Loblaws or on the soccer field or at the arena, or when you're walking down a sidewalk or you're interrupted while you're cutting your grass. They want to talk about transit or about the high water bills, and the list goes on.
This is no different. People still do that with me. One of the first questions they ask me is, “Why is it always a fight up in Ottawa? Why can't people just look after our best interests, the things that we deal with on a daily basis, as you used to do when you were a mayor, and simply stop playing politics and trying to gain a narrative, bashing the or bashing certain ministers or MPs?” Let's get down to it. Let's get down to work.
I came in about an hour ago and saw the amendment that has been brought forward, and when I see, quite frankly, the disrespect that's being shown here versus the respect for the people we deal with on a daily basis, it's quite disturbing.
Folks, we're all on the same team here. We all should be rowing in the same direction. It's Canada. I'll stop short of giving my opinion on some of the things that happen around the world or even with our neighbours to the south, because what's relevant here is that as Canadians, we should be rowing in the same direction.
Part of that—and I get the politics, because it is Ottawa—is allowing respect to be front and centre and therefore giving an opportunity for our team—our public servants and the law clerk—to come forward and be accountable, be transparent and give us a reason, and therefore move forward past that to the main motion.
To all of you, I say that: Show that respect. Show that you recognize the team. Show that you recognize that what's more important here is the business of government, not the business of politics. Therefore, we can move forward with this discussion, and I do respect the discussion, but equally if not more importantly is to move forward with what our priorities are here on this day, October 15, 2020, and moving forward as long as we're in this pandemic.
Those priorities are to ensure that people are healthy, safe, and confident and comfortable that they have a government that's working in their best interests in terms of what they're dealing with today.
I won't be long. Mr. Gerretsen asked for my viewpoint on this. When I go back and look at the original letter that was provided by the parliamentary law clerk, I was struck by that one paragraph where the parliamentary law clerk notes that the power the House and its committees have to order the production of records is absolute and unfettered as it constitutes a constitutional parliamentary privilege that supersedes statutory obligations such as the exemptions found in the Access to Information Act. That's it in a nutshell. That's it, full stop.
We're now dealing with a subamendment to an amendment to a main motion. I get what the Liberals are trying to do. They've talked repeatedly about wanting the finance committee to get on to more important matters, whereas members of the opposition are saying, yes, let's get to a vote so we can get to those other matters. However, for me it's the fact that various departments took that step of deciding what the committee could see and what the committee could not see. It just really goes back to that one sentence in the letter from the parliamentary law clerk. Our power to order the production of records and the production of papers is an absolute authority. It's rooted in centuries of tradition. That's what we're standing up for. Ultimately, we are the ones who make the decisions on what we view and so on.
I don't think, ultimately, any member of this committee.... I've heard members of the governing party allude to the fact that we may want to go on a witch hunt, or that members of various ministries and deputy ministers.... We're not interested in going after those people. I've worked very closely with deputy ministers at the agriculture committee. They're fine, upstanding people. In no way do we want to impugn their records or what they contribute to the way our government functions.
At the heart of this matter is our upholding the rights and privileges of Parliament as an institution, a convention and a set of rules that are rooted in centuries of tradition. That's really where the opposition is at.
I was at the great PROC filibuster of 2017. I remember taking part in that. I wonder why the Liberals are choosing this hill to die on. If you're going to filibuster a committee—if you're going to delay our actually getting to a vote—you should have a reason.
In 2017 we were legitimately filibustering the procedure and house affairs committee because we were trying to stop the executive from unilaterally changing the Standing Orders of the House of Commons. That was a hill we were going to die on, because it was affecting not only our rights and privileges as members but the rights and privileges of all MPs—present and future. I think that was a more noble cause. It was something that could be easily explained to the Canadian public.
You have to ask yourself.... People who are tuning in right now—not only to the Standing Committee on Finance but also to the Standing Committee on Ethics—are wondering why it's still October 8 on the Standing Committee of Finance's website when we are now more than 176 hours in, and why we keep having subamendments to an amendment to the main motion. It's continuous delay to not allow us, as members of the committee, to see information that we are rightly allowed to see, given Parliament's absolute power in this regard.
I'll end there by saying that I understand the Liberal argument on why they have to do this and the process they're going through.
To Mr. Badawey's comments, I believe that Parliament and its various committees are able to walk and chew gum. The business of government is going on. The House of Commons is dealing with justice bills. I know the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food is looking at agricultural matters. This Standing Committee on Finance is doing something that's related to its mandate, as is the ethics committee.
The government is still functioning. The various ministries are still functioning. The House of Commons is still looking at other things. I believe that this committee is exercising a power that it should be exercising. I hope the Liberals on this committee understand that the longer this goes on, the reasons they have for delaying our getting to an actual vote are going to start wearing thin with the Canadian public.
You don't have, on your side, a plausible argument for delay like we, the opposition members, did in 2017. We had the public on side with us for that fight. The public inherently understood that it was about the rights of Parliament, the rights of its members and the rights against executive overreach. In this particular one, the longer this goes on, the more it looks like there's something to hide.
I would ask my Liberal MPs to help us get along so that the Standing Committee on Finance can have those pre-budgetary hearings. I know we're already in October, but there is still time left in this year to allow this committee to get to a vote on the main motion. We can uphold Parliament's right for the production of papers in order that we, as a committee, can exercise our right to look at the fully unredacted documents and work with parliamentary law counsel to decide what information should ultimately be withheld. There are numerous ways that committees can protect private information, but ultimately this goes to the heart of what parliamentary privilege is all about.
I would draw the attention of all members of this committee to that very important sentence that is contained in the original letter from the parliamentary law clerk.
With that, Mr. Chair, I'll conclude my remarks.
:
Thank you. It's a pleasure to be a guest here.
I wasn't going to weigh in. I was listening intently, and after listening to Mr. Gerretsen and Mr. Badawey, I had to, as they spoke in hushed tones, very serious tones about Parliament properly doing its work and about accountability and transparency. I know my constituents would be astonished if I didn't weigh in on their behalf, because it is unbelievably ironic to hear those words being used in the discussion we're having here today.
Of particular interest to me was Mr. Badawey's assertion that we should all be rowing in the same direction. How unbelievable that statement is, given that about eight weeks ago the Liberals not only stopped rowing but threw all the oars out of the boat so none of us could row either. It's absolutely astonishing to hear that being said in the middle of a global pandemic in order to avoid accountability and transparency, to use Mr. Badawey's words, to stop Parliament from functioning properly. “Properly” again being M. Badawey's words.
They shut down Parliament so that the COVID committee, for example, couldn't function and hear from expert witnesses from across the country on best measures that we could take as a country to address a global pandemic.
We're in a situation where, by the time this is over, we're probably going to be spending as much money or run up as much debt in months, maybe in a year, as we ran up in over 150 years of Confederation. Canadians expect that Parliament will sit and parliamentarians will hold the government to account, and in a minority Parliament, if anything, the government should be working with parliamentarians from all sides to get the best results for Canadians.
I had to weigh in. When I put my hand up at first, I think it was before Mr. Badawey even said the things he said. It was in response to Mr. Gerretsen, who made the comment that opposition members, particularly Conservatives, haven't moved legislation or bills or motions to better the lives of Canadians.
In the spring of 2017, the one time I had the opportunity to move an opposition day motion, I remember working with members of the New Democratic Party, the Bloc and the Green Party, members from all sides of the House, to come up with a motion that I thought was the biggest no-brainer. In fact, I reached out to Liberals. Between a dozen and two dozen Liberals told me they would support my motion on a Canadian autism partnership. Talk about something that should be as easy to support as just about anything.
I put forward the motion. First of all, an expert committee put forward a proposal to government for a budget. It got rejected in the budget. Then we brought forward an opposition day motion to further the issue. New Democrats and Conservatives don't always agree, but on this point, we were in full agreement. At the end of the day, when it came time to stand up and vote, every Conservative, New Democrat and Green Party member voted in favour. Do you know who didn't vote in favour? Not one member of the Liberal Party voted in favour because they were whipped to vote against it.
I'm looking at all of you. Mr. Fragiskatos, Mr. Easter, Mr. Gerretsen, Mr. Badawey, Mr. Fraser, you voted against it. All five of you voted against it.
To hear Mr. Gerretsen give the lecture that he gave here earlier, a lecture that was born out of a situation where he has to waste as much of the committee's time as he can because he wants to avoid losing a vote that he's almost certainly going to lose eventually, to hear him make the points he made, I just couldn't stay silent.
On behalf of my constituents, on behalf of stakeholders whom I work with across the country, I had to weigh in. I will now, I assume, cede the floor so that we can listen to hours upon hours of Liberals standing up one after the other to lecture us in the way that they've been lecturing us for hours upon hours already.
With that, I hope, maybe hope against hope, that at some point we can come to a little bit of common sense and understanding and come to a vote.
:
I find it very interesting, Mr. Chair, to be lectured by a Conservative member who was sitting in the House of Commons when Stephen Harper prorogued Parliament solely for the purpose of avoiding an election. He's somehow sitting there with a straight face telling Liberal members that proroguing after spending over $300 billion in order to get the gauge of Parliament to determine if we're taking the right course is somehow not a proper use of proroguing Parliament. Meanwhile this member was in the House that whole time, including when Stephen Harper did that and prorogued Parliament to save his own skin, and for no other reason.
I appreciate Mr. Lake's comments. I think he did a very good job of delivering that, in particular advancing his position on it, but hypocrisy is a very interesting thing and we're seeing it on full display right now in this committee from Conservative members.
Going back to Mr. MacGregor's point, the reason I have a difficult time with what he's saying is that the reality of the situation is that it's not department officials who were doing the majority of the redacting. It was specifically the officials, and I will go back to my motion, because we asked specifically for them to come. They are the deputy ministers but also the Law Clerk and the Parliamentary Counsel for the House of Commons. These are not political staff, nor are deputy ministers political staff. These are individuals who have no way to defend themselves.
To suggest, as Mr. MacGregor did, that it's okay to proceed with this parliamentary privilege because of the fact that they're in the department.... It's unfortunate, but it's the same angle the Conservatives are using. That angle is that they need to make sure that they just get as much out there as possible, so that Pierre can go out again and start waving things around and grandstanding, get a 20-second clip that he can share on Twitter for all of his faithful followers to watch. It actually produces nothing in terms of what a parliamentary privilege is intended to produce.
What we're doing here is we're saying is that those who were impacted by this and are being impacted by this motion that's being proposed right now.... Again, the way that we ended on this motion is very interesting in that Mr. Poilievre decided that he would circumvent the order in which motions were already being delivered in committee, but I digress. What we end up with is a motion that holds people in light of breached privileges of members of Parliament, and that's where I think Mr. MacGregor and all members of this committee need to focus. It is the fact that you're not allowing these people to defend themselves.
Mr. MacGregor brings up the point. He asks whether this is the hill we're willing to die on. Well, guess what. If this is a hill that involves saving the careers of individuals who are professionals, who work within the government and who don't have a voice because the system intentionally doesn't provide them a voice because they're non-partisan, then this is a hill that I'll go to. I will defend those people. I will go to the hill for those people, and if Mr. MacGregor chooses that it's not the hill that's he's interested in dying on, then that's entirely his prerogative. However, I think it's worth fighting for those people, worth fighting for them to give their voices so that their voices can be heard, and to give them the opportunity to come forward to committee to explain in detail why and how things were redacted in the way that they were.
I'm sure we're going to find out at the end of the day that there's nothing to this outside of a standard redaction of information that was not relevant to the motion and what was being requested by committee.
I've made the point before that we really need to look for a way to provide an avenue for these people to speak and explain themselves so that we can get all the information out there. The blatant disregard for giving them that opportunity, which is being showcased by members of all opposition parties for that matter, is extremely troubling. I'm willing to fight for those officials to make sure that their voices are heard.
This is a hill that I'm willing to die on, Mr. MacGregor. I'm willing to fight for those people to make sure that their voices can be heard. I respect the fact that you're claiming that you had the prerogative and you were justified in 2017 when you were in this position, but somehow magically we're not justified right now. That's a matter of your opinion, with which I, respectfully, completely, 100% disagree. We need to make sure that our public officials always have the protections and are given the opportunities at all junctures, whenever possible, to explain themselves, especially before you bring them before a motion that basically suggests that they have breached your privilege, which is extremely unfortunate.
I'll leave it at that, Mr. Chair. I wanted to respond to Mr. MacGregor's comments on that, and of course to Mr. Lake's hypocrisy.
I won't belabour the point, but I find it rather curious that Mr. MacGregor, being a member of the NDP and a passionate one, clearly put himself on the record as not supporting the subamendment that is opening the door, in a very transparent and fair way, to public servants to voice decisions that they made instead of the alternative. Mr. Kelly's amendment, like everything that Mr. Poilievre has done before it, does not allow for public servants to explain themselves. Instead, it silences them.
What we've done here on the Liberal side is put forward a subamendment, which I'll speak about in a moment at length, Mr. Chair, about why it continues to be important that we look at and support the subamendment of Mr. Gerretsen.
I found this rather curious, with the NDP being always on record as a party that supports public servants and the whole idea of a vibrant, professional, non-partisan public service.
To Mr. Lake's point, although I have not had the chance to get to know Mr. Lake very well, I know him to be a very passionate advocate around a number of issues, particularly autism. I know that he has taken issue with particular decisions made by the government in the past, which he's quite free to do.
I noticed, though, and I think it's important to say back to Mr. Lake that it is interesting—I'll use a neutral word—that Mr. Lake failed to mention the record of the Harper government. I know it goes back a little bit, but he was a part of it. When he accuses committee members of standing in the way here and of playing political games, which we are not.... Certainly, however, if you want to talk about political games, Mr. Chair, what do we call efforts to obstruct the work of committees, to get in the way of committee work, such as we saw under the Harper government?
In fact, if I'm not mistaken, there was a book that Conservative staffers wrote that was to be read by committee members—in particular, Conservative committee chairs. The intent of that booklet was to find ways to prevent committees from doing their work, to prevent them from meaningfully engaging in the issues of the day, to ensure that only Conservative-friendly witnesses would come forward to address committees. There are many other examples.
It's thus a bit rich that Mr. Lake has told us here today of how unfair he thinks the Liberal side is when it is putting forward ideas that allow for this issue around redacted documents on the WE Charity issue and that allow us as parliamentarians to engage in those matters, but in a way that allows public servants to voice their perspective. We're not being obstructionist at all.
I was also moved by Mr. Badawey's insight. He comes at this as someone who has led in politics in other ways. At the municipal level, he was a mayor for a number of years in the community of Port Colborne—to which, actually, I have a tie, Mr. Chair: my mother-in-law is originally from there. The Badawey family is well known in that community and well respected. I think we understand why, when we hear Mr. Badawey speak with such passion about the everyday people he knows in his community.
I would ask my honourable colleagues that we keep that spirit and ethic in mind. What would our constituents say right now—and perhaps they are all watching and are seized with this issue on the parliamentary channel, though something tells me...[Inaudible--Editor].
What would they say, though, if they knew that we had a chance either to be debating this subject at great length—I believe we began at 11:00 a.m. today, and that's fine, as the days are long in parliamentary life—or were seized with parliamentary budget consultations as an alternative? Which would they want us to focus on, Mr. Chair? Which subject would be more important?
On top of that, if our constituents were made aware—and yes, some will be watching and so will already be aware, but if the vast majority knew—that the Liberal side has put forward a subamendment that allows for the general substance of what the opposition is seeking to hear, but in a much fairer way, what would they say? I think they would say the committee should unanimously support Mr. Gerretsen on this subject. I will leave those initial observations there.
I want to get into my further thoughts on what Mr. Gerretsen has articulated. It has been a while since he put forward the subamendment, so to remind members let me review the motion that Mr. Gerretsen has tabled. It reads, “That the committee requests the complete package of documents provided to the office of the Law Clerk and Parliamentary Counsel of the House of Commons by relevant deputy ministers or the signatories of the transmittal letters as well as the final package of documents the Law Clerk and Parliamentary Counsel of the House of Commons approved for release; that both of the documents packages be provided to the committee no later than October 19, 2020; and that after the committee reviews the two different versions of documents, the committee invite each of the relevant deputy ministers or the signatories of the transmittal letters as well as the Law Clerk and Parliamentary Counsel of the House of Commons to give testimony regarding the redactions applied to the documents that were requested and granted in the motion adopted on July 7, 2020. Until such a time as this testimony is complete debate on the main motion and amendment from Mr. Poilievre be suspended, and that the chair be authorized to schedule these witnesses and convene a meeting to resume debate on Mr. Poilievre's motion once these meetings have taken place.”
I know I might be accused of trying to waste time here by reading out the subamendment for the motion of Mr. Gerretsen, but it's important to catch up because it has been a long day, and some time has passed since Mr. Gerretsen put forward his idea.
What we are looking for is a full and complete accounting, Mr. Chair, of the documents to be provided to the committee. The opposition has since twice voted down Liberal members' attempts to provide the committee with a common set of documents without a word, Mr. Chair—and here I find some surprise—from the Bloc or the NDP. It's not clear that these members have expressed a view, and many of the members from those two parties here are substitutes. I don't see Mr. Julian. I know Mr. MacGregor put himself on the record before. It's unfortunate he took the view that he did, so I think my previous comment applies.
Next, we are asking for the transmittal letters. They have been cited here at length, but let me repeat that these documents tell the committee how the world-class public servants who prepared these documents, per the motion of this committee, applied redactions. Let me share some highlights.
The text of the letter from Mr. Paul Rochon, the deputy minister of finance, reads:
The Committee’s motion stipulates that Cabinet confidences and national security information are to be excluded from the package. No information is being withheld on the grounds of national security, since the information does not so pertain. With respect to Cabinet confidences, you will note that considerable information on the Canada Student Service Grant contained in Cabinet confidences is being provided to the Committee. This is in keeping with the public disclosures of information on this matter made by members of the Queen’s Privy Council for Canada. A principled approach was taken with respect to this information to ensure a non-selective application of the protection afforded by Cabinet confidentiality. As a result, considerable information on the Canada Student Service Grant that would otherwise be protected as Cabinet confidence is being released. Information not related to the Canada Student Service Grant that is contained in Cabinet confidences is withheld and identified as not relevant to the request.
That is entirely reasonable, Mr. Chair. Furthermore, the letter states:
With respect to personal information, the department is obliged to protect such information under the Privacy Act unless the individuals to whom it relates consent to its disclosure, or disclosure is otherwise authorized in certain specified circumstances or the public interest in disclosure clearly outweighs any resulting invasion of privacy.
His letter continues:
Reasonable efforts were made by the department to obtain consent. Where consent was not given, the department found that the public interest in sharing the information with the Committee outweighed any invasion of the individual’s privacy. As such, disclosure is being made pursuant to subparagraph 8(2)(m)(i) of the Privacy Act. As required by that Act, the Privacy Commissioner was informed by our decision. In very limited cases, personal information was redacted from these records as consent was not obtained from the individuals concerned nor was the department able to conclude that the public interest in disclosure clearly outweighed the invasion of the individuals’ privacy. The type of personal information that remains protected consists of the identity of unrelated third parties where their opinion or view relates to an unrelated matter to this inquiry, as well as personal e-mail addresses and phone numbers.
That is the end of the quote.
From the text of the letter from Mr. Simon Kennedy, Deputy Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development, which my Conservative friends will know as the former Industry Canada, I read into the record the following:
Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada has retrieved all records from within the Department that respond to the Committee’s motion. You will find the results of that search enclosed for the Committee’s consideration.
It should be noted, however, that in the preparation of this package, care was taken to obtain consent to disclose certain personal information from exempt staff referenced in the material and, in collaboration with other government departments, the staff from WE Charity in accordance with the provisions of the Privacy Act.
In addition, the Committee’s motion stipulates that Cabinet confidences and national security information are to be excluded from the package. No information is being withheld on the grounds of national security, since the information does not so pertain. With respect to Cabinet confidences, you will note that information on the Canada Student Service Grant that was a Cabinet confidence is being provided to the Committee. This is in keeping with the public disclosures of information on this matter made by members of the Queen’s Privy Council for Canada. A principled approach was adopted to this information to ensure a non-selective application of the protection afforded by Cabinet confidentiality. Information not related to the Canada Student Service Grant that constitutes a Cabinet confidence is withheld and identified as not relevant to the request.
Next, Mr. Chair, is the text from the secretary of the Treasury Board, Mr. Peter Wallace, who holds the distinction of having served as a senior public servant in three levels of government in Canada:
The Committee’s motion stipulates that Cabinet confidences and national security information are to be excluded from the package. No information is being withheld on the grounds of national security, since the information does not so pertain. With respect to Cabinet confidences, you will note that considerable information on the Canada Student Service Grant that were Cabinet confidences is being provided to the Committee. This is in keeping with the public disclosures of information on this matter made by members of the Queen’s Privy Council for Canada. A principled approach was adopted to this information to ensure a non-selective application of the protection afforded by Cabinet confidentiality. As a result, considerable information on the Canada Student Service Grant that would otherwise constitute Cabinet confidences is being released. Information not related to the Canada Student Service Grant that constitutes Cabinet confidences is withheld and identified as not relevant to the request.
It continues.
This same principled approach was also applied to the second enclosed package of TBS documents, which is provided in support of the commitment by the Clerk of the Privy Council to provide additional information on due diligence on the Canada Student Service Grant subsequent to his appearance on July 21, 2020. Additionally, because I believe...it is in the public interest to do so, this package includes information being made available as a result of a limited waiver of solicitor client privilege as it relates to the information that is being provided by Employment and Social Development Canada.
While many TBS employees continue to work virtually, guided by public health measures and focused on curbing the spread of COVID-19, these two packages provide, to the best of my knowledge, as of August 7, 2020, the TBS documents in response to the above-noted request for production of papers and due diligence line of inquiry.
I've read into the record that perspective. Now, let me continue on my own, here, Mr. Chair. Again, the opposition— I'm especially thinking about the Bloc here, as I've not heard anything from them—and the NDP have opposed the provision of these critical transmittal letters, without a single word. It is because they are not tuned in, Mr. Chair. I see that Mr. Ste-Marie is there. I respect him a great deal.
But again, we have something here, in the form of Mr. Gerretsen's motion, that I think can be agreed to. Plenty of compromises have been made. I hope the Bloc has an opinion. I've heard the NDP's, but, unfortunately, it has not made much of an impact and that is why I say what has been offered doesn't really count, with all due respect to my honourable colleague, Mr. MacGregor.
Further, we are asking that the various versions of the documents be compared and that the very public servants who wrote to this committee, Mr. Gagnon and indeed all Canadians, in their transmittal letters, be asked to come before the committee to talk about their approach and to answer questions from members about this motion. Again, I have questions for these individuals. Sadly, the Conservatives are refusing to hear advice from the public servants. I made this comment before in my remarks about an hour ago. It's stunning to me that the Conservatives aren't open to that. What is the fear? Might it be the fact that public servants could put on the record very basic points relating to not wanting to disclose personal information, which I think is very reasonable. That would, therefore, expose all of this on the Conservative side as one big political game, which it surely is. But I leave that judgment aside for now.
Again, to my Bloc and NDP colleagues, Mr. Gerretsen has put this forward. That opens a path that allows us to get past the issues we have been debating so vigorously. We've finally reached a resolution, what I think is a reasonable one. Let's be serious about it. In every study this committee conducted in the last session of Parliament, officials provided us with testimony and that testimony was meaningful, Mr. Chair. That is their duty on behalf of Canadians.
This has been the case for every study I've been part of as a parliamentarian. There is no doubt about that. I've had the honour and privilege of serving on the finance committee, the foreign affairs committee, public safety and national security, and at every opportunity whenever officials have come we've only benefited as a committee.
It's unfortunate that some—and I'm not speaking specifically of Conservatives or only the Conservatives at the table here today, but in general there seems to be this view of public servants on the part of Conservatives, this branding of them as somehow irresponsible, as somehow living off the largesse of the state. It's frankly not true. If we look at some of the central actors who have been getting Canadians through this crisis, public servants have played an incredibly important role. Of course, Canadians deserve the most credit in the first instance because of the responsibility they have shouldered for themselves, their families and their businesses. Public servants have been instrumental in suggesting policy designs that have met the needs of the moment, and I'm thinking particularly of the CERB but also the various other programs that were created very quickly and executed with incredible skill by the public service, whom unfortunately members of the Conservative Party continue to demonize, and other opposition colleagues have not stood up for in the right way here today.
Let's review and let me go back to this point about what we have heard from public servants at committee before. On Monday, February 3, 2020, in a very lengthy meeting from 3:30 to 8 p.m.—if that meeting was very lengthy, what is today's? But anyway we will leave that for now. ...a study on the pre-budget consultations of early 2020, what this committee should be working on, the following officials attended. From the Department of Finance, we heard from Nicholas Leswick, the assistant deputy minister of the economic and fiscal policy branch; Andrew Marsland, the senior assistant deputy minister in the tax policy branch. I will highlight him in particular here. At the very beginning of COVID-19, I had specific questions from constituents relating to certain programs the government had put forward. I asked him technical details very openly at committee, and he articulated the rationale. This allowed me, as a member of Parliament, to go back to my constituents and provide an explanation on why programs were designed in the way they were. He was very helpful in that.
Evelyn Dancey, the associate assistant deputy minister of economic development and corporate finance branch, also attended.
On Tuesday, March 10, from 3:30 to 5:30, the standard meeting time for this committee, we met for a study on corporate subsidies. What a lifetime ago that was. I have a faint memory of it, but it's still relevant to mention in my remarks because on that day we heard from ACOA, the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, with Daryell Nowlan, the vice-president, policy, programs and communications; and Bill Grandy, the director general of programs. We also heard from the Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency, as well as the Department of Industry, with Mitch Davies and Andrea Johnston. Excuse me; that is not to disrespect Ms. Buist from the Northern Economic Development Agency, as she was also there—
:
Excuse me on that, Mr. Chair. It's been a long day, so sometimes I, too, forget the requirements at committee.
It's simply a rebuttal to Mr. Genuis, Mr. Chair, who again jumped in without even saying “point of order”. He was a great debate champion, as he's reminded all of us in Parliament, repeatedly.
A voice: He was?
Mr. Peter Fragiskatos: Yes, apparently Mr. Genuis debated at length in high school and in university. He's quite proud of himself. That's fine. He has asked here about the education levels of public servants. They're very well educated, I assured him.
On Thursday, April 2, from 2 to 4 p.m., we had a study on the government's response to COVID-19. It was a set of meetings that I won't soon forget as a parliamentarian. We heard a number of individuals from the Canada Revenue Agency articulate their points of view. We had a number of folks from the Department of Employment and Social Development and from the Department of Finance who I've already mentioned, so I won't repeat them. It was an impressive group of people who, in the midst of carrying out all sorts of work on policy and program design, found time to appear here before the committee. I know they're expected to do that, Mr. Chair, but these are folks who are working 20-hour days and still finding ways to inform the committee about their work. I think they deserve respect, not just by acknowledging them here and now. They deserve the respect of being able to come here to committee to explain this issue that the opposition is so concerned about, instead of putting words in their mouth. That is effectively what the opposition wants to do by actively preventing them from coming to committee.
If we go with Mr. Gerretsen's motion, we have a fair outcome that allows the opposition to get answers to their questions in a way that does not silence our public servants.
I'll begin my conclusion from here, Mr. Chair.
Conservatives are refusing to engage at all. I hope that we start to see a different approach also taken by the NDP and the Bloc.
The members of the opposition are very fond of quoting the law clerk of the House of Commons who has said...and who carries out incredible service for all of us as parliamentarians and who serves the country as well. The Conservatives want to vote that down. Remember that Mr. Gerretsen's motion calls for the law clerk to appear, allowing all members, every single one of us, to engage. I call the NDP and the Bloc to support that. Unfortunately, I haven't heard very much on that point from either Mr. Ste-Marie or Mr. MacGregor.
Mr. Chair, we should not dither here. We should not waste our time. The end of Mr. Gerretsen's very reasonable motion asks that “debate on the main motion and the amendment from Mr. Poilievre be suspended, and that the chair be authorized to schedule these witnesses and convene a meeting to resume debate on Mr. Poilievre's motion once these meetings have taken place.”
This seems very reasonable to me, Mr. Chair. We ought to allow the clerk and analysts to do their important work and furnish us with the documents that this committee has not yet received.
Unfortunately, yet again, the opposition won't allow us to carry out the important work to be conducted here. That needs to be put on the record and recognized. We don't even know what they think or what their justification is for all of this. I hope that a member from the NDP and the Bloc—I've given up on the Conservatives—will come forward and tell this committee, their constituents and all Canadians watching at home what their view is, Mr. Chair.
I'll end my comments there. Thank you.
:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I was going to wait awhile to speak again based on what I heard, but I had to jump back in based on some of the comments from some of my colleagues—in particular, Mr. Lake's comments on some of the points that I had made, as well as other colleagues. It's, to some extent, time to really call out what it is, which I'm sure the opposition is thinking about and very well should. This is, once again, an attempt to gain a narrative because of the fine work that the government and Canadians have been doing since COVID hit us back in March. That's what it is. Let's just simply call it what it is.
Quite frankly, most of our residents—at least my residents here in Niagara—see that. They see right through what's happening here and, with that, are giving us a great deal of dialogue and a great deal of feedback with respect to what we should be doing and the priorities we should be having, as I spoke about earlier. To try to divert the discussion from the work that's being done is simply wrong.
I also want to bring up that word that I brought up earlier, which obviously isn't resonating: respect. It was mentioned by Mr. Lake with regard to fighting for the rights of....
Let me be very clear, Mr. Lake, who I/we are fighting for—and very well you should be fighting for. We should be respecting the people we represent and respecting our team. We should be respecting the ability and the opportunity for our team to come out and ensure that the decisions that we make are decisions that are based on evidence, that are based on reasons, that are based on what our team actually does on a day-to-day basis. Quite frankly, it's beyond what you and I do on a day-to-day basis, as it relates to issues that we depend on them to then, therefore, be evidence-based so that we then make the proper decisions. Once again, it's about respect—respect for them to do their jobs and respect for the people we represent—to ensure that those decisions are evidence-based and are, in fact, decisions that are sound.
I want to go back to the narrative again and, to some extent, based on Mr. Lake's comments, give a bit of a history lesson, the narrative being, again, putting Canadians first, putting people before politics versus putting politics before people. The narrative, quite frankly, on October 15, 2020, should be the health and safety of all Canadians. To have this discussion once again is simply rhetoric and noise, and it's, quite frankly, getting in the way of us doing that. When I say “us”, I mean all 338 members of Parliament, as well as the people we represent, working together to row in that same direction. That same direction is looking out for the best interests of Canadians.
Let's be very clear on that, Mr. Lake and others on the opposite side of the table. That's our narrative. That's our priority.
With that said, some things that were mentioned were COVID spending and, of course, the direction that this government has taken throughout the past many months. Often I hear the new leader of the opposition, the former leader of the opposition and members of the opposition critique the spending that's happening. My comment has been, and continues to be this: Where's your feedback? What are your thoughts? Instead of being a critic and part of the problem, be part of the solution. Of course, with that, I/we welcome some of those thoughts and what you would do in terms of taking care of the people, putting food on our tables, ensuring that people are working, ensuring that our business community—our SMEs and our big businesses—are being looked after, that their rent can be paid. The list goes on. I don't have to give you that menu; you read about it every day. I'm sure that you hear about it every day with respect to the people who need and, for the most part, are being dealt with and taken care of because of the programs that we've put forward.
Yes, this is about transparency and accountability. As I said earlier, it's also simply about respect. I think that we should all be cognizant of that and ensure that, as much as we respect each other, we also respect the people we work with on a daily basis and, quite frankly, look after our best interests as much as we look after the interests of our constituents.
Having said all that, let's look at past parliaments, at votes in past parliaments that we entered into on many occasions, and at many occasions where the Conservatives would vote against.
I recall budgets and early morning votes that the Conservatives would stand in opposition to, investments in homelessness and poverty; seniors and infrastructure spending; health care; spending in my riding as well as the riding of Mr. Lake in Edmonton—Wetaskiwin; local sporting organizations; recreation; lowering taxes; support for businesses. I can't understand why those were voted against. Those were good things, very good things, like those we're doing right now in the middle of this pandemic. Fortunately, we had a majority government then. We moved forward on a lot of those investments.
I have to give another history lesson—I apologize, Mr. Chairman—just to respond to the words that are now on the record by Mr. Lake and others about proroguing Parliament. You know, look at the 41st Parliament, the Harper government, in October of 2013. They shut down Parliament for 33 days to avoid questions on Senate expenses and the Senate expense scandal and the resulting PMO cover-up. In the 40th Parliament, the Harper government shut down Parliament for 63 days to avoid the Afghan detainee issue. In 2008 the Harper Conservatives shut down Parliament to avoid a confidence vote that would have toppled the government. That shutdown lasted 53 days. In 2007 the Harper government shut down Parliament to declare mission accomplished on five priorities from the election, and took 32 days before bringing in a new Speech from the Throne.
Mr. Chairman, I'm flabbergasted at the comments being made and how people can actually have the nerve to make those comments while knowing this. Quite frankly, Mr. Lake was around then. He was a minister.
If the opposition parties do not support this subamendment, all it will show is that they don't care about the facts. They don't care about an evidence-based decision being made. Again, it's a lack of respect. All they care about is having something to flash around, props, to get their supporters supporting them, supporters who will blast out this information too for their next fundraising event. They should be ashamed that by doing that they're robbing this committee of the opportunity to do its important work.
Again, Mr. Chairman, I would go back to my former life. When we had situations like this and issues like this, no, we didn't go into filibustering. We didn't get into the minutiae of the politics. Quite frankly, we put the people before the politics. We didn't put the politics before the people, trying to gain a narrative. Quite frankly, the narrative should always be dealing with the issues that people deal with every day, that they talk about at the dinner table at 5:30 or six o'clock, sometimes at nine o'clock at night. For myself, tonight it will be midnight. These people think about and live that every day. To simply have the discussion diverted from what they're thinking about to something for political gain is wrong, frankly.
MPs from the other side can talk all they want. Call it what it is. Everyone knows it. We know it here. We're in the box, but quite frankly, folks, the people who are outside the box know it too. Call it what it is.
All this subamendment is asking for is simply to ensure that the decision being made is made on the best evidence presented to us by the folks we count on every day to bring us that evidence. You can't be hypocritical here. You can't say on one side of your mouth that you want that evidence in other ways on other issues, but yet you're not prepared to look at it here. What does that tell us? What does that tell Canadians?
It's about accountability. It's about transparency. But most of all, it's about respect, respecting our team and respecting the decisions that we're counted on to make in a manner that is evidence-based.
I often say to people that different people have held our seats throughout time. Although people have opinions about the people who sit in those seats, regardless of what level of government it may be—it could be a mayor; it could be a city councillor; it could be a member of Parliament, a member of a provincial parliament—the chairs sit there. Those seats sit there forever; different people occupy them.
People have opinions about those people who occupy them. However, as occupiers of those seats, we must—not should, but must—respect those seats we sit in. Part of that respect is ensuring that the decisions we make are made by a team that includes all parliamentarians as well as our support staff; ensuring that those decisions are evidence-based and therefore good decisions; and putting people before politics, not politics before people.
We see that too often from those on the opposite side of the floor. We lived it between 2015 and 2019. I think people see that, hence the reason we're here back in Parliament forming a government. The expectation is for that to continue.
I ask all of you to take that into consideration, the respect that those people deserve, the respect of making a decision that's evidence-based, and therefore the respect to make the proper decision.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
:
Thank you so much, Mr. Chair. I'm glad to be back as part of the discussion.
I was gone for 55 minutes, Mr. Ste-Marie, in case you are following that.
I was listening very closely to your comments, Mr. Ste-Marie, and was glad you did speak. I don't agree. This isn't about killing time; I think this direct motion that Mr. Gerretsen has proposed is trying to address what we felt was truly the concern of the opposition members. If there is a perception that there were redactions in order to somehow hide some secret information the public should be seeing, I think that motion was there to directly address that point.
Let me mention four key points of this motion.
The first part, the main motion and amendment of Mr. Poilievre, is suspended. It's just suspended. It's not killed; it's not thrown out; it is just suspended.
The second part is that the chair is authorized to schedule meetings with witnesses. Who are those witnesses? Basically, we invite each of the relevant deputy ministers or the signatories of the transmittal letters, as well as the law clerk and parliamentary counsel of the House of Commons to come and talk to us about the 5,600 plus documents, to answer our questions, to talk to us about why things were redacted.
The fourth part is to convene a meeting to resume debate on Mr. Poilievre's motion once these meetings have taken place, so it's to suspend to try to directly address the issue that we believe is actually at the heart and soul of what we are hearing from opposition members, the public, and even here. That's what we're trying to address. If we're not hearing clearly, if we're missing something, then tell us what it is we're missing, because I want to listen. I want to hear you.
I agree with my colleagues that Mr. Badawey made a beautiful presentation, I think a very genuine one, about Canadians and where all our thoughts are—not just those of the Liberals but of all of us—in terms of where we want to be when we are thinking of them, setting a course for them, and helping to restart the economy in the strongest way possible, so I'm listening, Mr. Ste-Marie. I'm listening to all the opposition members right now. If we're missing something, tell us what we're missing because I thought this motion was not about killing time but about actually addressing, very deliberately, what we felt was the key issue being brought up by opposition members over the last few weeks.
I'll also say regarding this whole day of talk, talk, talk, that anyone listening is kind of thinking we are crazy people, anybody listening to us for any period of time, but sometimes I think you have to talk things out to try to get to some sort of a solution. It seems to be that is part of what we do here. We see if we can find some common ground, see whether or not cooler heads or our better angels prevail over time, so I don't see this whole day as a colossal waste, although I would have preferred not to be meeting for, I think, going on nine, 10 or 11 hours now.
I want to reiterate a couple of points, because this is what I believe we are trying to do with this motion.
We are being told that we, the federal Liberal government, are trying to hide things because of so many pages of redactions. We, the Liberal government, are saying that's not the case, because we have outstanding independent civil servants who followed the letter of the law to do their very best to provide all the information that was asked for in the motion that was presented and passed by Mr. Julian on July 7...although he presented the motion on July 2. You heard key evidence to that point from my colleagues Mr. Fragiskatos and Mr. Fraser, and from me. We read out key examples of civil servants doing their very best to give us as much information..., and if they hid some information it was personal cellphone numbers—completely irrelevant information to the CSSG—and cabinet confidentially. We gave example after example after example.
The other thing I love about this motion is that it provides a chance for us to hear from bureaucrats, from our public servants who were in charge of this. I think the redactions would be a learning experience for all of us as well, around what the rules are, why the redactions, and I think it would comfort the opposition members. To be honest, if we need to hear from our public servants to be able to continue with the work of our pre-budget consultations, I'm willing to spend a couple of meetings on that.
Again—I want to keep on repeating this—we're just suspending the motion of Mr. Poilievre, as well as the amendment. The fourth part of our current motion says that we convene a meeting to resume debate on Mr. Poilievre's motion once the meetings have taken place. There's no desire to throw this out. We're trying to address the issue at hand.
I also want to mention a few other things. I often think that if people are saying, “Well, you know...”. Just so you know, I've received zero telephone calls and emails. By the way I hate saying that publicly because whenever you put that out there all of a sudden someone starts a campaign to send you emails and make telephone calls around these things, but nobody has called us over the last few weeks about WE, believing that we were trying to hide things in some of the redactions of the WE documents that were submitted. People are very concerned about everyday things, and I'll talk a little more about that in a minute.
I want to point out to Canadians, or anybody outside our team right now who might be listening, two motions were put forward and approved on July 7. One was all this information, but the other one was to conduct a series of meetings that would look at why the government awarded the contract to WE and how the decision came to be made. I think there were some concerns about corruption. We heard very clear testimony. We heard under oath from the Kielburgers. We heard from Prime Minister Trudeau. Historically a prime minister doesn't come to committee, but he made a point of making sure he came to the committee to be transparent and to be personally accountable, to personally answer questions. We heard from Mr. Morneau. We heard from all of them, and they all said to us, “No, we're not friends. There's no corruption”.
No one was selecting WE to make sure that WE was paid back for any type of friendship with our Prime Minister or any of our cabinet ministers. That is on record. There's no misuse of funds. We heard that all the money came back. Zero dollars were misused. There was no profit to WE. The contribution agreement we put in place had a number of checks and balances to make sure the money was being spent properly. There was no profit to WE. It was all about having as many students engaged in volunteer initiatives and earning some money to be able to continue their schooling.
We also heard from Ian Shugart and Gina Wilson and Rachel Wernick. For those who don't know, Ian Shugart is the Clerk of the Privy Council and Rachel Wernick and Gina Wilson are two top public servants. We heard very clearly from them that it was they, the public servants, who selected WE and felt that in the amount of time we had, WE was the best able to deliver this program.
We also explained why we were rushed to do the contribution agreement. It was because we only had four months and we were trying to do our very best for all our students.
I was only able to go to the cottage for two days this whole summer. I was talking to some friends and they thought the CSSG was the only program we provided for students. It's not true. We provided $9 billion in supports. We provided supports through the Canada emergency student benefit. We expanded the number of jobs created beyond Canada summer jobs. We expanded it to more than 160,000 additional jobs. We made huge adjustments around Canada student loans, as well as Canada student grants. We did a tremendous number of things for students, $9 billion worth. Even if you take away the CSSG program, over $8.1billion was spent on students. They used it. It's been helpful to them. They're continuing their studies right now. We need to continue to do more for them.
I've already talked about the fact that it wasn't a sole-source contract. It was actually a contribution agreement.
I just want to remind everyone that we have contribution agreements for food security, $100 million; for non-profits, $350 million in order to help those in shelters; for our fight against domestic violence, $50 million. We have contribution agreements. We made that. It's a very typical way for a government to basically engage in this.
I wanted to list all of that because it's part and parcel. Why did we ask for all these documents? It's all part of this initial consideration about whether there was anything inappropriate in terms of selecting WE.
Who selected WE? Was there anything untoward? I think the evidence proved unequivocally in each of the points that I mentioned that that is not the case.
It doesn't mean that no mistakes were made, because no government is perfect. I was listening to Malcolm Gladwell a couple of years ago at some sort of talk or speaking series in Toronto. One of the key things he said is that in a world of change that we're in right now, we need governments to step up and do radical experimentation. We need governments to be able to experiment and not be afraid to fail. Because if it's not governments, then who? We're the only ones who are able to do that.
I do come from the business world. A small part of my life was actually in the venture capital world. I'll tell you, success for them is one in 10. If they have one business in 10 that actually succeeds, then they actually think that's beneficial.
In any case, I actually think that Minister actually said it best. She said we dropped the ball on CSSG. We could have done much better. It was a pandemic, and things were crazy. We were going at breakneck speed. We should not have dropped the ball on this. But she also said that she didn't think in any way it should take away from the other really important, and I would say fantastic work that we've done for students and for Canadians, writ large. She goes on to talk about it.
We're not perfect. We did our best. Of course, we're going to make mistakes. Of course it's okay for a committee to have looked at it. We've spent about two months on it. We asked really important questions. We've answered the really important questions. I think it's important for us to acknowledge it.
I think it's also really important for us to acknowledge that the Auditor General is also looking.... We have to remember that we have two outstanding independent officers who have a long history of serving the public and serving Canadians. They are continuing to look at our spending as well to see if there were any ethical breaches. Our Auditor General came before us to say that she's actually looking at our spending, absolutely looking at all the programs and how we've gone about doing it. There will be a series of reports before the end of this year.
Then we have the Ethics Commissioner who's still investigating our and our former minister of finance, minister Morneau, to see whether or not there's actually been any ethical violations.
I want to remind Canadians that these committees...and I know for sure this committee is not non-partisan. It is not non-partisan. I wish it were if even for a moment. I think we have some really important work to do.
I visit a lot of classrooms. I'm sure you guys all do, too. One of my favourite classes was the grade 5/6 class at St. Nicholas of Bari. One thing they asked me was what was the surprising thing for me as a politician. I said to them that for me the surprise was just the theatrics. I didn't realize how much theatrics and gamesmanship there would be. I said that to them.
Another kid asked me—and it's relevant to this—“Miss, are there ever days where you think that you just can't take this anymore?" I loved them asking me this. I said, “Well, there are definitely frustrating days, but I can tell you that it's such an honour and privilege to have this job because I get a chance to be able to make people's lives better every single day. I get a chance to be able to work with an amazing team of colleagues to try to create a better country.”
I love those questions. They are my favourite class ever because they asked the best questions ever.
I will tell you that the stuff I've been hearing over the last—I want to say the last few weeks, but I would probably say the last few months—is that they're really worried about their parents and family members. In my riding they're worried about their kids in school with the second wave under way right now. They're wondering why the federal dollars that have been going down to the provinces and to the city haven't resulted in more test sites and more contact tracing.
They're wondering, and they're asking why. They are worried about their jobs and their future. They're worried about their extended families. There are a lot of things they're really worried about.
A number of them have written to me to say that if there's anything we could be studying in pre-budget consultations—they know I'm on the finance committee—we should look at the environment, look at how we could restart the economy in a way that's going to help us continue to transition to a low-carbon economy, that's going to help us decarbonize, that's going to help some of our energy sector and multiple other sectors to be able to transition.
They worry about housing. When I was growing up, my mother, who earned minimum wage, and my dad, who had a working-class wage, were able to afford a house in downtown Toronto. That isn't possible right now. They're worried about housing.
I have a lot of amazing people in the arts and culture sector in my riding. They have been struggling for a long time in terms of being able to survive in the 21st century. So much has changed in how we fund our artists and our cultural sector. We know that arts and culture, in addition to tourism and hospitality, have been particularly hard hit through this pandemic, and it's going to be a while before anything returns to normal.
I'll also say that we've been hearing and reading a lot from a lot of economic leaders, such as David Dodge and Don Drummond, and I think they've had some valuable things to say. It's made me think I'd really like to get to pre-budget consultations, because I want to hear ideas about how we can ensure that Canada has a competitive economy as we come out of this pandemic. How do we attract more foreign direct investment? How do we accelerate economic growth? How do we invest in productivity-enhancing physical and human capital? How do we invest in industries in transition? There are so many things that we should be getting to right now, and the everyday things that my colleague Vance Badawey was talking about. Those are the things that I hope we'll focus on.
I'll end with a few more comments, Mr. Chair.
Canadians need us, as leaders, to be our best selves and listen to our better angels, to be the government they need in this moment and to rise above partisan games and business as usual. I'm sorry that Mr. Poilievre feels that he needs to yawn during my comments, but I think they're important for us to hear.
I would say to you that I don't think what's happening on this committee now is trying to find a solution. That is what I am feeling is happening right now. I would say to you that it would be really powerful if we could find a way to move forward to pre-budget consultations. Just imagine that we could do that. What would we give up? Would we give up a bit of ego, a bit of power to hold up a committee or the illusion that the opposition members are now holding government to account?
Don't you think it would be far more powerful if we conducted the most ambitious pre-budget consultations, listened to a historic number of ideas and stakeholders and brought the best national and international leaders to give us their best ideas? How about if we actually had some true debate and battled over the best ideas? Maybe we could even try to present a unanimous report to the House of Commons, to our . Don't you think that would be more powerful and historic? We and Canadians could say in history that when we were going through an unprecedented pandemic, all of our parties laid down their partisan arms and worked together in the best interests of Canadians. This is the moment when Canadians need us to rise to the occasion, to be our best selves and say we rose up and did exactly that.
We all ran for office to serve Canadians and to create a better country. If it's not we who are leading and charting a course for the future, then who? If it's not now, at a moment of tremendous change, fear and confusion, then when?
Thanks so much, Mr. Chair.
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Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to my colleague, Ms. Dzerowicz, for her intervention. The passion she showed towards the end of that is truly reflective of the calibre of MP that she is and what she brings to the table here. I wholeheartedly see that she wants a solution and a way through this. That is going to be a compromise that everybody is going to be able to appreciate and value.
I'll go back to Mr. Ste-Marie's comments. He said that this was a waste of time. Obviously, filibusters are inherently intended to do that to make a point. There is, perhaps, a bit of confusion as to why we're going down that road. The illusion that Mr. Poilievre and other Conservatives would like to paint is that there's something to hide. That couldn't be further from the truth.
I am very adamant about this one particular subamendment specifically because I'm concerned about the manner in which public officials are being treated. I want them to have a voice. I want to allow them to express themselves before we get to a point of determining whether or not they breached parliamentary privileges by the manner in which they provided information. I'm not talking about political staffers. I'm talking about the officials who contributed to the redactions that we see in the documents.
I'm getting a sense, Mr. Chair, that I'm not going to get anywhere with this. It hasn't been obvious to me that there's any interest from members other than Liberals at this time to support this amendment.
I'm led to the the conclusion that it's going to be very difficult for these public officials to be able to defend themselves. I think it's extremely important that they have the opportunity to do that. If we're not going to allow them the opportunity to defend themselves, Mr. Chair, then I think it's incumbent upon me to go to the wall on this one, as Mr. MacGregor phrased it. It's incumbent upon us—and I certainly take the challenge—to make sure that they are properly represented and that their voices can be heard. I do not want officials to go down as the reason that parliamentary privilege was broken when perhaps that wasn't the case. We really won't know and be able to cast the best judgment possible unless we give them the opportunity to speak for themselves.
Since members don't want to afford that opportunity, I'm going to try to defend them to the best of my own ability.
With that, I would refer everybody to the PCO redactions that were submitted. I'd like to go through those to explicitly highlight where redactions were made so that the general public can know and it can be put on the record.
There are 151 pages in this document. I'll try to go through it as thoroughly as possible to provide as much detail as possible, so that their voices can be heard through this process of trying to make sure that what they did to the documents is understood.
If we start on page 49, we see the first perfect example. We are looking here at a PCO document. A number of programs are listed. I wish I could share my screen and go through this with everybody. What we have here is an Excel-style table. There are a number of programs here that completely do not relate to the Canada student service grant program that was the subject of this motion.
I'll read off the ones that were blacked out, the ones that were redacted. This was one of those perfect pages that Mr. Poilievre held up and shook while he stood there at the podium saying that it had all been blacked out. Well, let's talk about what was actually blacked out.
We have the youth employment and skills strategy, which wasn't relevant to this, the student work placement program, the student learning program, Canada Service Corps, other financial supports, the Canada student loans program, the doubling of the Canada student grant and the Canada student benefit. None of those were visible, because they were not the subject of the motion from this committee.
However, among the ones that were visible and were completely subject to this committee's motion was the Canada student grant, where it specifically talks about post-secondary students under 30 enrolled in spring, summer or fall courses who significantly contribute to COVID-19 efforts through voluntary service, and then it goes on to talk about the $900 million to be set aside and the various questions that needed to be addressed in relation to that.
There was also the WE social entrepreneurship initiative, which was relevant and which is visible in the document. There's the $12 million there, and again that is completely visible on that document.
The next part that came from the PCO that I think is germane and relevant to discuss is pages 78 to 79 of that document. It is from Mr. Kielburger to Ms. Fox at PCO, yet the only redaction present in this whole email, Mr. Chair, is the private citizen's email address. That's the email address of Mr. Kielburger's assistant. This is private information and has no relevance to the process. Therefore, there was nothing that was necessary to be—
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I have a lot more to go through. I'm only discussing my sixth page out of 151, so I really want to get down to this.
As I was saying, the document that came from the PCO was titled “Increased Support for Canadian Youth and Students”. This goes into a lot of the details about money, including where the money came from, why it was important, why these programs were being developed, the Minister of Finance's ultimate decision, and all this stuff. None of it is blacked out. It is all right there. None of it is blacked out. Again, this would have been a great page that Mr. Poilievre could have waved around that had nothing blacked out on it.
If you go to the next page, now you have a full page. Just so everybody's with me—I know everyone's following along closely—I'm on page 106 right now. This page specifically has three programs on it. This is marked “Secret” and “Confidence of the Queen's Privy Council”. This one is obviously setting out details about programs that were used to compile the information. Two of the programs in here, the youth employment and skills development program and Canada student loans, were not relevant, so they were completely blacked out. They were not asked for in the motion, so they were completely blacked out. On the one that you do see in there, the reason it was important to provide this page was that a paragraph at the bottom specifically goes into the Canada emergency student benefit. This lists off everything with respect to the briefings and the eligibility for students and the extension to all post-secondary students, including those in college, whether part time or full time.
The point is that if we asked those officials to come here, which this motion is trying to do, they would have the opportunity to answer these questions. They'd say that they blacked out these large areas because they had stuff to do with other issues. They even left the titles in there so that at least you knew what they were blacking out. That's the irony here: They didn't even black out the titles. They left the titles in there so that you knew exactly what they were blacking out. You ended up with just this little paragraph at the bottom that was relevant to the motion.
Then you go to the next page of that same document. It continues on with two additional points as they relate to that particular program. Then it starts to go into other programs where again stuff is blacked out, but then you have another area that is germane to the motion. It goes on to talk about the CSSG program again and everything that was offered in that.
You'll see this happening over and over again. It might make for great theatre in terms of being able to wave around papers and say, “Hey, see everything that was blacked out?” I know that when the time comes for Mr. Poilievre to see what was actually blacked out there, he's going to have nothing. He's going to fall flat, because there is nothing there. My motive here, as I've stated before, is to make sure that those who did do this are not found to have breached privileges of Parliament because they did exactly what they were supposed to do. It's unfortunate that we can't let them come here to tell us this.
I'm now at the bottom of page 108, in section 69. You will see that it references the Canada student service grant again. It says:
In your announcement, you indicated that the grants in support of post secondary studies would be available for students helping to fight against COVID-19 this summer. You also announced that the grant value would be between $1,000 and $5,000, depending on the number of hours. The remaining details including eligibility criteria, scalability, specific amounts based on hours and delivery mechanism have yet to be determined.
Then, of course, on the next page—I know everyone's following along—there's that section that talks about the WE social entrepreneurship initiative. It goes into the details about that, about a $500 grant for a 10-week mentorship program. It finally comes to the PCO recommendation. The PCO's recommendation is all there, except for the one portion that is blacked out again, and it's clearly marked that it's not relevant.
You're getting the reason it's been blacked out. We keep coming back to this point of what could possibly be here.
I'm on page 111 of that submission. From the PCO release, it's pages 189 to 190. We're looking at an email between Rachel Wernick and Ms. Shannon from PCO. As the motion expressly stated, unrelated cabinet confidences were removed. They're unrelated. As well, Ms. Wernick's cellphone was removed. I don't know why Mr. Poilievre would want Ms. Wernick's cellphone number, but I think it's entirely her privilege to have that cellphone number distributed only to those who need it, nor do I think providing that phone number would be necessary or have any relevance to the issue at hand that this committee was looking for.
I think we can all agree that we wouldn't want that phone number to be out in public. However, the entire email and all the details about it, from Rachel to Tara and back and forth, it's all there, except for those details that are the missing phone numbers. It brings us back to the point about why we even need to have this information out there when it's completely irrelevant. People deserve to have that privacy.
Turning to page 191 now of the PCO release, we have another email between Ms. Wernick and Ms. Shannon. Again, only the cellphone number has been removed. This one is from May 7, 2020 at 3:14 in the afternoon. They discussed the intent of the policy and they go back and forth in multiple emails. All the email addresses are available. They're .gc.ca email addresses. Everything is available in there except where it says “Mobile:” and Ms. Wernick's phone number. That's the only thing that's been blacked out from there. Again, I have no clue why Mr. Poilievre would be offended by the fact that the phone number has been blacked out.
Going to pages 192 to 193 of that PCO release, we have another redaction due to a cellphone number. Again, I think we can all agree that the removal of such information is completely reasonable.
I find it interesting that while the public is battling the second wave of COVID-19, my colleagues are chasing down private cellphone numbers of people. I don't know what the motive is, but I'm sure they have a motive.
The point is that you see this entire email, which starts on Thursday, May 7 at 3:22 p.m. It starts off with Ms. Wernick, who says, “Wonderful, thanks [for the information]”. It's a back-and-forth conversation between them.
I'm not going to lie; it's not the most entertaining stuff to read. It's definitely not juicy, nor does it have that smoking gun that apparently Mr. Poilievre was looking for. Therefore, I guess he decided that chasing down a mobile phone number or searching for other information that's completely unrelated to those programs must have the.... I don't know, maybe buried in there is even the discovery of who the second gunman on the grassy knoll was. I have absolutely no idea.
The point is that so much information is being provided here. The only stuff that isn't being provided is the information that is specifically irrelevant or confidential in terms of being somebody's phone number.
We can look at pages 219 to 221 of the PCO document release. Frankly, this is truly extraordinary. It is a document that would rarely ever be released. It never would have been released under the Harper government, I'm sure, unless Mr. Lake wants to correct me on the Harper government's incredible openness and transparency. This goes into a synopsis of the entire cabinet meeting. Obviously, this would be protected by confidence, but these details are in there. It's there for them to see. It's stuff that, as it relates to this particular issue, has not been held back.
We have another page—the next page. If it had not been for the one bullet and sub-bullet at the bottom of page 220, that one little section there that relates to the Canada student service grant, this page would never have even been included, because the entire page would have been irrelevant. The only way to provide the five or six lines there that are relevant is to black out the other sections.
Of course, Mr. Poilievre takes this and flashes it around and makes it seem like it's a smoking gun because we're covering up massive conspiracies—or at least he's trying to drum up those conspiracies—but the reality is that this page would never have even been provided had that bullet about the Canada student service grant at the bottom not been there. That's the only reason they had to get rid of the rest of it. The next page, because the bullet continues from there and leads into the next page, is completely non-redacted.
If there are still people out there among the public—and we're now 11 hours into this—who are watching and listening to this, I hope they can appreciate, though perhaps I'm not doing a great job of explaining it, what we're talking about in the redacted documents.
This is a perfect example. We have a page here, starting at page 220, about four-fifths of which, I would say, has been redacted. The only reason is that the information there was not germane to the motion. Then, in the next bullet, the part about the Canada student service grant starts. The following page, the entire page, is not redacted, because it relates to the Canada student service grant and the PCO's comment on where things were going and coming from, so it's entirely appropriate to share.
It's no different from copying and pasting, if you were to just copy and paste the relevant parts. The problem is—and again this goes to those people who may be paying attention to this—that rather than explain this to you, rather than think that the public is educated enough to be able to.... No, let me rephrase that. When somebody takes the one page that has the major part of the redaction and waves it around, it appears as though they are assuming the public is going to buy in right away and say, “Hey, this isn't the government being transparent; they blacked out everything.” I understand why the theatrics of it play off so well, but it's the reality of how these documents are released.
As the document continues, as you go into pages 220 and 221, it really starts to talk about the details and PCO comment, and it turns to the Deputy Prime Minister to provide the key takeaways from it. Literally, it's all there for everybody to read.
There is another email, on page 222, which references pages 254 to 256 of the PCO release. Once again, we find a redacted part, and—you guessed it, folks—it's the personal and private cellphone numbers of a staff member, again something that would never be released in an ATIP, but something that Mr. Poilievre is obsessed with obtaining.
If you go into the details of the email, you can read the entire email. It's from Tara Shannon, again, going to Ms. Shannon Nix. It just goes back and forth about the partnership, about struggling to deliver on the existing programs, not having the capacity to take on more placements and so on. The second part goes into the CSC programming not being funded and so on, and it goes into the details of that.
My point is that nothing was redacted here that was germane to what is going on and what the committee was seeking to get through this motion. The only thing in this that has been redacted is the telephone number, both in French and in English. Her signature at the bottom is in English first and then in French, and the phone number in both versions of the signature has been redacted.
That's it, Mr. Chair. Everything else in there is totally available.
We can go on to the next email, an exchange between Ms. Wernick and Mr. Philip Jennings from the PCO. In it, they are discussing an attachment that Ms. Wernick has forwarded to the PCO. I know that the opposition has a lot of interest in Ms. Wernick; however, only one item here has been redacted. Can anybody guess it? Does anybody know? The cellphone number is the only part of this that's redacted.
See, this is what I find so fascinating. Mr. Poilievre didn't jump up to the podium there and start flashing around these papers saying, “Why isn't Ms. Wernick's phone number being shown to us? Why is it being redacted?” Of course not. He doesn't get theatre out of that. But that's the reality of all the documents that have been submitted.
Again, she talks about the attachment, being the proposal. Everything is in there: who it was sent to, when it was sent, what the PDF is called, her signature again, and then her phone number has been blacked out.
We get to confidence with regard to another document here, which would be the next one. We have another synopsis of a meeting, another cabinet scenario. Here again, it's another one of Mr. Poilievre's fully blacked-out documents that he wanted to wave around. The reality of the situation is that the parts of it that are blacked out are the parts that have absolutely nothing to do with the motion that this committee had asked for. However, the reason it was important to provide all of that—including the cover sheet, including the synopsis, and having all of it—was that, on the next page, which is the first page that becomes relevant, all of a sudden you have the part about the Canada student service grant.
This is happening time and time again in these documents, where these large sections are being blacked out, but the reality is that the only parts being blacked out are the parts that are completely irrelevant to the motion. When you do get to the parts that are relevant, then you get everything on the Canada student service grant. I mean, I don't know; perhaps Mr. Poilievre was hoping to get something else out of cabinet confidence that he was digging around for, and that's why he's upset that parts of this are blacked out. But the reality is that he got exactly what he asked for. The committee got exactly what they asked for.
With regard to my amendment, which we're speaking to right now, the reason I think it's so important for us to have a discussion about this and to pass this amendment is so that the people who did these redactions can come here and explain things.
Excuse me while I take a sip of water here, Mr. Chair.
They can say one of two things. They can come here and say, no, Gerretsen is totally incorrect; all the stuff we blacked out there was WE-related stuff and we just didn't want you to see it. Or they can come here and do what is probably the most plausible thing that we would see. We would see them come here and probably validate everything that my colleagues and I have been saying today on this issue, which is that the items that were redacted were items that were completely irrelevant and didn't have anything to do with supporting this particular motion. I'm sure we would end up seeing that, if that's the case; I have no doubt about it.
You know, people were asking why I'm suggesting motive by the opposition. Well, why wouldn't you want them to come here and confirm whether or not what I'm saying is true? I can't understand that. I find it incumbent on us to make sure that this voice is heard.
If you go to the next page, which is page 351 of that document, it continues to go right on. The PCO comment on this particular program is in two bullets there. Then it blacks out the rest. It blacks out the rest because it is completely unrelated. A really good sign to know that this is actually what's happening is the fact that in these documents, which are clearly PDF documents or some form of Word or something like that, you're not seeing lines here and there. It's not like you're seeing paragraphs and within the paragraphs words being blacked out, or sentences being blacked out. You don't see any of that in these documents.
What you do see in these documents are entire sections that are clearly coming before or after sections that relate to this program and sections that relate to the request that was made by the committee to get this information. That is a massive signal that what you're getting here is the reality of what was related to this particular motion, the CSSG program in particular.
I think people should take note of the fact that in a page or two of relevant information, not a single word, phrase, sentence or paragraph has been redacted. It's the entire portion that's related to this program.
I cannot wrap my head around the fact that the opposition would allow government officials, who are non-partisan, and parliamentary officers, who are non-partisan, to have their careers stained by the notion that they contributed to infringing upon the privilege of members of Parliament.
I can't understand, when it's so obvious that this is the case, why members of the opposition.... I get why the Conservatives are doing it. They've been doing this since day one, since I arrived on the Hill. They've been like this right from the beginning. I don't know what it is. Maybe they just don't have any good ideas. All they ever want to do is talk about the and everything he's doing that they perceive to be some kind of scandal. They don't want to offer actual substance.
But I'm shocked to see this coming from my colleagues from the Bloc and the NDP. I've always appreciated the fact that they want to stand up for the public servants we have. This is a glaring example of how they're not doing that.
I'm at a loss for words when it comes to that, Mr. Chair, because our public servants are the institution. They're the bedrock of how Parliament functions. Think about it. We politicians come and go. Of the people sitting around this table, some of us will be here after the election and some of us won't, and some of us will be gone after the election after that. However, those public servants, the clerks and the people who create the bedrock for the institution to function are the people we're talking about. These are the people who are being affected by this, Mr. Chair.
What's going on, Mr. Chair? Are we in a conference call?
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Thank you. I'm only on page 28 of 151, Mr. Chair. I have a lot more to offer on this. If nobody else is going to defend these public servants, and if I can do my part, then I'm going to do that, because I think it is incredibly important.
We're back to this scenario where, as I was saying before a conference call interrupted us, I'm just shocked. I'm shocked that the NDP and the Bloc would suggest that non-partisan government officials go down with this ship. I understand the political attacks. I even understand the sport the Conservatives get engaged in even when it comes to personal attacks. It's one thing to attack parliamentarians. We're fair game. We have the stage. We have a soap box we can stand on and defend ourselves.
There is a rule when you get into politics, Mr. Chair, when you're an elected official. I learned this the hard way, I will say. I learned this the hard way, and I'll never forget this, because I think it's really important. It goes to this issue of how we treat public servants. That's really what my amendment is about. Rule number one is that you never attack or impugn motive on staff, because they can't defend themselves.
I learned that the hard way. I think it was my first or second meeting when I was a city councillor. There was a big issue. We had just come off the election and were debating an issue. I really went after one of the city commissioners at the time. Afterwards, a gentleman who had been involved in the community a long time—I won't name him—came up to me and said, “You know, the way you treated that staff person, you should never put them in that situation,” and he really reamed me out over it.
In retrospect, I learned a lot from that. I learned a lot from that opportunity, because I realized that we need to be better when it comes to taking care of our staff. At the next meeting, the first thing I did, Mr. Chair, was to raise a point of order at the beginning of the meeting and apologize to that staff member for what I had done, because it wasn't right. In the same spirit, the lesson I learned that day from that individual—he was a former principal of Queen's University, to be totally honest, though I still won't name him—I continue to carry around with me to this day.
Back to Mr. MacGregor's point, I'm not willing to just let this go, because this is about the integrity of officials, of parliamentary officers. I don't think it's appropriate that they're being treated this way, not being able to come and defend themselves. In the amount of time I've spoken just in this session, they could have defended themselves and answered some pretty quick questions about this, but of course the Conservatives don't want that. They don't want them to come and explain themselves, because it will completely discredit Mr. Poilievre's motive of trying to advance conspiracy theories, like the ones that, by the way, he shares from The Post Millennial. I can't believe Mr. Poilievre is retweeting The Post Millennial. I'll leave it at that. It's almost as bad as when the Conservatives get up and quote the Fraser Institute as a reliable source of information, but I digress.
I'll go back to what I was reading here. From page 364 to 380, we have the actual funding agreement between WE and the Government of Canada, which was released by the PCO. Again, the professional public service redacted personal contact information. That's it. Mr. Poilievre, in all the ammunition that he's looking for, has the document entitled, “Canada's COVID-19 economic response plan: support for students and recent graduates, funding agreement between Her Majesty the Queen in right of Canada as represented by the Minister of Employment and Social Development (herein referred to as 'Canada') and WE Charity Foundation (herein referred to as 'the Recipient') hereinafter collectively referred to 'the Parties'”.
If there is going to be a smoking gun, Mr. Poilievre, I hate to rain on your parade—
Mr. Chair, if there was ever to be a smoking gun, this is where Mr. Poilievre would have found that, in this document. This is the actual funding agreement. Guess what's redacted from this? Absolutely nothing. It's only the private cellphone numbers and contact information of people, not even their names. It goes into the “whereas” clauses and the resolve clauses. It has the interpretation and definitions. It goes on to the dates and duration. It has everything in there, Mr. Chair. Everything is in there that has the details of this plan.
This is where you were going to find it, if you were going to find it anywhere. This would have been everything that you were looking for, but unfortunately, while everybody was focusing on everything else that was going on with the pandemic, Mr. Chair, how I interpret it is that Mr. Poilievre was probably just going through this document, digging up and looking for the smoking gun in here, and he just couldn't find it. So what did he do? He went back to these previous documents that I referenced earlier. These are the documents where portions had been redacted because they're completely irrelevant to the motion that this committee had passed. This contractual agreement goes on for 11 pages before it gets to the signatory page, 11 pages with 37 parts with subparts and sub-subparts that they could be critiquing.
Mr. Chair, Mr. Poilievre could have been there with his staff—I'm sure they did—just drilling into every little detail of this agreement, looking for that little part that says so and so is going to get all this money, and it's going to be great, isn't it? No, because it's just not there. He was never going to find that and he knew it wasn't there. He looked through this. He read the agreement. They probably sat there in dismay thinking, “Oh no, what are we going to do now? We don't have the smoking gun that we thought we had. Oh, I have an idea. Let's go back to the redacted parts from earlier on where they redacted the whole page, and we'll say, ha, see what they're missing. They've taken everything that we had and they've redacted the whole thing, everything that we were supposed to get.” Meanwhile, it was parts of an Excel spreadsheet that had absolutely nothing to do with this actual motion, the actual documents that had been requested.
If I have to be completely honest with you, Mr. Chair, until I was asked to get on this committee and to participate, I didn't even really fully understand it. When I started to go through these documents and started to understand this better, I honestly came to the conclusion myself. Being a member of Parliament, somebody who's “in the know”, so to speak, I came to the same conclusion. I said, “How is it possible that Mr. Poilievre is so obsessed with this information when it's pretty clear the parts that were redacted were completely irrelevant?”
I'll bring you back to what I said earlier, Mr. Chair. If this was somehow a document where people wanted to redact portions of it for the purpose of hiding stuff, within emails and within letters, within contracts, you would have seen portions of it redacted. You would have seen sentences of it redacted. You would have seen paragraphs. You would have seen words. You don't see any of that. It's all open and available, with the exception of telephone numbers and in some cases email addresses, although a lot of email addresses were shared.
Through you, Mr. Chair, I'll say that the opposition members are asking themselves, why are they going on and on about this? Why are they intent on filibustering this? Why are they pushing this as hard as they can? It's because the premise of what has happened here is wrong. They're trying to fabricate a scandal where it doesn't exist. I see a problem with that.
The more abusive problem, Mr. Chair, and the more egregious issue that I have, is how they're trying to implicate officers of Parliament and department officials in this. It's one thing for the opposition to go after the personal characteristics or personal relationships of a member of Parliament—most often the Prime Minister's. It's a completely different ball game when they start going after the people who are there to support the institution and who—theoretically, in the way our system is set up—don't care whether it's a Liberal government or a Conservative government. They don't care. They're there to execute their directives in a department, whether they come from cabinet, their minister or from Parliament, as it was in this case. Now we're trying to implicate them in all this. I have a huge issue with that.
We hear people talk about why the Liberals are holding this up and why the Liberals are spending...pushing on 12 hours. I'm doing it because I don't want to see people who can't protect themselves in these scenarios go down because they're considered collateral damage by Mr. Poilievre. I don't think it's appropriate. I don't think it's fair.
It's one thing when he and the Conservatives continually go after the . They had no problem with WE Charity being collateral damage, as long as it served their objective. They had no problem with that, but when it comes to the independent officers of Parliament, I have a serious issue with it.
Yes, I will hold this up as much as I can. I will put the brakes on this as much as I can, and I will go to the wall for these people because they deserve it. If the Conservatives—and, much to my dismay and unfortunate reality, the NDP and the Bloc—don't see that and are unwilling to see that they're allowing these people to become collateral damage in Mr. Poilievre's quest, then that's extremely unfortunate. I won't let it happen. We'll go through all this, and I'll highlight.... I will try to defend them as much as possible. They deserve that from us, as I've said in the past.
I go now to page 376, Mr. Chair. This continues on from that other document. This is schedule A of the project description. I've gone through 13 pages. There are 37 parts of that contract, plus the signatory page, where everybody would print and sign their name. Then we get into schedule A. Schedule A is the project description.
By the way, I should point out that absolutely nothing was redacted in that contract. I encourage all members to do their homework and look at the entire contract that was provided by the government House leader's office.
Then we get to schedule A. The first thing that was redacted is a telephone number, then an email address, then another telephone number and another email address. We have the names of the people who were the recipients of the project, which was WE Charity. Their names are right there. The only thing we don't get is their telephone number and their email address. Again, I can't understand why people would see the need to have that.
It talks about how WE Charity will administer cash awards and facilitate the creation of volunteer opportunities. All of this was open to Mr. Poilievre and his research team, back in his cave or his office or wherever it is, to go through in fine detail, to look at it and to make sure where the smoking gun is.
It's all here. It's all in this, Mr. Chair.
You get the activities of what they're supposed to be doing between June and September of 2020, and you get all the details, the bullet points of absolutely everything that's going on. Everything is in there. Then you get July to August; you get September to November, December to March 2021.
The reality is that as I read this and reflect on it, I think of the massive lost opportunities for students as a result of this. I think of the collateral damage that's been done by allowing WE, the charity, to take the heat of Mr. Poilievre's politically charged motives. I think it's extremely.... It's a detriment.
There are kids, there are students, who are worse off now because of this. When you finally get exactly what you're after, after I go through all of this and put it all in the record, you'll see that none of this was anything that was offensive and that should not have been redacted. It's all there, right in the actual document, for you to see.
Let us go on to the next page, the eligibility to participate in the WE-created volunteer opportunities. Here's the eligibility for the volunteer service opportunities, for the CSSG award; everything is in there, open, available and transparent for members to scrutinize. There's so much information in here.
Mr. Poilievre and the Conservatives—and the NDP, for that matter—could have taken the opportunity when they got this document to scrutinize the manner in which policy was being created to advance the interests and opportunities of young adults. There is so much policy in here that could have been the subject of the scrutiny, but it wasn't, and that's what we keep coming back to. The subject of the scrutiny was this: How do we make it look like they were trying to hide something so that we can better our own political agenda? Unfortunately, that's what happened.
We go further on for the disbursements of the Canada student service grant award. They go into the details of the lump sum, how people were going to get paid, the expected results. These are the outputs that were expected from this program. All of that is in there.
Forty thousand eligible volunteer service opportunities are gone, gone because Mr. Poilievre looked at WE as an opportunity to create political carnage upon other people. That's what he ended up getting out of this. Those opportunities are gone, and unfortunately, we see other members of other opposition parties jumping on board and following suit.
However, you had the opportunity to criticize the policy of this when you got all of this, to criticize what those outputs were going to be. The NDP had the opportunity to come here and say, “Well, hold on. Why is it only forty thousand eligible volunteer service opportunities? Shouldn't, for this kind of money, we be seeing sixty thousand eligible volunteer service opportunities? Why don't we do X instead of Y? Why don't we craft this policy so that it works like this instead of that way?” But no, they chose to do none of that. They chose not to engage in meaningful, productive dialogue that Canadians could benefit from. They chose nothing to that end, even though all the information was here.
I'm still going through this and I'm still on the schedules. I'm now at the signature line, where people were going to sign the acceptance of that schedule that's attached to the contract.
The next page I'm on here is page 394. This is Finance Canada's proposal from pages 394 to 401 of the PCO release. It discusses the implementation of the Canada student service grant in full and unredacted detail.
I am going to repeat that. It discusses the implementation of the CSSG in full and unredacted detail. This is the financial proposal. Can you guess at the only removal of information? ? I will put this out there. Can anybody at home guess what was left out from this information?
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I have two things to say to that, Mr. Chair.
First of all, thank you, Mr. Julian. I usually leave it to my party to relieve me, but I appreciate the fact that you did so on my behalf.
Second, I just want to say that it is a massive compliment to be confused with Mr. Fraser, and I appreciate it, Mr. Chair. That was very nice of you.
Actually, Mr. Julian, for your benefit, I could start at the beginning again. Would you prefer that? No?
I'll just pick up where I left off, then. I was on page 380 and I was discussing the details in it and how the recipients and everybody was going to sign off on it.
Then I went to the next part. I thought it was very important. This was the financial proposal specifically on the implementation of the Canada student service program. I was putting it out there and I thought somebody was going to call me on a point of order for trying to turn this into a reality TV show and getting people to call in to answer my question.
I had put it out there that in the financial proposal, the implementation of the Canada student service grant goes into all the details. We get the overview, we get the proposal description, we get the costing, we get what to expect with the first 20,000 placement opportunities, we get the second cohort, and we get the initial processing and administrative capacity of the program.
We then go into the initial funding envelope of the grant, a total of $500 million. We go into the contingency fund of additional grants. We go into the program support costs of the program and the costing assumptions. We go into the implementation, again within those time periods from June to July and then over the summer and fall, and then to the results.
Then we hit the stakeholder communications and considerations. We go into lots of detail about the stakeholders who have been consulted and have contributed to this, and then we get to the end, and can we guess what is blacked out, Mr. Chair?
This is what I was getting at. Mr. Chair, I don't even want to make you guess, because I don't want to put you on the spot, but it was a telephone number.
That's right, Mr. Chair. I went through every section of this entire document—the financial proposal, the implementation of the Canada student service program and its financial impacts—and the only part that was redacted was the phone numbers of the executive director and the director.
Of course, this isn't what Mr. Poilievre chose to criticize. I'm sure he could have found something in here to attack the government on in terms of the policy it was attempting to create and how horrible and wrong it was. He could have done that, but that's a lot of work. That requires actually having to come up with ideas and thinking of different ways to do things and how to be better at things than what you're seeing other people trying to do.
It's a lot of work. It's a lot easier to just grab pieces of paper, portions of which have been blacked out—and you know full well why they've been blacked out—and grab your podium and your iPhone for your Twitter clip and start waving around the pages, saying, “Look at all the blackout that's going on here”, never heeding the fact that the entire document, which relates to the financial proposal and the implementation of the program, is 100%, with the exception of a mere 18 digits that represent two phone numbers, open and accessible and unredacted.
In the entire document, 18 digits have been redacted, representing two phone numbers. Somehow, Mr. Chair, Mr. Poilievre, joined by Mr. Julian, the Bloc and the rest of the Conservatives, are offended by that. I just don't understand it. It's great theatre, but it's completely misrepresentative of what's actually going on.
Let's get to an even more interesting document, Mr. Chair. I'm on page 402 now.
This is a very interesting document. I think my colleagues will also find it interesting. It is an email, and we're looking at page 404 of the PCO release in which there's an invitation to a meeting to discuss the WE contract. The redaction is a conference call ID log-in. It's probably not even active anymore. Those conference IDs are usually generated every time there's a new meeting, but somehow the government officials decided it was important to remove the conference ID, and it became an extremely offensive point to Mr. Poilievre and everybody else on the committee who opposes allowing the people who did that redaction to come and explain themselves.
Why don't they want to hear from the person who removed the conference ID to explain why they removed the ID? I can't understand why anybody would not be interested in getting the answer to that question, unless of course the motive is they weren't interested in it at all from the beginning, because it doesn't serve their purpose of political carnage, which is the word that Mr. Fragiskatos and I have been using. It doesn't serve that purpose, and that's clearly the only reason somebody would not want that to be public information, not want the public to be able to understand that information right from the people who actually did it. Therefore, I am going to go through it painstakingly and make sure their voices are heard as to why they chose to do that.
At page 405, we get into the PCO release of pages 417 to 419. This is a cabinet confidence document stamped “Limited Distribution”. It's what we call a memorandum to the , and it's seeking a decision regarding this program, the Canada student service grant and other matters. As is noted in the motion from the committee, matters related to this particular program were requested, and here they have been released. You have this document labelled “Secret—Limited Distribution, Confidence of the Queen's Privy Council”. I don't know about you guys, but this is the closest.... I'm sure Mr. Easter, who has been in cabinet, has seen a document like this before. I certainly haven't, but so has Mr. Poilievre. It may not mean a lot to him, but when I see this this document, a memorandum to the , I think is a pretty important document. I've got to be honest; I've never seen one of these before.
What is being redacted here? Let's have a look. The only items—and there are just a few points—that have been redacted are one and a half points. Everything else that's available for people to read are items unrelated to cabinet confidences. All that stuff was provided. The only stuff that was redacted was the stuff that was related to cabinet confidence.
This goes back to my earlier point. Mr. Poilievre didn't grab this sheet and ask why the cabinet confidence of the Queen's Privy Council and the summary had been so widely distributed or why he is getting all the information they're providing here. That never happened. He didn't do that because it didn't serve his purpose, since the only items that are blacked out here are those unrelated to the motion that was brought forward by this committee.
Then you go to the next pages, page 2, page 3. All of page 2 is available to read. You've got everything in there, from the decision of the to the PCO comments on the issue. All of it's available. Not a single word is blacked out in this secret, limited distribution document, confidence of the Queen's Privy Council On page 2, it's all right there. This is the document the would have received.
On page 3 we go into this again, with bullet after bullet of the details right there. Then one item is blacked out toward the bottom.
Again, 97% of this, I'd say, with a quick glance, is totally available to be seen. As we've heard, the little bits that have been redacted were not germane to the motion and were not being asked for in the motion.
We then go to an interesting email here from the PCO. These are pages 426 to 427. It's an email from Ms. Roseanne MacKay at PCO to one of her colleagues, Alain Beaudoin. It is a cabinet meeting note for the Prime Minister, not unusual whatsoever. Does anybody out there want to guess what was redacted? I know I'm starting to sound like a broken record, but I think we're starting to notice a pattern here, Mr. Chair. What was redacted? It was a public servant's cellphone number. Again, clearly Mr. Poilievre has taken great offence to not being able to know that individual's cellphone number. Quite frankly, I don't think he needs to know. I don't think anybody else around this table generally believes, maybe with the exception of Mr. Poilievre, that they need to know.
The information, everything else in this email, is right here. This is from Roseanne McKay. She goes into detail. She says, “Please find attached the draft meeting management note for tomorrow's implementation call with the PMO.” They get into the details. You're really getting to see behind the curtain here. You're pulling it all back and you're seeing exactly what happened. You're seeing the emails flying back and forth. You're seeing the documents. I've gone through the contract. You're seeing the documents in terms of what was provided on the financial impact of this program. You're seeing all the emails. You've literally pulled back the curtain.
It just surprises me. I understand the motive of the Conservatives, but Mr. Julian has had the opportunity to look at this stuff too. He had it from the House leader's office as well and had the opportunity to see this, yet he still thinks that it's okay for parliamentary officials to be collateral damage in this, to have them strung up as the people who were responsible for breaching parliamentary privilege.
The whole notion that members of Parliament would be willing to let people go down for this is absolutely foreign to me. I can even understand, although I don't agree with it, that when it is somebody like a deputy minister, you can say, “Well, that deputy was really somewhere on the line between the politics and the non-partisan stuff.” You can take a position on that. I get it, because people do that all the time. People can make those judgment calls. I don't think it's the right thing to do, but I know from time to time people do that. I can understand not doing it, but I can also understand why people jump to doing it. What I just can't understand is when we start accusing officers of Parliament or legal counsel. What motivates that? I don't know. I guess it's some perceived political agenda that leads people to jump on it and start doing something like this. We're seeing a pattern here.
I hope if my discussion this evening serves any purpose, Mr. Chair, it's to show that we're seeing a pattern. The very first thing that you should get out of this pattern is that the vast majority of times, the things that were redacted were telephone numbers. Next to that, it was information that just wasn't asked for. Perhaps there's a way around this in the future; perhaps there isn't. I don't know.
The problem is that when these documents were originally prepared, obviously nobody knew that they were going to be asked to be supplied to committee, so everything was put into one document and things were compiled together. As a result, when this stuff was asked for and they started going through the documents, pulling out sections, just like a chapter doesn't always have to start on the beginning of the next page, neither does an issue.
That's what we're seeing here. We're seeing multiple issues being discussed. One issue was concluded and then, when the next issue was the Canada student service grant, they had to redact the part before it because it wasn't asked for.
The unfortunate thing about doing it that way is that it gave ammunition to Mr. Poilievre to start waving this piece of paper around, saying that they redacted all of this because they didn't want us to see it. In reality, it's just that the people didn't want to put in a page break when they went to the next topic. That's really what this is about. This is about the fact that in a lot of these documents, there just wasn't a page break. If there had been a page break on each issue, then each issue would have been on its own page and there would have been no redaction at all. That's what this comes down to.
Mr. Julian knows this. I believe Mr. Ste-Marie knows this. I believe the majority of my colleagues from the Conservative Party know this. For some reason it doesn't matter to them. For some reason, Mr. Chair, the integrity of the people who did that redaction because there wasn't a page break are now somehow getting strung up on this charge that they impeded the parliamentary privilege of members. I take great exception to that.
It comes down to the lack of a page break, basically. If there had been page breaks, there wouldn't have had to be the redactions we saw and Mr. Poilievre would not have his prop to wave around to everybody.
We go to pages 428 to 432 from the PCO. Again, we have a document with a conference ID redacted—it's probably not even functioning anymore—and items that are clearly not related to the Canada student service grant. These items were redacted by the good folks at the public service.
I find it really interesting that in most cases, if not all, it still shows the title. We saw this routinely throughout this document, Mr. Chair. In this case, I'm on page 428. It says the status of implementation of the Canada emergency wage subsidy. That's all there. It has the Canada emergency response benefit, or CERB. One part in there is not relevant, so it's been redacted. We're still seeing all the details of the other stuff. They're still giving us the titles, so that we know exactly what it is, where and why they were redacting stuff and how stuff was not relevant.
This document goes on and on. On pages 429 and 430, there is a lot of information about the Canada summer jobs program and an implementation update on that. The comments are available for that. The Canada emergency commercial rent assistance is in there as well. We get to the Canada emergency account that was set up for businesses. We have old age security, the guaranteed income supplement top-up and the regional relief and recovery fund.
The document goes on to page 432. Then, guess what? We have another email here, on pages 433 to 434. We see another release from the PCO. Mr. Chair, do you want to guess what's been redacted again? It's nine digits: a nine-digit phone number from an individual who sent an email. That's it.
Again, Mr. Poilievre has a fascination with public servants' phone numbers, and that's clearly becoming apparent to us; nonetheless, that's all that's been redacted, and you can see that it is so
Another email here from July 28 regarding the WE contract, saying “please find the email below”, is from Heather Moriarty in social development policy. It goes on to give the details in the email correspondence back-and-forth up to page 434.
We get to page 435 and the redaction below. This one again appears to be only an email address. It's an email address of an individual who is shown on the “cc” line, the carbon copy line. Mr. Chair, that's the only thing that's been redacted.
It goes into the details of an email from Marc Kielburger. His email says:
Thank you for your time and your call.
As we shared in our call, we are feeling confident for launch.
1. We currently have 10,000 WE placements which are ready.
2. If needed, we can have 15,000 WE placements which could be ready for launch.
It goes into all the details. Everything is in here. The only item that has been redacted is again the nine-digit phone number.
On page 458, we're again looking at an email exchange among public servants who are involved in the Canada student service grant file. The content again is all visible. The redaction is of the cellphone number of a public servant. That's it.
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The only thing on this email from June 11 to Tara Shannon, as requested here, are the responses to the technical questions on the contribution agreement. The third party has indicated they require a signed agreement by tomorrow to launch for Monday and there are more details about it. The only thing missing is the nine-digit phone number that Mr. Poilievre is so obsessed with getting.
Next I'll go to page 481. This is where we get to the Canada student service grant. These are questions, responses and background on contribution agreements. There are all the details. Contribution agreements are used by the government to further policy objectives. Under a contribution agreement the recipient is responsible to design project activities to meet objectives and outcomes. There are some questions in there. There is question one and then there are responses. Question two is about the relevance of the May 5 date. On page two, they get into all the details. It's great stuff. It's having an opportunity to pull back the curtain, see what's going on behind the scenes and make sure everything is out in the open—and it is.
In this particular document, we have page one, which is page 481, and then it goes to page 482, 483, 484 and 485 and absolutely nothing was redacted. This particular document would not have served Mr. Poilievre's purpose of grandstanding in front of a podium because nothing is redacted here because they did use a page break at the end of this one. Actually, this one ends with a paragraph and then there is a page break.
At the bottom of 485, had there been another topic introduced here with other information that was completely unrelated—even though we see that this is the end of this particular set of questions on the CSSG—they would have had to redact that and there would have been a big, blacked out part because it wouldn't have been germane to the motion that this committee had passed. Luckily, somebody put a page break there and started on a new page, so they didn't have to redact anything that was unrelated.
Going to page 486, we have an email from Craig Kielburger to Ms. Fox at the PCO. It's on pages 491 to 495 of the PCO release. The entire content and attached information from Mr. Kielburger is included. There is no redaction of content other than the names of private citizens and personal contact information, which is all relevant.
We are seeing the recurring theme, Mr. Chair, of redactions of an email address and a telephone number. In some rare cases it is a first or last name of somebody. I've only seen that once in all the documents I have read so far. This goes into the details. This is from Mr. Kielburger. He goes into the details of what's going on with the particular agreement. The redacted parts are only about that personal information.
When you get to the next page they start to talk about some of the programs they're doing and some of the things they're advocating for. It's nothing that intrigues Mr. Poilievre, but's still very important information about what's being done for young folks in our country. It goes on to talk about their global development commitment, the WE board of directors, HR recruitment, transparency, human resources and diversity and inclusion training.
Mr. Chair, these are all great things. A hundred per cent of this is intact and has not had a single letter redacted. Everything is here for scrutiny for the Conservatives to fall over and dig deeply into the details. Of course, they didn't find anything because there was nothing to find. Yet they want to suggest that somehow we can find officers of Parliament to have contributed to the breach of parliamentary privilege, which again is so unfortunate.
I turn your attention now, Mr. Chair, to some of the documents.
I'm sorry, Mr. Chair. I just realized that I've been talking for a really long time. Somebody else might want to get in here. I have a page break, and maybe I will pause right now, because I was about to get into the documents from the finance committee. I'm about halfway through, so why don't I take a break right now. Then, if necessary, I will come back to start talking about them afterwards.
I don't want to leave you with any cliffhangers, but I have a feeling that we're going to see more redacted phone numbers. When we get to that point, I want you to remember that I warned you of this in advance and that this was a recurring theme.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.