Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Sadly, here we go again. Conservatives have been trying to get the contracts publicly released so that the people who paid for these contracts can see them. We saw some shifting in position, sadly, of one party in particular around this table, which has changed the dynamic, and Conservatives are going to continue to fight for the release of these contracts.
Here's the situation. We have over $40 billion in public subsidies planned for various companies—over $40 billion. That is about $3,000 per Canadian family. That's a very significant amount of money per Canadian family, and I know many families are struggling as a result of the affordability crisis. Food prices are up, rent is up, housing costs are up, defaults are up, and hunger is up. There are so many challenges facing our country.
While Canadians are pinching pennies, especially at this time of year, the government has made decisions around very significant subsidies to companies to the tune of $3,000 per Canadian family. Canadians have a right to know what they are getting in return for those subsidies.
What we hear from the Liberals on this is an insistence on praising the deals, and yet an insistence on not showing the details of their work. They want Canadian workers to believe that these are great deals, and yet the Canadian workers can't see them. What we hear from Liberals is that essentially this is the best deal you've never seen. We're saying that if it is a good deal, show it to the people who are supposed to benefit from it so that they can make up their own minds. The public can decide whether or not they think that each one of them should be on the hook for $3,000. What are the corresponding benefits associated with these expenditures? If these are good deals, then let people see them.
For hours and hours on end, members across the way have said that these are good deals, great deals. They've said these are investments in people, these are fantastic deals, the best deals that you've ever seen—well, that you've never seen, actually. They've said that these are the best deals that you could imagine—well, you'll have to imagine them, because you don't get to know what they are. They're the best deals you can imagine, and that's all you'll be able to do. That's the approach that our colleagues opposite want to take.
This bluster about the glory of something that can't be seen is bizarre. It's unprecedented that they would be so shameless in making claims on the one hand about the quality of their work and on the other hand about the necessity of keeping that work completely invisible.
We have taken a clear, principled position, saying that these deals should be subject to democratic scrutiny by the people who are looking at them. Those who are supposed to be, in effect, the shareholders for this deal, those who are putting their money into this deal, should get to see what is in the deal.
Are there protections for workers in these deals? In the process of negotiating the handover of $40 billion-plus, which is $3,000 per Canadian family, did the government think to include provisions that would provide protections for Canadian workers that would definitively ensure that a certain number of jobs are being created in Canada? Did the government think to do that, or did they forget? Was it a matter of incompetent oversight, or was it a matter of indifference? Did they include those provisions? Did they intend to not include those provisions? Did they have ill intentions towards workers? Were they simply capricious in their disregard for Canadian workers? Did they just say, “Well, who cares? We don't need that.”
What was on their minds? What's in this deal? We don't know. As they would like to have it, we'll never know.
Mr. Chair, call me a skeptic. I want to be hopeful, especially at this time of year, but as a father of five children, experience teaches me that when somebody wants to hide something, maybe there's a reason. When one of my kids says, “Don't look at that. Don't go in that room”, I can tell you that the first thing I do is I want to know what's going on. Any parent of young children has probably had that experience. You're used to a noisy household; then, all of a sudden, you think, “It seems a little too quiet. I wonder what's going on?”
Well, members across the way who may have similar experience will have to acknowledge that they're acting a little bit guilty here. They're acting a little bit like there are things they want to hide in these contracts. I invite them to prove me wrong. I invite them to come clean with Canadians.
A prime minister of this country once said, “Sunlight is the best disinfectant.” I think it was the current Prime Minister who said that. In fact, it was the soon-to-be-former prime minister, who for now is the current prime minister, who said, “Sunlight is the best disinfectant.” Let's disinfect the suspicion that is hanging over our colleagues opposite. Let's give the good people of Windsor the chance to know the truth. We've heard from MPs from the Windsor area and elsewhere saying that it's the best deal you could possibly imagine, but that's where it's going to stay: in your imagination. It's the best deal you've never seen.
We're saying, “Show your work. Let the taxpayers, let the workers, let the voters know what's in these deals.”
We started with a situation in which all of the opposition parties were on board with that principle. In fact, we had the NDP leader standing up in the House of Commons calling for the release of these contracts. We had agreement from all three opposition parties in this committee to support the release of these contracts. Then we had a feeble filibuster for a short period of time from the Liberals, who wanted to keep these contracts secret and were going on and on about how great a deal it was, but in the process of talking about how allegedly great a deal it was, they were filibustering to prevent the release of this information.
I was extremely disappointed to see the NDP, just with a little bit of Liberal pressure, buckle under that pressure from their costly, corrupt, cover-up coalition compadres. They changed their position. First they called for the release of these contracts, and then in a fiery fury of flip-flopping—that's the end of the alliteration—they switched sides and voted with the government to kill our motion to order the production of these contracts. I think that was a sad betrayal of Canadian workers by the NDP.
The NDP likes to claim that it's the party of Canadian workers, yet we've seen repeatedly again today a sad betrayal of workers by the NDP. The NDP is now a shadow of its former self, and it's become a shadow of the Liberal Party. One of the Liberal members said, in fact, in the House yesterday that the NDP are in their pocket. Well, it's sad but true.
We now have two parties of government. We have the Liberals, and to be fair to the Liberals, they've at least been consistent on it. They've been the party of cover-ups for decades at least. That's their brand. They're the party of corruption and cover-ups. That's what they do. They don't quite put it on the sign, but it's pretty close.
However, the NDP have sold the farm and have fully joined this tragic coalition—tragic for Canadians—that is trying to hide important information from Canadian taxpayers. Here we are. They defeated our motion and then put forward their own motion.
Now, this motion that the NDP put forward initially, I must say, Mr. Chair, is one of the most bizarre motions I have ever seen come before a committee. The NDP, I think, in the midst of caving to their coalition colleagues, wanted to still put some window dressing out there for workers. They put forward a motion that effectively says they're going to use the ATIP process.
It seems that some NDP MPs could simply be replaced by a five-dollar bill, because that's all it costs to file an ATIP. It's five dollars. We don't need a parliamentary committee to file an ATIP. Any citizen—any person from Windsor or any other part of the country—can take five dollars and go file an ATIP.
Under this government, the ATIP process has become severely challenged. Under this government, if you file an ATIP, you get massive delays and horrific redactions that prevent you from knowing anything useful. You get your money's worth for that five dollars. That's the ATIP process.
My colleague Mr. Perkins is saying you don't get your money's worth for five dollars. Well, keep in mind inflation. With “Justinflation”, that five dollars doesn't buy as much as it used to.
It's true with ATIP as well. Before justinflation, you could actually get some information for five dollars, but now you can't.
Anyway, there's this ATIP process whereby Canadians can, for five dollars, file an access to information request. My colleague from the NDP says that as a parliamentary committee, let's do what any Canadian can do and file an ATIP. Okay, he has some other language in there about ensuring that some specific information is included.
Frankly, I think there are some procedural problems around the information they're asking for in terms of whether it will actually come up. The procedural problem is that committees have an unfettered right to order the production of existing documents, but they cannot order somebody or some entity to create documents that do not exist. Committees can order copies of all of my love letters to my wife, but it cannot order me to write love letters to my wife, to use a somewhat absurd analogy.
Committees can order documents that exist. They cannot order someone to produce documents. I think there's a little bit of a misunderstanding with this motion in terms of whether it orders the production of existing documents or orders the creation of documents.
I would like to think we can order the transfer of that information, but I suspect that if the motion were to pass, we would in some cases not get the information we want. The entities in question would come back and say that they're not producing documents that don't exist; they're only complying with the committee's orders insofar as they involve providing existing documents. In that regard, there was a little bit more heat than light, let's say, in the motion that's been put forward.
The basic substantive core of this motion is a five-dollar ATIP. Maybe the committee can save some Canadian the five-dollar fee or maybe we could just pass the hat and have everybody throw a nickel in and get this done.
This is not the serious work of a parliamentary committee, Chair, quite obviously. Parliamentary committees, unlike private citizens, have the right to request access to any document, unredacted. We have taken the position that parliamentary committees—this committee—should use the power they have to order the production of these documents.
We have over $40 billion spent, which is $3,000 per Canadian family. Liberals say these are great deals. We say, “Show the deals.” We say, “Let's produce the deals.”
At first, we have the NDP agreeing with us these deals should be produced, while the Liberals are filibustering and trying to hide the deals. Then the NDP flip-flops and proposes this ridiculous motion that says essentially that this committee should do the work that a five-dollar bill could do on its own, with the help of a person submitting the request, I suppose.
