Procedure and House Affairs Committee on April 9th, 2024

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

Good. Thank you.

Ms. Gaudreau, you have the floor for six minutes. Please address the chair.

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

As we just saw, my colleague set the stage.

Many thanks to the witnesses for being here, even though they are attending the visit by the French Prime Minister, who is arriving tomorrow.

In my opinion, there are two important aspects. On the one hand, we must shed light on the consequences of an event like this and, on the other hand, ask questions about what we should do from now on.

I am not a diplomat, but I understand that it required seriously mobilizing Canadian diplomats. What were the consequences of this incident?

[Sébastien Carrière]

Madam Chair, I thank the member for her question.

In terms of the consequences, I would say the event certainly led to an embarrassing moment. The incident made headlines around the world, and for all the wrong reasons. However, I do not think it led to conclusions about Canada’s support for Ukraine. I do not have the impression it had lasting consequences in that respect. That’s my opinion; I am not an expert on relations between Canada and Ukraine.

I accompanied the Prime Minister to Poland when his delegation was travelling to Ukraine. During the planning for this visit, as well as during the visit to Poland and afterwards, no one raised the incident in question. It may be a sign that this story has somewhat run out of steam.

I must say that we are something like implementers. In my opinion, the thinking around what must be done now should focus on two aspects. First, there’s the issue of parliamentary independence, meaning the legislative branch relative to the executive branch.

For my part, I represent the executive branch. As I have always said, I am the Chief of Protocol of Canada everywhere except here. If I had requested the Speaker’s office guest list, I would have been told it was none of my business, probably rightfully so. I trained as a political scientist. That’s what I learned at university. I do not know how we could avoid another similar incident, since I’m on the outside.

Based on my understanding of the statements by the previous Speaker of the House following the event, something went wrong within his office. It is also my understanding that the Speaker’s office undertook a revision of the process in terms of establishing guest lists and recognizing guests.

The solution probably resides in the revision process, rather than creating a political crisis by trying to ask a member of the executive branch to verify the list of the Speaker of the House of Commons. That would be rather excessive, in my humble opinion.

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Based on what I understand, the work we are doing will improve the aforementioned measures. In the end, we want to avoid a recurrence of this situation in the future. Above all, we understand that these situations are extremely sensitive.

I understand the witness when he says that he is an implementer and that it is difficult to see from the outside what could be done better.

I would nonetheless like a few hints about the path to follow. Mr. Carrière may tell me that a protocol must be extremely sophisticated and maintained, but I would like him to tell us more about that.

[Sébastien Carrière]

In my view, committee proceedings are useful in the sense that members of this committee will develop recommendations on the way to avoid a recurrence of this kind of situation.

However, when a visit is organized secretly, it is extremely difficult to talk to people. I do not know how the Speaker’s office could have avoided what happened. I had no role to play in the decision to invite anyone whatsoever. We must consider two aspects: the invitation and guest recognition. Personally, I am under the impression that if this person had only been invited, we would not have heard about it. However, the Speaker of the House of Commons rose and called attention to his presence in the gallery, which is quite important.

I have worked at the department for 24 years. Throughout my career, I invited delegations to attend question period, for example. I have also asked for the Speaker of the House to call attention to the presence of another country’s minister of foreign affairs. Sometimes the request is accepted, sometimes it’s rejected. I have to explain why it is important to highlight the presence of that person and note which other people will be present. There is definitely a process to follow.

In the case before us, there was a mistake during the process in question. Perhaps the Speaker’s office should review it based on the committee’s recommendations.

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

I gather that our work is useful. We have covered everything. We see that, when people want to act quickly and secretively and when communication gaps arise, inviting someone and recognizing them in the House can be two different things. In my opinion, the situation could very well have been avoided.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Gaudreau.

Ms. Mathyssen.

[Lindsay Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Thank you to all of the witnesses for providing time out of your busy schedules.

I think a lot of my questions on this have already been answered, but considering there were a lot of people hurt by this serious incident, I want to be clear.

Mr. Carrière, you said, and understandably so, that the division between the parliamentary and executive sides is very clear, and there are clear benefits to keeping it that way. There are no changes you can see within that that we could recommend here. There's nothing whatsoever in your roles, an expansion or anything that we've learned from this, that you could provide as a recommendation.

Is that right? You've been pretty clear, but I want to just double-check.

[Sébastien Carrière]

Madam Chair, I thank the honourable member for her question.

I really don't think it's my place to tell a parliamentary committee what to put in the report. However, I can state the facts and how things work now.

It's hard for me to imagine the executive branch having oversight on something that—

[Lindsay Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Even as a double-check...? It's not as a directive, but what about as a double-check of the system?

[Sébastien Carrière]

It then leads back to the question of capacity. Do we have vetting capacity? There would have to be a conversation with the Minister of Foreign Affairs about enhancing our team and adding a vetting unit of some sort, and getting the lists weeks in advance so that people will have time to do that.

What do we do? Is it just a Google search? It takes some time, but not too much. Would a Google search have revealed the past of this individual? I wish we could go back in time and google him before the address to see what pops up.

You can then go further and turn to our security agencies to do the vetting. They would say, “Are you crazy? We're not going to vet 1,000 people.” The RCMP does, with police databases and the like, but reputational vetting is a whole different ball of wax.

[Lindsay Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

The Sergeant-at-Arms of our protective services was quite clear on that as well in previous testimony. They had that under control. It was a matter of resources, and if that's the will, we'll change things. You're basically saying the same thing as a spectator of all this, and I understand that.

Ms. Kennedy, you talked about the PCO not doing that vetting. You referred to it as a cursory review, which is fine. I understand that. You specifically said you might look at those outside lists to ensure that there was gender representation and that rules of protocol were abided by.

To be clear on that, is there anything else that you would look at in any way, shape or form?

[Christine Kennedy]

For the foreign and defence policy secretariat, it's not within our mandate to conduct the vetting of invitees. We very much rely on other entities within our system to do that.

However, before forwarding it on, we do give the list a cursory review. Often we don't have a lot of time to do that. We're simply looking for any errors, including grammatical errors, within the list, ensuring that appropriate organizations are there and scanning it from a gender representation perspective, which is important for us, for example, during business round tables. I would say we rely heavily on our Global Affairs experts, as well as our PCO experts, who take that extra lens.

I would just add that, with respect to the list of invitees for the address in Parliament, neither the foreign and defence policy secretariat nor anyone in PCO received that list.

[Lindsay Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

It's only gender representation? It's not a GBA+ look at things?

[Christine Kennedy]

It certainly is. It's the whole gamut of what's important for us.

For the foreign and defence policy secretariat, we're responsible for providing policy advice. When we're supporting incoming and outgoing visits, we're very much focused on where we can advance our foreign policy objectives and support our domestic interests. That's the kind of cursory lens we take.

[Lindsay Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

To be perfectly honest, I don't think I have any further questions.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

Thank you.

We'll go to the second round, starting with five minutes for Mr. Duncan, followed by Mr. Lauzon.

Mr. Duncan, go ahead.

[Eric Duncan, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Again, thank you to our witnesses.

When we talked about this visit and what the goals for this were, we mentioned strengthening relationships between Canadians and Ukrainians in their time of need right now.

Would you also agree with me that, in order for this to be considered a success, one of the goals would be to not provide any opportunity for the Russians, given their typical misinformation and disinformation campaigns, to latch onto something to try to distract from the visit and take away from its success? Would you agree that not providing Russian misinformation campaigns with fodder would help this trip to be deemed successful?

[Sébastien Carrière]

That's more a policy question, but I think we can all agree that not providing Russia with material for disinformation is always a goal for every visit.

[Eric Duncan, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

Great.

Sadly that's what came out of this international embarrassment back in September. When we're talking about the overarching goals and what happened and what was covered in the media, what Canadians and people around the world saw was exactly this incident. We're trying to figure out how it could have been avoided, should have been avoided and can be avoided in the future.

Ms. Kennedy, with respect to vetting, maybe this is an opportunity for lessons learned and what we've learned from past mistakes, perhaps, that the Liberal government has made.

Can you confirm that whenever there are visits to Canada by a foreign head of state or dignitary or a diplomatic mission comes, you work on the protocol, events, lists and so forth? Also, conversely, when the Prime Minister travels around the world and brings guests with him, do you have a process or do you have a role in preparing those itineraries, agendas and logistics?

[Christine Kennedy]

Madam Chair, I would just like to confirm that the question is about the Prime Minister's outgoing visits, in which he is....

[Eric Duncan, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

Yes.

[Christine Kennedy]

For both incoming and outgoing visits, we provide the Prime Minister with the appropriate policy support. We work closely with Global Affairs to develop a recommendation to undertake the visit to begin with.

When we go through that process, we look at how our foreign policy objectives could be advanced but also at tangible outcomes that could be derived from such an engagement. From time to time, depending on time constraints, we do provide some ideas for program elements that could be considered in the context of an outgoing visit.

[Eric Duncan, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

Let me use the example of the Prime Minister's trip to India a few years ago in his first term in office. We can recall that trip being a disaster diplomatically for many reasons, one of which was that we found out afterwards that the Prime Minister's Office invited a known terrorist to be part of the Canadian delegation that visited India.

Is it correct that it happened back in the Prime Minister's first term in office?

[Christine Kennedy]

I was not in my current position at that time.