SoVote

Apr/8/24 12:03:04 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it seems like the hon. member is very confused because, just a moment ago, he talked about how he enjoyed minority settings. This idea of a consensus is completely irrelevant to the discussion because, at the end of the day, there needs to be accountability out of government. There needs to be accountability at our committees by the public, by people providing testimony. Does he not agree that in minority settings accountability, the checks and balances in place, needs to be protected by our parliamentary privileges so that people like Mr. Firth cannot thumb their noses at Parliament and stick it to Canadians?

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Mr. Kevin Lamoureux

Apr/8/24 12:03:44 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I think that in certain situations, like we have with Mr. Firth, we can build a consensus, and there is a consensus: Everyone is saying that we want to have the individual at the bar. However, I think the member underestimates the importance of recognizing majority versus minority. I would refer the member to my home province of Manitoba, where I could talk about the Crocus file and others. There is a difference in a majority—

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès)

Apr/8/24 12:04:06 p.m.
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We are way out of time. Resuming debate, the hon. member for Perth—Wellington.

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Mr. John Nater (Perth—Wellington, CPC)

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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Mr. Kevin Lamoureux (Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, Lib.)

Apr/8/24 12:23:46 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the government has been fairly clear in recognizing that what took place in committee is not appropriate. Ultimately we are to see Mr. Firth come before the bar. It is important for us to establish that, as opposed to the false impression Conservatives are trying to give. When the member starts making accusations about this government and tying it to a scandal, I wonder if he could reflect on the ETS scandal, which involved $400 million. His own leader of the Conservative Party was the parliamentary secretary for Treasury Board then, which was, in good part, ultimately responsible for it. Does the member think the leader of the Conservative Party should have done more when he had the opportunity to deal with issues like those we are debating today?

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Mr. John Nater

Apr/8/24 12:24:44 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-2

Madam Speaker, if we are going to go back nearly 18 years in history, let us remember the very first action of the former Conservative government. Bill C-2, the very first bill introduced by the Conservative government in 2006, was the Federal Accountability Act, an act that directly came as a result of the Liberal sponsorship scandal of the previous Liberal government. That is the action the former government took to root out corruption and third parties getting rich off of government contracts. We will take no lessons from the Liberals on actions to root out corruption because the first thing the former Conservative government did when it came into power was to put in place the Federal Accountability Act, something that the previous Liberal government failed to do.

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Mr. Charlie Angus (Timmins—James Bay, NDP)

Apr/8/24 12:25:40 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I have been around the House for a number of scandals. I remember Jean Chrétien's golf balls. I remember Brian Mulroney's bag of money in a brown paper bag in a motel room. I remember Nigel Wright's $90,000 secret cheque to Mike Duffy to help pay off whatever. The issue about what we do at committee is vitally important. We do not have the power to find guilt, but we do have the obligation to get evidence and to present it to the House to make a finding. I have sat on committees where we have talked about issuing subpoenas and summons, and while these are tools we do not often use, the government does not like us using these tools. They should only be used very rarely, but if we were to not use them ever, we would lose those tools. Given what we have seen of the refusal of these witnesses to present and respond to fair questions, this would seem, to New Democrats, to be a good time to use this tool. Does my hon. colleague agree?

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Mr. John Nater

Apr/8/24 12:26:43 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I wish the hon. member for Timmins—James Bay well. I know that he will be around for a little bit longer, but I do wish him well on his announcement of his forthcoming retirement from active politics. I am sure he will be involved in other ways. To his question, he is right. If we do not use the more unique and rare tools the House possesses, they will fall into a pattern of disuse, which is why we, as parliamentarians, must exercise them when the need arises. This is a perfect example of when that need has arisen. We have witnesses who have shown themselves to be uncooperative at committees and unwilling to attend committees when they have been summoned, which a very strong power. They have only attended when they were threatened with arrest by the Sergeant-at-Arms. This is a very clear example of the necessity of using this rarely used but nonetheless legitimate tool of the House of Commons to call Mr. Firth before the bar of the House to answer questions on behalf of parliamentarians and, through us, on behalf of all Canadians.

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Mr. John Brassard (Barrie—Innisfil, CPC)

Apr/8/24 12:27:53 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, one of the things that my hon. colleague talked about was the decline in democracy and the diminishment of Parliament. We all recall, in 2015, how the Prime Minister said that this was going to be the most open and transparent government by default. We found that, since then, nothing has been like that. The member talked about the Winnipeg lab scandal, where they actually called an election so that the information would not come forward. Could the hon. member speak to the decline and the diminishment of this Parliament and the power and supremacy of Parliament under the Liberal government?

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Mr. John Nater

Apr/8/24 12:28:43 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Barrie—Innisfil for the excellent work he is doing as chair of the ethics committee, which has been working overtime these last number of months to root out scandal and corruption. He talks about the decline in democracy and the challenges that we as parliamentarians face in getting information. The concept of “open by default”, that we should be able to see the documents and the information on what this government is doing, is laughable now after over eight years. The ATIP system is broken. We see examples of years upon years of individuals waiting to get what should be fairly simple documents from the government. We see committees being given the runaround when requesting fairly simple information. We see this across the board in all aspects of parliamentary life, where parliamentarians, who are sent here to do their jobs, are unable to do them because of the lack of information. Open by default, eight and a half years later, is now closed by default. We are not getting the information that we need, as parliamentarians, to do our job.

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Ms. Sylvie Bérubé (Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, BQ)

Apr/8/24 12:30:09 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I think the important thing to remember is that the Conservatives created GC Strategies by giving millions of dollars in contracts to the executives of what was then called Coredal Systems Consulting. We found this out from the Journal de Montréal. What right do they have to make recommendations and get up in arms? Furthermore, they are attacking the Bloc Québécois for no good reason. They always vote against everything without asking any questions.

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Mr. John Nater

Apr/8/24 12:30:36 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am not sure what the hon. member wants to know. Obviously, the official opposition party wants answers from GC Strategies. It is important to know what that group received from this government. We need to know who in the government helped GC Strategies win millions of dollars in government contracts. We need to know these facts. As the official opposition, we will continue to demand answers from this government.

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Mr. Kevin Lamoureux (Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, Lib.)

Apr/8/24 12:31:36 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-2

Madam Speaker, in response to my question, the member indicated that Stephen Harper first brought in the Federal Accountability Act, Bill C-2, and he was very proud of that fact. A couple of years later, the current leader of the Conservative Party, then the parliamentary secretary to the president of the Treasury Board, was at least in part responsible for a $400-million scandal known as the ETS scandal. Members can look it up and see that it is true. I am wondering if he would reflect on that and say that the leader of the Conservative Party made a big mistake back then. I am wondering if the member would agree that we should be focusing, contrary to what I just finished saying, a little more on the bar question, and that it is a good thing.

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Mr. John Nater

Apr/8/24 12:32:25 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, let me first say I do agree that we need to focus on the issue of calling Mr. Firth to the bar, because we need answers. My colleague brought up the member for Carleton, the leader of His Majesty's loyal opposition, so let me be very clear about where the member for Carleton stands here today. He stands on axing the tax, building the homes, fixing the budget and stopping the crime. Those are the issues that we, in the official opposition, are committed to, and that is what our leader, the member for Carleton, will deliver for Canadians in the next election, whenever that next election may happen.

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Mr. Garnett Genuis (Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, CPC)

Apr/8/24 12:33:04 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-234

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to address the House today. Yesterday, common-sense Conservatives announced our demands for the upcoming federal budget. We called on the government to axe the tax on farmers and food by immediately passing Bill C-234 in its original form. We called on the government to build the homes, not bureaucracy, by requiring cities to permit 15% more homebuilding each year as a condition for receiving federal infrastructure money. Finally, we called on the government to cap the spending with a dollar-for-dollar rule to bring down interest rates and inflation. We said the government must find a dollar in savings for every new dollar of spending. These were the three common-sense Conservative demands for the budget: axing the tax on farmers and food; building homes, not bureaucracies; and instituting a dollar-for-dollar rule. Of course, Conservatives in government would go further to axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget and stop the crime. Under the NDP-Liberal government, we see how spending is completely out of control. Under the Prime Minister, Canada will spend $46.5 billion this year to service the debt. That is more than the federal health transfer. The government is spending more on servicing the debt than it does on the federal health transfer.

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Mr. Kevin Lamoureux

Apr/8/24 12:34:35 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. When the budget comes out, the member will be provided a wonderful opportunity to talk about the budget. It will be coming up very soon, but today we are debating about an individual, Mr. Firth, coming to the bar.

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès)

Apr/8/24 12:34:48 p.m.
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The hon. member knows there is a lot of leeway in how we introduce subjects. I am expecting the hon. member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan to get to the heart of the motion.

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Mr. Garnett Genuis

Apr/8/24 12:34:59 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the member opposite was enthusiastic about hearing the rest of my speech, and I invite him to hear it now. The Prime Minister is responsible for $46.5 billion this year in debt service costs. That is more than the federal government will transfer in health care. Astronomical amounts of money are being given to bankers and bond holders for the Prime Minister's out-of-control debt. The Prime Minister is not worth the cost, the crime or the corruption. Today, as the member pointed out, we are not debating the budget directly. We are discussing a question of privilege that relates centrally to government spending, to how the government spends taxpayers' dollars and the lack of controls associated with that spending. The point I want to emphasize is that this arrive scam scandal is intimately linked to overarching questions about how taxpayers' dollars are spent. The government spent $60 million, according to the available data, on the arrive scam app, but that is a drop in a much larger ocean of contracting out to government insiders. The arrive scam scandal is illustrative of this larger problem of abuse, corruption, at best extremely generous contracting out, which has led to so much waste of taxpayers' dollars. The government will try to convince people that all of its spending is necessarily associated with meeting immediate needs that Canadians face, but that is very clearly not true. We need to understand this picture of how government procurement is being abused under the NDP-Liberal government, how costly it is for taxpayers, and what an opportunity this presents for us to do better, to save money for taxpayers and focus, instead, on the core needs of our country. Specifically on the arrive scam scandal, we had, according to the Auditor General's report, a rigged process. We had a process in which specifications were put in place that do not appear to make any logical sense but served the result of giving this one company, with only two people, the ability to access this contract. GC Strategies got the contract for the arrive scam app and subcontracted it. That company alone, according to estimates, got some $20 million. It did not do any work, other than a very sort of perfunctory activity of going to LinkedIn and finding others who might be able to perform the work. A simple way of understanding what GC Strategies did and did not do would be if I were hired to paint your fence, Madam Speaker, for $100. I then hired the member for Winnipeg North and paid him $50 to paint the fence. He painted your fence and got $50. You paid me $100 and I just got $50 for facilitating the deal. Maybe I went on LinkedIn to find out that the member for Winnipeg North could paint fences. He might be looking for job opportunities like this after the next election, so this may be a relevant example. In that process, the middleman, the person who got the contract and passed it on, did not actually do anything. They did not add any value, yet they were able to collect, big time. The nature of this scandal was that GC Strategies, this so-called staff augmentation firm, which I think is the lingo that was used, took the contract, subcontracted the work out and got a whole bunch of money in the meantime for doing nothing. The process that allowed GC Strategies to get this contract was a rigged process. In fact, the Auditor General revealed how GC Strategies, in one case, sat down with government officials and set the terms of the contract that they would then bid on. We heard at the Standing Committee on Public Accounts over the break that KPMG was told to go through GC Strategies by government officials. They said that if KPMG wanted to be part of this work, then they had to go through GC Strategies. The government was aware of other companies that could do this work, yet they directed those companies to go through GC Strategies. There was clearly something of a special relationship whereby members of the NDP-Liberal government were keen to see GC Strategies cashing in big time, for reasons that remain somewhat unclear. GC Strategies is also a company that doctored résumés they were submitting to the government. This is something that we should be teaching children not to do. It is not appropriate or ethical to be doctoring your résumé in order to access an opportunity that you would not otherwise qualify for. It appears that GC Strategies was doctoring résumés systematically. During his earlier appearance at committee, Kristian Firth said they change the résumés to make them compliant with the requirements of the contract. Then they go back to their resource and ask if it is okay. If I am applying for a government contract, and I have five months of experience when I am supposed to have five years of experience, then GC Strategies would cross out “months” and write in “years.” Then they would send it back to me and say, “We made this little change. Is that okay?” Then they would send it off to the government afterward. Kristian Firth admitted that this was not something that they did just once. Adjusting résumés to meet the requirements of the contract and then checking if that was okay before sending them in was their process. What a wild and broken system this was. We have rigging of the process and systematic cheating, things that young children should know are highly unethical and that seem to have been happening systematically in the government. Despite these obvious problems with GC Strategies, the Liberal-NDP government was keen to push other companies to work through GC Strategies. Then we have obfuscation in committees and accusing people of lying. These are some of the particular issues around the arrive scam scandal. Thinking about this in the context of the budget and the overall fiscal situation, we have been digging more on the arrive scam and asking what the procurement practices are that allow this sort of thing to happen. What is happening more broadly inside of the government that allowed $60 million to be spent in this case and for nobody to seem to notice or care? First of all, this process of contracting to people to contract other people was not just a one-off. It was not something that happened just in the case of ArriveCAN. We found that there are 635 companies that do IT staff augmentation for the federal government. There are 635 companies whose job it is to receive contracts and then contract out. I think there are cases where contracting out is likely legitimate, although I am very skeptical of the idea that there is any value in contracting out to those who subcontract and perhaps further subcontract after that. The general contractor project management function should be able to be performed inside of government, yet we have 635 companies that do IT staff augmentation only. They act as these middlemen, these middle companies that receive contracts and contract out. There are 635 of them in the IT space alone. That is not just a one-off. That is not just the arrive scam app. This is a larger issue with how the government treats money overall. The larger issue is systematic growth in contracting out and contracting out to those who just do this “staff augmentation” piece. We have seen how, in the midst of dramatic growth in spending on the public service, there has also been dramatic growth in spending for contracting out. The government was spending tens of billions of dollars in contracting out. Some of it was for management consulting, and we have talked about the enormous growth in spending on McKinsey, and some of it was for those who further contract out. We are spending more inside of government and we are also spending dramatically more outside of government. We would expect those things to be inversely related in that if we are spending more growing public service then we should be contracting out less, or maybe if we are contracting out more, that should correspond to having a smaller public service. However, the government is growing the size of the public service and contracting out more at the same time. The NDP-Liberal government clearly has a profound lack of respect for taxpayer dollars. Then it will try say that the Conservatives want to fix the budget and that the money will come from cuts. However, when we look at how broken our contracting system is and when we look at the 635 companies doing staff augmentation in the IT space and the tens of billions of dollars being spent on contracting out, pretty clearly there is a lot of room to get the budget under control. We can stop giving money to those outside companies that are abusing the taxpayer and providing no value and we can instead provide tax relief to Canadians who need it. We can instead axe the tax, build homes and cap spending. We can get out budget under control if we fix these grotesque abuses in government spending. One key aspect of this scandal we need to ask about is where the minister was in all of this. It is right and important that we demand answers from these contractors. Canadians elect members of Parliament from which emerge a cabinet and a government, an executive branch, that are supposed to be accountable for the decisions that the government makes. They are supposed to be providing oversight and policy direction. Of course, ministers are not involved in the minutiae of every decision, but they are responsible for the culture and the policy frameworks that are established. I asked the minister of procurement what he was doing in the midst of this arrive scam scandal. Actually, there have been a number of different ministers. I think four ministers just in the period since the pandemic have been responsible for procurement. Therefore, there have been many hands that should have had an opportunity to impact this process, yet all of those ministers, and anybody who speaks from the government, would have us believe that they were just there, that something happened in the department that they were supposed to be in charge of, but that they had no accountability or responsibility for it. That is absurd. Ministers should take responsibility for what happens in their departments. They should establish clear expectations in terms of accountability, ethics, respect for taxpayer dollars. When costly criminal corruption is occurring under the watch of a particular minister, then the minister should have some responsibility and some response to what she or he is doing in order to address those concerning events. However, when the current Minister of Public Services and Procurement was before committee, I asked him when he was briefed and what did he do. He said that he had received a briefing and that he provided no directive in terms of action in response to this scandal. That is unbelievable. The descriptions by public servants are that ministers receive briefs, remain apprised of or seized with what is going on, but then ostensibly do nothing and have no role in actually shaping policy outcomes, which is just unacceptable. At best, the government has been a disinterested passenger in the midst of declining respect for taxpayer dollars. That is a an overly charitable description. The government has itself shown flagrant disregard for taxpayer dollars and has been complicit in various corruption scandals over the eight long years that it has been in power. Even in its defence, the government says that the minister had nothing to do with it. We have someone in the government whose title is “Minister for Public Services and Procurement”, yet when there is one of the biggest procurement scandals in our country's history, the government says that we cannot expect the Minister of Procurement to have anything to do with a scandal in procurement. It is just in the name. At committee, I proposed, and it elicited points of orders and maybe it will today, that we could replace the Minister of Public Services and Procurement with a potted plant and we would have the same result. A potted plant could receive briefings, naturally. A potted plant could be apprised of events, though it would obviously not take any action in response to those events. Ministers were in the room, received briefings, but did nothing. They would want us to believe that the role as a minister of procurement is to simply be there, to hear things, to be interested in those things and to receive updates. Again, we could save a drop in the bucket in comparison to other money that could be saved, but we could at least save a minister's salary if we replaced the current procurement minister with some such inanimate object. I want to underline that the arrive scam scandal, as bad as it is in and of itself, is a drop in this larger ocean of government waste and corruption. Tens of billions of dollars are being spent on contracting out. There was clearly a basic incontinence associated with government spending. The money just flows out for no discernible reason. The processes are rigged. There is obfuscation and unresponsiveness at committee. The latest is that we have seen how the indigenous procurement rules are being abused by insiders, insiders who feel they have no obligation to bring about any benefit to indigenous communities through their access to indigenous procurement. A lot more work needs to be done to understand the abuses of the indigenous procurement process that have been happening under the government. Very troubling information has come out, for instance, David Yeo saying that the point of the program is not to benefit indigenous communities, it is just to benefit him as an entrepreneur. I do not think that is the point of the policy. We see costs, corruption and crime happening under the government. This privilege motion is one key piece of getting to the bottom of what happened, demanding answers from Kristian Firth that he was unwilling to give at committee. This would help us suss out, in detail, all the crime, corruption and the cost that we are seeing under the NDP-Liberal government. Enough is enough. Canadians are looking for an alternative that will respect taxpayer dollars, that will restore probity in spending, that will bring it home.

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Mr. Kevin Lamoureux (Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, Lib.)

Apr/8/24 12:53:44 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the member said that the $60 million for ArriveCAN was a record in Canada. That is just not true. All the member needs to do is take a look at the ETS scandal, which was $400 million, and $400 million is more than $60 million. The parliamentary secretary at the time is the leader of the Conservative Party. The member made reference to ministers and parliamentary secretaries being plants. I would suggest that maybe the leader of the Conservative Party is a dandelion, one of those yellow weeds that we pull all the time. I think the leader of the Conservative Party might be a little offended by his colleague calling him a plant. I wonder if the member would like to retract those words and, at the same time, maybe indicate how he believes people who are called to the bar should be questioned.

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Secretary

Mr. Garnett Genuis

Apr/8/24 12:54:41 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am not aware of some of the long-tenured, historical events about which the member is speaking. I am a relatively young member of the House, so events before a certain date are before my time. It is pretty rich for the Liberals, after eight years in power, to always want to draw our attention to things that happened in decades past. The fact of the matter is that since 2015, the national debt has more than doubled. More than half of our national debt is the responsibility of the Prime Minister. That is why we are now spending more on debt servicing than we transfer for health care. It is outrageous, out-of-control spending under the government. The $60 million for the arrive scam scandal is important, but it is part of a larger pattern of cost, crime and corruption. I mentioned some of these numbers in my speech, such as over 600 companies just doing staff augmentation. It is out of control.

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