- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- New Brunswick Southwest
- New Brunswick
- Voting Attendance: 65%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $123,506.39
- Government Page
- May/3/24 12:18:18 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the 30th report of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, entitled “Main Estimates 2024-25: Vote 1 under Office of the Auditor General”.
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- Mar/22/24 12:23:17 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the 37th report of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts in relation to the motion adopted on Wednesday, March 6, 2024, regarding “Report 1: ArriveCan” of the 2024 reports of the Auditor General of Canada. That motion reads: “That the committee report to the House that it calls on the government to prohibit any government employee from simultaneously working as an external contractor.”
I also have the honour to present, in both official languages, the 38th report of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts in relation to a motion adopted on Wednesday, March 6, 2024, regarding “Report 1: ArriveCan” of the 2024 reports of the Auditor General of Canada. That motion reads: “That the committee invites the President of the Treasury Board, Anita Anand to appear for no less than two hours in relation to the ArriveCAN study, and that this meeting occur within three weeks of this motion being adopted.”
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- Feb/27/24 12:51:08 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, that is up to the committee members. If my hon. colleague would like to urge his member to seek support to do that, it is something we can consider. Generally, our committee follows the reports from the Auditor General, so I would not decide this on my own. If the Auditor General studies it, we will take it up. Again, today is about ArriveCAN, a program that has not worked, as well as the support the NDP has given that program and the great waste to taxpayers.
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- Jun/1/23 10:01:45 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the 29th report of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts entitled “Public Accounts of Canada 2022”.
Pursuant to Standing Order 109, the committee requests that the government table a comprehensive response to this report.
I would like to thank all the witnesses who appeared, who included the comptroller and the Auditor General of Canada, among others, and I thank committee members and our team at public accounts for helping us put together this report.
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- May/31/23 4:29:06 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the 28th report of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts entitled “Main Estimates 2023-24”.
I wish to thank the Auditor General of Canada for appearing, as well as her team, and thank as well all committee members, the clerk, our analysts and all the other support we had to get this done.
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- Dec/14/22 4:39:25 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the 22nd report of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts in relation to the motion adopted on Friday, December 9, regarding the 2022 reports 9 and 10 of the Auditor General of Canada. The motion reads, “That the committee report to the House that the committee affirms its support for the Auditor General and the independence and integrity of the office and that the committee also request a government response pursuant to Standing Order 109.”
I am also tabling the 23rd report of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts entitled “Access to Benefits for Hard-to-Reach Populations”.
Pursuant to Standing Order 109, the committee requests that the government table a comprehensive response to each of these two reports.
Like many other members in this House, I am looking forward to the Christmas recess to catch up, but I want to thank the staff of the House and, of course, my assistants on the public accounts committee, the clerk and the analysts.
I wish everyone a merry Christmas.
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- Nov/1/22 12:11:18 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, as the MP for New Brunswick Southwest, I know first-hand how harmful ArriveCAN was to the lives and livelihoods of Canadians.
My riding in southwest New Brunswick borders the state of Maine, in the United States of America. We have five international crossings, and many of these border points do not really feel like we are dealing with a foreign, distant government. This is because these cross-border communities were actually in place long before Confederation. These communities, with Maine residents on one side and New Brunswick residents on the other, have long lived together and shared services, including emergency services and community activity. When the border was closed, it had a devastating impact, and ArriveCAN was a poor solution.
There is a very good reason why the Auditor General should conduct a performance audit, including of the payments, contracts and subcontracts for all aspects of the ArriveCAN app, and good reason to prioritize that investigation. The ArriveCAN scam disrupted lives and family relations. It damaged the Canadian economy and infringed on mobility rights.
We have discovered that it was a costly government boondoggle rolled out by the Liberal government, which seems incapable of governing any federal institution in the country. Whether it relates to passport offices, the CRA or social programs, this is a government that just cannot shoot straight. It cannot govern well and, as a result, costs are going up everywhere.
This program, like many others, was a costly and unnecessary bureaucratic exercise. It was also heavy-handed and trampled over the guaranteed constitutional rights of Canadians. Millions were spent on a computer-based program and a mandate forcing all travellers, citizens and visitors alike, to register before entering Canada or, for citizens, coming home. Failing to do so could result in fines and/or a forced lock-up.
Independent software developers tell us that this app could have been built for less than a quarter of a million dollars. That would have been $250,000. It could have been completed in a weekend, but not in Ottawa, and not under this government. Instead, the Liberals spent an eye-popping $54 million and paid out millions to Liberal consultants. Of course, the government will not tell us who received those payments or who got rich.
My colleague from Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes spoke about the gross negligence that went toward the creation of the ArriveCAN scam. Regrettably, everything he said is true. The government said that one company was paid $1.2 million and then the company stood up and said that it had not received a dime. Where did that money go?
The Auditor General needs to investigate this because the government is not coming clean with the Parliament. It is not coming clean with Canadians.
This entire program is in desperate need of an audit, since Liberals will not tell the truth to Canadians. Canadians want to know what happened. Why was $54 million spent to control Canadians and strip away charter rights for a program that not only did not work but also was not necessary?
The Liberals, of course, cannot get their stories straight. We need an investigation. We need an audit.
Since the introduction of ArriveCAN and its subsequent mandatory use, I have been amazed by the lack of concern that the Liberal government has for the basic rights of Canadians. Anyone who is legally allowed to enter Canada, either as a Canadian citizen or permanent resident, under the Liberals, could now suddenly be denied re-entry into the country, through the threat of a fine of up to $5,000 and/or a 14-day quarantine because they did not register to come back into their own country.
The government requiring citizens to register as a condition of coming home is not something that we see in democratic and free countries, yet the government thought nothing of this infringement.
It was an infringement on charter rights, and there is no way around it or to explain away that citizens coming home could be fined for not following the government's rules. It was not just the invocation of the Emergencies Act that suspended civil liberties. ArriveCAN did the same to Canadians for a much longer time. Liberals believe theirs is the party of the charter, but this is difficult to square when we consider the actions they took while ArriveCAN was in place.
It is difficult to measure the economic impact on the Canadian economy, especially on the tourism sector, but we know there was a cost, and one part of my riding is quite a revealing example. Many members have long heard me talk about Campobello Island, a unique island, which is in New Brunswick. The only way on or off that island, year round, is over a bridge to Lubec, Maine.
This island has a population of only about 1,000 people, and it is especially popular with visitors from the United States because Campobello is home to the Roosevelt Campobello International Park. This was the summer home of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the former American president, and his wife, Eleanor. It attracts tens of thousands of visitors from the United States every year in the summer, or at least it did before the Canada-U.S. border was closed, either because visitors were not allowed or because of the de facto closure with ArriveCAN.
According to my discussions with CBSA officials, of the American motorists who crossed onto Campobello from the state of Maine, for every three cars that arrived, two were returned to the state of Maine because the U.S. visitors were either not aware of ArriveCAN or had not completed it. It is estimated that between 25% and 50% of those visitors who were sent back did not bother to complete the ArriveCAN, did not come into Canada and just returned to Maine to go elsewhere.
I do not know if it was because of a lack of quality Internet in Lubec, because senior citizens are not familiar with apps and uploading medical documents or because these Americans just did not feel comfortable about uploading documents onto the database of a foreign country. However, if the Canadian government had been more reasonable from the start, it could have allowed CBSA officials to screen individuals at land crossings that enter our country and to do their jobs, but it did not.
Instead, it was a bureaucratic mess. It caused hardship to Campobello. It caused hardship to tourist operators across New Brunswick, as well as across Canada, and as it is with everything else, the government failed its task to run the country in a way that does not penalize Canadians and working Canadians.
Last week I was home in New Brunswick in Saint Andrews, after the Liberals had come back from a summer caucus meeting there, and I asked some of the operators how the season went. The answer was that it was great, once the Americans were allowed in at the end of the summer. It has an impact when we close the border and stopped allowing our American friends in.
ArriveCAN was a costly and flawed program, and there are many questions for the Auditor General to look at. If ArriveCAN requires one to take a PCR test and schedules pickup by the government's testing supplier, why were so many rural homes in my riding completely ignored for pickup? Why did the government not contract this pickup service to Canada Post and the rural post office carriers, so rural homes could be serviced? How many PCR tests were left outside homes on doorsteps for pickup and never collected? Why were children, who were ineligible for COVID vaccines, forced into quarantine because of random selections?
There are numerous questions the Auditor General should look at. If this motion passes, I intend to forward these questions to the Auditor General of Canada, and I hope the House votes to pass this, so we can get down and see what happened with the ArriveCAN scam.
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Madam Speaker, New Brunswick is large in its mind, and it is large in its geography as well. Thank you for recognizing me and permitting me to address this important piece of legislation. I should remind the House and members here that when we cut right through it, inflation is the price that we and all Canadians pay for the things that the government told us would be free. That really cuts to the core of this debate and why this bill is so important.
Parliamentary oversight and accountability are key pillars of our democracy that we as legislators should be determined to protect and safeguard. Members of Parliament have a great deal of respect for the work done over the decades by Canada's auditors general, along with the Parliamentary Budget Officer and the other independent offices of Parliament. As chairman of the public accounts committee, I have heard from our current Auditor General, Ms. Hogan, and her deputy, Mr. Hayes, on a number of occasions this year. I can say that MPs from both sides of this chamber welcome their analysis on the machinery of government, through audits of federal departments, agencies and Crown corporations.
The Auditor General's office has historically performed a valuable service to Canadian taxpayers. Their work informs us in this House of both the missteps and the achievements that come from fulfilling policies and programs implemented by the Government of Canada. With few exceptions, these policies and programs are tied to mandates given to them by the executive, that is the cabinet. Of course, those mandates come ultimately from Canada's voters. When civil servants do not adhere to these mandates, it is on us, as parliamentarians, to hold them accountable and to make course corrections.
As such, I wholeheartedly support Bill C-253 to bring the Bank of Canada under the purview of the Auditor General by including the central bank under section 85 of the Financial Administration Act. What this bill would do is authorize the Auditor General to include the Bank of Canada in her normal audit cycle, which means the Bank of Canada would be subject to the same types of routine audits that Crown corporations and departments undergo. That is it. At its core, this is about accountability and transparency, and adherence to its mandate and Parliament.
I applaud the member for Regina—Qu'Appelle for introducing this bill, because he, like me, wants accountability from the Bank of Canada to ensure it adheres to its mandate. Some hon. members protest that MPs should not examine or even criticize the Bank of Canada, because it is independent, but this is a view out of step with democratic oversight in the United States, Britain and other countries where lawmakers are today vigorously debating what their central banks got wrong. We can just turn to a couple of headlines, which read, “Former Fed Chair Ben Bernanke said the central bank erred in waiting to address inflation”, and “The Fed's slow response to inflation was a mistake”.
Another one, from the Financial Times, states, “MPs turn on bank's handling of economy as [British] government feels heat from cost of living crisis”. In fact, even here in Canada, the media are reporting about Bank of Canada officials. In this case, “Carolyn Rogers says the Bank of Canada is learning from its mistakes”, yet some feel that this House has no role in this debate.
Historically, the Bank of Canada has been focused on a stable rate of inflation, and the bank's previous governors successfully kept inflation under control. It was not always easy and it required work, independence and a focus on results. However, in recent years, the bank's references to employment targets has been a consideration. If colleagues look at the bank's website or listen to speeches that officials have made, other considerations are now being added by bank officials in its considerations.
More recently, the bank has also started to indicate that other goals, such as environmental and social objectives, would or could influence policy. Since the pandemic, the Liberal government's deficit spending program has been underwritten almost exclusively through the bank's use of quantitative easing. That is a fancy word for expanding the money supply, which is a polite way of saying “printing money”.
As my hon. colleague just pointed out, when we expand the money supply, we dilute or reduce its value, and that is what has happened today in Canadian wallets. Their paycheques and their savings are worth less than they previously were.
How has all of this worked out? As members of Parliament, we should not be afraid to ask, to probe questions and to seek answers. The bill we are considering would allow the Auditor General to conduct audits of the bank through its normal 10-year cycle. Such audits include performance evaluations, something that is not happening now as it would go beyond the fiscal balance sheet examinations.
This is an important and key addition, particularly since the central bank is implementing monetary policies that are without precedent, and this will have massive implications for things like interest rates, inflation, growth and household incomes going forward. It is necessary that the Bank of Canada be subject to more transparency and accountability by Parliament.
Of course, there is precedent for allowing the Auditor General to have jurisdiction over arm's-length independent financial institutions. The Public Sector Pension Investment Board operates free of political interference but is still subject to the Auditor General's oversight. This bill follows virtually the same model by amending the Financial Administration Act's exemption for the Bank of Canada to match the Public Sector Pension Investment Board. Again, we are calling for the Bank of Canada to be covered in a way that other arm's-length agencies are.
Let us return to mandates and accountability. The Bank of Canada and its governor, Tiff Macklem, wield an extreme amount of power by setting our nation's monetary policy, not economic policy, as one of the members on the government bench said, but monetary policy.
I would argue that the bank's governor is the most powerful unelected civil servant in Canada. At the same time, he is bound by the mandate of his office and therefore subject to accountability, for us to ask how this governor is doing in his job. Unlike other institutions that report to Parliament, the Bank of Canada is audited by external auditors, who are appointed by cabinet on the recommendation of the finance minister. Therein lies the problem. There is not enough oversight or independence.
The bank is responsible for maintaining low and stable inflation, a safe and secure currency, financial stability and the efficient management of government funds and public debt, but at its very core, the governor is responsible for keeping the rate of inflation between 1% and 3%. How is he doing? The rate of inflation, in this country, has hit 6.8%. That is a 30-year high and not a record of success.
Political elites do not want MPs or Canadians to talk about the Bank of Canada's shortcomings. This is to protect the governor from proper and legitimate criticism, yet Governor Macklem has blown Canada's inflation targets and, in doing so, was cozy with the Liberal government.
He should have done his job instead of echoing government talking points about non-existent fiscal anchors. The incestuous relationship between the Liberal government and the Bank of Canada should never have been permitted to develop.
Because the Bank of Canada did not properly perform its job, Canadian households are paying a high price and, I fear, will pay a high price for years to come. Interest rate hikes will be more punishing, and price increases will last longer than had an independent Bank of Canada acted sooner.
Instead of talking about the punishing financial hit on Canadian families and businesses, these gatekeepers, to shield the governor from legitimate public scrutiny, cried, “Respect the bank's independence.” Those cries ring hollow after the governor failed to exercise his own independence from the Liberals. The bank should be held accountable for its errors. This is not interference. This is accountability.
This bill is a modest reform to grant Parliament some oversight, since the Auditor General's audits would be tabled in Parliament and studied by its members. It would bring Canada's Parliament in step with other democracies in probing the Bank of Canada's implementation of its mandate. It would allow MPs to hold the Bank of Canada accountable and to ask and seek answers.
Conservatives do not wish to diminish the Bank of Canada's independence, but we want to ensure it is acting independently while fulfilling its mandate to control inflation. I support this bill, and I urge others to do likewise.
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