44th Parl. 1st Sess.
September 17, 2024 10:00AM
- Sep/17/24 11:55:52 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to talk about this issue with regard to the Auditor General of Canada conducting a performance audit. It is ironic that the Conservatives have brought this forward. It was the party that attacked the Auditor General and sought to defund the Auditor General under the Harper regime. I was here during the debates on that.
The Conservatives not only did it behind closed doors but also did in here. We can watch the video. We can watch all the different things in the past that took place. They sought to defund the Auditor General and they did that at the expense of Parliament. That was done under Stephen Harper.
The Conservatives are asking the Auditor General to do more work and more investigation after they attacked the Auditor General very publicly. On top of that, they cut the budget, defunding the Auditor General. The Conservatives now run back to the Auditor General. I wonder about that in terms of their secret plans that could come forward later on. If they ever were able to get into government again, would they defund the Auditor General even more?
Using this as a motion is rather curious. It really comes at the expense of other accountability that took place, because the Conservatives defunded the Auditor General in the past and the Liberals never really restored that. It has been an attack on that house of independence for overseeing Parliament on many other issues that have consequences.
The Conservatives are asking the Auditor General to do more work for their political agenda right now, and it is a political agenda with regard to their attack on ArriveCAN. I will get into what they have not talked about in this motion and what they have asked for versus the results that we can get for Canadians. There are a couple things to point out specifically on that.
In the motion and in the talking points of the Conservatives, we will never hear them question or raise concerns related to personal privacy, the expenditure of resources and the effects on CBSA officers at all. They call it arrive scam. They have their slogans that they package up into a little box, but they really do not get to some of the things that are germane.
When we look at GC Strategies and what it has done with the money it received, there is a very legitimate discussion to be had. How did it get so much money? How was there so little accountability? How did all this happen? At the same time, what is not discussed is why we even outsourced such an important provision that was being sought in the first place?
The Harper regime cut the public service and CBSA officers. It cut frontline officers, and it cut off other types of systems in place that dealt with gun smuggling, drug smuggling and so forth. Over $100 million of cuts to our border services took place under the Harper regime. It was one of the first things it did.
Then later on in Parliament, they come back and we see an outsourcing by the Liberals, because that is a convenient way to do it for an application that deals with personal privacy and border management, which is significant. I come from a border region, the busiest border in North America, where we need that commerce to run efficiently.
During COVID, we had a blockade at the Ambassador Bridge. The Conservatives basically stood by and they denied all the different consequences that took place for the auto industry. They denied the consequences for the tool-and-die industry and mould-making industry. They denied the consequences of people not being able to get to their jobs. They denied the consequences of kids not going to school. They denied the consequences of people, including children, going to their health care appointments, including cancer treatments. They stood down as this illegal blockade took place to the point where we had to put Jersey barriers all along Huron Church Road.
Why is that important and germane to this? They have been part of this outsourcing that took place to GC Strategies and others to deal with an application that would have helped us potentially deal with COVID. The problem was that it manifested itself into a blockade and disgruntlement. Now the Conservatives continue to have that disgruntlement with regard to their focusing solely on GC Strategies, something they probably would have employed, or a different strategy organization, themselves because they love outsourcing.
The Conservatives love the fact that they cancelled and defunded our in-house capabilities when it came to creating applications and processes related to the border crossing. ArriveCAN was about that. It was an attempt to deal with COVID, the complications of the border and so forth. The Conservatives will not talk about how it really related to the exposure of personal privacy and the inefficiencies that it created for the industry and other economic issues that we had.
This motion focuses on the priorities of GC Strategies and the payments of contracts and all those different things that took place. It is important to note that both the Liberals and Conservatives feel differently about how we can deal with these contracts and this information in the future. Had we done that in house, had we had the capability for the public service to do those things, we would have had more control.
Let us remember that we have lessons for that, lessons created in the past with the Phoenix system, when we outsourced, again, potential in-house applications that could have been done by public servants even with regard to payment. The government turned the switch on that, despite knowing that it would cause a problem, and it has cost us billions of dollars and has been a scandal. It has caused anguish among the public service and other people who are looking to get a paycheque. That is sad because those things were totally avoidable.
One of the things I want to touch on, which is important with regard to this issue and beyond it, is that we can have this on GC Strategies but I am just not convinced, whether it is the Liberals now with their friends in the GC Strategies group or whether it is in the past or later on with the Conservatives and their friends getting these contracts and these types of things, that we have really learned anything that systemically will change what is taking place. That is what we really need, because, if not, we will be spending another day in the House of Commons talking about another strategy, or another scandal or another type of problem related to a practice that functionally we have not changed.
One of the things I do want to talk about is the accountability of government information and contracting that could be different, and which is different in other industrialized nations, and we are not even dealing with it. That is Crown copyright.
Crown copyright in our country is done differently than in any other place. Crown copyright is the availability to the public of documents, studies and information that is done in house. Both the Liberals and the Conservatives have opposed reforming Crown copyright from the early 1900s. Our law has been in place since 1926, and it is different from that in the United States, the U.K and everybody else across the board. Why is it important? Because if it were done in house, if it were done by the public servants and if it were done by taxpayers, the New Democrats believe that information, those studies and those accountability documents that are being sought after now would be public information.
Under the best circumstances, when we contract those information pieces and we get them done, they are very helpful for businesses, academics and a number of different things for our economy and accountability. We would not have to spend time in the House of Commons debating that because it would already be available. That is what the United States does. That is what the Americans have done since the 1800s. However, in Canada, we have a system in place right now that is protected by sensitive so-called information by the government, where people cannot see when the Liberals or Conservatives do those types of studies from by public servants. Why? Because some of that information that the Conservatives and Liberals have done over the past have been polls, research opinions and other types of information to guide their principles and other things. That should have been paid by their political parties but taxpayers have paid for it.
If people cannot get their head around why they would, as taxpayers, pay for all those different things and never get access to them, it is because of the power interests that have taken place here. That needs to be changed significantly. If we did this materially and if we did these studies that GC Strategies did, that would be automatically available to the public.
Today's discussion to get the documents, to get the contracts that have been through a committee, and it is on the Auditor General now to actually deal with these issues, all would be readily available anyway. How much money does it cost the taxpayers to run Parliamentary committees, run discussion in the chamber, make the Auditor General do something after the Auditor General's budget has been cut in the past and then try to get a document back into our system, to talk about that accountability and complain about it? The Conservatives will use arrive scam and then the Liberals will try to defend it and all those different things, but the solution is right in front of us.
Had we actually done that with in-house and Crown copyright, which every other industrialized nation actually has in a different fashion than Canada, it would not even have been a fight. It would have been automatically available. Why is it okay, and I cannot believe the motion does not even talk about this, that we can allow a continuation of a whole bunch of companies, this one being GC Strategies, which appears to be done in somebody's basement, to get millions and millions of dollars on the whim, with the least accountability, and then we do not get that information to the Canadian public?
Coming from a border region, I would have been interested, as I am sure our chamber of commerce and others would have, with any real application like this ArriveCAN app, in having the data and information they used to create an application, which was unnecessary and has huge flaws. That is almost beside the point in many respects. We saw that on a regular basis at the border. However, why are we even fighting to get that, when the solution has been in front of us? The reason is because of the continuation of control of public information and the control of the civil servants.
There is disenfranchisement of the public, because people cannot get the information on a free and regular basis from GC Strategies, which should have been available from the start. The reason is that it is better to continue with that issue right now. The Conservatives do not put that in the motion here because they are hoping they can get over on that side and get the same access to the public purse strings and public money to do whatever they want on these accountability issues. Then later on it will be up to the opposition or others to expose that.
Over the years, I have seen that so many times, especially under the Harper administration. There have been so many different issues with regard to accountability that have never been answered. Sadly, I am looking at the situation back in the time when I sat closer over there, and I sat a couple seats across from the now Prime Minister. They supported Stephen Harper on confidence votes without a single concession from Stephen Harper. Over 100 times, the Liberals agreed with the Conservatives and did not get a single thing for Canadians.
That is important, because this motion, which we are going to agree to because it is an improved situation, still would not change the fundamental problem that we have, which is the outsourcing of that accountability and on top of that, ensuring that businesses, the public and others have access to the information before we have to fight for it in the House of Commons.
I know the Conservatives do not want to hear that, and that is okay. I can tell members that it is not the norm in other democracies. In fact, the United States fixed part of the problem by not outsourcing some of the material, the studies and so forth, and by setting up its information-sharing system. It goes back to 1895. I know the Conservatives do not want to hear this, but their predecessors, in many respects, actually agreed with me. In Canada, there were attempts in 1981, in 1993 and so forth to try to make some of these changes, but the 1980s seems like a long time ago. People forget that today's Conservatives used to be called the Progressive Conservatives. Then they were taken over by the Canadian Alliance party.
An hon. member: Hear, hear!
Mr. Brian Masse: Madam Speaker, I just heard a “hear, hear”. If we look behind the veil, we see exactly what I have said.
I remember those days. I remember Peter MacKay and David Orchard. I remember all those behind-the-curtain deals that took place as Erin O'Toole and others were running out the door. The Conservatives want everybody to forget about those things, but it is interesting that when I talk about those things here I get heckled with a “hear, hear”. They are happy about those days, because those days are still here. A takeover took place, and that is why they dropped the “Progressive”, I suppose. I do not know. At any rate, it is interesting.
This is important, because the motion does not get to the fact that there is still a responsibility thrust upon the Auditor General. It would be interesting to see what the Conservatives would have put in there. They could have put in there that they would reinstate the cuts they made to the Auditor General's office. That would have been helpful. It would have been really good if they said the money they took out of the Auditor General's office under Harper, and was voted on, including by the now leader of the official opposition, who was there at the cabinet table when they decided they were going to attack and defund the Auditor General's office, could specifically be used to go after this issue. They could have done that, which would have been really helpful, because we know the Auditor General is taxed, in many respects, with regard to what has taken place on the Liberal side.
As I conclude, I want to focus on this. If we want a real and responsible solution, we will simply make sure our public service is funded properly, that it can do the research and that the research is then open to the public, businesses, employers and so forth so it performs well for our economy with respect to Crown copyright renewal and reform. However, we do not have this. Instead, what we have is a systematic problem of outsourcing continually, not having control and spending lots of money. However, it has gone to the government side in the past, whether Liberal or Conservative. It does not matter whether it is blue, red or whatever; governments will find a way to pass that public money on to their friends. That has been the consistency of what is happening here. It is time to end that consistency with respect to Ottawa and pass it on properly back to the taxpayers to ensure they are not involved in this boondoggle or any other in the future.
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