44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 30, 2022 11:00AM
- May/30/22 3:29:19 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, during the vote, and in this hybrid Parliament, we have had an abridgement of some of the Standing Orders when it comes to voting from our seats. The member for Laval—Les Îles heard the question but was seated in a different seat during the roll call on the government side. He moved seats to have his name called for the vote.
I would like clarity from you on whether that vote can be counted in the House and clarity on the rule when it comes to whether we stay in our seat during the entire vote before our name is called.
106 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
Madam Speaker, I am pleased to join this debate on the concurrence report.
I want to say something for my constituents back home who have been wondering what this is. Oftentimes, I have to explain to residents in my riding what exactly Parliament is doing during report stage like this. It is the opportunity for any group of members in the House to highlight a particular report that is coming out of a standing committee of the House. This means that a group of parliamentarians met. They met with witnesses, discussed it, had analysts go over it and then agreed on a set of recommendations to report back to everyone in the chamber and everyone in the House of Commons. It is an opportunity to weigh in on the contents.
This particular report goes back all the way to June 2021. The reason the government was not able to respond to this report was that we had an election in August 2021, one that many of my constituents believe was wholly unnecessary because it was an election done during a national pandemic and they do not believe it was needed. It returned mostly the same results all across the country, including in my riding, so I make sure that when I rise, I thank my constituents for sending me back here for a third time and, I will note, with the second-largest vote count, once again, across all the Canadian ridings. I always lose out to my friend and colleague from Edmonton—Wetaskiwin, who has an even larger riding than I do, with even more electors to serve. He consistently gets more votes than I do.
This report goes back to June 2021. The report was on what is colloquially known as the WE Charity scandal. It is one that I have received a lot of emails about, especially at that time. I have a lot of constituents who continue to ask me about it. I probably get five to 10 emails and a few phone calls a week still asking me whatever happened with that. They always ask about the follow-up on it. What was the follow-up? What was the outcome of it? I often refer them to this report, and I have not heard back from the Government of Canada on whether it is going to act, whether it is going to respond or whether it knows about it.
That is what is happening today. This is a concurrence report debate. We are going to want to hear from members in the House of Commons on the report.
What I thought I would do today is actually go through the 23 recommendations of the report so that my constituents back home can better understand what the follow-up was from the WE Charity scandal. What did parliamentarians do? From whom did they get information? To whom did they give recommendations? I am still hoping the Government of Canada will respond to these recommendations and implement some of the findings so we can do better.
In this House, we often debate legislation and amendments. Some of those ideas are then taken up in particular committees. They discuss policy ideas and hear from witnesses. Experts come in from the government side, and officials try to weigh the pros and cons with parliamentarians. It is also an opportunity for parliamentarians to get on the record on particular issues they care about. I have served on many standing committees of the House, so I have some measure of facility with these particular rules and how it is supposed to work.
Then, when members write the report, they are hoping to get as much agreement at the committee level as they possibly can. It is always interesting in a minority Parliament, where the government does not always have a majority of the votes available to it. Nowadays, with this coalition agreement between the NDP and the Liberal caucus, it is a unique situation where there is effectively a majority at the committees for the government, but then the NDP also gets to pretend that it is an opposition party.
That list of recommendations is what I want to go into. I want to read them into the record, just to provide an opportunity to have that debate. I intend to report this back, through my newsletter, to my constituents on Friday so they can see there was an actual debate in the House on the WE Charity report and these were the recommendations. I can maybe provide some of my ideas and feedback on the contents.
Recommendation 1 was on cabinet decisions:
That the Government of Canada consider making mandatory, prior to all Cabinet decisions on awarding a contract or contribution agreement, an evaluation and determination as to whether a conflict of interest screen, agreed upon pursuant to section 29 of the Conflict of Interest Act by a public office holder and the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner, should be put in place for any member of Cabinet, as a preventative measure to avoid conflict of interest.
This is a perfectly reasonable recommendation. I am glad the committee was able to report back. This is a committee chaired by a member of the official opposition.
This is infinitely reasonable. I do not see why anybody in the House would oppose having an ethics screen to ensure that decisions are being made by cabinet ministers at the cabinet table who understand where every single person is coming from and if they have any particular reasons for maybe wanting to recuse themselves from that debate. I think it is perfectly fair and it should be done.
“Recommendation 2 on decisions made in the Finance Minister’s Office” states:
That the Government of Canada make mandatory, prior to decisions made in the Finance Minister’s Office, an evaluation and determination as to whether a conflict of interest screen, agreed upon pursuant to section 29 of the Conflict of Interest Act by a public office holder and the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner, should be put in place for the minister or any public office holder involved in that decision and that it conduct a review to examine how groups not registered to lobby were able to have direct access to the Finance Minister.
That is a lot in a recommendation, I would say. Now that he is not a member of the House, I get to say something generous about the former member for Malpeque, Wayne Easter, who used to counsel rookie members, as I was two Parliaments ago, to keep recommendations short. If we want the government to listen to us and understand what we are trying to do, we should keep recommendations short. If Wayne is listening for some reason, I miss him dearly. He was a good committee chair who was very fair.
To explain this to my constituents, this is fairly simple. This is a catch-all for this growing concern that there are groups out there lobbying or advocating on behalf of a group: an association, perhaps, or a group of concerned citizens. Typically in the past, we would not require them to register as lobbyists because they were like a public advocacy group. They wanted some public good to come from their talks with a minister's office, a minister or a department. What has evolved over time is that these groups are in between. They have a pecuniary interest and a public advocacy interest. The WE Charity fell into this type of grouping, and this is where many people have concerns about how they were able to get this Government of Canada program tailor-made to their own benefit. That is where there were a lot of concerns for people.
This is a good recommendation. It is seeking clarity on how to capture that particular group so that information is provided to the public and the public can then make a judgment call on whether it is right or wrong. It would also ensure that in the future, those types of public advocacy groups know when they have crossed the line from advocacy to actively lobbying for a pecuniary interest they may have.
Recommendation 3 states:
That, given the failure of [the member for Waterloo] to reveal her 17 April 2020 meeting with Mr. Craig Kielburger, a review of ministerial accountability to committees must be undertaken.
Recommendation 3 is one of the recommendations I like, not because I have any particular issues with the member for Waterloo, but because ministerial accountability to standing committees of the House is under threat. I remember many years ago that in a certain committee, I believe it was the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates, a certain member, maybe the chair occupant at the moment, wrote a letter with others being highly concerned that the Auditor General was being tasked with more and more audits and was not able to conduct them.
That is an issue I have seen consistently now across many committees: A minister is invited and either the minister refuses to come, which is typically not a direct refusal, but a refusal due to scheduling difficulties; or the minister could come only at a certain time or for a limited period; or the deputy minister, the assistant deputy minister or the parliamentary secretary is sometimes offered instead. Accountability in the House of Commons has to come from the ministers. They are at the apex of their departments. They are supposed to be the ones held accountable for the management and administration of everything that happens in their departments, and they are supposed to be held to account.
These are the most powerful men and women in Canada in our political system. These individuals have drivers and very high salaries. They make decisions that literally have serious impacts on people's businesses, livelihoods, families and whether someone can enter or exit Canada. Profoundly, they should be held accountable and it should not be too much to ask that ministerial accountability in this Recommendation 3 be reviewed to make sure that we have only the highest standards for them.
In fact, I would say the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, PACP, has the highest standard of any committee before the House of Commons. The expectation is that only the deputy minister can come as the financial officer for the department to explain him or herself, and ministers are expected to come and explain the running of their departments and the details of what the departments have done with the monies that have been given to them, because they are stewards of the resources of the taxpayers, and that is what this whole place is supposed to be about. There was a reason we agreed on the fields of Runnymede, where the first members of Parliament met. The exact thought and idea was to keep the Crown accountable for the way it was spending money and the policy decisions it made.
Moving on to Recommendation 4 and record-keeping in the context of a meeting with lobbyists, it states:
That the Government of Canada implement a mandatory rule requiring, except in exceptional circumstances, that senior public office holders be accompanied by at least one staff during any meeting with lobbyists for the purpose of taking notes.
I am a great lover of the access to information system. I believe it is broken. I filed an ATIP, I remember, with the Department of Defence in 2020 and I had to launch complaints in order to obtain documentation. Back in June, the Privacy and Information Commissioner found that 13 or 14 of my complaints were justified in order to release access to information documents. Those notes are taken by staff. Those notes taken by public servants in such meetings would be available. They are not transitory documents. They would be available for an access to information request that is dutifully filed by a member of the public, a member of Parliament, a senator or whomever. I think it is the minimum to expect: that public office holders can make information available to the public on request obviously through, in shorthand, the ATIP system.
There are 23 recommendations. I do not know whether I will be able to go through all of them. I do have a Yiddish proverb. I will come to that and explain how it ties in to all of this, too. I will just move on to a few of the other recommendations that I have highlighted for myself because I think these are the ones that some of my constituents have raised with me before.
Recommendation 13, regarding compliance with orders from the House of Commons, states:
That the Government of Canada comply with orders of the House of Commons and not block testimony of key witnesses in studies relating to conflict of interest and lobbying.
While this is a good recommendation, I would expand that recommendation even farther for the committee. The House of Commons is supposed to be the highest political body in the land. The Government of Canada, which is represented by the cabinet ministers here, is held accountable by the House, including the members of the back bench on the government caucus side. Their role as well is to hold the government to account.
To their credit, some of the members have, I know, held the government accountable for decisions made. That can take on many different forms. It can be critiquing the government, heavily criticizing it in a very negative way. It can also be offering up amendments and offering up solutions. It can be voting down certain measures. It can be abstaining on certain measures to make a point. It can be public advocacy. It can be with petitions. There are any number of ways to achieve that goal, but I have seen now in the House the government defy the House of Commons, and at times obstruct the House of Commons. It even obtained documents, as with the Winnipeg lab situation in the last Parliament.
I think it is critically important for constituents in Alberta, but also across the country, to know that the elected officials they send actually do productive work for them: We actually fulfill a constitutional function on their behalf, which is accountability. That is what this place is for. It is to demand accountability from the government, receive and obtain it back. I could actually expand this recommendation far more broadly to include many more things.
Recommendation 15 is on the use of new technology. I often get residents back home asking me about the House of Commons. The way and manner in which we conduct business seems a little archaic to them at times. Recommendation 15 states:
That the Government of Canada refrain from using any new technology that has the potential of violating the privacy rights of Canadians until it has been examined by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada and given the parameters of use.
I think that is a very reasonable one. Since the time of this report, I think there have been more concerns raised by members of the public on how the government obtains their private information, how it uses the information, how it shares it across departments and how international organizations may obtain and use Canadian-obtained information on our citizens. Where does it go, how is it used and what is the purpose?
I think more transparency in this situation would make people feel far more comfortable knowing that they can track what the government is tracking on them, and know what the government knows about them. I think that is entirely reasonable as a safeguard recommendation, so that is what I wanted to highlight to constituents back home.
Another recommendation I wanted to highlight is Recommendation 20. On oversight and accountability during emergencies, it states:
That the Government of Canada establish oversight and accountability mechanisms specifically designed to ensure rapid and transparent allocation of federal funds during emergency situations.
This was far before the protests in Ottawa, and far before the illegal blockades at our borders. This was way before any of that happened. This was specifically dealing with emergency situational spending, and there was an attempt by government ministers to allow themselves two years of unlimited taxing and spending during the pandemic.
We had to meet on Easter Saturday in order to discuss and debate the bills. I remember debating Bill C-20, in a previous Parliament, that had such a complex mechanism in it for the allocation of funds. I even asked the minister during the COVID-19 special committee that was meeting in the House about it. I could not make heads or tails of the bill, and I asked the minister to explain it to me and take as much time as he wanted, because I honestly could not grasp how the bill was going to function. I had accountants in my riding asking me questions on the emergency relief programs and how they were going to work. This recommendation is absolutely critical.
We saw, in the House of Commons, the government try to direct funds, and not go through all the accountability measures during an emergency. On one side, we have to account for the fact that it was an emergency and the government was trying to ensure the safety of its citizens during a global health pandemic, but I think that the right question to ask is: How could we do this better? What could we do differently? That is what this recommendation is asking. It is asking for a specific design to ensure rapid and transparent allocation of federal funds during emergency situations.
I am not as well versed in the estimates as I should be, but the member for Edmonton West is, indeed. He is far more interested in them than I think most members of the House of Commons are. He has a finer knowledge of where the money goes, and there are many people who would rely on his expertise. I think that is fair to say. However, that is where accountability happens, and the estimates are quite a Byzantine process that is hard to understand for many. I often have questions from constituents who ask me: “How is this government money spent?” I usually refer them to the Public Accounts of Canada, and then I call them and we have a walk-through over the phone on where they can find the spending details. I think it is reasonable, and something the government should be working on, to make not just the budget side, which are the proposals on how to spend, but the accounting side, accounting for how the money was spent, and informing Canadians of where the money went.
A good example that I can give members is that there was a promise a few budget cycles ago, I think it was in budget 2019, to spend $1 billion on rare disease programs. It was in two tranches of $500 million over two fiscal years. I still cannot figure out where that money went and where it is going. I have been here almost seven years, and I am still trying to sort out where that money is going. I tend to file some Order Paper questions to discover where the money in this particular situation went.
Lastly, I want to raise Recommendation 23, because it talks about contracting. It states:
That the Government of Canada provide an independent organization, such as the Office of the Procurement Ombudsman, the powers necessary to proactively review departmental contracting processes, including their use of sole-sourced contracts.
That has become even more important now that we have found out that the Treasury Board has been allowing people to slice contracts to under $25,000 to allow themselves the opportunity to sole source them under that limit. We are not allowed to do that. The Treasury Board has been very clear that we are not allowed to cut contracts in two just to fall underneath the $25,000 limit. One minister is writing an article today and being published.
“One who wants to know is better than one who already knows.” I will admit that this is a Yiddish proverb. I have gone through the contents of the report that we are debating today, and I would like to know if the government is going to actually implement the recommendations. Which of these is it going to implement, and which is it going to review? The report was dropped in the last Parliament and resurrected in this Parliament, and now we can have an opportunity for debate and for a vote. I want constituents to know, back home in the riding of Calgary Shepard, that this is part of the representation and work that I do on their behalf.
The WE Charity scandal, I think, shook the confidence of Canadians in the government's ability, specifically cabinet's ability, to deliver on major government programs. It shook their trust in the government. A series of scandals led to that particular one, and I do not think that the government has recovered from that loss of trust. It is one that will go on into future governments as well. It is a shaking of trust in our institutions when we should be shoring up our civic institutions, strengthening bodies such as Parliament and strengthening standing committees of the House. We should be ensuring that members of Parliament have the resources they need to hold the government to account, whether that is through better measures in the House: better tools, such as Order Paper questions that are maybe reported faster, or that have an obligation for a response from the government, and a clear response would be even better. It could also be through more obligations to release more documents publicly, and more obligations, as listed in this report, to oblige the government so that we can know. This is where I think the proverb is most important. It is better that we all know.
With that, I will take my seat and I will be happy to take questions.
3714 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- May/30/22 7:11:43 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, I thank the member for referring to that dissenting report the committee agreed to and sent to the House of Commons. I will refer to recommendation 11, though, which is on the powers of the Commissioner of Lobbying of Canada. It is “That the Government of Canada introduce legislative changes to the Lobbying Act to give the Commissioner of Lobbying real powers to investigate, issue fines and impose lobbying bans to those who disregard the Act.”
I think it is much better than that other recommendation, which was asking for a review. Here the committee agreed to direct the government, saying, “Do these things. This is a good idea. Change this part so the Commissioner of Lobbying has some teeth and can actually do their job and prevent future wrongdoing.”
136 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- May/30/22 7:13:57 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, I regret that the member caught your eye, because that member is from Edmonton, and after the 5-4 beating on May 26 that the Calgary Flames took, I do not find it very fair to let him speak.
He is absolutely right. If we have Treasury Board rules that are set out, we have to abide by them. That is the whole point of having them. When we have a situation of cabinet ministers allowing government programs to be not subject to particular rules, there is very little accountability when this happens. Rules are simply being suspended ad hoc without information being provided to the public, to the House or to members of Parliament so that we can decide whether this is the right decision to make. This is the whole crux of the matter. There was so much internal waiving of the rules on an ad hoc basis that it created the perception that there was this massive scandal brewing within the government, and then it exploded into the public, and rightly so.
The member for Edmonton West is correct that this should never have happened in the first place, and Treasury Board directives must be followed by the government.
204 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- May/30/22 7:16:25 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, the member for Berthier—Maskinongé just asked two questions.
First, I hope that, after these three hours of debate, we will end with a vote on this issue so that the House can say, on behalf of Canadians and Quebeckers, that what we ultimately want is for the government to take this report and its 23 recommendations seriously and follow through on them.
Second, it is not the job of the official opposition or the Bloc Québécois to facilitate the passage of government bills. That is supposed to be the job of the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons. It is entirely his fault if the government does not manage to pass all the legislation it wants to before the end of June. It is his responsibility. I do not believe it is up to us to facilitate the passage of legislation that, sometimes, is not well written. Our job at committee and in the House of Commons is to ensure that each bill that reaches third reading stage in the House is a bill in which we have confidence.
191 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- May/30/22 7:18:50 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, I entirely agree with the opposition House leader. That was an excellent question, and I could not have done it better myself.
24 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- menumenu
- notificationsnotifications
- home
- mailmail
- searchsearch
