SoVote

Context: House Hansard - 234 - Oct/18/23

Mr. Daniel Blaikie (Elmwood—Transcona, NDP)

Oct/18/23 6:15:19 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the Auditor General is an officer of Parliament, and the allegation that a department withheld vital information from the Auditor General during the course of an investigation is a very serious allegation indeed for this place. I think it behooves Parliament to hold the government to account and to try to get to the bottom of what went on. I know that the member for Winnipeg North has taken exception to the idea of doing that through a concurrence debate. I also know that he has far more experience in opposition than he does in government. If the member were on the opposition benches, what method would he recommend that parliamentarians use to hold the government to account in light of this serious allegation?

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Mr. Kevin Lamoureux

Oct/18/23 6:16:11 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would use the forums of question period and opposition days. I would look at ways in which it could be raised in a number of different standing committees, depending on the severity of the issue. I believe that, in good part, we have witnessed that on this particular issue. I would challenge members. There are so many issues. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of issues we could be debating on the floor of the House of Commons. We have a responsibility to ensure that we are dealing with the legislative agenda of the government and of private members, and even opposition day motions and things of that nature.

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Mr. Mark Gerretsen (deputy House leader of the government, Lib.)

Oct/18/23 6:16:54 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, let us just be frank about what is going on here. Today, the Speaker of the House of Commons basically told the House, including Conservatives, that we have to behave ourselves. Conservatives are upset about that. They tried to prevent him, on a number of occasions, from giving that statement today. Now, they are using this tactic in order to slow down the House, because they are frustrated and upset. It is actually behaviour for which I would scold my five-year-old and my seven-year-old, but that is actually what is going on in the House of Commons right now, demonstrated by the Conservative Party of Canada. In the next eight or nine minutes, I will demonstrate why I believe this to be the case. For starters, the Conservatives could not have picked a worse concurrence motion to bring forward. I have had the opportunity, since we started debating this, to have a look at the motion. There are six recommendations in it. The government agrees with five recommendations, and accepts and acknowledges the sixth one. The Conservatives could not have picked a worse concurrence motion. At least they could have picked something that is slightly more controversial. This is a concurrence motion on a report about which the government has already put in writing that it agrees with over 80% of it. This is about trade relations. It is important for the public who might be tuned in right now and watching this to fully understand what is going on here. The government had put on the Order Paper that we would be talking about Bill C-50, sustainable jobs, today. That is what we were supposed to talk about. There is a whole other issue that I do not have time to dive into, about why Conservatives are not interested in sustainable jobs, but let us just park that for a moment and focus on their objective today. The government said that this is what we were going to talk about. The House commenced at 2:00 p.m. today. The Speaker, a brand new Speaker, tried to rise to give a statement about how he plans to conduct the House, in terms of decorum. He cited numerous references of other Speakers, including, at great length, what the member for Regina—Qu'Appelle said when he was the Speaker, and he just established a benchmark for what the Speaker expects from the House. Conservatives heckled, made points of order and did everything they could to prevent the Speaker from even giving that statement, which I think was incredibly petty. Then we got to the point where we were supposed to go to Government Orders and start the listed item for today. There is an opportunity in Routine Proceedings to put forward a concurrence motion. This basically sucks up anywhere up to three hours of House time. Conservatives looked at the clock, and they knew that if we started this concurrence motion, the three hours would expire before the House needed to adjourn, and the government would not get to dealing with its business today. That is the Conservatives' objective. That is what they did. However, the motion they did it on I find to be so perplexing. It is a set of recommendations in a committee report about our borders, particularly postpandemic. I did not really read it or even know it existed before the concurrence motion was put on the floor. There are many committees submitting many reports, and I was not aware of this one. However, I did take the opportunity to have a good look at it since then, in the last 40 minutes or so since we started debating this. Here is recommendation 1: “That the Government of Canada ensure the safety and security of Canadians by continuing with its ongoing efforts designed to modernize Canada’s borders.” It goes on to list how to do that. The important thing is that the government agrees with the recommendation and accepts the recommendation from the committee. Recommendation 2 reads as follows: “That the Government of Canada enhance its efforts designed to increase domestic and international awareness that Canada has removed COVID-19–related public health measures.” There is nothing the Conservatives would want more than to do that. Again, the government agrees and says it is a good recommendation, that we need to make sure that the world knows Canada is open and ready for business and tourism, that this is a great recommendation and that we should move forward with this one. The government agrees with that recommendation. Recommendation 3 is “[t]hat the Government of Canada ensure that international bridge authorities and commissions, as well as duty-free stores in Canada, are eligible for federal financial support if the Government decides to close—for any length of time— the borders that Canada shares with the United States.” This is the one thing the government responded to and said it acknowledges but that it might not be as simple as how it is being portrayed. For example, the government did assist with the tourism sector quite a bit. The government also assisted with businesses, as we know. The government assisted in many different ways, including trying to reopen borders that Conservative supporters were trying to close. The government did a lot to ensure that we supported businesses throughout the pandemic. Although the government acknowledges the recommendation, it said that it is a bit more complex, as there are various sectors involved, and that this needs to be looked at more closely. It certainly did not outright reject the recommendation. Then there is recommendation 4, which says, “That the Government of Canada enhance safety and security, reduce delays and backlogs, and improve processing times at Canadian ports of entry”. Once again, the Government of Canada agreed with that recommendation. Also, I am sorry. There were not six recommendations; there were five. We have the fifth recommendation, which the government agrees with. My point is that there were five recommendations, and the government agreed with all but one but did acknowledge that it was important and tried to explain what the government was doing about it. What the public needs to know is that 99.9% of the time that somebody in this House moves concurrence on a report from a committee, they agree with it. They are basically saying that this report is so important that it is not enough to table it for the government, even though the government already responded to it: They need to force Parliament to vote on it so they can solidify the support of this House and not just the committee. That is what they are saying. Why do I point that out? I point that out because the Conservatives put this forward as if they support it, because one only puts forward a motion of concurrence if one supports it, and then turned around moments later and put forward an amendment to basically wipe the entire report clean as if it did not exist, sending it back to committee. I could not put together a scenario in which the Conservatives would look more petty than we have right here, right now on the floor of the House of Commons. I am sorry the Speaker told the Conservatives today that they have to behave themselves, that it is time to play nice, that they cannot be heckling and making up fake names for ministers, shooting them out like this is some kind of wild frat party. The reality of the situation is that maybe a little decorum is required in this House from the Conservatives, as day after day we hear personal attacks and name-calling. The Speaker did the right thing by pointing that out. Then what do they do? They act worse than I expect of my children with the games they play and with what they are doing right now to delay talking about a very important piece of legislation on how we create, manage and ensure that sustainable jobs are here for the future of Canadians. How many times have we heard Conservatives talk about jobs and needing to make sure that we put the right groundwork in place for jobs? Just two days ago, a minister of the Crown went to my neighbouring riding of Hastings—Lennox and Addington to make the announcement of 600 sustainable jobs. These are sustainable jobs. This is the bill we are talking about. This bill is about how we ensure there are more of those jobs throughout our entire country. How do we continue to attract clean-tech jobs from Germany or Belgium, as we see with Umicore, and bring them right here to Canada? I think this is very petty. It is very unfortunate, but for eight years I have been watching it occur time after time.

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Mr. John Nater (Perth—Wellington, CPC)

Oct/18/23 6:26:07 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would point out that the debate is on the amendment, which the member did not comment on too much. However, I want to focus on the amendment, which deals with the fact that the RCMP had to be called in to deal with this scandalous ArriveCAN app and the fact that the Auditor General herself was not notified by CBSA officials, despite the fact that she is actively auditing that department. I am wondering if the member for Kingston and the Islands would join me in condemning the acts of the government officials who failed to notify the Auditor General of Canada about a criminal investigation occurring within that department.

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Mr. Mark Gerretsen

Oct/18/23 6:26:54 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the report does not even speak to that. That should show us how incredibly petty this is. The report does not even speak to it, yet the Conservatives are basically saying that we should delete this report and send it back to committee to study this new issue. As the parliamentary secretary said earlier, the committee can decide of its own inclination if it should study the issue. It is completely unrelated to the report. The member knows it. He knows the procedure of this House better than the vast majority of the people here given his experience, and he knows exactly what they are doing. The fact that he just got up and asked me that question is kind of ridiculous.

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Mr. Denis Trudel (Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, BQ)

Oct/18/23 6:27:45 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is almost Halloween. Our colleague is trying to scare us, putting on a shocked schoolgirl act. The Liberals cannot believe the Conservatives' approach. In fact, they are one and the same. When one side is not obstructing, they are moving closure. I cannot remember how many gag orders there have been in the last two years. We should be talking about important things, including Bill C-50, which deals with sustainable jobs. We could talk about housing. We could talk about the cost of living. We could talk about seniors. We talked about that earlier; we voted on an important bill. There is so much we could be talking about. With the Conservatives filibustering and the Liberals imposing gag orders, one wonders where Canadian democracy is headed.

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Mr. Mark Gerretsen

Oct/18/23 6:28:25 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, there is only one member who I think I compete with for the most animation in this House and it is that member. He was just critical of the government having to move closure, but certainly he can understand, based on what the Conservatives are doing today, why we end up having to move closure. Before I got to this House and heard the stories about closure, I used to think it was anti-democratic. I did not understand the nuances of how the House worked and why it was necessary to do it. It is absolutely necessary because Conservatives play games like this.

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Mr. Daniel Blaikie (Elmwood—Transcona, NDP)

Oct/18/23 6:29:15 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I want to thank the member for Kingston and the Islands for demonstrating, however accidentally, how great a tool concurrence motions can be to bring to the attention of members of the government issues that heretofore they had no idea about and recommendations from committees they had not heard anything about. I think that is an important tool for members of this House to use to bring to the attention of members of Parliament, and indeed the government, things they have been working on at committee. Therefore, I am loath to disparage concurrence motions. I think they have an important role to play here. However we got here, and whatever is going to happen at the end of the debate, the fact is that we are spending the next bit of time talking about this, including an amendment that raises the question of a department having hid from the Auditor General, an officer of Parliament, a criminal investigation into the very thing she was investigating. I wonder, given that we are spending the time anyway, if the member might take this brief opportunity to say something meaningful about the substance of that allegation.

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Mr. Mark Gerretsen

Oct/18/23 6:30:23 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am certainly flattered that the member sees this as an opportunity to make me aware of what he perceives to be a very important report. However, I do not know if it is worth tying up three hours of the House's time to do that. If the member really wanted to inform me about it, he could have just brought it over to me and told me that I should look at the report, as it is really important. He did not do that, nor did any other member. They tabled a report, just like everybody else. We all have our own issues that we are passionate about. I am very passionate about the environment. I follow just about every report that comes out on it. The member knows that. The reality of the situation is that we do not get to see or read every report. If anybody in this House claims that is not the case, then I certainly would like to know about their skills in being able to do that.

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Mrs. Julie Vignola (Beauport—Limoilou, BQ)

Oct/18/23 6:31:31 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to inform the House that I will be sharing my time with my esteemed colleague from Terrebonne. Here we are again to talk abut the ArriveCAN app. There would not have been so many questions—logically—if there had not been any problems, including with the contract. I will not argue the reasons why the Conservatives decided to bring the report to the House now and ask for three hours of debate. I will not go there. I am not in their shoes and do not intend to be, ever. Rather, my goal is to raise the problems that cropped up with ArriveCAN and help make concrete improvements to procurement practices and the customs and practices of the machinery of government. It is a question of efficiency. It is also a question of saving money, the money that helps create programs and applications—ArriveCAN in this case. It is not money that grows on trees. It is money that comes from taxpayers. It is our money from our taxes. Let us not forget that we are nothing more and nothing less than trustees of the tax money that taxpayers pay the federal government every year. As trustees, we have a duty to manage this money responsibly. Was the ArriveCAN app developed in a responsible way? We have a duty to ask the question, because what we see and what we know so far is that it was not done either responsibly or well. An application initially expected to cost $80,000 with updates ended up costing $54 million. That is some increase. An app designed to make it easier for people to get through certain border controls on arriving in Canada is not a bad idea. This is the 21st century after all, and if we can cut through the red tape to help things run more easily at the border, so much the better. “More easily”, however, does not mean less securely. We need to ensure both. The problem with ArriveCAN is much the same as with other contracts. In the case of ArriveCAN, two guys won the contract. They said they knew people, so they assigned some of the work to others. The committee realized that no one really knew whether everyone had gone through security screening or whether due diligence had been done. There are a lot of questions that have not been answered. We were told yes, it was done, but it was more of a yes to get us off their backs. We do not want that kind of a yes. We want a definite “yes, that was done”. However, we are still not not sure about that yet. We are talking about an app that stores personal information, and the government is not sure that the people who developed it had the necessary security clearance. This is not the first time this has happened. My colleagues spoke a bit about it earlier. Think about the WE Charity, for example, or the contract awarded to a non-existent company. That company did not exist 10 days before it was awarded a contract. It was founded by two guys. As soon as they got the contract, what did they do? They gave the $237 million to Baylis Medical, which belongs to a former Liberal MP who lost his seat in 2019, if memory serves. A $237-million contract was awarded to a company that existed for only 10 days. I already said it, but the Canadian dream is not bad. Not just anyone would be able to pull that off. I am not sure whether Rockefeller himself managed anything like that. Once again, we have two guys who got awarded a contract and gave it to others to develop an application, supposedly because the federal government could not find one person among its 340,000 public servants who specializes in application development. It is 2023. This happened in 2020. That is a problem, and that is what I want members to think about. How is it that 1% of the population works for the federal government and that not one person in that 1% of the population specializes in application development? Our public servants are trained. They have security clearance. They are capable of doing the work we ask them to do at a lower cost and in a much safer way. We are currently faced with a situation involving allegations of identity theft, fake resumés, contract theft and fraudulent billing. That is not trivial. Where are the controls that should have been applied when this contract was being awarded or monitored? Given the allegations filed with the RCMP, there is no trace of that. How is it that officials who knew that the RCMP was conducting an investigation failed to inform the Auditor General? Nothing is clear or transparent about the situation with ArriveCAN and other contracts. This needs to be said loud and clear. People do not want secrecy, they want transparency. We are not asking for the app's source code. We want to know where, how and on whom our money is being spent and who is spending it. With ArriveCAN and in the consultations we did in committee—the powerful Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates, as the committee chair would say—we heard from unions, university researchers and civil servants. We were astounded to learn that the unions had not been consulted, even though their members were the ones who were supposed to be making sure that things were working and following up with people at the airport. They were supposed to ensure that everything moved quickly so that things did not drag on and there were no delays. However, they were not consulted at any stage, either in the development of the app, the request for the exact need at the borders, or even the updates. At no point were they consulted, yet they were the ones who had to help passengers, use the ArriveCAN app and live with it on a daily basis. It seems to me that it would make sense to include the end users when developing an app. As I have already mentioned, this was a private contract. There was no due diligence. Who are these guys? Who are the other parties involved in the contract? Are these people solvent? Are they reliable? We do not know. It seems to me that this expression has come up a lot in my speeches over the past four years. We do not know because we never get an answer. The people we are asking do not have any answers either. No due diligence was done to determine whether the app could be created and managed internally. The government did not even ask whether anyone could create an app. A contract was awarded immediately. It does not take 15 years to ask whether we have in-house developers. Normally, when someone is hired, their skills are well known. With the millions of dollars we spend on IT in Canada, no one ever tried to find out whether there was anyone capable of developing apps. ArriveCAN has simply brought to light a whole host of problems inherent in the federal machinery, and those problems need to be dealt with at the source. People might wonder why we are taking three hours to discuss a committee report. However, this committee report is just one small tree in a forest, and we cannot forget to see the forest for the trees. Here, the forest is the current federal government's inability to assume its responsibilities towards its own public servants, towards its citizens, and towards—

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Carol Hughes)

Oct/18/23 6:41:46 p.m.
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I am sorry, but the member's time is up. Questions and comments. The hon. member for Calgary Shepard.

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Mr. Tom Kmiec (Calgary Shepard, CPC)

Oct/18/23 6:41:53 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, at the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, the Auditor General indicated that, in the context of her work, two departments had not informed her that criminal investigations by the police were under way. I would like the member to tell us what she thinks about this fact that has come to light. What does she think about the importance of this report and the vote to refer it committee for this study to continue?

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Mrs. Julie Vignola

Oct/18/23 6:42:24 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is a worrisome situation. People who are called to answer questions from the Auditor General need to be transparent and honest and report any fraud that may have occurred. These people who are required to do so failed to do so and that means that there is an internal culture that needs to be changed, and fast, for the good of the entire population.

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Mr. Daniel Blaikie (Elmwood—Transcona, NDP)

Oct/18/23 6:43:03 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, what we are talking about, given the amendment, is a very serious allegation, which is that a government department was not forthcoming to an officer of Parliament, the Auditor General, whose job it was to investigate a specific program. It reminds me of when the Harper Conservatives were in power and they denied information to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, who was looking at that time to satisfy a request to look into the effect of cuts to government services that were being planned at the time. The PBO had to take that government to court, which found that in fact that information should be handed over. At that time, the Liberals were very interested in that issue and the accountability of government to parliamentary officers. Why the sudden change of heart?

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Mrs. Julie Vignola

Oct/18/23 6:43:55 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, is it a partisan problem or a problem of culture? We have already talked about Bill C‑290. We have already talked about whistle-blower protection in the public service. We have already talked about the internal culture that compels silence when people want to see improvements. Does the problem stem from a level of government, blue or red, or does it come from a culture of silence? The discussion we are having today raises that question. This is not just about ArriveCAN, it is this culture that we need to dismantle for the greater good of the population.

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Mr. Joël Lightbound (Louis-Hébert, Lib.)

Oct/18/23 6:44:54 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will leave it to others to comment on the propriety of the procedure put forward by the Conservative Party, but, in essence, it is a very interesting question. When it comes to public money, we must be as transparent as possible. Above all, we must ensure that the officers of Parliament, who are independent, have all the tools and information they need to shed light on what happened. When we learn, for one, that software developers report they were able to reproduce the application at a fraction of the cost that was charged to taxpayers, this shows, in my opinion, the clear need to shed light on this issue. Does the member believe that sending this report back to committee with the proposed amendment will get to the bottom of what happened?

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Mrs. Julie Vignola

Oct/18/23 6:45:45 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I hope this sheds some light on what happened, either in whole or in part. We also cannot forget that the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates is studying the matter from another angle. Together, the two committees will certainly be able to shed light on the matter. More than anything though, we must find concrete long-term solutions and implement them. As I was saying earlier and as my colleague was saying, we are talking about public money, of which we are merely the trustees. We have to be responsible when it comes to these funds.

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Carol Hughes)

Oct/18/23 6:46:29 p.m.
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There are only 30 seconds left in the debate. The hon. member for Terrebonne may begin her speech, but I will have to interrupt her rather quickly.

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Ms. Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné (Terrebonne, BQ)

Oct/18/23 6:46:40 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, since I have only 30 seconds, I will simply say that there is a real a problem with the current government's emphasis on belt-tightening and with its plan to ask companies to repay their Canada emergency business account loans. Meanwhile, way too much money has been wasted on apps. Accenture received $208 million to manage a program that is not even being managed properly.

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Carol Hughes)

Oct/18/23 6:47:07 p.m.
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The hon. member will have nine minutes and 30 seconds the next time this matter is before the House. It is my duty to interrupt the proceedings on the motion at this time. Accordingly, the debate on the motion will be rescheduled for another sitting.

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