QUESTION PERIOD — Foreign Affairs and International Trade
Export Development Canada
February 5, 2020
Honourable senators, I would like to also congratulate Senator Gold on his nomination as government leader. I am looking forward to working with you.
I have a follow-up question to the one posed by Senator Dagenais with regard to the government being free and loose with taxpayers’ cash. Each mandate letter from the Prime Minister to his cabinet ministers has stated:
I also expect us to continue to raise the bar on openness, effectiveness and transparency in government. This means a government that is open by default.
In contradiction to Prime Minister Trudeau’s words, the Department of Finance and Global Affairs Canada are refusing to disclose any information about a loan this government has written off from Export Development Canada’s account, worth just over $196 million in taxpayers’ cash.
Senator Gold, this is a significant amount of money to write off without a word of explanation to taxpayers in this country. Will your government provide taxpayers with the transparency they were promised and provide basic information, which all taxpayers are entitled to, involving this particular company and the writing off of this significant loan?
Thank you for your question.
In the last Parliament, we in the Senate had the opportunity to study and significantly improve legislation that was introduced to take further steps forward in open government. That included measures of proactive disclosure and the like.
I cannot comment on this particular loan to which you referred, but I will make inquiries to see whether divulgence of this will be deemed appropriate. But I can say it is the government’s position, as reflected in a number of mandate letters, that the government continues to take seriously the transformation of our government into a more open, more digitally friendly environment for the benefit of Canadians. I am assured the government takes these responsibilities very seriously.
Government leader, it’s nice to say that we take these responsibilities very seriously, but at the end of the day, all we’ve had as an explanation from Global Affairs and EDC is that this loan has been written off in the best interests of Canadian taxpayers. I think you will acknowledge that isn’t a sufficient line of explanation. It’s $196 million being written off, and I think the Canadian public needs to know exactly why EDC came to that conclusion and why Global Affairs signed off on it. Just to say, “It was in the best interests of the taxpayer — take our word for it,” I think we all believe, in terms of good governance, that just doesn’t suffice.
Thank you for your question, but I repeat, I’m not aware of the circumstances of that. I do have confidence the government takes these responsibilities seriously and is attempting to answer appropriately.
