QUESTION PERIOD — Infrastructure and Communities
Invest in Canada
April 11, 2019
Fourteen meetings with SNC-Lavalin, and I’m casting aspersions? He hasn’t answered to anybody yet.
Since we’re not going to get an answer on the SNC-Lavalin file, let’s try a more important question, because the government seems to diminish obstruction of justice.
My question is for the government leader, again. On November 29, six months ago, I asked you about the work done by Invest in Canada, the agency that was created under Bill C-44, the Budget Implementation Act, in 2017. You could not answer simply because nothing had to be done. Six months later, on the Invest in Canada website we can find two announcements: the nomination of a CEO and the appointment of directors in March and July 2018, but nothing about any results.
There is on the website a ministerial plan for Invest in Canada. In the plan, all the results are either to be determined or non‑applicable, but one thing is clear: Invest in Canada will have spent $23 million last fiscal year and will spend another $36 million this year.
I remind all senators that our Banking Committee of the Senate said in its report that it could not see the usefulness of this new agency.
Senator Harder, close to two years later would you agree that the Banking Committee of the Senate and its members were right in questioning the need for Invest in Canada?
Again, I thank the honourable senator for his interesting supplementary question. Let me simply say that the departmental reports that I’ve tabled may well have further information to report to Parliament.
With regard to his specific question, it is always good when Senate committees question government programs and the establishment of agencies and the like, and that accountability is part of the framework that the Senate provides through its review not only of departmental estimates but of the Main Estimates and when departments are called before the Senate committees to answer directly.
