It's good to see colleagues.
Mr. Chair, I won't take too much of the committee's time. I just wanted to take a few moments, if I could, to recap where we are. For those back at home, after weeks of watching it could be easy to be confused as to why we're here.
We have our initial motion, which pertains to 's matter of privilege in relation to redacted documents. These documents were received by this committee in accordance with a motion that was passed by committee members. The documents were in the format as requested in the motion and were provided on time. The redactions that Mr. Poilievre seems to be taking issue with, it would appear, are directly related to the work done by the parliamentary law clerk. I can appreciate that Mr. Poilievre is not happy with the results of the motion. However, it was his party that drafted the original motion.
Subsequently, we have an amendment and a subamendment on the table related to the production of documents, on which version of documents should be disclosed, how they are compared and whatnot. I won't waste time going into detail on that. What is key to the subamendment is the appearance of the Clerk of the Privy Council. As my colleagues have noted previously, and as my opposition colleagues are fully aware, we are in possession of a letter from the most senior civil servant in the country. The Clerk of the Privy Council and secretary to cabinet is the head of our civil service, the head of the Privy Council Office, which coordinates the functioning of the government in Canada. As secretary to cabinet, they are the chief adviser to cabinet and are responsible for the accurate recording of meetings and decisions. Clearly, the clerk is in a position to be an expert witness on any number of matters, particularly because it was the clerk who pre-emptively ordered the release of documents, including cabinet confidences and the names of relevant public servants, prior to this committee making its motion.
It's important that we focus for a moment on the matters at hand. As I noted, the clerk is the secretary to cabinet and is responsible for keeping information related to cabinet. As a result, he is the keeper of cabinet confidences. He can choose whether they're waived in a particular circumstance, as he did in the matter of the Canada student service grant. He did choose to waive confidence and provide all documentation that flowed through the cabinet papers system. The clerk committed to doing this before we even voted on requests for these documents.
Further to his responsibility to keep cabinet confidences, the clerk did take the position that matters unrelated to the student service grant should not be disclosed. Is this an unreasonable position? I think not. Is this position by the clerk to redact unrelated cabinet confidences outside the normal scope of practice? No, it is not. Is it outside the normal scope of practice for department officials, non-partisan public servants, to redact said documentation at point of source? No. Is it outside the normal scope of practice for the public service to provide completely unredacted cabinet documents to the parliamentary law clerk and for him, and him alone, to choose what should be redacted as a cabinet confidence? Absolutely, 100%.
This is exactly what and my opposition colleagues are calling for here. The opposition majority is calling on this committee to take a position regarding document requests that is very far outside the normal practice. It's happening not just here. We see this happening at other committees as well. We also see it with the structure of the motion the Conservatives made in regard to their opposition motion the other week, again, requesting documents unredacted and calling on the law clerk to make those redactions for cabinet confidences. The parliamentary law clerk has never had powers to review cabinet confidences. There are legal precedents and reasons for this—very good reasons.
For the information of colleagues, I am on point in relation to our subamendment. I believe setting the proper context is important. You will fully understand my point momentarily.
As I have explained, the way in which the majority opposition has requested documents is rather unorthodox and out of the ordinary. To make it even more interesting, the original motion drafted and passed by the opposition recognized that unrelated cabinet confidences would be redacted at source and then forwarded to the law clerk for a personal privacy check.
The motion was structured and passed in that way and no one from the opposition said otherwise. Imagine our surprise when appeared post-document release dramatically throwing blacked out papers around at the press briefing, papers he received from the law clerk and conforming to the exact specifications of a motion that he proposed.
Now this brings me to the Clerk of the Privy Council. In mid-August the released documents, the exact documents that the clerk had promised and that the clerk had requested in the motion, minus the redactions by the law clerk. This was an extraordinary release of Crown secrets. As has been said in this committee in the past, this release of documents this was unlike any that had occurred in the past. Included in the information was reference to specific public servants, which the clerk took the extreme step of leaving unredacted. This required the clerk to file a notice with the Privacy Commissioner advising him of his move.
I think colleagues need to let the gravity of that decision sink in. We now have two sets of documents, the lightly redacted information from the , which saw the complete release of information as it relates to the CSSG, or the Canada student service grant, minus unrelated cabinet confidences, which included the names of public servants. We also have the documents from the law clerk, which are a bit more heavily redacted, removing the names of public servants, phone numbers and emails, among some other items.
Now the opposition has taken issue with the preredactions made by the public servants in relation to unrelated cabinet confidences, which again I find strange considering that this was in the motion from the committee. It's the regular practice when documents are sent to the committee as well, though clearly this doesn't fit the partisan narrative of the majority opposition. , Mr. Julian and others have concerns about these preredactions. We can debate all day about how this was to be expected because of the motion that was passed. However, let's set that argument aside for a moment.
As I've said, the Clerk of the Privy Council is the keeper of cabinet confidences and is an expert witness when it comes to their release. He has offered to come before this committee. That letter sent by him states clearly that he and his relevant deputy ministers would gladly come before the committee to explain how they went about reviewing the motion from the committee, compiling documents and complying the best they could with our request.
I know this has been reported in the press as well, so Canadians across the country will be aware of this fact too. Personally I'm not sure why the opposition has questions about why there were redactions for unrelated cabinet confidences. I get that they have their political game to play so I'm willing to play ball on some level. That's why I think it's completely reasonable to have the clerk and his fellow deputies here to explain themselves. What is important for us to remember is that, like us, the amazing public servants who work for the Government of Canada swear an oath, an oath to uphold the secrecy of all matters that come before them in their duties and to uphold the statutes that govern privacy laws in Canada.
As we push these public servants for the release of information, they are conducting a delicate balancing act between our rights as parliamentarians to reasonably access government documents and their sworn responsibility to uphold the confidence of the cabinet process and protect the functioning of responsible government. I think that, up front, the clerk should be commended. He recognized that this program, while on its merits was a good concept as far was the program was concerned, clearly had issues on the implementation front. He recognized the need to be 100% up front and transparent in regard to how the CSSG came into being, and he ensured that the cabinet documents relating to its creation and approval were made available for parliamentarians.
However, as committee members, we have to recognize that this unprecedented move to make the information available had to be balanced with the need to protect cabinet confidences on matters that were unrelated. If we accepted the request from the clerk to appear, I think that is what he would tell this committee. I think he has a measured and reasonable explanation for why some information was released and other information was not. I think the testimony he will give will side with the fact that it is not the responsibility of the Clerk of the Privy Council to assist the official opposition with their politically motivated fishing expedition
I think it wouldn't be appropriate for him to unredact information for purely political reasons, to help the opposition. It would taint the cabinet process. All these explanations would be better heard coming from the lips of the clerk himself.
I think we know what colleagues on the other side are afraid of. They are rather annoyed that we will not allow the tyranny of the opposition majority to rule supreme here in this place. I think they are annoyed that a non-partisan professional public servant is willing to come forward and testify, and that the testimony that would be given would likely counter their narrow partisan strategy. I encourage all my colleagues to vote in favour of the subamendment to allow the clerk to come forward and explain the position of the government in regard to the redaction. It's the right thing to do.
I ask colleagues to do the right thing: Allow the clerk to come before us. Let's move past this matter after he testifies and get to the work that Canadians expect of us. In particular, I am very much looking forward to discussing the motion from Ms. Dzerowicz regarding pre-budget consultations. It's the whole reason this committee exists. Let's hear from the clerk and then let's get to the work on pre-budget planning.
This is a critical point and one that is quite relevant, because, if we think back, this debate around Mr. Kelly's amendment and the subamendment that has been proposed by the Liberal side really does, as we continue with it—and I think we should because the subamendment is tremendously important—stand in the way of our looking at Ms. Dzerowicz's motion, which is completely on par with what this committee, as I just said, needs to do: commence pre-budget consultations so that we can begin to hear from Canadians about what their priorities are.
As we face a second wave, COVID-19 continues to impact almost every part of this country in some shape or form. In my own province, Ontario, we are seeing real challenges, not only in the GTA and in Ottawa, but also in other parts. As we start to grapple with it, we need to hear from experts, particularly on the economy, and consider how COVID-19 is impacting the land. I can't emphasize enough to my colleagues how imperative it is that we move in this direction. If we think back to when we were elected, what was it we were sent here to do?
The committee process for all MPs is central to the job of being a parliamentarian. We all know that this job is many things. It's really two jobs, at the end of the day. You have the constituency work, which is vital, but you also have the work that takes place on Parliament Hill. On this latter point, the work on Parliament Hill, our committee work is crucial, imperative. I have had the honour of serving on the committee for foreign affairs, on the committee for public safety and national security, and now for the previous two years, under your learned leadership, Mr. Chair, and I say this very sincerely.... I know you're a modest man, and you're shaking your head there. You should not. You have led the committee in a very able way, Mr. Chair.
It is a tremendously important thing to sit on the finance committee, and the work we do is varied. We have a role in the gathering of ideas that relate to COVID-19 and the economic response, the gathering of ideas that find their way in the form of recommendations for the to consider and for the also, of course, to consider. That is not a small thing. It is something that I and colleagues around the table will take pride in, but our constituents also feel a great amount of pride when they know they have MPs representing them who sit on this committee, arguably the most important committee on Parliament Hill.
As we have engaged in this debate, I have thought back to what it is preventing from happening. It is obviously preventing us from dealing with Ms. Dzerowicz's motion, which is calling on us to begin immediately pre-budget consultations.
However, that doesn't mean this debate is one that I'm willing to simply surrender to the opposition, because there are a number of things at stake here. We have the Clerk of the Privy Council, who has made the very important point that he wishes to come before committee to be asked questions, not only by members of Parliament on the Liberal side but by opposition members of Parliament as well. It is an extraordinary move on his part, and we see the opposition standing in the way of that happening.
This is where I have real concerns. We have not dealt in previous meetings with this point that I'm about to make at this committee, but it has been suggested, especially by Mr. Poilievre, and I am disappointed not to hear opposition colleagues challenge him on this point.... I will tell you—and I think I speak for the entire Liberal side—that when Mr. Poilievre suggested that it would not be something he would be open to, that he would not be in favour of having the clerk appear before this committee, because in his view the clerk operates at the whim of the and, as I think Mr. Poilievre put it, is somehow under the thumb of the Prime Minister, is reliant, is “dependent”, on him.... These are the words he continues to use. Mr. Poilievre has said that the Clerk of the Privy Council is dependent on the Prime Minister. It's just not true.
The most senior civil servant in the land is, by definition, neutral and objective. They must be in order to carry out their role, which is what? The clerk has the most important role in the public service, and we need to make sure that, while there naturally will be quarrels between members of Parliament on opposite party sides, we do not attack the public service, which, as we have seen with the issue of the day, COVID-19, were it not for the federal public service.... We could also talk about the public services operating at the provincial and municipal levels, but I won't do that. I'll focus on the federal public service and what an extraordinary job they have done through COVID-19.
By suggesting that the head of Canada's public service is somehow under the rule of and entirely “dependent”, as Mr. Poilievre put it, on the , that is something that besmirches not only the reputation of this particular clerk. It besmirches the reputation of clerks previous and those who will come after Mr. Shugart. It also attacks the reputation and honour of existing public servants at all levels, whether they are public servants who have just recently joined Canada's civil service or whether they are experienced ones as well.
I wonder why it is that my Conservative colleagues continue to do this at almost every opportunity. It surprised me as well that Mr. Poilievre made the point, because he speaks very highly, at least he has in previous sessions and meetings of this committee.... In the previous Parliament, for example, I remember him putting on record that he held Mr. Shugart in high esteem. That was an interesting point, but one that he completely contradicts when he says that Mr. Shugart is under the thumb of the current . It's just not the case. In fact, if I'm not mistaken, when Mr. Poilievre served in cabinet, Mr. Shugart was the deputy minister to Mr. Poilievre and has served under a number of different governments.
All of which is to say, that the moment we begin to attack public servants is the moment when we see a tide or a shift in our democracy that we should absolutely avoid. All of us are in this position as members of Parliament, a position that will not be forever. We are here for sometimes a few years and sometimes a good number of years. The reality is that partisanship plays a role in that process. We've decided to approach our public service in that way, but public servants who decide to work in the civil service, making a contribution along those lines, want nothing to do with politics. Once we begin attacking them, we violate a central, a cardinal, rule in a democracy, and that is that the public service must never be politicized.
Public servants are not politicizing this process but by making the accusations that Mr. Poilievre has put forward, and which again I emphasize to my amazement, the opposition has not intervened to correct him or to voice their view on the matter. We take away, we do away with the need to ensure that our democracy, in terms of the public service, is free of politics.
There's another thing, too, here. I remember suggesting this, although he didn't complete the thought, if I remember, when he sat at this committee a few weeks back. It was that we have to be very careful about how we decide to engage discussions around the public service because they're not here to defend themselves. When Mr. Poilievre makes these accusations he does so without Mr. Shugart and other public servants present. That to me is offensive because public servants are not to be attacked for all the reasons I've laid out. Also, it's not their position to engage in these debates.
Mr. Shugart realizes that but in a very honourable way has put forward a letter to this committee so he can be heard. If members of the opposition at that point wish to engage combatively with him I suppose that can happen. To launch these accusations without the Clerk of the Privy Council present is quite extraordinary and something I don't think I've seen at any committee level. I wonder if it's happened before in previous committees. Perhaps it has, as that parliamentary history is long. I'm going to assume, because of the strength of our democracy, that the times it has transpired are few and far between.
This point about not attacking the public servants who serve this country—
First of all, I want to say thank you to my colleague for giving me such an introduction. I'm afraid I'm probably going to disappoint. I am not ready with any oratorical speeches at the moment, although I probably have a few interesting things to say before I go into some prepared remarks. To be honest, a lot of it is expanding on where Mr. Fragiskatos has been. It's been exactly along the lines I've been thinking about, so I am expanding on some of his points.
Here is where I am going to start off. I am going to say that we on the government side do not believe—and I say this wholeheartedly—that we're hiding anything. I always like reminding everyone who is listening, and maybe some of the new colleagues who have joined us today at this committee meeting, that we actually had almost two months of testimony over the summer, just to look into the WE Charity being selected to deliver the Canada student service grant, the CSSG.
We have heard very clearly through that testimony that there was no corruption, that there was no misuse of funds and that WE was actually independently selected by civil servants. The reason we rushed before the summer was that, we knew that university students really wanted to be able to access as much money as possible so they could fund their continued education. We went to a contribution agreement and not a sole-source contract for very deliberate reasons and we explained that, and we absolutely did this for students.
Not only did we introduce the CSSG program, but we introduced over $9 billion in supports for students. The vast majority of that money has gone out. It's been very helpful, and it's been very helpful for my nephew, who is now at Brock University. I'll tell you, he laments that school is not fully back in session, but I know that he has taken advantage of some of the programs because he needed to. I wanted to put that out there because I think it's very important.
The 5,000-plus documents—I think there are around 5,600—do not have a smoking gun. There is no smoking gun there. What the subamendment before us tries to get to is to say, let's bring all the parties relevant to this matter—to the redactions, to the documents and to why things were redacted—around the table. Then we can address any outstanding questions and concerns and try to do it in a public way, in a transparent way, so that we can move on to pre-budget consultations. This is a motion I had introduced at our very first session, after we came back from prorogation and after we listened to the Speech from the Throne. That was, I believe, on October 8.
I found something in the paper that I want to share with you. This is from the Toronto Star weekend edition. There was a foundation that decided.... It was a group that actually had been very involved with the WE Charity for over 10 years. They took out a full-page ad and it's exactly relevant to what we're talking about. It says:
The Real #WEscandal is the Loss of #WEcharity
My name is Andy Stillman. I believe in smart, impactful philanthropy. That's why for nearly a decade, my family foundation supported WE Charity. But over the past months I've been confused, reading negative press about WE and its founders. If you're like me, you want to cut through the politics and get to the truth.
So that's exactly what I did. I hired top-rated, non-partisan investigators and forensic accountants, including Matt Torigian, former Deputy Solicitor General for the province of Ontario, and forensic accountant Dr. Al Rosen, who has appeared before the Supreme Court of Canada.
The review included over 5,000 pages released by the federal government, and nearly 400 documents released by WE Charity, as well as a full evaluation of WE Charity's finances and that of the social enterprise ME to WE that funds the charity.
The findings convinced me. So much so that I wanted to pay for these full-page ads to ensure that Canadians have the truth.
Here Are the Top Five Things the Experts Found:
1. The public service considered multiple other charities and groups, and the public service determined that We Charity was the best partner to administer the Canada Student Service Grant (CSSG) to help students.
2. The Prime Minister's Office did not predetermine that WE Charity would be selected to administer the Canada Student Service Grant.
3. WE Charity would have made no profit from the CSSG, but only been reimbursed for eligible expenses to administer the program. WE Charity was clearly motivated by helping students.
4. ME to WE Social Enterprise has created jobs to help lift people overseas from poverty and given 100% of its profits to WE Charity or reinvested funds for social purposes.
5. Marc and Craig are volunteers who never profited from WE Charity. In contrast, the Kielburger family are the among the most generous financial supporters of WE Charity.
Simply put, there was no funny business. The real #WEscandal is politics causing the loss of an incredible Canadian charity which has helped millions of young people for over 25 years.
See the facts for yourself at FriendsofWE.org and learn how you can help right this wrong.
I remain a believer in WE Charity and I will continue to support them. Today's world needs more youth volunteerism, not less. We need to take a step back, think critically and check our assumptions.
It is my hope that these reports will renew your confidence in an important organization, like it has mine. If you want to make your voice heard, I hope you'll share your WE story of impact with FriendsofWE.org
I just want to say that because, again, it validates.... The reason we're actually talking about a subamendment to an amendment of an original motion is that the original motion had an implication that there were redactions done by our independent civil servants that were hiding things that were some kind of smoking gun, that were covering up some kind of big scandal or some sort of big cover-up. That is indeed not the case.
Again, because of the two months of testimony we've had.... I found it so amazing that this foundation decided it was going to hire its own independent investigators and forensic accountants to actually see if there was any funny business, and when it found the results, decided to go out and put out these ads, and it was really important to do so. I thought I'd start with that, because it is really important for us to put it on the table.
Getting back to the subamendment, again, the reason we want the subamendment to pass is that it was our attempt on the Liberal side to try to deal with any concerns that there was some sort of document that hid some big secret or cover-up, so that we could move as fast as we could to pre-budget consultations. Now, because we've had a number of discussions, it feels like where we are at is that there is agreement that we'll eliminate cabinet confidence and we'll eliminate anything of national security. However, I think where we are sitting is that there are some redactions within the original set of documents that went to the law clerk that had zero relevance to WE and that never needed to be submitted, but because they were just part of the documents they ended up being submitted and were automatically redacted. What is important to state is that if those sections were not included as part of the submission, no one would have ever complained, because it was never part of the original intention that they be included.
Anyway, I don't know if any of that is clear but we have a few hours to actually make it clearer.
Where I am going to take us is actually what my colleague, Mr. Fragiskatos, talked about when he indicated that Mr. Shugart, our Clerk of the Privy Council, had submitted a very clear letter to the Clerk of the Committee indicating the following:
I am writing further to recent discussions at the Standing Committee on Finance.
My colleagues and I would be pleased to make ourselves available to appear before the committee to speak to the redactions that were made if it would be useful to do so.
I know that we've been discussing the documents requested by this committee for some time now, and I think it is fair to say there is some disagreement among parties in relation to the redactions of non-relevant cabinet confidences by the public service. As well, there seems to be clear-cut confusion as to who redacted which set of documents that are floating out there.
If you look at the subamendment we've put on the table, we've actually proposed to bring forward to the committee both sets of documents. The set of documents that is coming forward that was redacted by our independent civil servants, that's package number one. Package number two is the package that came back from the law clerk, which was further redacted. That way we can see the differences.
In any case, there seemed to be some confusion in regard to who redacted which set of documents. We have the very comprehensive set of documents released by the , which had some light redactions in relation to personal privacy and unrelated cabinet confidences. We then have redactions completed by the law clerk, which were intensive.
On the first set of documents, the redactions and instructions came from our law clerk. Mr. Fragiskatos talked a bit about how it was the clerk who gave very clear instructions to all departments as to what information needed to be released. I want to add to the discussion that cabinet confidence is very clearly defined. There are six short points that are defined in terms of confidences of the Queen's Privy Council for Canada. It's in a subsection of our Privacy Act, which states:
70(1) This Act does not apply to confidences of the Queen’s Privy Council for Canada, including, without restricting the generality of the foregoing, any information contained in
(a) memoranda the purpose of which is to present proposals or recommendations to Council;
(b) discussion papers the purpose of which is to present background explanations, analyses of problems or policy options to Council for consideration by Council in making decisions;
(c) agenda of Council or records recording deliberations or decisions of Council;
(d) records used for or reflecting communications or discussions between ministers of the Crown on matters relating to the making of government decisions or the formulation of government policy;
(e) records the purpose of which is to brief ministers of the Crown in relation to matters that are before, or are proposed to be brought before, Council or that are the subject of communications or discussions referred to in paragraph (d); and
It's important to point that out for anyone who is listening. To be honest, I had to learn this as well. I learned it as part of all of these discussions. It's very clear, when formal documents are actually requested, that there are very clear guidelines about how to define cabinet confidences, how to define items of national security and how to define things that are irrelevant. I wanted to make sure that I put that out there.
As a result of the proper instructions that came from the Clerk of the Privy Council, several departments undertook to release an unprecedented level of information, including cabinet confidences relating to the CSSG, where 5,000 pages were disclosed, including documents that would never had seen the light of day.... It says here in my notes that they would “never have seen the light of day under the previous Harper government”.
That comment just highlights the point that our government is trying its best to be as transparent and as open as possible. The release of an unprecedented number of documents is part of that. I would also point out, and it's important to note, our did not prorogue Parliament until all of these documents were formerly released to the public.
That's a very important note to reiterate, because to me that is another clear action our took that showed there was no desire on our part to not release the full documents, as was agreed to at our July 7 finance meeting.
The release of these documents is significant. The opposition members can now take umbrage with the fact that some redactions were made by public servants, but it's to be expected. I explained that there are very clear definitions about what redactions need to be made. I would also add that there's probably a lot of training that goes into making sure that we only redact what we need to redact, and everything else is made public.
To my friends in the Conservative Party, as they will know, Mr. Poilievre especially, typical cabinet meetings are not solely focused on one topic, particularly during this ongoing pandemic. Countless important topics are discussed at cabinet, and relevant decisions are taken in order to ensure proper functioning and responsible government. Reasonable redactions were made to unrelated topics, including these cabinet documents, so as to allow for their release. This isn't out of the ordinary, and I want to make sure that I reiterate that.
I'll move on here.
We have in possession this letter from Mr. Shugart, who wishes to come before this committee along with the relevant deputy ministers to discuss the documents that were released by the Government of Canada. Because of Mr. Shugart's position and his initial commitment to release all documentation related to the Canada student service grant, he is, in fact, uniquely positioned to answer our questions.
Therefore, it begs the question: Why does the opposition not want to hear from the clerk and the relevant deputy ministers? I'd also ask, as it relates to the subamendment, why we would not want to bring our Clerk of the Privy Council and the law clerk together at the exact same time. This is what the subamendment also highlights.
I also want to mention something that Mr. Poilievre indicated in the last session. I don't know if other Conservatives also mentioned it, but I do recall Mr. Poilievre saying this a number of times. There seemed to be an implication that the Clerk of the Privy Council is not independent, and I think this is troubling. I pointed out very quickly that, if you're in government—and the Conservatives were in government for a while—Canadians and all other parties assume that our public service will be independent and act independently, and that they will do that irrespective of whichever party is in government. I absolutely believe that this is true right now.
If Mr. Poilievre or other members believe that, for some reason, our public service is not independent anymore, this is a much bigger issue that we need to address. It is not the focus and should not be the focus right now, but I'm pointing out something that is very troubling in terms of that line of questioning or that type of indirect sort of accusation, which it is fairly direct. I truly believe that our Clerk of the Privy Council, who had—and this has been pointed out—been a deputy minister for Mr. Poilievre when he was a cabinet minister in previous governments.... At that point Mr. Shugart acted independently, and I absolutely believe that the Clerk of the Privy Council, who is now Mr. Shugart, is acting independently as well.
I was going to say that it's a slippery slope, but I don't even think it's a slippery slope. I don't even think there should be any kind of a slope that we should be going down in terms of saying our civil servants are not independent and are not acting in the best interests of all Canadians.
Where I am going to go from here? I think one of the things I'd like to get to is the whole thing of why. To be honest, I'd prefer if we were on pre-budget consultations right now. I'm not quite sure why it is that our opposition is not allowing us to hear from the Clerk of the Privy Council and from our law clerk. Honestly, I've never heard of parliamentarians refusing to hear from these independent civil servants, and the very act of refusing to allow them to testify here at committee is effectively politicizing our public service.
The public service in this country is expressly non-partisan for a reason. It's absolutely unacceptable that the opposition is taking the position that they have. Let's put partisanship and politics aside for a moment. Let's acknowledge the fact that, at the instruction of the Clerk of the Privy Council, the public service compiled documentation related to the Canada student service grant.
In keeping with the motion of this committee, cabinet confidences were removed. That is a standard practice, and I talked a lot about that before, and I know everybody knows about it. The clerk added only one caveat to the release of these documents, that personal information was to be removed from the documents. Even then, the names of political staff and public servants were left visible. Only phone numbers and unrelated family member names were removed, as the clerk indicated in his letter to us.
The law clerk, upon receiving the documents on August 8, went about his duty to review the documents for personal information, as indicated by the committee motion, and redacted appropriately. Those are the blacked-out documents the opposition members are waving around in, as it says here, “moments of grandeur”, but I think it's also the opposition waving around the same documents in French and in English.
I want to get this on the record. I have the utmost respect for the parliamentary law clerk and the work he does. I know that the role of the law clerk is essential to the functioning of Parliament and to protecting its rights and privileges. Like most lawyers, he will always defend the rights of his clients strenuously. His legal opinions will always take the most conservative view of Parliament being the ultimate authority amongst the three branches of government. This makes complete sense. That's his job. I'm happy to have him on my side. I think he's done great work on this file under the most strenuous circumstances, particularly the pandemic. However, the Clerk of the Privy Council and public servants at large also have inherent responsibilities. For them it's to the Crown, to protect Crown secrets and uphold and enforce the statutes and legislation passed by legislators.
This leads us to the normal tension that exists, and not just now. It has always existed. There will always be tension between the law clerk and the Clerk of the Privy Council as it relates to this type of release of documents. The law clerk will always take the most expansive position on the rights of parliamentarians for access to documents. The Clerk of the Privy Council, and by extension the public servants, will always take the opposite position, that cabinet confidences have to be protected and upheld at all costs.
Typically, we resolve this tension through negotiation, where a happy medium is found. I think that is where we ideally want to go. I think that's the reason we proposed this subamendment. Let's bring both to the table. As I have said time and time again, we already proved through the testimony in the two months over the summer that there is no scandal and there is no cover-up, as Mr. Poilievre, I think, is very fond of theatrically stating there is. There is no smoking gun in terms of any of the 5,000-plus documents.
Don't just take our word for it. You also have this independent foundation that had been very involved with WE and became very troubled with all these allegations about WE. They independently hired Dr. Al Rosen, a former deputy solicitor general for the Province of Ontario and forensic accountant, who has appeared before the Supreme Court of Canada, to also validate that, as he said, there is “no funny business”.
With that, the only thing I would leave with everyone before I pass the baton to the next person who would like to speak is that at this point I will tell you that I am really quite worried about our pre-budget consultations. I wonder whether we can really give the proper time that is needed to the almost 800 organizations, individuals and corporations who have made submissions to us. I have an interview that I'm supposed to be doing about what happens if there are no pre-budget consultations.
I truly believe in the work of our government. I truly believe in the work of this committee. I believe we have important work ahead of us to not only listen to those who are going through an unprecedented pandemic but also to hear their very best ideas about how we can support not only them as organizations, as corporations, but also Canadians overall, how we can get our economy back on track, how we can create a strong economic foundation from which to pivot after we come out of this pandemic, how we can also set ourselves up to be even more competitive and address some of the structural financial issues we have had in the past, how we can put our capital to work to become as competitive as we can, and how to address maybe some of the bigger issues we have in terms of trade surpluses.
It's really important for us to try to get past this. I've heard Mr. Julian say a couple of times—I know he's about to speak, so he'll probably respond to this—that he has put all these ideas on the table.
Quite honestly, Mr. Julian, I have not heard all your ideas on the table. I've only heard a “no”, or there seems to be a reluctance to actually agree to the subamendment so that we can maybe bring all the actors to the table to try to get past this so that we can have a certain number of meetings and considerations for pre-budget consultations, and put forward these very excellent ideas to our and to our government so that they can be incorporated into the much-awaited and much-needed budget 2021.
With that, thank you so much, Mr. Chair and everyone, for lending your ears.
Thank you.
I want to thank my colleague Mr. Julian for his comments. We, too, have confidence in the Speaker of the House, as does he and all of our colleagues in the House. We also have a lot of confidence in the law clerk to make the judgment based on fact. I think both arguments can be made and should be considered before we make a final decision on how to proceed.
I can remember a time not long ago, watching the proceedings of this place, where members of Parliament were able to set partisanship aside, work together and come to a consensus on how to handle the issues of the day. It really is a shame to see the polarizing politics that have taken hold in other countries throughout the world continue to creep into our own Parliament of Canada.
Unfortunately, this is most present in the tactics or strategy of my colleagues from opposition parties. Before Mr. Julian begins to play defence for Mr. Poilievre and tries to call relevance on me, I'm hoping for a few moments of latitude because I will be coming to my point in regard to the subamendment, not the subamendment of the subamendment that Mr. Julian discussed, but the first one. However, it requires a few moments to lay the track before arriving at that station.
It is so clear in the attitude of my Conservative colleagues, especially, that they have fully bought into the misinformation tactics of the extreme right. It's never been more present than in the initial purpose for the debate that we're having here today. We are here on Mr. Poilievre's privilege motion, and in debating that we have an amendment and further a subamendment on the floor, and perhaps another one now in regard to that motion. The initial motion is what is key here. It is the reason behind the subamendment before this committee today.
The Clerk of the Privy Council is an expert witness on the release of cabinet confidence. It was Mr. Shugart who agreed to release all documentation related to the Canada student service grant, even prior to this committee making any requests. The appearance of the Clerk of the Privy Council really is important as it relates back to Mr. Poilievre's initial motion. The truth is, this matter of privilege raised by the honourable member is nothing but what appears to be a cheap partisan stunt. It is complete mistruth wrapped in a procedural bow meant to further the narrative of the Conservatives. That is a tactic of the extreme right, which we have seen throughout the world as of late—this penchant for casting the truth aside and continuing to make an argument that has no basis in reality.
As many of my colleagues have said before this committee, over 5,000 pages of documents were released by the Government of Canada with all information relating to the design and implementation of the Canada student service grant present and accounted for. I think the opposition was just plainly dumbfounded at the level of detail that the non-partisan public servants left unredacted. Mr. Poilievre must have been completely stunned to see that documents stamped “Secret” and “Confidence of the Queen's Privy Council” were actually included in the documents and unredacted. We can find out exactly why those documents were included if we have the clerk come before us and testify about that, yet for some strange reason my opposition colleagues are blocking that attempt.
It's a whole new world, when opposition members are blocking the appearance of the non-partisan head of the public service. It's truly a real shame.
Getting back to my point, I'm very sure that my colleagues were shocked at the level of detail included in these documents. At this point, the Conservatives and perhaps other opposition colleagues had a problem. They were likely sitting there thinking that since all the documents were actually released, between that and the testimony, they have nothing.
I cannot imagine the sinking feeling they had when they realized this, yet what is the truth? To my colleagues on the other side, truth is in the eye of the beholder. Taking a page from these extreme-right groups that have sprung up around the world, they have perhaps decided to obfuscate and create their own narrative. When you think about it, this explains why colleagues do not want the Clerk of the Privy Council to testify before us today, because his testimony would very likely crush the narrative that they have been trying to peddle for weeks now.
As I noted earlier in my remarks, there was a time when civility would win out and parliamentarians would work together to fix the problems of the day. There was a time when the truth would have been accepted when the facts were presented. Unfortunately, we no longer live in those times. We now live in a time when, if, after being presented with the facts, your argument is disproven, you double down anyway. When you are presented with expert witnesses—
I thank my colleague for his point of order. I guess we're going to agree to disagree on that point.
I'll go back to my comments and say that I have never, in all my time as an MP—and it's been just a little bit over a year—seen an opposition party refuse to allow a public servant with relevant information to testify before a committee, especially when that public servant is the top boss. I've said this before in previous comments, and I echo what my colleague Ms. Dzerowicz said earlier. If we place doubt in the Clerk of the Privy Council, then we absolutely have a much bigger issue on our hands than debating the subamendment to the subamendment to perhaps another subamendment.
It was clear from the outset what this committee requested in regard to documentation, and it was clear from the testimony of the Clerk of the Privy Council here what we would receive from him. In fact, again, over 5,000 pages of relevant information were released with limited redaction. The clerk noted that he would endeavour to ensure that this committee would have the information it needed to fully understand what occurred with the design and implementation of the Canada student service grant.
He kept up his end of the bargain. My colleagues on the other side know full well that the redactions present in those documents are about unrelated matters, but due to the nature of the document, they were redacted to allow for the information about the CSSG to be present. The law clerk himself redacted further, not only when he received the documents but he redacted some of the redactions. That is my understanding.
The motion by this committee recognized that these unrelated cabinet confidences would be redacted. This committee also understood that the parliamentary law clerk would remove some personal information from the documents as well. The Clerk of the Privy Council could be saying this himself if we were to invite him here. I'm happy to hear that Mr. Julian says he wouldn't have a problem to have Mr. Shugart before us because I really believe we should, sooner rather than later. He actually took the extraordinary step of leaving in the names of public servants, and advised the Privacy Commissioner that this would be the case. The Clerk of the Privy Council cannot control the fact that it was the motion by this committee that later caused the law clerk to redact those very names that the clerk endeavoured to release. If he could be here, he could explain that positioning himself.
This committee received these documents on time. They were forwarded to the law clerk, as was expressly stated in the initial motion, and here we have the law clerk completing his own redactions right around the time of prorogation. The law clerk released these documents to the members of this committee. The interesting thing here is that clearly the redactions by the law clerk are much more intensive than the redactions in the original documents handed over by the public service.
In order to ensure full transparency, the released the less-redacted documents anyway. In essence, the Government of Canada fulfilled the promise of the Clerk of the Privy Council and the request of this committee vis-à-vis the motion requesting documents. If the Clerk of the Privy Council were allowed to testify, he would back up this very simple fact.
This brings us back around again to why we are still here debating this subamendment. Quite simply, we are here because the opposition majority cannot accept that they were actually given everything they wanted. It doesn't square with the narrative that they are trying to put out in public, just as the testimony of the clerk would not fit the narrative they are trying to put out in public. Here we are debating a subamendment to an amendment to a motion that, in the end, is just a procedural trick to try to further this cheap political stunt that is now falling apart day by day.
We are weeks into this at this point. We have pre-budget consultations that this committee is mandated to complete, and I fully agree with Mr. Julian that we have to get to that.
We have a fix before us. With one simple vote we could set aside Mr. Poilievre's motion today, not defeat it but set it aside. We can invite the head of the public service, the Clerk of the Privy Council, Mr. Shugart, to this committee, and then he, along with relevant deputy ministers, can present their thinking and reasoning around the documents that were provided.
They could walk us through how all discussions and decisions regarding the Canada student service grant were unredacted. They can walk us through why some matters were redacted, and how they were unrelated to our topic of study. They can finally put to rest any concerns of the opposition.
I know this wouldn't fit the narrow political interests that the majority opposition has tried to push. I know this would completely blow apart the fictitious narrative that Mr. Poilievre is trying to spin; however, so be it. Mr. Poilievre and the other opposition members want to get to the truth, so here we are. Let's get to the truth. It's time for the non-partisan head of our public service to come before us and give us the truth.
I have done this before. I am going to repeat my comments. I urge colleagues to put aside their partisan differences, to finally return to past times of collegiality and decorum in Parliament, to remember we are here in this place to serve our constituents and to put their interests first. Let's show some respect for our professional and non-partisan members of the public service, not use them as ploys in a political game.
Mr. Chair, I ask colleagues to work with us to approve the subamendment to invite the Clerk of the Privy Council and other deputy ministers here forthwith.
:
Thank you so much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to my honourable colleague Ms. Khalid.
Welcome to our committee.
I appreciate the nobleness of Mr. Fragiskatos' comments. He is indeed correct.
Sometimes when people make a point, I kind of forget it. As I get older I do forget my comments and I prefer to make them almost right away. Mr. Julian made a number of comments, and I want to address them directly.
The first is that we're holding up the finance committee from moving forward to pre-budget consultations. In this meeting I've not said this and it's very important for me to reiterate it.
On October 8, when we first convened as the finance committee after we had elected our chair and our vice-chairs, I presented a pre-budget consultation motion. I was the first one out the door to do so. We could have gone ahead with it if Mr. Julian or any one of the opposition members decided they were going to support it. That did not happen.
Mr. Poilievre interrupted our ability to move to a vote to decide on pre-budget consultations with a motion on a point of privilege, following which we have gone to a subamendment to an amendment of the original motion. I want to make sure I put that on the table. We wanted to go right into pre-budget consultations. I do not take lightly anyone saying that in any way the Liberal government team has been trying to stop us from moving directly to pre-budget consultations.
I want to get to Mr. Poilievre's motion. In his point of privilege that he says we should vote on, he said, “Your Committee has concluded that the government's response failed to comply with the order”—which is the July 7 order—in terms of having all of the WE documents submitted to the public and the law clerk for redaction.
We have spent every single meeting since October 8 proving that we have completely followed through on that July 7 motion. We've explained why we followed through on it. We have explained what cabinet confidences were. We explained the transmittal letters. We have gone through every single bit of it. We even gave examples ad nauseam of what was actually redacted. We then put the subamendment on the table in order to say, look, even if you don't believe us, why don't we bring the people to the table? Let's bring the Clerk of the Privy Council. Let's bring the law clerk. Let's bring any relevant deputy ministers, and let's, in public, transparently, deal with this once and for all, because we don't think there is any smoking gun. There is nothing that we are trying to cover.
We proposed that motion fairly early on, and that was, again, not taken up by Mr. Julian or by any of the other opposition members. I do not take lightly anyone saying that we have in any way tried to hold up the pre-budget consultations. If anything, we have done our very best at every moment to try to move as quickly and as expeditiously as possible to pre-budget consultations.
I want to reiterate another point I've made. Mr. Julian has proposed zero new ideas for how we can actually break this logjam.
With that I want to say a huge thanks to Ms. Khalid for allowing me a few minutes to address Mr. Julian's comments.
Thank you.
:
Thank you very much for that, Mr. Chair. I do appreciate your proactivity and your diligence in ensuring that members all have their say and are well respected with their perspectives here in this committee.
As I was saying, the point that was being raised that I was trying to lend to this debate is an outside perspective of what the Canadians we serve as members of Parliament see and what they interpret when they see all of these amendments, subamendments, subamendments to the subamendments, and all of this questioning around the integrity of the public service, the integrity of elected officials, regardless of what side of the aisle they're on.
I was giving my personal anecdotes as to what Canadians see, what my constituents see, the feedback that they've been providing me over the past number of months, as well as the issues they've been telling me that they're faced with on a daily basis as they deal with this pandemic.
There have been a number of organizations that have reached out to me, to my constituency office, to my Hill office, to ask if they could participate in the pre-budget consultations. I know how important it is that we hear from Canadians to really form that policy and to really provide that assistance and that help to Canadians as we spend so much time travelling across the country and doing that hard work that we're elected to do.
I'll hit on one more phone call that I had quite recently. It was from a gentleman who had just at the beginning of this pandemic lost his job, and he was able to get the CERB to be able to keep the lights on in his home. As we were having a discussion last week about his job situation and his intrigue with the new CRB and when that was going to be put forward, he again asked me, from that public perspective, what is going on in the House. I again tried to explain to him, and he used a very interesting phrase that I questioned him on.
He said, “It looks like, Ms. Khalid, you've been CoNDP'd,” and I said, “What's a CoNDP?” He said, “Well, it looks like the House has been taken hostage, dealing with and just falling into completely irrelevant matters, into amendments and subamendments and all of this extra language that just does not impact Canadians at all.” I told him that using a term like CoNDP is probably not the best way—and if Mr. Chair had been there on that call, he would probably have told him it was unparliamentary.
However, it's again to the point that we need to ensure that whatever we're doing as parliamentarians, we're doing with integrity and we're doing it with a commitment and a focus to support Canadians in this really important time. They have been telling us consistently that now is the time that they need that help and that support.
I will leave it there, Mr. Chair. I see that you've unmuted yourself. Perhaps it is to talk about something?
:
I agree entirely with Ms. Jansen.
On the first point regarding the WE scandal, this is five weeks that the government members have been dawdling and giving 171,000 words of speechifying. They're talking about the Bible, the Torah, the Koran, Greek philosophers, cartoon characters and everything under the sun to run out the clock and avoid releasing these documents.
Today I came forward with a motion that reflected the compromise that the Liberal House leader effectively agreed to when he tweeted about it earlier this week. Now we're finding that tweet isn't consistent with what the Liberals are prepared to do. We said we would be willing to put aside for now the documents that the government claims are cabinet secrets and that the government would release everything else. They claim it was cabinet confidentiality that they needed to protect, and that was their major objection with releasing these documents unredacted. We put forward a motion that does what they they wanted to do, and now they're saying they're not so sure.
The timelines are not an excuse either. The documents are in the government's possession. All they have to do is send them over without the black ink. If they have versions with black ink, they must also have the pre-existing versions without black ink. These are digital documents. I presume that the copies sent over to the committee were not the only copies, that they are now blacked out and there's no way to get hold of the originals. The originals are there. The government knows what they are. They have an army of public servants who can produce them without the black ink. They could send them over on a USB stick, or possibly even an email attachment, to the law clerk this evening if they wanted to. To suggest that they can't get it done by Thursday—sorry, Friday.... I gave them until Friday, for God's sake. I don't know how long it takes it to send an email.
Then to claim that they can't get their act together and have the Clerk of the Privy Council come to testify by the date in the motion, which is I think mid next week...that too is ridiculous. He lives in Ottawa. He has access to electronic communications. He certainly can make himself available. It would not be hard for him to move his schedule around because the Parliament of Canada has asked him to do so.
There is no logistical reason that the government can't simply agree to this motion tonight. It's more dawdling and more delay. Meanwhile, we have millions who are without work and businesses are getting evicted, because the government once again messed up the rent relief program, a program that could have been fixed here in this committee but for the fact that we're paralyzed by a five-week Liberal filibuster. Now we're being asked for another 48 hours for them to go back to read a one-paragraph motion.
With regard to section 69, Mr. Fraser, I think you're being a little bit modest about your abilities. You are a skilled lawyer and a learned gentleman. You can read section 69 of the Access to Information Act in a couple of minutes. You are more than intelligent enough to do that. In fact, I rather suspect that you know the section already, because I know you spend a lot of time reading these statutes. I don't say that facetiously. You could master that section very quickly. It's short. It's about 100 words long and basically says “cabinet confidences”.
None of the excuses we're hearing today make any sense. It looks like we're being sent off on another wild goose chase to waste 48 hours of our time, rather than getting this done so we can get back to our jobs.
Ms. Jansen is quite right. I sometimes wonder if the government is not just covering up the WE scandal here with this endless filibuster but also doesn't want any scrutiny of this grand reset that the is now talking about, this idea that he is going to renovate Canadian society to fit his “Trudeaupian” ambitions. This is not a time to re-engineer society to his liking or his socialist ideology.
This is a time to get people safely and securely back to work, to protect their lives and livelihoods, not a time for government to take advantage of the crisis in order to massively expand its powers at the expense of Canadians' freedom. That's what we should be talking about here in the finance committee. We should be standing up against government power grabs like this grand reset the is discussing.
I'm beginning to wonder if this filibuster is about more than just covering up the WE scandal, and also about covering up the government's grand schemes for social and economic engineering, to cover up the power grab that he has lusted over since the beginning of this crisis. Frankly, we've lost patience. We want an answer. We want to get on with the job.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
:
Thank you, Mr. Chair. It's nice to be back here in Ottawa, actually. It's nice to see everyone in the room.
For Ms. Jansen, I absolutely agree with you, and I think we probably all agree that we all want to get back to business. Getting back to business for me, at this moment, means that we want to get right to pre-budget consultations.
I'll just remind everyone once again that on October 8 when we first met, within the first few minutes of our actually convening the committee, I did introduce a motion for us to get started on pre-budget consultations. I will tell you that if we want to get right down to business, we can get down to business ASAP if the point of privilege that Mr. Poilievre introduced after my motion to start pre-budget consultations were withdrawn. There is absolutely no delay on our part.
There was a motion that I'm very grateful to Mr. Poilievre for putting forward today. I will say to you, though, that it was given to us during committee. If this were something that we would have wanted to already have decided on, it would have been.... Often, it's not uncommon for us to be given these motions beforehand. We could have contemplated it beforehand. We could have already read and reviewed it and then have come here today for a decision, but that was not done. It was given to us during our meeting.
Again, I am very grateful that Mr. Poilievre has proposed something. As my colleague Mr. Fraser has indicated, I think it looks promising. I think there are a lot of elements that could get us to where we all want to end up, but we do want a little time to actually reflect on it properly.
My understanding of what Mr. Fraser has proposed and what our chair has actually tried to relay is that we've proposed something very expedited that maybe could set us back on track by the time we get here on Thursday. If I heard my colleague Mr. Fraser correctly, he has indicated that he is willing to start working on this immediately this evening, in addition to a couple of other things he has on the table, and that he has offered a phone call tomorrow to whomever would like to discuss it—from all parties—so that we could maybe answer some questions and continue to proceed toward what we are hoping is some sort of agreement.
I think I heard that we could also figure out—if we do find some agreement—a way to deal with it procedurally at the onset of our meeting on Thursday if we are not able to find an available meeting space tomorrow, if one doesn't miraculously come free. Then we can actually get down to business and hear from our governor and deputy governor this Thursday.
I didn't hear anybody trying to say “let's just keep on waiting”. What I heard is, let's try to move as quickly as possible, let's fairly have a chance to actually look at this motion and let's make sure that we understand it completely. We're going to start working on it right away. We're willing to actually meet on this by phone call tomorrow morning and try to figure out all the steps we need to be able—if we have some sort of agreement—to resolve it within the initial part of our Thursday meeting so that we can get right down to business on Thursday.
That is what I heard, and I don't think that in any way is us trying to delay or any further delay tactic. I think that is just responsible on our part in terms of reviewing the motion that was presented to us here at committee.
I also want to address Mr. Poilievre. He always makes me laugh with some of his references. I just want to correct for the record that there was no one who was bringing up the Quran or the Torah or some of the other references he was mentioning earlier today during our last few weeks. I think we were desperately trying to find a compromise, and we had proposed a subamendment that we had hoped would address the issues raised by the opposition—
The finance committee was charged back in March with overseeing government spending. There were two roles to that, making sure that people were being helped through this pandemic, and also making sure that the government was actually spending money in a way that ensured that people, small businesses, the folks who needed it, received those funds. We had those twin responsibilities, and we performed them admirably until August 18 when the unceremoniously and unilaterally prorogued Parliament.
Since then, for the last three months, between the prorogation and the filibuster, the finance committee has been unable to perform its duties it was charged with by a unanimous motion of the House of Commons. The government members have been saying that the opposition needs to compromise. There has been a whole range of suggestions brought forward. Every time it's greeted with, “Let us have some time to consider it”, and then the response that has come back has been no.
I'm deeply concerned by this idea that, again, even though every single element in Mr. Poilievre's motion has already been suggested by government members, the government again wants to consider it for a period of time. We have seen in previous manifestations of this process, or this strategy, that the response that comes back is then negative.
I'll say this facetiously, Mr. Chair, but the motion has less than 200 words. That means the government is now asking for 48 hours to consider this motion, which means about 15 minutes for every single word of this motion to be scrutinized. Part of the motion says “member for Westminster-Burnaby”. Those are four words. That would be an hour of consideration that the government members seem to be asking for. For the life of me, I cannot understand why the government members are stalling, when what has been suggested by the government is being brought forward, albeit with the addition of one additional witness, which is the Ethics Commissioner. .
We've now had three months when we should have been focused on government spending, and making sure that people are being taken care of. This is all through unilateral Liberal actions, first the prorogation and now the filibuster. We have an opportunity today at this meeting to adopt this motion, to have Liberal members withdraw their subamendment that is blocking it, and move forward.
There is really no reason to do anything but adopt the motion that Mr. Poilievre has put forward. I certainly support it. It's a reasonable compromise, and it would hopefully allow us to move back to doing what we were asked to do by the House of Commons at the beginning of this pandemic: scrutinizing government spending, making sure that as much as possible people are being taken care of during this pandemic.
I don't understand the stalling technique. It is reasonable to expect, with this motion coming forward, that the government members would have already done the consultation over the past hour. They've got another hour to do it, to make the phone calls. Let's just get it done, so we can move on to do the work we were charged by a unanimous motion of the House of Commons at the beginning of this pandemic. We've been unable to perform for the last few months, first, because of prorogation, unilateral, and now, because of five to six weeks of filibusters.
:
Let me clarify that. In normal times, we normally could. I talked to the clerk, and I am told that there is no space available for us tomorrow. That's a problem, given what we're dealing with in the COVID world we live in and having to deal with Zoom and scheduling, etc. in here. Normally, we could meet five days a week as a committee, but we're not in those kinds of time frames now, and that's a problem. I didn't change my mind. I just had to face the reality, I guess, that there's no space for us tomorrow.
I do have Ms. Dzerowicz on my list, and then we're going to go back to the subamendment, but just to give committee members something to think about, I really do believe that if we work at it, we can have a solution to this issue for the Thursday meeting.
I want to mention this just for members to think about, because I know that we all want to get to pre-budget consultations. We want to read the 793 submissions that have been submitted. There are a lot of good recommendations in them. We've seen some of the briefs—at least some of us have because they've been sent to us directly.
This is just for the committee to think about. Under our normal standing order, we would have to report on our pre-budget consultations by December 8. There are, as I said, 793 briefs that have come in prior to August 15, so we would have those to work with.
I know that the analysts have been working on them and trying to get them into summary order so that we could have a look at the recommendations, etc. That would mean that we would have hardly any time, I guess, to really hear from witnesses in person, and we would probably need two or three meetings—three, more than likely—as members to propose recommendations, discuss them and agree on recommendations. That's scenario number one. That would be a possibility.
The other possibility would be that we could ask for permission from the House to table in the first week of February. To do so would actually require getting permission from the House for the allowance of virtual hearings beyond December 11, because I understand the motion that's in the House allows them only till December 11.
If we went with that scenario, we'd have a few time slots between now and December 11, but after December 11 other committees are not meeting, or I don't think they are. If we were to hold three-hour meetings or more on December 14, 15, 16 and 17, in a three-hour slot we could hear 12 witnesses, six in each hour and a half. That would allow us 48 priority witnesses. It would give the analysts January to draft the report, and we could do our work in the last week of January to get our report done and in. As I said earlier, they are working on an appendix on the written briefs that will be very helpful to us.
The other point I'd make—and this, as I say, is just to think about, because we do have to get this work done somehow to benefit Canadians—is that the analysts have also worked on our COVID-19 hearings in the spring.
I've seen a bit of a summary of what the analysts put together prior to prorogation. They have now continued on that work. There are a lot of good suggestions in those COVID-19 submissions that we've seen. They have put together a comprehensive summary of the COVID-19 suggestions. We could also bring that forward—either report it as a summary to the House—to give the and others the opportunity to see what others said in those hearings in the spring. That would be in addition to whatever work we may decide to do on pre-budget consultations.
I'm just taking the leeway as chair to lay that out there. I do think people need to think about where we're going and how we can do the best we can to get the information that Canadians spent time on when writing and submitting briefs to us and appear before us in the spring.
That's just there for your information.
Ms. Dzerowicz, you're still up for Mr. Poilievre's motions proposal. It's not really a motion that's allowed on the floor, but we'll allow you in. Then we'll go back to the subamendment.
:
Fair enough. I thought she was ready to intervene there. Being a good committee colleague, I was willing, even in this case, to yield some time to the opposition even. That shows the good faith that Liberal members are bringing to the committee level.
Getting back to what I was talking about, I think robust debate is needed to ensure that we get this right. There is already confusion on the opposition side after they passed a motion that specifically removed cabinet confidences and they received exactly what they asked for. It seems in their rush to pass this motion, they confused themselves, unfortunately.
In regard to all these stories that the opposition is trying to weave together with respect to WE Charity, it's no wonder that they find themselves confused. You really do have to be immersed in what has been going on and in the debate we're having to understand the intricacies of what is going on here. What I can say for certain is that constituents are not bogged down in this minutiae on the WE Charity affair, at least not the constituents in my riding. Frankly, they have looked at this matter closely over the past few months, and the conclusion of most Canadians seems to be clear: Nothing improper occurred.
This makes sense, Mr. Chair, because after hours of testimony by those the opposition majority allege are involved, and after thousands of pages of documents have been released to the public, it's clear that nothing untoward took place.
Now, I understand that Mr. Julian may be itching to call me on relevance, which he hasn't done yet—it will the first in a while, but I guess the night is young—to the subamendment. That's understandable. I apologize. I am a sucker for a good preamble. But I do promise that I'm getting to my point. I feel that we must lay this out properly for those who are watching at home so they can understand exactly what we have going on here. In fact, I think it's paramount that in all the things we do, we keep our constituents informed and ensure that they can follow along and understand the false narrative that the opposition majority on this committee and in Parliament is trying to weave.
Chair, it's clear that my opposition colleagues know full well that the public is not biting on this web of stories that they're trying to push. Here we are, still debating documents, unredacted versions that are in the hands of the law clerk, that really do paint a clear picture of what occurred and support the position of the government. Mr. Poilievre can argue all he wants about privilege and documents being redacted. However, the truth is clear. The motion that Mr. Poilievre put forward specifically noted that cabinet confidences should be removed. The documents provided by the government via the House leader were very clear and transparent in regard to the student service grant and provided an unprecedented look behind the curtain. Mr. Poilievre is not pleased that his plan to have the law clerk review the documents backfired, that in fact it was the clerk who redacted a significant amount of information in the documents. It was those documents that Mr. Poilievre held up in his display in front of the press gallery back in August.
It's completely understandable that Mr. Poilievre is now upset. It's because the Clerk of the Privy Council, who was our topic of discussion with this motion, I remind committee members, ordered an unprecedented release of cabinet documents as they relate to the student service grant. In August the government House leader released those documents. I know that my colleague was expecting full well that in some fantasy scenario we would be completely redacting those documents. That just wasn't the case, however, and this upsets him.
We are here today because we have a motion, an amendment and a subamendment, all of which deal with these documents in question. Part of our discussion has focused on comparing the documents, which Mr. Poilievre does not want to happen because this will show it was in fact the law clerk who redacted the documents more fully and not the public service. He doesn't want the Clerk of the Privy Council to testify or any of the deputy ministers to testify because their testimony will also support that the public service was open and transparent.
If we actually had the ability to hear from Mr. Shugart, I'm sure he would tell us the same thing that he has said in testimony previously at other committees and at this committee, that he ordered unprecedented unmasking of cabinet confidences and personal information for public release. He would likely attest to the fact that the minor redactions that were done on cabinet confidence documents were done because the information was unrelated to the CSSG. He would likely remind us that the cabinet and the government were navigating the first wave of the global pandemic, and some decisions being taken were not relevant and were related to national security and other matters that should not be made public. However, we cannot know any of these things for certain, because the opposition majority continues to reign supreme here.
I truly believe that each of us needs to have reverence for this place. We are trusted by our communities to represent them in Parliament. It is a unique privilege that few before us have had. When I was first elected in 2015, in London North Centre, I had high hopes for what could be achieved. I heard past stories of members from all sides coming together to work toward the common good. In fact, I've seen at least a few examples of this through the years.
Sitting here, and debating a motion that is being blocked by the opposition to allow the highest ranking public servant in Canada from testifying before a parliamentary committee, frankly, is unacceptable.
I thought that at some point we would be able to come to a compromise, and this subamendment seemed like a fair and equitable way to get to the bottom of the story around these documents. It would allow us to hear from those who control the redaction processes. It is truly unfortunate that partisan politics are stopping us from coming to that agreement. It's even more unfortunate that these partisan games are having the effect of politicizing the position of the clerk, who has worked under governments from both parties, and has been nothing but an upstanding and well-respected civil servant.
Sometimes as elected officials we have to stand back, and realize the effects of the actions that we take. Unfortunately, because Mr. Poilievre did not get what he wanted out of the initial request for documents, he is now willing to go to any length to find a way to continue his narrative.
We have a subamendment before us that could answer all the questions that all parties have, and because it doesn't fit the narrow partisan interests of the opposition majority, we have yet to reach a consensus.
I implore my colleagues to put aside the partisanship, to put aside their personal vendetta against the and his family, to look at the facts that are clear and surely out there, testimony that has been more than apparent, to vote in favour of this motion, and do the right thing, allow the clerk to come before us to explain that nothing nefarious took place, and to finally put this matter to rest once and for all.
We have important work to do. We are far behind on our work to conduct pre-budget consultations as mandated in the Standing Orders of the House of Commons. This is the work that our constituents are expecting us to do. This is the work that will help the economic rebuild for us. This is the work that we were elected to do.
In fact, Mr. Chair, if I could follow-up on that last point, it's so critical that this committee think long and hard about the path ahead. The subamendment sketches out a meaningful way to address exactly what the opposition has been calling for, what Liberal members are more than prepared to get behind in the form of a subamendment, but for some reason they continue to delay. They continue to throw up road blocks.
We have something here that's indeed quite reasonable, Mr. Chair, and when you think about the work that could be done right now...We could be holding pre-budget consultations. We could be hearing about the best way forward, not only in terms of dealing with the pandemic, but in the economic rebuild that must follow.
We could be hearing from organizations across the country focused on the environment, focused on indigenous issues, focused on urban transit, focused on rural issues, focused on all these issues that should be seizing this committee, a committee that is arguably the most important in Ottawa.
When the time comes around to deciding committees, every MP in the House of Commons wants to serve on the finance committee. It is a unique role and honour. Instead of doing the work that I expected to be doing at this time, and all members around the table expected, we continue to debate these matters when a meaningful solution is on the table that opposition parties should get behind.
The position of the opposition members on the matter is such that they have in fact worked to politicize the role of the Clerk of the Privy Council, the chief public servant in all of Canada and the highest ranking public servant in all of Canada, by suggesting, as they have in previous meetings, time and again.... It hasn't only been once.
I think each Conservative member.... If I'm going to single anyone out, I won't call out Mr. Julian or Mr. Ste-Marie on this, but Conservative colleagues have suggested that the Clerk of the Privy Council is somehow controlled by the Prime Minister. They have politicized his role. The Clerk of the Privy Council is an independent public servant, full stop. Someone in the form of Mr. Shugart has served Conservative and Liberal prime ministers, and when these allegations are made, it undermines public confidence in the institutions of the country, not only in the Privy Council, Mr. Chair.
These allegations are not just inaccurate, but pushed, and reveal in the Conservatives an approach to the public service that we must fight against, because if you look at the tendency in modern democracies, you see a populist right-wing that is rising. Thankfully it hasn't hit Canada, but you do see it in other mature democracies, whereby members of the public service are belittled and the end result is that citizens lack faith in democracy. I would call my opposition colleagues to be more careful, because when you have someone in the form of the Clerk of the Privy Council who has not just expressed in verbal form but also through a letter to this committee a desire to appear to make his case, to answer any questions, and yet we are told by the Conservatives that he cannot do so because he is somehow being controlled by the Prime Minister, it is a bizarre argument. It is an argument without any merit, but more than that, it's not laughable because it has effects, and the effect is, as I said, to undermine public confidence in the institutions of federal government.
No doubt the rise of social media means that the democracy before us has been reduced in many ways to an algorithm. When the Conservatives put forward these sorts of ideas, inevitably these find their way onto Facebook and the like. It doesn't take much. All of a sudden, an image develops and someone who is objective and non-partisan then bears a reputation saying the opposite.
The way things work now, the person I'm talking about, the Clerk, Mr. Shugart, could be dismissed by Canadians as not being objective. And all of a sudden, the institutions of the land are not able to serve the public interest.
Ms. Jansen is agreeing with me as she continues to follow along, and I'm seeing that she's deeply amused with the argument, which says to me that she's in violent agreement with exactly what I'm putting forward to the committee. I say that, of course, rhetorically, and I would say to her very respectfully, because I know she's not going to interrupt me—she's too polite to do that—that I will not interrupt her when she speaks.
I would ask her to carry the message to Mr. Falk, Mr. Poilievre and to other Conservative members of the committee. I see Mr. Kelly has disappeared. Mr. Poilievre is having an influence on him. Mr. Kelly is usually quite good at staying at committee meetings, but he's suddenly gone, and I guess that's the influence of Mr. Poilievre. Oh, there he is. Okay, So Mr. Poilievre has not had a tremendous influence, but there, he's disappeared again. Mr. Kelly is gone.
Not to joke around too much, Mr. Chair, we're all colleagues here and we're all striving to find ways to work with one another. If it's Ms. Jansen or if it's Mr. Falk, I don't know, but this idea that the Clerk of the Privy Council is somehow under the thumb of the Prime Minister of Canada, please do away with that. It's not acceptable and let's not besmirch the reputations of public servants.
In my remarks, Mr. Chair, I think back to what it means to be an elected member of Parliament and the work that one expects to carry out when here. I've always seen the job of an MP...and granted, I'm still relatively new to the job, five years in now. But I think it's fair to say that the job is really two jobs.
There is the constituency role, and there is the role that one has on Parliament Hill. As far as the constituency role goes, it is the most important element of the job. The assignment to the finance committee has allowed for the merging of the two. You can take local concerns and bring them to the level of the finance committee, even having the privilege of suggesting witnesses from one's own riding.
You might recall, Mr. Chair, that London-based organizations have been invited a few times over the years to present at the finance committee, whether in pre-budget consultations or otherwise. My colleagues have sometimes accused me, jokingly and in good spirits, of talking too much about London, but I will never apologize for that, Mr. Chair. I will never apologize for making my community a key agenda item of my work in Parliament.
The point I'm making is that we could be engaged in pre-budget consultations right now. I could be inviting local-based organizations and stakeholders...and I know that other committee members would have the same right and privilege to do so. Instead, we continue to be here. We continue to waste time because the opposition does not want to deal with the subamendment in a meaningful way.
I'll leave my comments there, Mr. Chair, because I'm not the sort of member who wants to occupy all the space here.
I see that Mr. Fraser's hand is up. In the spirit of being collegial and the like, he wants to speak, and I think I'll turn it over to him.