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

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

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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