44th Parl. 1st Sess.
April 8, 2024 11:00AM
- Apr/8/24 12:04:15 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, in a moment I will speak more specifically about questions of privilege in this place, but I want to start off more broadly on the privileges and the rights of this institution. Indeed, our House is founded on centuries of precedent, and that precedent is interpreted and applied by the protector of the House, the Speaker of the House.
Before I go into the details of my speech, I do want to rise and pay tribute to the late Hon. John Allen Fraser. Mr. Fraser passed away this Saturday at the age of 92, but he served in this place for more than two decades. He served as Speaker of the House of Commons from 1986 until his retirement at the 1993 election. I note this because Mr. Speaker Fraser was the first Speaker to be elected in the House by a secret ballot after the 1986 report of the McGrath committee, which made its recommendations as a committee, I might add, working on a consensus basis. Mr. Fraser served as minister of the environment prior to being Speaker and as minister of fisheries and oceans in the early days of the Mulroney government. I join all Canadians in expressing our condolences to the family and loved ones of Mr. Speaker John Allen Fraser.
Before us today is a question of privilege. Now, questions of privilege are often like solar eclipses, as they do not happen very often, but here we find ourselves today debating one on the same day as a solar eclipse. I want to begin by thanking the hon. member for Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes for bringing forward this important question and saying that I will be voting in favour of the motion but not in favour of the amendment moved by the Liberal government.
For more than a year and half, the House and multiple parliamentary committees have been seized with the ArriveCan scandal, or as it has come to be known, “arrive scam”. From the first indications of concern in 2022 to the damning Auditor General's report in February 2024, week after week, meeting after meeting, new evidence has been slowly unveiled that shows a pattern of deceit, cover-up and potential corruption.
We know that through an opaque network of contractors and subcontractors, the cost of ArriveCan was slowly driven up and that a small group of select people enriched themselves while performing little to no work. We do not know yet exactly how they achieved this or who within government assisted them. One of the reasons we do not know all of the details is that there was such an apparent lack of documentation and accountability. So few records were found by the Auditor General that she was unable to determine the exact cost of the app. Indeed, the $60-million figure we have been citing could even be too low. We just do not know, because the Auditor General herself said that what was most surprising about her audit was what they did not find. They did not find the documentation to confirm the work that was completed. However, we know who benefited. It was a company of two people operating out of a basement: GC Strategies.
Just this past week, last Thursday, April 4, at the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, we were told by the multi-billion dollar, multinational firm KPMG, who I might add has 10,000 employees, that they were told by a senior government official not to contract directly with the government. Instead, they were told that they must work through a two-person company that has no IT experience. We learned that KPMG was paid $400,000 for the work it performed through GC Strategies and that GC Strategies took $90,000 on top of that. This was $90,000 that went to GC Strategies for no IT work performed. We know that these two people, effectively operating out of a shell of a company, have done all they can to avoid accountability for their actions and to deliberately mislead Parliament, committees and all Canadians on this issue.
That is why the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates, more commonly known as the mighty OGGO, reported to the House that, “the committee was unable to ascertain certain facts from Mr. Firth, who repeatedly refused to answer questions”. The OGGO report goes on to state, “Additionally, some of the witness testimony provided by Mr. Firth was called into question as being misleading or false.”
As the member for Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes rightly pointed out, Mr. Firth has, on several occasions, refused to answer direct questions when he was asked and refused to answer and has been caught providing misinformation to Canadians. One specific issue is that he has refused to disclose whose testimonials are on his website. The website quotes senior government officials giving glowing reviews of GC Strategies, yet Mr. Firth, as of yet, has refused to indicate who those senior government officials are.
The House cannot and must not tolerate the disrespect and the degrading of the authority of Parliament and its committees. Witnesses who are summoned to testify must answer questions truthfully and not withhold information that is duly requested.
As the member for Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes thoroughly explained on March 20, there is a long and vital history both within Canada and in its Westminster counterparts showing that a refusal to answer questions before a committee is indeed a contempt of the House. As much as I enjoy referencing and quoting from previous Speakers' rulings, from Bosc and Gagnon, from Beauchesne's sixth edition, from The Power of Parliamentary Houses to Send for Persons, Papers & Records and indeed from Erskine May, I will indeed spare the House from once again hearing me repeat some of the passages that have already been quoted by other members.
However, spoiler alert, I will in a bit quote from Sir John Bourinot, one of the older authorities of the House, dating back to the early part of the last century.
I will, however, point out that, in the eight and a half years that I have had the privilege and honour of serving as a member of Parliament, I have found that on far too many occasions the House has had to deal with breaches of parliamentary privilege, including the rights of the House collectively or the rights and immunities of individual members. Far too often, we have seen those rights and privileges violated, and the slow erosion of the rights and privileges of Parliament is not a small matter; it is indeed an absolute threat to our democracy.
I will recall that on June 17, 2021, in what turned out to be one of the final days of the previous Parliament, members of all three opposition parties made the wise and appropriate decision to pass a motion on a question of privilege. With the passage of that motion, we called the president of the Public Health Agency of Canada to attend the bar of the House for the purposes of receiving, on behalf of the agency, an admonishment delivered by the Speaker for not delivering the documents ordered by the House. That motion was an important step in pushing back against the loss and disuse of the powers and privileges of the House of Commons. It is unfortunate that 147 Liberal members of Parliament voted against that motion.
Moreover, I would also point out that the federal agency at the centre of that scandal, the Winnipeg lab scandal, is also at the centre of this scandal today: the Public Health Agency of Canada. There is clearly a problem with the governance and accountability at both the Public Health Agency of Canada and the Canada Border Services Agency. Everyone responsible, including cabinet ministers, public servants and outside contractors, must answer for their actions or inaction in relation to these scandals.
I would recall for the House some of the testimony that we heard from senior government officials at the public accounts committee, including the president of the CBSA. The president of the CBSA stated that the organization just did not know who approved the ArriveCAN application. It just did not know. It reminds me of an old Saturday Night Live sketch in which O. J. Simpson was going around the golf course, trying to figure out who the real killer was. The president of the Canada Border Services Agency could not tell the committee who approved the ArriveCAN app, despite being the president of the agency and having full, unfettered access to all documents and people within the agency. It is simply mind-boggling that this was the testimony we heard.
We also heard from the president of the CBSA that she could not find any evidence of the company Deloitte being “in the penalty box”. Once again, it is not shocking that she may not have been able to find the written evidence, but there is no question that she could have talked to the public servants within the agency to find out the reasons that it was. Perhaps some of the emails may no longer have existed because we know now that one of the key, central players in this scandal had permanently deleted all of the emails. We learned last week that to delete emails is “surprisingly easy”, which is another dark mark against this institution.
As well, last week we heard from a vice-president of the Canada Border Services Agency who indicated that there were as many as six or seven outside contractors who were also employed by the Government of Canada, but when pressed for further information, he waffled and gave four separate answers to this very simple question. I think he thought the British sitcom Yes Minister was an instructional video rather than the comedic genius it actually was. There were four different answers to that one simple question, but never once did we get the truth about that double-dipping within the Canada Border Services Agency.
There is before the House an amendment that I, frankly, believe would lessen the importance of this motion. Nearly three years ago, we heard about the Winnipeg lab documents, and that motion was passed. It is clear the amendment, as proposed by the Liberal member for Kingston and the Islands, who serves as the deputy House leader of the Liberal government, must be disregarded. Indeed, if this amendment were to pass, it would not only belittle the seriousness of the situation, but also lessen it. It would also ignore the importance of the rights and privileges of parliamentary committees and significantly delay any meaningful accountability on this matter until May, at the very earliest.
I believe strongly that the supremacy of the House, of Parliament, must be preserved. By sending this off to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs for as long as two weeks, we would once again delay accountability. We must uncover, as is said, the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. That is what the original motion intends to do and why we must pull back from the amendment.
I recognize that the act of calling a person to the bar to be admonished by the Speaker and compelled to answer the questions they were previously unwilling to answer is a very rarely used power for Parliament, but I strongly disagree with the member's argument that this is a reason not to use this power. To the contrary, the rarity of this motion shows just how unacceptable the actions of Mr. Firth and GC Strategies are. Just because an action has not been used recently, there is no question that it is nonetheless appropriate in the House.
As promised earlier, I will now cite from Sir John Bourinot's Parliamentary Procedure and Practice in the Dominion of Canada, fourth edition, 1916. For those following along at home, it is pages 70 to 74.
Bourinot writes:
A witness who neglects or refuses to obey the order of the house will be sent for in custody of the sergeant-at-arms. Any person refusing to obey this or any other order, or aiding any witness to keep out of the way, may be declared guilty of a contempt of the house and brought before it in custody that he may be dealt with according to its will and pleasure. Witnesses who refuse to answer proper questions will be admonished and ordered to answer them. If they refuse, they may be committed until they express their willingness to answer.
However, that is not the only authority. I would also draw the attention of the House to Beauchesne's Parliamentary Rules and Forms, fourth edition, 1958, at citations 329 and 330; Beauchesne, second edition, at citation 701; and of course Erskine May, 18th edition, 1971, at page 672. I will not read those into the record, but I know hon. members will seek out those citations later today.
It brings us back to the fact that, while we may not have used these powers in the past or in recent times, they are nonetheless important to the matter at hand. The fact that these extreme powers are used only in extraordinary circumstances should serve to express and underline the seriousness of the situation we find ourselves in.
Indeed, I would remind the House that the report from the OGGO committee was a unanimous report of all members of the House, and it was concurred in by the House unanimously.
What is often referred to as the grand inquest of the nation would only be effective if we were to receive the needed answers. To choose not to pass this motion would be to choose to not exercise our powers in this case. It would be to choose to to willingly weaken the House as a democratic institution. I do not accept that option.
Based on the evidence collected thus far by committees in Parliament and others outside of Parliament, including journalists, and evidence collected through other accountability mechanisms, it has become clear that GC Strategies has used individuals within the federal public service to wrongfully win government contracts and to enrich themselves while performing little, or no, IT work for the Canadian people.
The system of bidding and contracting between these organizations and the federal government has become so corrupted that this two-person firm was able to decide on the contract conditions for a contract that, surprise, surprise, it ended up winning. This organization even uses the name GC Strategies, standing for “Government of Canada strategies” to grant itself a fake sense of authority and legitimacy.
As committee meetings have proceeded, these two individuals, Mr. Firth and Mr. Anthony, have been unco-operative, evasive and dishonest. On multiple occasions, they refused committee summons and invitations, and only appeared most recently before the OGGO committee on threat of arrest by the Sergeant-at-Arms. Only when the Sergeant-at-Arms was ready to place these individuals under arrest by the authority of Parliament did they finally appear before the House.
When Mr. Anthony did eventually appear, he was, at worst, evasive and, at best, completely oblivious to the business of his own firm, despite having the titles of partner and chief security officer. He let on that he knew very little about this company of which he was a partner.
When Mr. Firth eventually appeared, he was, again, unco-operative and, frankly, dishonest. Mr. Firth refused to answer basic questions, including whether he had lied to a parliamentary committee before and whether he had lied about meeting government officials outside of government offices. He also refused to tell members of Parliament the names of the public officeholders with whom he had met outside of government offices, the names of the government officials he had worked with to get over 100 contracts and which senior government officials gave endorsements on the company website. He lied about providing hospitality to government officials.
Here we are, with key facts still being hidden. The people's representatives in this place must be able to hold the government and its contractors to account for this web of deception and fraud. We need to know who else benefited from this scandal and how it was allowed to carry on for so long.
Canada is a parliamentary democracy. The powers invested in the House derive from the Constitution Act, 1867. The duly elected representatives in the House must be able to get the information we need to uncover the truth as we pursue our role in parliamentary democracy. When an individual does not comply, he or she must be held to account.
That is why Mr. Firth must be called to the bar of the House to be admonished by the Speaker, and he must be required to answer the questions that Parliament needs answered to get to the truth behind the ArriveCAN scandal. I urge the House to quickly pass the motion in its original form, rather than that of the delay tactic introduced by the Liberal government.
I commend these thoughts to the House.
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