44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 30, 2022 11:00AM
- May/30/22 5:26:52 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I usually have notes, but I have pulled out my report, which is now a year and a few months old. Here it is with the highlights.
Of course, we must acknowledge the work that was done with the ultimate goal of helping all Quebeckers and Canadians to get through the pandemic. That said, some of the things that were done warranted review. This review, which took several months, concerned a grant that, at the beginning, was very worthwhile. It was a student grant to thank young people who volunteered.
We remember that most seniors who were 60 or 70 and older had to self-isolate more than others. There were staff shortages, so young people were asked to get involved in their community. The purpose of the grant was initially to recognize the work being done on the ground to save lives or to help ease seniors' feelings of loneliness. The rationale for the program made sense.
However, when we saw that the program had been put together astonishingly quickly, we wanted to take a look. We quickly realized that there was no call for tenders. I am a businesswoman, and I have been dealing with projects all my life: I am well aware that the bigger the project, the longer it takes to consider it, to receive bids, and to choose carefully. However, this program was put together so quickly that the tenders were not there.
We then decided to dig deeper. That is why the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics looked into how and why this contract was awarded to WE Charity. The first reason given by the government was that it was unable to manage the program because of the need to quickly respond and reward these young volunteers during the summer months. It was a rather extraordinary summer when we had to react quickly. We had no idea what was going to happen the next year, either.
There were two previous reports from the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner. I will repeat this for those who are listening and want to have the timeline of events. In 2017, we heard about the Prime Minister's family visiting the Aga Khan's island. The Prime Minister unfortunately received an initial reprimand from the commissioner. However, mistakes can be made and apologies can be accepted.
That said, members will recall the SNC-Lavalin affair of 2019. I myself suffered reprisals at the ethics committee because we wanted to take another look and dig deeper into the SNC-Lavalin report. There was pressure to hold back information about what was done in the SNC-Lavalin case. We remember the pressure put on the former justice minister, Jody Wilson-Raybould. Unfortunately, for the second time, the Ethics Commissioner found that there was an ethical failure.
Obviously, we ask ourselves questions and reflect. The more we consider the issue, the less proof we find that our executives and our leaders deserve our trust. When I meet with students, those who will take over from us, I tell them that it is important to be trustworthy. Again and again, I asked for proof that we could trust in the actions taken to manage the pandemic.
I should point out that I also got lucky because it was the first time I experienced a filibuster. I spent hours at committee. Obviously, there are not hundreds of Bloc Québécois members to replace one another. I can assure the House that I remember it well, those 40 long hours spent talking about something. For anyone watching us, yes, it does happen.
Of course, in 2019 and 2020, when we heard about how this Canadian grant was being managed, without a tendering process, we dug a little deeper. We wanted to understand how such a large grant, worth $910 million no less, could be awarded so quickly to an organization that was already known to have ties to the Prime Minister's brother, mother and wife, and this was soon proven, although that is not to say that the organization itself did not have a legitimate purpose.
Of course, any time I receive a gift or special treatment, the first question I have to ask myself is this: What is the intention behind this gift? The second question I have to ask is this: Do I have to disclose that I have received special treatment or a gift? As members, we all know the sanctions we face if we accept gifts worth over $200. This one was worth $200,000. Taking a moment to stop and think about it should have been the first reflex.
Of course we then went over the contract. I thought of my organizations, which struggle to provide services to the community with only a few thousand dollars. The contract that was granted to the WE Charity was initially worth $19 million. Shortly thereafter it rose to $43.5 million. We thought that rise was rather quick, and when we looked at the contract we wondered about the organization's ability to provide services both in English and in French, both in Quebec and in every province in Canada. The answer is that WE Charity was providing a unilingual service only. That, of course, was another concern.
On July 2, the Prime Minister defended the government's decision to entrust that organization with managing the program. According to him it was the right thing to do. On July 3, unfortunately, the then minister of diversity and inclusion and youth announced that the WE Charity would no longer be administering this student grant program. That is why we proceeded with the investigation. That is also why on July 9 and 10, we put on the table all the elements that I previously mentioned.
In fact, in all the weeks and hours that followed, at no time was anyone able to clearly demonstrate that the government had done a conscientious and trustworthy job with taxpayers' money. That was not done. The conflict of interest finally came down to this: What constitutes a friend? Can we receive, obtain, award contracts?
There was definitely reason to go further. When the government felt the heat—on July 30, as we all remember—the Prime Minister unsurprisingly denied any wrongdoing, even though he was aware that the perception of this large contract, along with its implications, could lead to questions. At that point, I explained to my constituents that when the pressure is on, we have to take a step back and find a solution. I was also introduced to the idea that if we do not know how to work through a situation, we prorogue. Proroguing is like taking a break, when we try to put everything behind us and pretend that nothing happened, so that we can start over. That break lasted six weeks. In fact, I worked for part of the summer. As legislators, we were in the process of building up trust, but the August 18 prorogation forced us to stop everything for six weeks. Then, where do we start up again?
We wanted to keep going. I distinctly remember moving a motion to carry on with the House's routine proceedings while at the same time having a special committee, which would have been a great way to not waste time. I think we have been wasting too much time for months. We could deal with a whole lot more social issues than we are at this point.
The Liberals were responsible for 27 irregularities. I also have to say that, on the ethics front, we looked into the purchase of medical ventilators. Members may remember former Liberal MP Mr. Baylis, who scored a $237‑million contract. We wanted to know how Mr. Baylis, who was in the automotive business, got into the ventilator business. The same goes for Palantir.
We had to dig a little deeper to make sure these activities followed the rules, with tenders, and that taxpayer dollars were being used appropriately. The committee tabled 23 recommendations in June 2021. We wanted to pursue the matter, but unfortunately, we encountered more reactions. It was time to call an election. Prorogation's time was up. As we all know, that is what happened.
For this reason and several others, it is important to discuss those recommendations here and now. This is about using tax dollars appropriately, making sure this does not happen again, and making it clear that everything has to be squeaky clean. Unfortunately, these three incidents, what happened in 2017, 2019 and the WE scandal, suggest that the government is not trustworthy.
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Madam Speaker, I want to rise on this point because I think this debate on an ethics concurrence motion is, of course, an effort at time-wasting, but some of the issues are substantive.
I never really had an opportunity to comment on what I made of the WE Charity scandal. Having attended meetings at finance committee, and having watched the Prime Minister's testimony and the testimony of his chief of staff, I came to the conclusion, for what it is worth, that the Prime Minister's Office did not politically interfere in this at all. It was Rachel Wernick, as a chief public civil servant, discovering that the Prime Minister's favourite pet project to deliver the program for youth was not yet up and running, and civil servants who I think were embarrassed to tell the Prime Minister that the youth service corps was not up and running, who scrambled to find something to cover for an announcement that had already been made. It was the civil servants who came up with the WE Charity as a possible way to deliver the program. That was my conclusion from watching the evidence.
However, I still think we should have been able to get to the bottom of it so all Canadians would have some assurance that we knew what this was. Also, the fact that it got called the “We Charity scandal” points to some other issues that I think are important, and one of them is that we really do need to amend, reform and modernized Canada's charity laws.
This is a roundabout way of saying that I had some thoughts on the matter, but I have never had a chance to get them on the record, and for that I thank the Conservatives for raising this concurrence debate. However, my thanks are rather overwhelmed by my frustrations that we are not debating Bill C-18.
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- May/30/22 6:15:09 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I appreciate the opinion of the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands as to what the results were. The Ethics Commissioner, in his investigation, came to the conclusions that he did, and that was it.
The member talked specifically about the WE Charity and its involvement in this, but let us not forget that, at the end of the day, WE Charity supported and helped a lot of children throughout this country. However, for no reason other than political gain, Conservatives were willing to walk all over that because they thought they could get an ounce of political gain out of it, and that is what they did.
WE Charity is not a Liberal organization or an NDP organization. As a matter of fact, the provincial government of Manitoba, in multiple budgets, awarded money to WE Charity to do work in Manitoba. WE Charity was an organization that many Conservative MPs had visited, frequented, participated in and encouraged.
WE Charity only became a lightening rod when the Conservatives decided it was time to use it as one for political gain. Up until that point, the Conservatives were all about WE Charity. Both Conservative MPs and Conservative governments throughout Canada routinely built funds into their budgets to give to WE Charity to do work for them.
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- May/30/22 6:17:39 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank the Conservatives for finally participating in the debate. I had to wait for three questions before they decided to be interested and ask me one. We listen to the rhetoric from the member talking about the WE Charity, ethics and a violation, and this and that, but I will remind him that the Ethics Commissioner determined that the Prime Minister had done nothing wrong. The Conservative member looks surprised when I say that right now. Just because his caucus members might be telling him that something was wrong, the Ethics Commissioner did not determine that.
I would encourage him to go back to read the report from the Ethics Commissioner because the Conservatives utilized a national charity that supported thousands of children, and with all due respect to my friends in the Bloc and the NDP, they were right along with them during the process. They utilized the charity, at the expense of those who would benefit from it, for political gain. The member is continuing to do it right now, even after the Ethics Commissioner came to his conclusion on it.
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- May/30/22 6:19:00 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I love how over-the-top this is coming from the member for Kingston and the Islands, but he said there was nothing wrong. The previous finance minister was found guilty of breaking ethics in the WE Charity scandal. Just because the Prime Minister did not break the law this time, it is not like Liberals did not. Their finance minister did. How can he be so over-the-top, looking down his nose from his high horse and saying that nothing is wrong with this report when the finance minister of the country broke the ethics rules?
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