Information & Ethics Committee on March 9th, 2009

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

I have all kinds of questions, but I'm going to save them for our witnesses. We hope to have the minister come before us after the break week, either on that Monday or Wednesday. We certainly would like to get their feeling as to where we might go. I don't want to speculate on how that might go, but I want to reassure you that the committee is looking forward to taking the time to consider all of the inputs that we received from you and from witnesses and from the minister, and from our own discussion, to make a report to Parliament that we feel is appropriate at this time.

So we thank you at this time for giving us all of your time and raising these issues. You may want to think about one issue that really causes me some interest, and it's the issue of who's going to decide whether the public interest outweighs the importance of secrecy. Every jurisdiction that has to report on it could really bog the system down. Maybe your job will double overnight if that happens. We'll find out from the witnesses.

So thank you very kindly.

I'm going to suspend until we can resume with the last item I'd like to raise with the committee.

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

We'll resume our meeting.

Colleagues, on Friday Mr. Walsh, who is with us right now, the law clerk of the House--and he's joined by Mr. Greg Tardi, who's senior parliamentary counsel for the House as well--received a letter from the Oliphant commission, counsel to counsel, as it were, or lawyer to lawyer. He raised it with me on Friday; he sent me a copy of it to look at and asked for my input.

I shouldn't talk to this yet, because there is a procedural matter we have to deal with, but I thought it was important to bring it to the committee. I asked Mr. Walsh to write up some matters, and I personally only considered the very last item, which is the motion itself, to be relevant here. I was concerned that the commission is going to proceed with its work unless we respond. I'm sure Mr. Walsh is going to respond, and I think he's basically asking whether or not this committee should reaffirm the undertaking it made to our witnesses with regard to parliamentary privilege.

So I'm asking to bring it to the committee for consideration. My concern is simply with regard to times, since those hearings are going to start. If we don't respond to them, they're going to go and try what they can, but I do understand efforts will be made to use the testimony before the public inquiry, as a consequence. I think it's important that we decide whether or not we want to reaffirm our view and get that communicated to the commission as early as possible so there's no misunderstanding as to the rules of Parliament.

First of all, I have to ask whether or not the committee will waive the 48-hour notice required to bring an item before the committee.

[An hon. member]

Agreed.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Nepean—Carleton, ON]

We on this side do not agree to that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

There's no agreement.

Thank you.

The meeting is adjourned.