Mr. Speaker, I will just continue addressing the question of privilege that was raised on Friday by the member for Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot.
I had gotten to the point in my dissertation as to the ruling that Speaker Milliken made in 2002 about the minister of national defence at that time. He is quoted as saying that misleading a minister or a member has been considered a form of obstruction and, thus, a prima facie breach of privilege. The Speaker accepted the minister's assertion that he had no intention to mislead the House and made the following statement: “Nevertheless this remains a very difficult situation.”
The Speaker went on to say:
On the basis of the arguments presented by hon. members and in view of the gravity of the matter, I have concluded that the situation before us where the House is left with two versions of events is one that merits further consideration by an appropriate committee, if only to clear the air. I therefore invite the hon. member for Portage--Lisgar to move his motion.
On November 4, 2003, the member at the time for Scarborough—Rouge River presented to the House the ninth report of the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates, which documented how the former privacy commissioner had deliberately misled the committee and provided false and misleading information to it. The member for Scarborough—Rouge River rose later in the sitting on a question of privilege to charge the former commissioner with contempt of Parliament based on the contents of the report. On November 6, the Speaker delivered his ruling and found the matter to be a prima facie question of privilege.
On April 10, 2008, the member for Charlottetown at the time raised a question of privilege alleging that the RCMP deputy commissioner provided false and misleading testimony to the Standing Committee on Public Accounts at a meeting on February 21, 2007. The Standing Committee on Public Accounts reported the matter to the House. and the Speaker found that a prima facie case of contempt had been established.
On February 17, 2011, the member for Scarborough—Guildwood and other members argued that a minister had made statements in a committee that were different from those made in the House or provided to the House in written form. These members argued that the material available showed that contradictory information had been provided. As a result, they argued that this demonstrated that the minister deliberately misled the House and that, as such, a prima facie case of privilege existed.
In a ruling of March 9, the Speaker said:
The crux of the matter, it seems to me, is this: as the committee has reported, when asked who inserted the word “not” in the assessment of the KAIROS funding application, in testimony the minister twice replied that she did not know. In a February 14 statement to the House, while she did not indicate that she knew who inserted the word “not”, the minister addressed this matter by stating that the “not” was inserted at her direction. At the very least, it can be said that this has caused confusion. The minister has acknowledged this, and has characterized her own handling of the matter as “unfortunate”. Yet as is evident from hearing the various interventions that have been made since then, the confusion persists. As the member for Scarborough—Rouge River told the House, this “has confused me. It has confused Parliament. It has confused us in our exercise of holding the government to account, whether it is the Privy Council, whether it is the minister, whether it is public officials; we cannot do our job when there is that type of confusion”.
On February 25, 2014, the then House leader of the official opposition raised a question of privilege regarding statements made in the House by the member for Mississauga—Streetsville. He claimed that:
...the hon. member for Mississauga—Streetsville had deliberately misled the House on February 6, 2014, during debate on Bill C-23, the fair elections act, when he stated that he had witnessed evidence of voter fraud firsthand. He further argued that the matter was not resolved by the statements made by the member for Mississauga—Streetsville on February 24 and 25, where he admitted that, contrary to his original claim, he had not actually witnessed what he had originally claimed to have witnessed. In his view, this was not a simple case of someone misspeaking; he argued rather that it was a case where the member deliberately chose to take something he knew not to be true and present it as eyewitness evidence—something so egregious, it constituted contempt.
In delivering his ruling, on March 3, the speaker at the time cited that:
Speaker Milliken was faced with [this] in February 2002 when the then Minister of National Defence, Art Eggleton, provided contradictory information to the House. In ruling on a question of privilege raised about the contradiction, Speaker Milliken stated on February 1, at page 8581 of Debates:
I am prepared, as I must be, to accept the minister’s assertion that he had no intention to mislead the House.
The same Speaker went on to conclude:
In keeping with that precedent, I am prepared to accord the same courtesy to the member for Mississauga—Streetsville.
At the same time, the fact remains that the House continues to be seized of completely contradictory statements. This is a difficult position in which to leave members, who must be able to depend on the integrity of the information with which they are provided to perform their parliamentary duties.
Accordingly, in keeping with the precedent cited earlier in which Speaker Milliken indicated that the matter merited “...further consideration by an appropriate committee, if only to clear the air”, I am prepared in this case for the same reason to allow the matter to be put to the House.
On November 3, 1978, the member for Northumberland—Durham raised a question of privilege and charged that he had been deliberately misled by a former solicitor general. The member had written in 1973 to the solicitor general, who assured him that, as a matter of policy, the RCMP did not intercept the private mail of Canadians. On November 1, 1978, during testimony before the McDonald commission, the former commissioner of the RCMP stated that they did intercept mail on a very restricted basis and that the practice was not one that had been concealed from ministers. The Speaker ruled on December 6 that there was indeed a prima facie case of contempt.
I will go back to the original question raised by the member for Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot. He said on November 4 that he had been told by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Defence that a decision had not yet been made in answer to a question that he had here on November 21 about the replacement of our CP-140 Aurora aircraft.
The parliamentary secretary stated:
Mr. Speaker, I agree with the hon. member. We need to replace the CP-140 Aurora patrol aircraft. However, we need to replace them with something that will serve the operational capability of the armed forces. No decision has been made yet.
The parliamentary secretary's second answer was even more specific. She said, “Mr. Speaker, I want to be very clear today. No decision has been made.”
A few days later, on November 28, in an answer to questions from the member, the Minister of Public Services and Procurement said:
Mr. Speaker, I thank our colleague for acknowledging the expertise of aerospace workers not only in Quebec, but also in Canada. That is why the decision we will soon be making is an important one....
We know that the next day, November 29, there were multiple media reports that the government was going to be buying the Boeing Poseidon P-8A patrol aircraft.
Global News stated, “sources, who were not authorized to speak publicly on the matter, said that last week”, which was November 23, “cabinet green-lit the purchase of 16 P-8A Poseidon surveillance aircraft to replace the half-century-old CP-140 Auroras.”
It went on to say:
Two of the sources, including a senior government official, said the Treasury Board held a special meeting Tuesday night [November 28] and approved the contract, which a U.S. agency has listed at US$5.9 billion (C$8 billion).
Therefore, the announcement did finally get made officially on November 30 to sole-source the P-8 from Boeing.
This question of privilege does not call into question the replacement of the CP-140 Aurora patrol aircraft or the process of awarding that contract to Boeing. To be clear, Conservatives want to procure equipment for the Royal Canadian Air Force and the Canadian Armed Forces; we just want to do it faster, and we want to make sure we are procuring the kit and equipment our armed forces are asking for.
This question of privilege is with respect to whether the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Defence and the Minister of Public Services and Procurement intentionally misled the House.
Based on the timing of events I just laid out, I support the member for Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot's question of privilege. The answers from both the Minister of Procurement and the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Defence were misleading to the House and the defence industry, and I would suggest that this constitutes a prima facie breach of privilege.
