PACC Committee Meeting

37th PARLIAMENT, 3rd SESSION

Standing Committee on Public Accounts

EVIDENCE

CONTENTS

Tuesday, March 23, 2004

À

1045

The Chair (Mr. John Williams (St. Albert, CPC))

Mr. Odina Desrochers (Lotbinière—L'Érable, BQ)

The Chair

Hon. Joe Jordan (Leeds—Grenville, Lib.)

The Chair

À

1050

Mr. Odina Desrochers

The Chair

À

1055

Mr. Dennis Mills (Toronto—Danforth, Lib.)

The Chair

Hon. Joe Jordan

The Chair

Mr. Dennis Mills

The Chair

Mrs. Marlene Jennings (Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, Lib.)

The Chair

The Clerk of the Committee (Mr. Jeremy LeBlanc)

The Chair

Mr. Odina Desrochers

The Chair

Mr. Odina Desrochers

The Chair

Mr. Odina Desrochers

Á

1100

The Chair

Hon. Robert Thibault (West Nova, Lib.)

The Chair

The Chair

Mr. Odina Desrochers

The Chair

The Chair

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CANADA

Standing Committee on Public Accounts

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NUMBER 013

l

3rd SESSION

l

37th PARLIAMENT

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EVIDENCE

Tuesday, March 23, 2004

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

À  (1045)  

[English]

    The Chair (Mr. John Williams (St. Albert, CPC)): Order please.

    Good morning again. We have now reconvened the same meeting that we left off at the Centre Block. We're now in Room 306, West Block, and it's a continuation.

    This meeting is continuing in public. Madam Jennings' motion didn't say public or in camera, but I feel that it's appropriate, since we were in public when we suspended or adjourned over there, that we can start off in public here. Mr. Desrochers had the floor.

    Mr. Desrochers.

[Translation]

    Mr. Odina Desrochers (Lotbinière—L'Érable, BQ): First off, Mr. Chairman, I apologize for getting carried away a few minutes ago. All parties, whether it be the Bloc Québécois, your party or the Liberal Party of Canada, want to state their position. Let me explain to you how I interpreted your ruling.

    Earlier, you decided to adjourn our proceedings. I had learned of these two documents and concluded once again that the motion I had moved at the start of the meeting had been rejected.

    I'm doing my best to understand the second official language. When rulings are made, Mr. Chairman, 99 per cent of the time I have no problem understanding. Unfortunately, I missed something this time around and that's why I raised my voice.

    I apologize, Mr. Chairman, and withdraw the comments I made to you outside this forum.

    The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Desrochers. Apology accepted.

[English]

    The reason for the adjournment of the meeting and the reconvening here is that today every meeting room has been pre-assigned. We only had the meeting room till 10 o'clock. We went to 20 minutes after and the subsequent meeting's members were waiting in the hallway to get going. There was absolutely no desire, no intent whatsoever to preclude the committee from ensuring that these matters were debated in public.

    Now, Mr. Jordan.

    Hon. Joe Jordan (Leeds—Grenville, Lib.): I have a technical question having to do with Mr. Mills' motion. Because it coincided with the introduction of our forensic auditors, is it reasonable to assume that this task is going to fall on their shoulders? Where does that go next?

    The Chair: The motion was that the documentation be provided. I intend to use the Department of Public Works to a significant degree because it has thousands of people on the payroll. I would hope the department presents it to us in a usable form, the same way as there was a previous motion that all sponsorship program grants be provided to the committee showing constituency, how much was paid out by the government, and how much was received by the event. I do hope that when we are drafting motions we rely on Public Works to a large degree to do a lot of the legwork for us.

    This would also apply to Mr. Mills' motion. They are not going to give us a stack of documents and say “Help yourself, see what you want to do with them”. This is also the reason for our forensic auditors, who will then take the information and boil it down into something that we as committee members can understand. We may have to have meetings. We may want to have meetings with our forensic auditors where they can explain to us as a committee what's in the documents they have perused.

    We're breaking new ground here. This committee is doing a very serious investigation into a particular issue over a great many weeks. This is not a policy issue, where a policy committee will hear witnesses upon witnesses and draw a policy conclusion as to where the government should or should not go forward. This is a retrospective examination into a problem, and it is difficult to do this as a committee.

    I recognize that the political parties represented here have competing objectives, and it's important that we work.... As I've said many times, there's more than enough accountability to go around on all the issues that we deal with in the public accounts committee, not just this one, so we don't have to worry about the partisan politics to a large degree. I have made it my point not to allow this to break down into a partisan effort.

    I would expect all sides to respect the nature of this investigation, which is on behalf of all Canadians to tell them what has happened, rather than an “I'm going to score points for my side” situation. We're not doing Canadians a favour if we think we're going to shut down the inquiry, take it in a certain direction, use it as hype for a political perspective. That's not what it's about.

    There are serious allegations about misappropriation of taxpayers' funds and huge amounts of money. It's for us to understand how and why the government went off the rails, where the breakdown in the checks and balances occurred, how it was that the crown corporations felt they were not responsible to the taxpayers--and they have to explain themselves as to how they felt they could act in a manner that would appear to be beyond the law--and so on. That is the role of this committee, and to report back to the House on what we have found. We can follow down that general direction.

    Mr. Desrochers does have a motion that he filed with the clerk on March 10, 2004. It's in both official languages. It's properly before this committee. The meeting is in public.

    Mr. Desrochers, your motion please.

À  (1050)  

[Translation]

    Mr. Odina Desrochers: Mr. Chairman, from what Mrs. Jennings said, I understood that a series of motions containing some requests for documents were received and subsequently rolled into a single motion. You will recall that that particular morning, many motions were received, some containing certain dates. I believe there were five or six in total.

    I filed the motion in question because Mr. Alfonso Gagliano had alluded to a national unity fund administered by the Privy Council Office and because Prime Minister Paul Martin had clearly stated that if asked, he would turn over these documents. Hence the reference to the following:

all documents containing references to the use of the Privy Council Office's national unity fund (for example, but not exclusively, the annual financial statement for this fund since its creation, the financial initiatives undertaken by the fund each year, and the amounts allocated to each such initiative).

    It was my understanding that this paragraph was to be included in the slew of motions dealt with here this morning.

    Hadn't we discussed this, Mrs. Jennings? All of the motions were to be rolled into a single motion. As I said, we may have got our wires crossed. After checking with the clerks, as you suggested I do, it was discovered that indeed there was no mention of the points raised in this motion.

    As you can well understand, it's very important to me that this motion be passed. In the course of this discussion, we agreed to roll all of the motions into one, but the final motion was supposed to be a fair representation of all of the motions filed. Therefore, I trust that the points raised in my motion will be incorporated into the new motion.

[English]

    The Chair: Okay. Before we move to Ms. Jennings, I'm going to read from the minutes of March 11.

By unanimous consent, Marlene Jennings moved,—That the Chair, on behalf of the Committee, write a letter to the Department of Public Works and Government Services, requesting that PWGSC write all parties who received a sponsorship grant from the time of the program's inception and ask those parties to provide a description of their event, when they first learned of the sponsorship program, how they applied for the grant, the amount of moneys that were approved each year and the amount of money that they actually received each year for their event;

    Continuing on, on the next page:

By unanimous consent, Marlene Jennings moved,—That the Privy Council Office be ordered to provide to the Committee copies of the minutes and all records from all meetings of any cabinet committee or ad hoc committee (including all documents created and generated by such committee) wherein communications and sponsorship activities/programs were discussed between January 1, 1994 and February 10, 2004.

    There is, I think, some overlap in Mr. Desrochers' motion and what Ms. Jennings has. What I'm suggesting we do, because we're dealing with a committee, is that if you agree with the contents of Mr. Desrochers' motion, you pass it. If it overlaps with what Ms. Jennings received unanimous consent for, her motions, then the staff, the clerks, and the forensic auditor will deal with that overlap. Therefore, I would suggest that we don't be too concerned about overlap in this motion. Is that acceptable?

    It appears to be. Okay, I'll consider that acceptable.

    So now we're going to deal with—

À  (1055)  

    Mr. Dennis Mills (Toronto—Danforth, Lib.): Excuse me. For clarification, you're suggesting.... What was your final point?

    The Chair: My point is that if there's a decision contained in Mr. Desrochers' motion that was also contained in Madam Jennings' motions, we don't try to go through it line by line and say this is a duplication, so delete that, and so on. If we have a duplication, we'll just accept that as a duplication of a motion. Is that acceptable?

    Hon. Joe Jordan: Are we going to deal with this motion?

    The Chair: Pardon?

    Mr. Dennis Mills: Are we going to vote on it separate from Marlene's motions?

    The Chair: That's right, because Marlene's are passed.

    What I don't want to do is get into whether this line has already been covered off. We'll just deal with the whole motion.

    Madam Jennings.

    Mrs. Marlene Jennings (Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, Lib.): May I just make one point? To my recollection--and I would like to have the opportunity to go back and look at the actual blues--I don't actually recall having seen this motion at the meeting where my motions were discussed and debated.

    I do, however, recall seeing a motion from Mr. Desrochers that asked for the documents from the committee or a cabinet committee, the minutes and all records, but there was a specific date. If my recollection is correct, it was a date in the month of June of a specific year. Therefore, when the discussion began as to what my motion would include or not, when I made assurances to Mr. Desrochers, my assurances were based on his motion that specifically talked about the minutes and documents of all committees or a committee, a committee meeting that took place on a specific date, which was in June or July of a certain year. My assurances were that, yes, in fact my motion would cover the minutes and the documents of that specific meeting.

    It was not at any time to give assurances that this motion that's now before us, that was submitted to the clerk on March 10 and talks about documents containing references to the use of the Privy Council Office, national unity fund, and so on, was contained in my motion, because as I said, I don't even recall having seen this motion.

    The motion I recall seeing was one that talked about a specific cabinet meeting, a specific date. I believe it was a meeting of a cabinet committee of Treasury Board, and the date was in June of...I don't remember the year.

    The Chair: The clerk has advised me that the contents of Mr. Desrochers' motions were contained in substance in the ones that we've presented this morning. Therefore, am I correct in saying that Mr. Desrochers' motion had not been circulated—which confirms your point, Madam Jennings?

    So one may argue that the motion has not been circulated with 48 hours' notice.

    Am I correct in that, Mr. LeBlanc?

    The Clerk of the Committee (Mr. Jeremy LeBlanc): Quite honestly, Mr. Chairman, neither myself nor Ms. Kingston was the clerk at that time. I do not remember seeing the contents of this motion, but that is not to say it wasn't received. I wasn't there at the time, and I honestly don't remember.

    The Chair: Okay.

    By unanimous consent, can we consider this motion as being properly before us at this point in time?

    Some hon. members: Agreed.

    The Chair: That is agreed, so the motion is now properly before us.

    Now, for the debate on the motion, Monsieur Desrochers.

[Translation]

    Mr. Odina Desrochers: It's clearly indicated on the motion: “Filed with the Clerk of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts on March 10, 2004”. I had understood from my discussion with Mrs. Jennings that this paragraph would be incorporated.

[English]

    The Chair: That's fine, Mr. Desrochers—

[Translation]

    Mr. Odina Desrochers: I understand. What you need to understand is that I filed this motion...

[English]

    The Chair: Mr. Desrochers, the motion is before us. We're going to deal with it right now. Therefore, I'm talking about debate on the motion.

    Now, because we have four points—

[Translation]

    Mr. Odina Desrochers: As I indicated to you earlier, Mr. Chairman, I filed this motion further to a question raised during Question Period.

Á  (1100)  

[English]

    The Chair: Mr. Desrochers, the motion is before us. We are going to vote on it now. We're going to vote on your motion now, unless there's further debate on the motion.

    I think it's appropriate that we take it in four blocks. It's moved by Mr. Desrochers that—

    Hon. Robert Thibault (West Nova, Lib.): On a point of order, there is a motion before the committee. We should vote on the motion.

    The Chair: Then we will take the whole motion as presented by Mr. Desrochers.

    (Motion negatived) [See Minutes of Proceedings]

    The Chair: My question now is, do we wish to continue in public or do we wish to move in camera?

    Monsieur Desrochers.

[Translation]

    Mr. Odina Desrochers: Mr. Chairman, I think we should continue on as before. We had agreed to meet in camera when discussing future business. I move that we go back to doing just that, particularly as these premises are extremely— [Inaudible—Editor]—

[English]

    The Chair: All right. There's a motion that we go in camera.

    (Motion agreed to)

    The Chair: We will now move in camera.

    [Proceedings continue in camera]