On another point of privilege, if I may, this dates back to another study, Mr. Chair, on February 15, when the committee had the deputy and the minister at this committee.
At that meeting I had asked for the deputy to provide us the details on the consultation process with respect to the caregivers review. Ms. Marta Morgan responded:
The nature of the consultations has not yet been established, but we will make sure that committee members are aware of it so that they can provide that information to caregivers. We will also directly provide information once we have a consultation process set out.
Mr. Chair, then we received a response from the IRCC officials to my question on the consultation process. This is the answer that I got, and let me put this on the record:
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) is undertaking consultations in March and April 2018 to inform the development of permanent residence options for caregivers, as well as considering input provided in the past.
That is the information that was provided with respect to the consultation process.
I have since found out that in fact consultations have taken place. Not only was this committee not informed, but also that information was so secretly held that many people didn't know about it. There were, at least to my knowledge, six consultation meetings that took place in Toronto. There was a consultation meeting that took place in Ottawa, which I was informed about by a stakeholder, and I made a request to the minister's office to see whether or not I could attend that consultation meeting. I was advised, or my staff was advised, that it was not a consultation meeting and that my request to attend that meeting was declined.
Further pushing this issue then, subsequently, consultation meetings were held in Vancouver. In fact, yesterday a consultation meeting was held in Vancouver. I was notified of that consultation meeting on April 10. I wasn't notified that I could attend that meeting until late Friday afternoon of that week.
I attended that meeting yesterday. I showed up at the location that was emailed to me. The location had changed. It had gone to a different location. I had to go to another location in order to make that meeting, and then through that process I found out that there was another meeting that was scheduled that afternoon as well as one this morning.
My point is this. A clear undertaking was given to the IRCC officials, to the deputy no less, who had committed to this committee that she would provide this information to all of us, so that we might inform the caregivers of the process, so that they could engage in this process. That was not done, in my view. The answer that was provided to me and provided to the committee to say that consultations would take place in March and April is frankly meaningless.
I am disturbed about this pattern of behaviour from officials, who seem to think that it is okay for them to ignore the request of committee members with their undertakings. I don't think this is an onerous request. It's simply to ask for basic information on when consultations would be taking place, and none of that was provided.
I would like to have an explanation as to how this will be rectified in the future. It is not acceptable. I hope it is not acceptable to you either, Mr. Chair.