Bill C-14 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Criminal Code and to make related amendments to other Acts (medical assistance in dying)

This enactment amends the Criminal Code to, among other things,
(a) create exemptions from the offences of culpable homicide, of aiding suicide and of administering a noxious thing, in order to permit medical practitioners and nurse practitioners to provide medical assistance in dying and to permit pharmacists and other persons to assist in the process;
(b) specify the eligibility criteria and the safeguards that must be respected before medical assistance in dying may be provided to a person;
(c) require that medical practitioners and nurse practitioners who receive requests for, and pharmacists who dispense substances in connection with the provision of, medical assist­ance in dying provide information for the purpose of permitting the monitoring of medical assistance in dying, and authorize the Minister of Health to make regulations respecting that information; and
(d) create new offences for failing to comply with the safeguards, for forging or destroying documents related to medical assistance in dying, for failing to provide the required information and for contravening the regulations.
This enactment also makes related amendments to other Acts to ensure that recourse to medical assistance in dying does not result in the loss of a pension under the Pension Act or benefits under the Canadian Forces Members and Veterans Re-establishment and Compensation Act. It amends the Corrections and Conditional Release Act to ensure that no investigation need be conducted under section 19 of that Act in the case of an inmate who receives medical assistance in dying.
This enactment provides for one or more independent reviews relating to requests by mature minors for medical assistance in dying, to advance requests and to requests where mental illness is the sole underlying medical condition.
Lastly, this enactment provides for a parliamentary review of its provisions and of the state of palliative care in Canada to commence at the start of the fifth year following the day on which it receives royal assent.

An Act to Amend the Criminal Code and to make related amendments to other Acts (medical assistance in dying)

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Justice said, in introducing the motion, that she respectfully disagrees with amendments 2(b) and 2(c) because they would remove the criterion of reasonably foreseeable death and undermine the objectives of Bill C-14. As the House knows, the amendments would make sure that the legislation would be consistent with the constitutional parameters of the Carter case, in the words of the Supreme Court. Professor Hogg said that if the bill was amended in this way it would be consistent with the parameters set out in the Carter case, and if it were not the bill would be unconstitutional.

I would like the minister's reaction to the comments of Dr. Douglas Grant, the chair of the Federation of Medical Regulatory Authorities of Canada, who said that the criteria in the unamended Bill C-14, in other words, the “reasonably foreseeable” language the minister would propose to retain would involve language that is “too vague to be understood or applied by the medical profession and too ambiguous to be regulated effectively.”

I would like the minister's comments on that quote.

[Jody Wilson-Raybould, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to acknowledge the hon. colleague's comments on the crucial nature of Bill C-14 and pursuing a national regime for medical assistance in dying in this country, necessarily so in response to the Supreme Court of Canada's direction. I recognize, as stated in my comments, the importance of ensuring that we proceed with caution with respect to medical assistance in dying, recognizing that there is a link, as articulated by my friend, and that we do everything we can to study this particular issue and proceed with caution on the next steps of this debate in this country.

[Jody Wilson-Raybould, Liberal, Minister of Justice]

She said: Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin my comments by acknowledging the depth and quality of the thoughtful work that the other place has undertaken in its review of Bill C-14.

The number of amendments that were presented and thoroughly debated speaks volumes, not only about the complexity of the issue at hand but also about the dedication with which members of the other place sought to improve the legislation.

Bill C-14, as passed by the House of Commons, expressed our policy choice to address medical assistance in dying in a principled and cautious manner. This policy choice was deliberately and carefully crafted. The bill achieves the most appropriate balance between individuals' autonomy in deciding how their death will occur and protection of vulnerable individuals, as well as broader societal interests. These interests include suicide prevention, equal valuation of every person's life, and preventing the normalization of death in response to suffering. Several amendments were made to Bill C-14 in the other place.

The most significant amendment was the deletion of the definition of “grievous and irremediable medical condition”. The effect of this amendment essentially removes the eligibility requirement that “natural death has become reasonably foreseeable”. This amendment appears to have been motivated by a concern that this criterion is unconstitutional because it does not explicitly appear in the Supreme Court Carter decision.

Many legal experts have testified before the Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs in the other place. Some expressed their views that Bill C-14, as initially passed in the House of Commons, would be found unconstitutional if challenged in the courts.

However, other legal experts and professors took the opposite view, that Bill C-14, as adopted in the House of Commons, with the requirement that natural death be reasonably foreseeable, is constitutional. In Carter, the Supreme Court was clear that it is the role of Parliament to craft a complex, regulatory regime with respect to medical assistance in dying and that such a regime would be given a high degree of deference by the courts.

Hon. colleagues, as Minister of Justice and the Attorney General of Canada, I am confident that Bill C-14, as originally drafted and presented in this place, is constitutional. As outlined in an addendum to the legislative background paper that I distributed to all parliamentarians earlier this week, and which I am pleased to table in the House today, the question is whether the complex, regulatory regime found in Bill C-14 is consistent with the charter, not whether it exactly replicates the wording of the Supreme Court in Carter. In the dialogue that this Parliament has with the judiciary, Bill C-14 is our principled, cautious, and deliberate response.

This is a transformational discussion, and a significant first step for our country. It is important to note that Bill C-14 is very different from the former law that was before the court in Carter. Our proposed legislation permits medical assistance in dying for the overwhelming majority of those Canadians who would seek to access it, and it is motivated by broader, new legislative objectives that do not animate the former law.

Bill C-14 is a new law with new features, and an analysis of its constitutionality must reflect this. The Carter ruling alone is not the end of the story, nor is it the end of our national discussion. The conclusion to draw here is that there are diametrically opposed but reasonable points of view about the constitutionality of Bill C-14.

The situation is not unique. It is normal and part of a healthy debate for legal experts to differ on the merits of a particular piece of legislation that has not yet been examined by the courts. However, I would caution that fundamentally altering the delicate balance purposefully struck in Bill C-14 solely because of the existence of these differing views is ill-advised.

As the Supreme Court of Canada stated in Carter, “the risks associated with physician-assisted death can be limited through a carefully designed and monitored system of safeguards”. The government's policy choices, as reflected in Bill C-14, were specifically crafted to protect vulnerable Canadians from these different types of risks.

First is the protection of those who will ask for medical assistance in dying. Bill C-14, as passed by this chamber, would limit eligibility to those whose death has become reasonably foreseeable and for whom the risks can be adequately addressed by the robust safeguards found in Bill C-14. However, if eligibility is drastically expanded to all Canadians who are suffering unbearably, regardless of whether or not their death is reasonably foreseeable, as in the amendments the other place proposes, there are more risks of different types that are much harder to detect.

These risks include the very real possibility that individuals may be motivated to request medical assistance in dying for a whole host of reasons, psychosocial, emotional, or systemic, which are separate from their medical condition but that exacerbate their suffering. People may die unnecessarily or prematurely, when other options for improving their quality of life are available. Cases from other jurisdictions that permit medical assistance in dying support these concerns. We do not believe that this is what Canadians want.

Importantly, while the other place expanded eligibility in the bill, it did not introduce new safeguards for the very circumstances where the most caution is required. The result is that any serious medical condition, whether it be a soldier with post-traumatic stress disorder, a young person who suffered a spinal cord injury in an accident, or a survivor whose mind is haunted by memories of sexual abuse, could result in eligibility for medical assistance in dying. I raise these examples from other jurisdictions not to be sensational, but to highlight the real risks at play.

However, beyond the risks for those who make a request for medical assistance in dying, making it available to all Canadians who are suffering would also have repercussions at a much broader level. It would alter our societal values and send the wrong message to our most vulnerable Canadians who may never even request assistance. These are risks for which there are no obvious safeguards.

Broadening eligibility for medical assistance in dying to situations where death is not reasonably foreseeable would contribute to negative perceptions about the quality and dignity of life of people with disabilities. Organizations like the Canadian Association for Community Living and the Council of Canadians with Disabilities, among other disability rights organizations, have cautioned us about the potential devaluation of the lives of Canadians with disabilities that broader eligibility criteria would attract. They tell us that such devaluation happens when the law presumes that life with a disability could be so unbearable that death should be a state-sanctioned option.

Broad eligibility criteria could also send the wrong message that society feels it is appropriate to address suffering in life by choosing death. This message may encourage some who are in crisis and already considering suicide to act, even privately and without assistance. Procedural safeguards would not help these individuals. The relationship between medical assistance in dying and suicide has not been sufficiently studied and we must have more information about this complex situation before we can decide what is right for Canada. I want to acknowledge the thorough and emotional discussion in the other place on this incredibly important issue.

We recognize the important amendments to Bill C-14 adopted by the other place, namely that a person signing on behalf of the patient requesting assistance cannot know or believe that they will benefit from the patient's death. This is indeed a thoughtful amendment that improves the bill and a valuable safeguard that we are pleased to support. Ensuring that a patient is aware of all means available to relieve their suffering, including palliative care, is of course important.

A further amendment concerning the monitoring system introduces mandatory language requiring the Minister of Health to make regulations and guidelines. The government appreciates the other place's concern that regulations to support the monitoring regime be put in place. Canadians want to know that this system will be well monitored and we support this well-crafted amendment from the other place.

Further, there was an amendment requiring that the issues to be studied in the bill, which are mature minors, advance directives, and requests where the sole underlying condition is mental illness, be completed in two years. This amendment from the other place reflects the concern that Canadians have for these incredibly complex issues, and the desire for this government to be held to account on each of them, and for that reason it is supported.

I would also like to acknowledge the substantive work of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights, whose thoughtful study of the bill resulted in 16 amendments from all parties being adopted.

I would urge all members of the House to consider the pressing need for a federal legislative framework governing medical assistance in dying. With no such regime in place at this time, with the force and clarity of the criminal law, all Canadians face significant uncertainty.

It is crucial to keep in mind that Bill C-14 was carefully and deliberately crafted as a cohesive and balanced regime. The balance sought in Bill C-14 would be upset by the broadening of eligibility criteria to individuals who are not approaching death without the corresponding safeguards for these specific cases.

Since forming government, we have spent countless hours consulting with Canadians and stakeholders, carefully considering all of the evidence and diverse perspectives on this incredibly challenging issue. We are confident in the policy choices expressed in Bill C-14. The legislation represents the right approach for Canada at this important time in our country's history. I encourage all members of the House to support the government's motion, which respects the other place's contribution to this important debate and maintains the most appropriate balance for all Canadians.

I am pleased to table, in both official languages, a document entitled, “Legislative Background: Medical Assistance in Dying (Bill C-14)—Addendum”.

Criminal Code

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the member's arguments with respect to the urgency of this issue. However, he may be aware, and I think should be, that provincial guidelines have already been proposed with respect to this, and provinces are bringing in a framework to deal with this at the provincial level.

That does not negate the possible arguments for or against having a federal framework, but I think it is important to acknowledge, in the context of a claim to the alleged urgency of this issue, what the reality is at the provincial level, because if we look at the various guidelines, it actually seems fairly clear to me that a number of provinces have done a much better job of protecting the vulnerable than the framework the federal government has put in place.

I have raised concerns repeatedly in this House about the lack of protection for the vulnerable in this legislation. It is important that we separate out two different issues. There is the issue of the eligibility criteria, which has been fairly contentious in terms of whether it should be terminal, whether it should simply repeat the language of the Supreme Court, or whether it should use other types of language, as the government does in the somewhat ambiguous term of death being “reasonably foreseeable”, but then there is the separate question with respect to safeguards.

I think, especially in this legislation, whatever Canadians and members of this House think of the provisions in terms of eligibility criteria, that there is an absence of safeguards. If we look at what the provinces have put in place, they have, in many cases, done a much better job of providing important safeguards.

One of the models I would like to draw to the attention of members of the House is the law in place in Manitoba. The law put in place there has actually been praised. It was welcomed as a welcome development, even by someone involved in assisting people accessing assistance in dying, with an understanding of the real benefits of this law.

The system that was set up in Manitoba was that it allowed individuals seeking assistance in dying, euthanasia, or physician-assisted suicide, whatever we want to call it, to have their cases reviewed by government lawyers. It did not require judicial review, which has many advantages but is something that some members have claimed is unduly onerous. It instead created a procedure by which government lawyers would review the eligibility criteria and would be able to, in the context of their legal expertise and knowledge, rule on whether the person in fact met the criteria.

The government's legislation contains absolutely no mechanism for advance legal review by a competent authority, and we proposed an amendment to that effect in hopes of seeing the government bring it in. Unfortunately, it would not agree to that.

I think the Manitoba law strikes a good compromise. It does not require judicial review, but it does have some kind of apparatus whereby we have review by competent legal authority. Certainly in the case of Manitoba, the vulnerable in Manitoba are better off under the provisions of the existing standards in Manitoba than they would be under federal legislation.

Let us talk about some of the other provinces. In general, the provinces I was able to look at use language around attending physicians. They have protections in terms of conscience, but they are rooted in this idea of an attending physician being in some way involved in the process.

The federal legislation, Bill C-14, makes no reference to attending physicians. It does not require the involvement of the attending physician at all. It simply says that any two physicians can sign off. We could have two physicians in the country who see a particular case one way, with every other physician in the country seeing the case a completely different way, and that person would still be able to access euthanasia or assisted suicide.

In their wisdom, most of the provinces, at least most of the ones I have had a chance to look at, have guidelines that deal specifically with some kind of carved-out role for an attending physician. I would argue that involving, in the guidelines, specifically the attending physician provides significantly greater safeguards than we would have otherwise.

This speaks very much to the motion the government House leader put forward, because he is claiming that there is some urgency to passing this legislation on the basis of the protection of the vulnerable. However, if we look at the rules that are in place in the various provinces, it is very clear that they may, so far, in terms of the interim guidelines they have put in place since June 6, have a somewhat more liberal interpretation of the eligibility criteria, but on the issue of safeguards, on the issue of the protection of the vulnerable, they are actually doing a much better job.

I have stated before concerns about the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario's policy with respect to conscience. It is evident in its interim policies that it has introduced, as well, a requirement for effective referral, requiring someone to be complicit or to refer for euthanasia, which is gravely concerning to physicians as well as to many other people within the province of Ontario. However, that would not change with the federal legislation, because the legislation would not provide the necessary protections for conscience.

In other provinces, though, we see a better job in terms of understanding processes that can be put in place which protect the vulnerable and also protect conscience. Therefore, generally speaking, they make reference to this issue of having the attending physician involved, but they do not specifically require the participation or an effective referral. In my home province of Alberta, there has been a system constructed whereby there is a sort of central hub where people would go directly, or where someone might be pointed, in order to have their situation addressed or adjudicated in some way.

These systems prevent what I think is one of the very pernicious aspects of Bill C-14, which is the possibility of doctor shopping. It is where a person, or even a member of their family, could shop the case around, and 10 or 20 different doctors could say absolutely not because the person does not meet the ambiguous criteria. It is somewhat ambiguous under Carter, but no less ambiguous under the provisions of the new government legislation.

What is important in this debate is that people have raised the spectre of a legislative vacuum, in that there will be no legislation, no rules in place whatsoever. Well, June 6 has come and gone, and provinces were ready to respond in a way and to an extent that the federal government simply was not. The government proposed the legislation fairly late. It did not seek to get our buy-in on the substance of the legislation. Instead, the government pushed this forward at a late stage and said that we have to pass it now because it is urgent.

Well, provinces have done a much better job here. Now June 6 has come and gone, and we are not in a vacuum. Provinces have developed standards, policies, and procedures, some of which may be better than others; some of which I may agree with more or less. However, if we look at the substance of these, I think we see that there is not at all a legislative vacuum. In fact, the provinces have in some cases been more effective.

The central issue of doctor shopping, the issue of whether or not someone meets the criteria, needs to be adjudicated. It needs to be adjudicated, hopefully once, and may be subject to appeal or review by someone else. However, there needs to be one person or a group of people who have the expertise, legally and medically, who make the assessment, and then that decision is made.

This fearmongering from the government about the absence of a law or a vacuum, I think really misses the point. We have these bodies, colleges of physicians and surgeons at the provincial level, that have the competency and have come up with guidelines, that have recognized, unlike the government, the concerns about doctor shopping that we have raised repeatedly in the House. They have recognized the problems with conscience and said they could try to construct, using their expertise and authority at the provincial level, a system that works better and that provides real protections for the vulnerable.

Whenever we think about the eligibility criteria, and in some cases the interpretation of the eligibility criteria is different at the provincial level, let us provide the safeguards.

One thing I want to briefly mention is that the federal legislation provides immunity from prosecution for someone who has a “reasonable but mistaken belief” that the standards have been met. Therefore, someone could take the life of a person who did not meet the criteria and still avoid prosecution. That is not a protection for the vulnerable. However, in the absence of the legislation, we do not have that exemption. The vulnerable are better protected because there is not an exemption for those who take life without the consent of the patient and without the proper criteria being met.

In looking at the reality of what is in place at the provincial level, it is not correct at all to talk about a legislative vacuum. Therefore, the motion does not have the urgency that is claimed.

[Dominic LeBlanc, Liberal, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister of Fisheries]

Mr. Speaker, I wish to state that the completion of Bill C-14 is an urgent matter because a legislative framework is needed to protect our most vulnerable in society and establish clear and consistent practices for medical professionals, while providing access to assisted dying pursuant to the Supreme Court of Canada ruling.

Therefore, pursuant to Standing Order 53, I move:

That, notwithstanding any Standing or special Order or usual practice of the House, when Orders of the Day are called later this day, a Minister of the Crown be authorized to move, without notice, a motion relating to Senate amendments to Bill C-14, An Act to amend the Criminal Code and to make related amendments to other Acts (medical assistance in dying).

Message from the Senate

[Andrew Leslie, Liberal, Orléans, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. Should you consult with the other parties, I believe you will find unanimous consent that notwithstanding any standing or special order or usual practice of the House, when orders of the day are called later this day, a minister of the Crown be authorized to move without notice a motion relating to Senate amendments to Bill C-14, an act to amend the Criminal Code and to make related amendments to other acts (medical assistance in dying).

[The Speaker, Geoff Regan]

I have the honour to inform the House that a message has been received from the Senate informing this House that the Senate has passed Bill C-14, An Act to amend the Criminal Code and to make related amendments to other Acts (medical assistance in dying), with amendments to which the concurrence of this House is desired. Copies of the amendments are available at the table.

Opposition Motion—Internal trade

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank all my colleagues for this important debate. I would like to acknowledge my colleague from British Columbia for the work he has done on freeing wine across Canada. I understand now his campaign to free beer is also very popular among Canadians. It is something we should continue moving forward on as we start to liberate the Canadian economy from provincial trade barriers.

I want to talk about bales. No, this is not a Liberal speech that is irrelevant to the topic. This is actually a very relevant example of what happens with interprovincial trade barriers and regulations.

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Barrie—Innisfil. He has a very important topic he wants to talk about also.

One might ask what hay bales have to do with interprovincial trade barriers. Actually, this is a very real story. In August 2003, we had a horrible frost on my farm. It took out my crop. It cost me and many of my neighbours in the area of millions of dollars. For myself alone, it cost me about a quarter of a million dollars in one night.

When a farmer has an established crop and that happens, he looks at what he can do to salvage that income. We worked with our local agriculture officials and they realized that canola, for example, made great horse feed. We did everything right and we baled that crop. We salvaged it. Then we went on the Internet, Western Producer, and places like that and we sold that crop. We sold it into Alberta. It worked out great. The horse guys in Alberta were happy. We were happy. Everything was happy-go-lucky. We got everything baled and ready to ship the crop into Alberta. The trucks hit the border, and who would have known that the regulations for a trailer in Alberta when hauling hay are different? It required a different coloured sign and different symbols on the wide load signs, and different permits.

Farmers look at this and ask, “What are you talking about? If it's safe to haul in Saskatchewan why can't it be safe to haul in Alberta, or be funded?” A neighbour gets a fine, then another neighbour gets a fine. All of a sudden the guys from Alberta are saying it is not worth the hassle to buy the hay from Saskatchewan, even though they really need it because of the drought. However, because of the interprovincial trade barriers, the regulations that were put in place, it made that move impossible to happen.

That is just one example of how a barrier like this really restricts the flow of goods across our country. It is a very real example of what costs people thousands and thousands of dollars for no reason at all. The roads were not made any safer by having different regulations. They were not improved. There was no issue other than the fact that Alberta wanted to do it one way, and Saskatchewan's NDP government at the time wanted to do it another way.

It went the other way also, when we had stuff coming back from Alberta to Saskatchewan, we had to get a permit. The Saskatchewan NDP government at the time said it did not want to get rid of the permits because they were a good cash cow. We have to remember that back at that time all our kids were moving to Alberta, so the NDP was looking for any type of taxation it could get. This was one way to do it.

When we look at that we realize that is a direct impact on what can happen when we have improper trade regulations.

I sit on the trade committee. I was actually the former chair of the trade committee. I always find it really interesting when we bring in different producers from around Canada to talk about trade. They say we need trade, that it is very important. When we ask about internal trade they say it is actually easier for them to sell their stuff in Washington than to take it out of B.C. and sell it in Alberta.

We have to scratch our heads and ask if this make sense. What is the logic behind that? What are we really trying to accomplish as a country, as a confederation, when it is easier to export our goods than to sell them next door in our own country? Those things need to be eliminated. The Comeau case really provides the government with a unique opportunity to be involved in helping eliminate barriers.

We have heard speeches here in the House today talking about how this case is probably going to go to the Supreme Court and be ruled upon by the Supreme Court. The provinces should be very worried about that. They should be so worried they might want to negotiate something beforehand to put some stability in place, so that it is done in such a way that the barriers are actually removed.

The federal government has a chance to show tremendous leadership on this file if it so chooses. Keep in mind, I am also on the trade committee that has been consulting and delaying TPP passage. Let us face it, the Liberals are going to let Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump actually write our foreign trade policy. If the Liberals would not write their own foreign trade policy, why would they write their policy here in Canada? They will just vacate that to provinces and accept whatever comes out of it. That way they are not responsible. Why show leadership? They are not used to doing that.

Another example of silliness in this market, I think, is that all of us here in Ottawa sneak across to Quebec and go to Costco. I can buy beef there, bread, wine, and beer. I can buy beer, but I better not bring it back to Ontario where I live because then I would be breaking the law. I would be like Al Capone. However, that beer in Quebec is the exact same beer that is in Ontario. It is just as safe, brewed probably in the same factory, but yet for some reason we have a barrier to prevent that from happening. It does not make sense. Canadians cannot figure that one out. The reality is, they are just ignoring it and doing it anyway.

A colleague from the NDP just stated the exact same thing. We have already seen wine shipments going across Canada, breaking these barriers as we speak. In reality, Canadians are already doing what the market should be allowed to do, and that is trade interprovincially, free.

We look at legislation, and the Liberals say we should not use litigation to solve this; we should actually negotiate and wait until negotiations move forward. Like I said previously, we could use this court case to enhance our argument in that process if we want to go through a consulting process, but litigation is a valid form for settling this. When we are breaking somebody's constitutional right, that is what the courts are there to do, whether we like it or not.

We have a perfect example of where that has happened here, right in front of us in the Senate today. Bill C-14 is because of litigation. It is because the court did not like the way the law was written. I do not agree with the court. I do not necessarily like it, but litigation was the process that was used that sent it back to this House to rewrite the law. It is valid. In fact, the government is doing it through C-14 as we speak. To say that we should not do it that way just does not make sense. It is hypocritical. It is already happening.

The reality is, the courts are there to actually protect the rights of Canadians, so in this scenario, Canadians feel that they should be able to trade freely among the provinces. I should be able to go to B.C. and sell some stuff, and the member from Kelowna should be able to come back to Prince Albert and sell his goods. As long as they meet the safety requirements, as long as they are safe, where is the issue? Why do we have these barriers?

If we looked at them more closely, I think we would see there is a good reason to get rid of them, and I will give credit to the western provinces. They actually showed some leadership on this. The New West Partnership, Premier Wall, showed lots of leadership in trying to identify what these barriers are and remove them.

Labour mobility, getting rid of the situation that we had with trucks hauling hay across the border. These things need to be eliminated, and I want to congratulate the provinces that have taken this seriously because it just happens that those are the provinces that are doing very well in this confederation. Saskatchewan has a growing, booming economy, regardless of what is happening in the oil and gas sector, what is happening everywhere else. It is still holding its own.

If we want to do economic stimulus, if we want to boost this economy without spending a dime, let us deal with these. This is one thing the Liberals could do and it would not cost them a dime, but the impact across this country would be spread and felt immediately.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to the motion moved by my colleague, the member for Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola. This motion has been affectionately dubbed “free the beer”.

As a new member of Parliament, I must say that it is truly motivating to listen to an experienced parliamentarian like the member for Abbotsford.

This member just shared his vast experience as a minister in the previous government. His words were very inspiring, as was his belief in the importance of eliminating trade barriers.

He is an inspiration to us, and he should also serve as an inspiration to the new government, which should be taking advantage of the experience this member gained by negotiating numerous free trade agreements with other countries. These negotiations were successfully carried out by our colleague from Abbotsford, and I applaud him for that. By way of tribute, I would say:

He was fast and efficient.

I will admit that using beer as the foundation of a motion on the liberalization of internal trade is a little unexpected.

However, for the benefit of those who have been tuning in since the start of the day and who have heard about the Comeau case, but who do not really know what we are talking about right now in the House, I would like to recap because I think it can be useful to look at why the motion came to be and explain how we got to where we are.

This is about a citizen of New Brunswick, Gérard Comeau, and his fight for justice, which highlighted how difficult it is for Canadians to trade freely within our country's borders. Mr. Comeau singlehandedly broke down the barriers to internal trade.

I found a good summary of Mr. Comeau's story in an editorial. The title of the publication made me smile: it is called “Bières et plaisirs”, or “Beer and other pleasures”.

Even so, it is a very serious editorial. It recounts Mr. Comeau's story, which I will now share with the House of Commons and all of the Canadians who are tuned in.

Gérard Comeau was arrested in October 2012 in possession of 14 cases of beer and three bottles of liquor. He had just done some shopping on the Quebec side of the border. In October 2012, Gérard Comeau committed an illegal act: purchasing a quantity of alcohol over the authorized limit in another province, not in a licensed establishment.

According to the Government of New Brunswick and other Canadian governments, alcohol is under provincial jurisdiction.

Here is more from the editorial in “Bières et plaisirs”:

All residents of New Brunswick buy their alcohol in provincially owned licensed establishments: outlets of the New Brunswick Liquor Corporation, also known as the liquor commission.

That is the law as enacted in 1928, a year after the commission was created. Laws governing the sale of alcohol were enacted around that time across Canada. The goal was to protect each province's market....Many New Brunswickers prefer to buy their alcohol in Quebec, where prices are much lower. The Province of New Brunswick sometimes applies high mark-ups to wine, beer, and spirits sold in its stores.

The article goes on to say:

After receiving a guilty verdict, Gérard Comeau decided to take his case to the New Brunswick provincial court. His argument was simple: the Fathers of Confederation passed a law that stipulates that the provinces of Canada must allow interprovincial free trade, a law that was written long before all of Canada's post-prohibition laws, and one that remains in effect all across Canada....The court found in favour of Gérard Comeau. The judge ruled that the provincial law was unconstitutional. Gérard Comeau was found not guilty.

Our motion today is very clear. It recognizes one of the key elements of the vision of Canada's founding fathers:

That the House: (a) recognize that it is a constitutional right for Canadians to trade with Canadians; (b) re-affirm that the Fathers of Confederation expressed this constitutional right in Section 121 of the Constitution Act, 1867 which reads: “All Articles of the Growth, Produce, or Manufacture of any one of the Provinces shall, from and after the Union, be admitted free into each of the other Provinces”...

The wording is very clear.

I think that the article in Bières et plaisirs is a good summary of the Comeau case, but also many other cases involving countless Canadians who travel across our country and would like to take advantage of a free market here at home. It took a New Brunswick man standing up for his rights to remind us, the elected representatives of this great country, that we have an important role to play to preserve the spirit of our Constitution.

We are talking about beer here, but the Fathers of Confederation were clear:

121. All Articles of the Growth, Produce, or Manufacture of any one of the Provinces shall, from and after the Union, be admitted free into each of the other Provinces.

It is simple. I am sure that most Canadians did not even know that some provinces put up so many barriers that hinder interprovincial trade. I can understand them, because we form a single great country made up of extremely dynamic provinces and territories. We all want to improve the economy of our regions, and it is rather amazing to realize here that Canadians do not always have the right to do business with one another as they would like.

The Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development said this morning in the House that he prefers that any disputes be settled by negotiations between the provinces. Despite years of negotiations, it seems that the agreement the minister would like to negotiate is not possible. On this side of the House, we believe that this government does not have the leadership required to arrive at such an agreement. It is all well and good to say that the government wants to promote trade and reach an agreement with the provinces. However, at the first opportunity this government does the opposite.

Take the example of Bill C-10, which was supposed to meet Quebec's and Manitoba's expectations. By invoking closure, the government rammed through a bill that forces the legal action against Air Canada to be dropped. Lo and behold, two provinces asked us not to act too quickly because they cannot conclude their agreement as negotiated if the threat of court action, which is on their side, disappears. The government ignored the provinces' requests.

Another example is Bill C-14. The Quebec Minister of Health said that Bill C-14 was inadequate. Even so, the Liberals went ahead and imposed a gag order so that parliamentarians could not express their views.

That does not bode well for the federal-provincial negotiations under this government. Since it took office, the Liberal government has shown leadership and interest in only two things: running an ever-growing deficit and increasing the tax burden on small businesses. The Liberals have done a good job on those things.

Today, the Liberal government has a unique opportunity to do something tangible to help small businesses and, once again, it is turning its back on them by relying on a negotiation process with an unknown timeline. We are skeptical about the results of that. The second part of my colleague's motion is clear. It states:

[That the House:] (c) recognize that the recent Comeau decision in New Brunswick creates a unique opportunity to seek constitutional clarity on Section 121 from the Supreme Court of Canada; and that therefore, the House call on the government to refer the Comeau decision and its evidence to the Supreme Court for constitutional clarification of Section 121.

That would finally make it possible to set clear guidelines for trade between the provinces.

Creating more free trade in Canada is not a partisan issue. The issue here is what is fair. Canadian businesses do not want their government to tell them with whom they can and cannot do business. Businesses should be able to sell their products across Canada, and consumers should have more choices on the market.

In my member's statement today, I spoke about young entrepreneurs in Quebec. Three thousand young entrepreneurs in Quebec will make deals and work hard to sell their products and share their passions. Three thousand of them will open their own small business. Imagine telling them that they cannot do business with their neighbour because they are not on the same street. They are in the same city, same province, and even same country. These are the kinds of barriers we want to eliminate. We want to eliminate them to enable small and medium-sized businesses to do business, create wealth, and drive our economy.

I will wrap up quickly and say that this was the will of the Fathers of Confederation. The government has a unique opportunity to take action. I hope it will seize this opportunity to do away with empty rhetoric and to finally take real action for small businesses in Canada. For all these reasons, I urge the government to join me in supporting this motion to free the beer.

Physician-Assisted Dying

[Jody Wilson-Raybould, Liberal, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada]

Mr. Speaker, I completely reject the premise of the questions that have been proposed. All of the discussions and the considerations by the Court of Appeal in Alberta and others were considering personal exemptions with respect to medical assistance in dying. They were not considering Bill C-14.

The Supreme Court of Canada rendered its decision in Carter. We are complying with the Carter decision in doing our jobs and putting in place a complex framework for medical assistance in dying in this country. The question is whether this bill is constitutional, and I submit that it is.

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Justice insisted Bill C-14 complied with the Carter decision, but courts in Alberta and Ontario disagree. She argued the bill was constitutional, but then Canada's leading expert on constitutional law said that was not so. Now the minister is changing her tune again, saying the bill does not have to comply with the Supreme Court of Canada ruling, forgetting, it seems, that the case was based on section 7 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Why is the minister trying to ram through a law that, according to the Supreme Court of Canada decision, would take away Canadians' charter rights?

[Jody Wilson-Raybould, Liberal, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada]

Mr. Speaker, I was pleased to release an addendum to the explanatory paper that we released previously with respect to Bill C-14, to provide additional information to parliamentarians who are considering this important piece of legislation. In considering very carefully the Carter decision, Bill C-14 would comply with the Carter decision. The Carter decision stated that a complete prohibition on medical assistance in dying is unconstitutional, and the court left it up to Parliament to put in place medical assistance in dying in this country. That is exactly what we would do in this legislation.

[Brigitte Sansoucy, NDP, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the government is clearly all over the map with its bill on medical assistance in dying.

After assuring us that Bill C-14 complied with the Supreme Court's decision, the Minister of Justice is now telling us that her bill does not need to comply with the decision and that it only needs to comply with the charter. However, the Supreme Court based its decision on the charter.

Why this new take? Did the government finally realize that its bill does not comply with Carter or with the charter?

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

I want to talk to you about why I think this motion is important and why I think the members of the committee should support it.

Let me start by going back to what the Speaker indicated in his ruling that there was a prima facie case of privilege. When he made his ruling in April he was responding to a matter of privilege that had been raised on April 14 in response to the leak of the story on April 12 to Laura Stone at The Globe and Mail. The Speaker made a point of indicating that the issue of “provenance”—that's the term he used—meaning where the leak came from, finding the source of the leak, ought to be the focus of our investigation, not what we are now focusing upon.

About halfway through his remarks he said, dealing with an earlier case, that “no doubt existed as to the provenance of the leak”, referring to a previous leak that had occurred back in 2010. He's emphasizing that the source of the leak is of key importance. Looking back at previous Speakers' rulings, I find that in dealing with a similar situation back in 2001, Speaker Milliken also emphasized the importance of seeking out the provenance, the source, of the leak. Once again, this was at that time a piece of legislation, Bill C-36, the anti-terrorism act.

Mr. Chair, you were in the House when that arose, as I was.

It was a matter of equal importance from the point of view of Canadians at that time to the stature that Bill C-14 has in the public consciousness today. Some of the content was leaked. The member for Winnipeg—Transcona, at that time it would have been Bill Blaikie, argued that the Speaker ought to investigate.

The Speaker, while he appreciated this input, corrected Mr. Blaikie in the following words:

The hon. member for Winnipeg—Transcona in his remarks tried to assist the Chair by suggesting that it was for the Chair to investigate the matter and come up with the name of the culprit and so on. I respect his opinion of course in all matters, but in this matter I think his view is perhaps wrong. There is a body that is well equipped to commit acts of inquisition, and that is the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs.... Accordingly, in my view this is a matter which ought to be sent to the committee.

Of course, he then went on to rule that a prima facie case of privilege having been found, the matter should be further investigated by the procedure and House affairs committee, by this committee.

The point to be emphasized is there is a body that is ideally suited—I wish he had not used the phrase “commit active inquisition” because, clearly, our goal is not to be the Spanish Inquisition—to inquire, to engage in matters that require further inquiry.

We are the body that does inquiries. Doing inquiries for the purpose of discovering the source of leaks is what we do when leaks of legislation have occurred. To further emphasize how important this was, I am once again turning back to Bill C-36. I wonder if I could also draw the attention of members of this committee to the words spoken by Don Boudria, who at the time was the Liberal House leader. To be clear, the Liberals were in government, he was the House leader, legislation of his government had been leaked out.

He made the following comment prior to the Speaker making his ruling. He said, with respect to Bill C-36, that:

On Saturday I saw extracts from the bill in the media. They were not all factually correct but enough of them were that it caused me to be as concerned as the hon. member

—he's referring to some other member who'd raised the matter—

when raising this question in the House. I cannot say much more other than to apologize on behalf of whoever is guilty of this. I use the word guilty because that is what comes to mind, given the respect that I have for this institution. Anyone who breaches that respect is guilty of an offence in my book. The problem is that we do not know who it is.

So here we have the government House leader, who has just seen a leak occur on his watch, making it very clear that he thinks it's appropriate to determine the identity of the individual.

That's the first point to be made. It is our job to find the individual. It is our job to find the individual because the privileges of the House have been breached. It is not part of that investigation to try to predetermine whether or not the leak was deliberate or unintentional. I have my own views on that subject. I've shared them with the committee in the past. This looks far too much like the kind of information that I would have included in a deliberate leak had I been in the business of deliberately leaking information. That is to say, it very neatly shaped the story that came out of the media. The focus was on the bill not going far enough as opposed to the bill going too far. That is the kind of thing one does when one is trying to engage in leaking for the purpose of redirecting conversation and shaping public discourse.

That being said, that does not, as yet, point us in any particular direction. We do know, based on the testimony we heard from one witness, the Minister of Justice, that she has firmly and absolutely.... In response to my question, when I simply asked her, “Are you the source of the leak?”, she said no. We take her at her word. I take her at her word; I thought the rest of her testimony actually indicated very clearly.... I should be careful what I say here; it indicated to me, in a way that satisfied me, in my subjective judgment.... That's a bit different from being clear, but it was subjectively satisfying to me that she was not the source of the leak.

Indeed, I think her willingness to appear here, at a time when she really is arguably the busiest person in Canada, indicated to me that she was anxious to clear her name and make a point—i.e., that whoever else is the source of this, I am not, and I don't have information as to who is; that is to say, it was not leaked by somebody else with my sign-off, active or passive.

I accept that, but that doesn't mean that the acceptance, active or passive, of other individuals was not involved. Indeed, that is the likeliest scenario. I think when we see a reluctance to allow anybody else to come forward, or indeed to explore which individuals might be responsible, be they officials or be they elected people, it indicates a desire to prevent the truth from being found.

Why would that be, Mr. Chair? Most obviously—indeed, it's the only plausible explanation I can have—it was a deliberate leak. Moreover, a search for the truth revealed that it was not a leak that can be pinned on some low-level individual. No low-level individual can be thrown under the bus and thereby end the story. When we can't find some enlisted soldier to use as a sacrificial lamb when one of the generals is implicated, we start stonewalling. That's what this looks like to me.

Now, I want to come back to a point that Mr. Chan had been making. Mr. Chan said that, well, the text of the bill was not actually leaked, that what we had instead was negative information, information about what wasn't in the bill. Therefore, previous rulings where we talk about the text ought not to be treated as being as important.

Just to be clear about this, I'm returning now to a ruling that Speaker Milliken gave on October 4, 2010. If one turns to page 4711 of the House of Commons Debates—I know we all have our copies with us right now—you'll be able to read Speaker Milliken having said: “It is indisputable that it is a well-established practice and accepted convention that this House has the right of first access to the text of bills that it will consider”.

I think Mr. Chan is arguing that this convention should be understood very narrowly. As long as I don't use the words in the text when I'm making my leak, if I am, say, a minister of the crown or a communications person for one of the ministers of the crown, then no real breach has occurred because under this narrow and technical construction, the actual text is still seen first in the House. If I use words that are somewhat different or if I don't have them in the correct order, as they were in the bill, then I haven't leaked the text of the bill.

This narrow and technical construction, Mr. Chairman, of course is incorrect. The law can sometimes be interpreted narrowly and technically. That is not the interpretive doctrine that the Supreme Court currently, typically, uses, either for constitutional or ordinary textual interpretation, but it has been a respectable doctrine of interpretation in the past, in certain situations where the overbroad reading of the statute could result in an act of injustice.

I'm going to loop back here for a second, so you can see the point of the distinction I'm driving at. In one famous case from the 18th century that is cited in Blackstone, Parliament passed a law indicating that the death penalty was to be applied for any rustling or theft of cattle.

In the language of the 18th century—the English language evolved, of course, as did the French language and other languages—the word “cattle” sometimes was taken in the sense that we would use it today to mean cows, bovines, but “cattle” was also meant sometimes as a term for all livestock. Faced with the situation of an individual who had stolen or poached some other animal—I think sheep, but I'm not sure—the court chose to give a narrow and technical construction to the word “cattle” and said it interpreted the word “cattle” as narrowly as it could, to mean only cows. This was a sheep. This individual would not hang.

I'm not sure what happened to that individual. They probably got transported to Australia or something lesser, but nonetheless it was perhaps not desirable.

Then Parliament passed a new law saying in this act, the word “cattle” meant all livestock, thereby making it clear that they wanted people who poached anything to be hanged.

That general practice of using narrow and technical construction for criminal law, although it has been eroded to some degree in recent decades, remains a way of dealing with situations where the law could wind up causing acts of injustice were it interpreted by using the opposite practice, which is known sometimes as “large and liberal” construction—“construction” means “interpretation”, by the way. The term the Supreme Court likes to use, “purposive” construction, that is to say we interpret this, whatever the words are, to bring fulfillment to the action that was intended.

That's the law. We're dealing here with a convention or practice. There is no such thing as a narrow construction of a convention or practice. It's all about intention. There is no looking at the letter of a convention and ignoring its spirit. It is all spirit. And interpreting the spirit of the law, or a practice or convention, inevitably means giving it a broad construction.

This gets expressed in a number of ways in House of Commons debates, particularly in rulings of the Speaker. The Speaker points out, for example, that you cannot do by the back door that which you cannot do by the front door. In the same way, if I want to address a question to the Prime Minister, I have to refer to him as “the Prime Minister”, not as “Prime Minister Trudeau” or “Mr. Trudeau”. I can call him “my honourable colleague”, “the right honourable gentleman”, and so on, as long as I don't use his name. That's the direct rule. But I can't get around it. I can't enter through the back door by saying, “Today's Globe and Mail says that Prime Minister Trudeau...”, saying that I'm quoting somebody else, so it's not me; it's them. I've tried to come through the back door when the front door was shut. I have tried to find a way of interpreting a practice narrowly, when it ought to be interpreted broadly.

All right. So now you can see the point I'm getting at. We have a practice, a convention, relating to the text not being leaked. It is a well-established practice. It applies to words that don't actually contain chunks of the text, but that have the same effect. I wanted to make that point very clearly, but I would actually go further. In regard to this talk of negative versus positive information coming out, unless the entire text of the relevant sections of Bill C-14 had been released to Laura Stone, it would have been impossible to summarize that which was being left out of the legislation, if you follow. This is all about, “Here's what the government won't be doing. Here's why people who feel very strongly that the legislation should go further ought to be upset. Here's why people who feel the legislation ought not go as far as the parliamentary committee had recommended ought to feel that the government is responding to their concerns”, which after all, is the entire communications exercise of the leak.

That can only be accomplished by indicating that which was absent from the bill. As I pointed out to the minister when she was here—and she made the same point about only negative information being contained—that actually was a greater disclosure of information. I can know only part of the government's plans and leak that positive information about what's in the bill. I could be someone who was only privy to one part of the legislation. But in order to say this or that is actually absent from the bill, I must be familiar with the entire bill, the whole of the bill.

I would make the suggestion to you that only relatively senior individuals in the government, be they people who are actually elected officials or people who serve those officials in a staff capacity, would have had access to all of this information. We haven't ascertained who those people are. It is not an infinite list. It is a finite list. It is a list the government could provide us with if we passed this motion. This is information the government would have to provide us with. And that, I suspect, is the real reason—although one should never attribute motives in this business—that the Liberal members of this committee have been instructed to try to ensure that this motion does not pass. Their goal is, of course, to make sure that the “guilty” parties—to use the term that Don Boudria, Liberal House leader, used 15 years ago—are not found.

That, of course, leaves them at liberty to do the same darned thing all over again. If the approach is going to be that when these matters come before this committee, this committee then kills them quietly, then this committee effectively ensures that contempt of Parliament can happen, and those who engage in that contempt get away scot-free.

Once that pattern has been established, once it is clear that there is no punishment for acting in contempt of Parliament in this particular manner, then they can do it all over again the next time it serves their communications goals to act in contempt of Parliament and release information in this manner or in some similar manner. That's a very worrying thing.

Mr. Chair, I now want to turn to the question of whether this was a deliberate versus an accidental leak. As you know, I've already editorialized to some degree on this. I thought I would explore in a bit more detail why this is important, and the point I'm about to make emphasizes the importance of passing this motion.

I've pointed out that the very fact that the Liberals would like to shut this down suggests that it's someone higher up. It also suggests deliberate intent. After all, if it was an accident, we would be able to determine what the accident was and we could ensure that hole was plugged. Someone could say, “Mea culpa, I'm upset”.

They might say something similar to what Don Boudria said. Let me go back and give you a bit more of what Don Boudria said in 2001, because it is striking. He admits that he is not in complete control of what's going on and is frustrated by that fact. So on October 15, 2001 Don Boudria said, and I quote:

Last Friday afternoon I received a copy of Bill C-36. As is my role as Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, I do what is known as a review of the bill. I took precautions then and earlier with the minister and all of her staff to ensure that the bill was not in any way given to the media or otherwise. I was given that assurance by everyone I spoke to.

This is the part I quoted from before, but I want you to go back and look at what was said by the House leader at the time explaining how it works.

Is his role as leader of the government in the House of Commons, he does what is known as a review of the bill. At some point before it is released to the House of Commons, not way in advance, he gets to see a copy of the bill and, as is the case with Bill C-14, you're dealing with a piece of legislation that is both high profile and also urgent. It has been pulled together in a hurry.

He sees it a few days before it is released. Part of his job, which he stresses, is to make sure that nothing has been given to the media by the minister or any of her staff. The minister he's referring to is the then Minister of Justice, Anne McLellan, and, of course, her staff, and he was given assurances. The House leader was then and is now in possession of the assurances of individuals that they did not leak it. Unless, of course, somebody said they did leak it.

There are several possibilities here. Either, one, the House leader Dominic LeBlanc was given assurances from everybody that no leak had occurred, and one of them lied to him; or two, he was informed by one of them, but the others wouldn't have known that in fact a leak was going to happen or had already happened—it was in the works, and so he was part of it—or three, he and his office were themselves a part of the strategy to leak the information.

I don't know which of those three scenarios is correct. I do accept vis-à-vis the Minister of Justice and her officials, unless they are working behind her back, which I suspect is not the case, that they are not the source of things. But someone is the source of things because the leak exists; the leak was there in The Globe and Mail on April 12. It was a deliberate leak, unless some kind of scenario exists that I'm having trouble imagining, and the House leader is very likely to have known about it.

The House leader should be before this committee to clarify that and, just as we did with the Minister of Justice, we would take him at his word if he says he knew nothing. We would not say, “Minister, you're lying”. We all understand that, if he were lying, that would be itself a contempt of Parliament, and the kind of contempt of Parliament that ends a career if it's ever demonstrated to be the case.

The justice minister's awareness of the severity of deliberately and overtly lying to a committee of Parliament is one of the reasons I take comfort in her words. I take very seriously her words, because she is, as we all can see, a very intelligent person who is not going to do something that stupidly self-destructive.

He should be here. He will be on the distribution list, for sure. He should be here testifying before this committee. He could go further, I believe, than any other person in bringing clarity to where and when this deliberate leak was planned, who was involved in it, and what their strategy was. I guarantee that sunlight—and they say that sunlight is the best disinfectant—will bring an end to future leaks of this sort because no one will want to go through that again. That is the reason we want to have him and other people on the list here, or at any rate to know who they are so we can figure which of those individuals should come here.

Let me make one last point about the desire of the Liberal committee members, or the Liberal whip, to vote down this motion which is critical to actually determining the provenance of this leak. As we've found with the recent matter of privilege on the Prime Minister's physical contact with the member for Berthier-Maskinongé, the committee is in a position to make a ruling and to report back to the House on contempt of Parliament, whether we believe it happened or not, and, if so, how—that is, the details—and perhaps recommendations as to how to ensure that this sort of thing doesn't happen again.

We also have the ability to just say that no report is necessary. This was actually new information to me as of that meeting, and the record of my interaction with Mr. Christopherson in which I tried to determine what course of action we should have, and of my interaction with the clerk in which I tried to find out the rules in this matter, are a matter of public record.

The option of determining that there's nothing here to see not merely ends the possibility of reporting back to the House, but the possibility of dissenting opinions. It ends any investigation. As such, I would make the suggestion that it has the practical effect of giving licence, of saying to the government, “You got away with it. There was an insignificant little hearing, which produced no result and then got shut down through the simple act of the government exercising its majority to reject any new motions to bring forward witnesses.” That's all the punishment there is, so they may be able to get away with this.

I mean, the idea that a convention or practice is permanent and that it can never be eroded is incorrect. Normally the idea that conventions, whether constitutional conventions—and that's my area of specialization—usages, practices that exist in the House, are permanent and lock themselves in is actually not guaranteed. Normally, they do. Normally a convention or practice is an act of self-restraint that is not actually written down in the rules but is accepted as a norm of behaviour and is sanctioned by the overriding body, demonstrating its disapprobation. Normally these things become stricter and stronger with time. If you look at our day compared with 50 years ago, 50 years ago compared with a century ago, and a century ago compared with two centuries ago, you'll find that the conventions are becoming, on the whole, stronger.

These conventions impose restraints upon all of us to abide by the norms of civilized behaviour—or the norms of “respectful” behaviour perhaps is the right term to use—that cause us to restrain ourselves in ways that are not written down in the rules. Those norms become stronger with time, on the whole, but they can go in reverse. One of the roles of this committee ought to be to try and ensure they do not go in reverse and that we do not find ourselves chipping away at, or eroding, a convention, so that something that was not considered respectful behaviour or acceptable behaviour in the past comes to be tolerated in the present.

I would submit that if we're looking on the grand scale of things, then this erosion of self-restraint is one of the things we see happening, for example, in wartime. They always say “truth is the first victim in any war”. The need to shut down openness for strategic reasons becomes one of the victims of war even in the best and most civilized countries, and even when we are fighting for the most just of causes, as we were in the Second World War. In the midst of that war we did things that we are not proud of and that we now recognize were wrong. While I do not make an analogy here, the purpose of the analogy is simply to point out how conventions can erode. I do note that the way in which we acted toward one subgroup in our population at that time was unacceptable.

One could point to other conventions, perhaps at a more benign level, but let me make a clear example here of a constitutional convention in the United States. It was initiated by George Washington, and it developed over the decades, that no president ought to serve more than two terms in office. That was the convention that was respected by every president up to Franklin Roosevelt, who in 1940 ran for a third term because there was a crisis in the nation with an impending war. The United States was still not out of the Great Depression. Nobody thinks that Franklin Roosevelt was not a great man, but after he passed away, a decision was made and concurred with by two-thirds of the members of each of the two houses of Congress, as well as by the legislatures of three-fourths of the states, that in the future no person should be able to serve as president for more than two terms, and that was put into their Constitution.

There was a minor exception made for someone who had served less than half of a previous term of a previous president. Such an individual could serve two terms plus that half term, and Lyndon Johnson considered taking advantage of that in 1968 before announcing that he would not be contesting the 1968 presidential election.

The point I'm making is that conventions can be rolled back, and that what is true with a constitutional convention is also true with a parliamentary practice.

I think what we are seeing here is an attempt on the part of the government to roll back a practice and to say that a practice that has always been understood and interpreted robustly ought to be—“ought” is the wrong term, because it implies they think this is of value—or they can get away with, if they do the right things, restricting or narrowing a practice that is respectful of the House. They can say, “As long as it's not the text, it's okay, we can get away with it”, or that, “If we get caught, then we'll just take this to committee, and we'll kill it quietly.”

We have been given the task of looking for the “guilty” party, in Don Boudria's words, and seeking out the provenance, in Speaker Milliken and Speaker Regan's words, of the leak. Their words, the Liberal's words and Mr. Chan's words, are that this isn't necessary. The Speaker says it's necessary, or recommends it to us, but they say it's not necessary. Past practice has been to take this very seriously, but meh, they say it's not necessary because of a technical argument that there was no revelation of the actual text, even though, clearly, the leak is of a greater scope than if the text had actually been leaked.

Maybe they're right. Maybe they can get away with this. That's how it happens. People drop their guard, either because they feel it's an emergency, for example, in a time of war, or as with the Anti-terrorism Act, in a time of national crisis.

Returning to that bill, Mr. Chair, I voted against that bill. I voted against it because I held a constituency referendum, similar to the one I held on Bill C-14, and the majority of my constituents said to vote against it. They told me to vote against it because it lacked a sunset clause.

We said in a time of crisis that we were willing to suspend some of our traditional civil liberties in the pursuit of terrorists, in the pursuit of those who are willing to do the kind of horrible thing that was done on September 11 and that, in another way, with another weapon, was done just last weekend in Orlando and has been done a thousand different times, a thousand different ways, in the intervening decade and a half. My goodness, those of us who lived through September 11 and those who are living through all of the subsequent horrors visited upon us—whether in London with the subway bombings, or in Paris with the nightclub attack, or in Orlando with this recent outrage against humanity, or any of the others that have slipped my mind because there are so many—can be sympathetic to that goal of saying that we have bigger fish to fry and we can set aside some of these safeguards we have put in place.

But even then, in rural, conservative, law-and-order Lanark County, a majority of people thought it was too much of a price to pay. So they instructed me to vote against that.

I voted not only against the government but also against my party. Four of us from the old Canadian Alliance broke party ranks and voted against it, along with the NDP caucus who also voted against it. I thought that was important.

There is no similar crisis driving this particular breach of the practices of the House. Don't misunderstand me. There actually was a looming deadline—now passed—on June 6, that if we did not have a new piece of legislation in place, the relevant provisions of the Criminal Code would cease to be in force and effect, and so there was an urgent deadline in that sense.

The urgent deadline having passed, we are not actually faced with the prospect of physicians euthanizing people in the streets, which some fearmongers seemed to be afraid was going to happen. But that wasn't what this leak was about. This leak wasn't about somehow assisting the government to deal with that impending crisis, real or artificial.

This was about trying to shape the debate. This was about manipulating public opinion. This was about manipulating the thoughts in peoples' heads. This was about misdirection. This was about the abuse of public discourse. This was about someone saying that he or she has a whole package of information and is going to selectively put out part of that information, going to put it out in a way so that nobody can confirm the truth or accuracy of it, going to put it out in a newspaper with national reach, going to put out this leak in a way that will get picked up by all media, going to shape this debate.

This is not information. This is misinformation. Although virtually every word in this is true, this is about misinformation.

It is striking to me, Mr. Chair, and it should be striking to any objective observer, that one of the minister's defences—and this should not be taken as being terribly serious—was that, after all, part of the leak is inaccurate. It's not correct, so that's okay as a defence. Now, I think you know my response to that. My response to that is that it would almost certainly have been a verbal leak. Laura Stone would have received an email or a phone call saying let's get together. I assume they either met somewhere or had a conversation over the phone with Laura Stone then taking notes, but she was not left with a copy of the legislation, and nobody wrote down or took dictation.

The likeliest explanation is that Laura Stone...and I could be wrong, because maybe she was and is an expert on the details of the ins and outs of assisted suicide, but even if she were, she very likely just made a slight wording error. But a minor correction to the wording makes this correct in every detail.

That is what happened, and it is most regrettable that we are being told that this is not important, that this is something we should just drop. Also, to be clear, this is something we can expect to recur in the future.

Turning now to the great poet, T.S. Elliot, do you remember he talks about how freedom dies when civilization dies, not with a bang, but with a whimper? It's a thousand little whimpers, our failing to respond vigorously. Our failing to try to keep committee meetings going when we're faced with the stone wall we see across the way here, that would be one of the whimpers. That is the reason, Mr. Chair, that we are attempting to exercise the only weapon we have on this side of the aisle, which is public opinion to try to draw attention by dragging out this debate to the fact that debate is about to be shut down; to the fact that open inquiry is about to be shut down; to the fact that silence is about to reign on how one deals with contempt of Parliament.

No one doubts that a contempt of Parliament took place. The question now is whether it's worthwhile taking the valuable time of this committee, or whatever the argument is, to look at this contempt. Matters of privilege are in fact the primary matter this committee looks at. Sometimes they're of a technical nature, sometimes they are not, but they're the primary matter and they take priority. That is a practice long established with us and written into our rules. It is done because we understand that the erosion of these privileges, a little bit at a time, and sometimes by someone who has a very high rating in the public opinion polls at that moment, nevertheless results in the stripping away of those norms of respectful behaviour that are the basis on which our success as an institution is founded.

The way you will have to deal with this in the long run, if the government gets away with this, is that at some point in the future you will have to take your norm of appropriate behaviour and write it into the rules. It's a hard thing to do because once you switch something from being a norm to being the black letter of the rules, it becomes highly mechanistic—a matter that we are all aware of—and something that we're dealing with consensually in the MP code of conduct with regard to issues like gifts and so on. An attempt was made there to put something into a formalized code. The need to be punctilious in our respect for every detail of that code has created its own set of problems. But that is how you deal with it when you can no longer rely on the usages, the conventions, and the practices to provide guidance.

I didn't want to take up all the committee's time. I merely wanted to lay out the arguments. I thought it would be best to be as fulsome as possible.

Perhaps with that, Mr. Chair, I can terminate my remarks. I look forward to the contributions others may have to this discussion.

Thank you.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

As all members of the committee would know, I've brought notices of motion for a number of motions in regard to our study on the premature disclosure of the contents of Bill C-14.

For context, I'm going to read the motions I have. Then I'll be moving one of the motions, Mr. Chair.

The first of those motions would read as follows: That, in relation to its study on the question of privilege related to the matter of the premature disclosure of the contents of Bill C-14, An Act to amend the Criminal Code and to make related amendments to other Acts (medical assistance in dying) and pursuant to the Handling and Safeguarding of Classified and Protected Information and Assets guidelines, and the requirement to maintain a distribution list of all SECRET information, the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs request that the Government provide a full distribution list of all persons who had access to any copies of the legislation on Bill C-14, An Act to amend the Criminal Code and to make related amendments to other Acts (medical assistance in dying) prior to its introduction, to the Committee no later than June 21, 2016.

The other motions are as follows: That the Procedure and House Affairs Committee invite the Minister of Health to appear no later than June 21st, 2016, to answer all questions related to its study on the question of privilege related to “the matter of the premature disclosure of the contents of Bill C-14...”. The motion goes on to cite the rest of the title of the bill.

Also: That the Procedure and House Affairs committee invite the Chief of Staff to the Prime Minister to appear no later than June 21, 2016, to answer all questions related to its study on the question of privilege related to “the matter of the premature disclosure of the contents of Bill C-14...”.

Also: That the Procedure and House Affairs Committee invite the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons to appear no later than June 21, 2016, to answer all questions related to its study on the question of privilege related to “the matter of the premature disclosure of the contents of Bill C-14...”.

Finally: That the Procedure and House Affairs Committee invite the Director of Communications to the Prime Minister to appear no later than June 21, 2016, to answer all questions related to its study on the question of privilege related to “the matter of the premature disclosure of the contents of Bill C-14...”.

Now, I just wanted to make sure to read all of those into the record so there would be context to the motion that I will move, Mr. Chair, and I appreciate your indulging me on this.

I wanted to take a few moments to explain this. I think it's easier for members to understand the rationale behind all of the motions prior to moving the first one. Then we can have some discussion about that and, hopefully, proceed with our proper study of the matter to ensure that we are doing our due diligence here.

It was made quite clear when the justice minister appeared before us and mentioned numerous times that her department was certainly not the only department or agency that in fact had disclosure of the contents of the bill prior to it being tabled in the House of Commons, of course. That's not really any great surprise, but she did mention very specifically a number of times the Minister of Health and that department, and also the Prime Minister's Office. Those were two that she made quite clear.

To that, I've added also the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, simply because obviously we're all aware that the House leaders and their offices have the direction or control in terms of what happens and comes forward in the House of Commons. Obviously, they would be consulted and would be in the loop on these things in everything that is coming forward in terms of the government's legislative agenda, so this seemed like a logical one.

I do believe that when she was appearing before us the minister also once or twice mentioned the Treasury Board president, but when we're looking at this, I feel that the Prime Minister's Office seemed to be the one that was indicated most often. Also, in all honesty, in looking at who would be most directly involved in this, obviously it would be at Health and in the Prime Minister's Office, outside of Justice, where the most involvement in this bill would have been.

Also, I think that when we're looking at dealing with the media or journalists, the most obvious place would be a communications shop, I suspect, as it would often deal with the media and be looking at communication strategies. So if there were a deliberate strategy to leak this, it would often come from those departments.

That is the reason there is no indication by me or anyone else in the official opposition that these specific individuals were the source of the leak, but certainly there are people who are answerable for those departments, and much like the Minister of Justice, it would be appropriate for them to answer for whether any kind of determination was made, any kind of investigation done, as to whether the source of the leak came from their specific ministry, department, or agency. That is the reason for choosing to call those specific witnesses.

The minister indicated a number of times that a number of individuals had access to the legislation prior to its being released. If you look at the guidelines for the handling and safeguarding of classified and protected information and assets, which would obviously include bills prior to their being released to the House of Commons—if you look under section 502 of those guidelines, a number would be indicated for each copy as one of the criteria for handling secret information. They would have to show the copy number on the face of each copy and maintain a distribution list. Clearly a distribution list is maintained for these documents, and that is why we believe it is appropriate for that list to be released to this committee so the committee is aware of who else might have had access.

Obviously, our job that we've been tasked with by the House of Commons through the Speaker is to try to do our very best, to do all the due diligence that we possibly can, to ensure that we determine the source of the leak and to try to ensure that we prevent this kind of thing from happening again and take any measures necessary to do that. It is important that we do our best to determine who would have had access to these and to have the people who are answerable—for what anyone being honest would have to admit would be the most likely sources—testify, given that they would be the people who would be dealing most with the media. We would certainly call them, much as we did with the Minister of Justice. The government side agreed to have the Minister of Justice here, and the same principle would certainly apply.

I can't understand why anyone wouldn't want to have these other departments and agencies that had full access to the contents of the bill come here to defend the actions of their department or ministry and make sure they have shown an accounting for any efforts they have made to investigate and determine that there was no source of the leak. I would think that no one on the government side would want to have that cloud hang over the Prime Minister or the Prime Minister's Office, or the Minister of Health either, I'm sure, and so for us to do anything but bring someone to be accountable for the Prime Minister's Office, the Minister of Health, and their departments and their ministry offices, we all, including the government side, would want them to have the opportunity to come and ensure that they have given us all an accounting for what due diligence, what types of investigation, they have done.

If we were to do anything else, the effect would be to leave some kind of a cloud, or cast some kind of doubt over the Prime Minister or the Prime Minister's Office and the Minister of Health's office. We certainly wouldn't want to see that. No one would want to see that, and we want to ensure we do our best due diligence to ensure that doesn't happen. If there is nothing to hide of course they would be more than willing to appear, and I would certainly hope that would be the case.

Mr. Chair, we'll move these motions one at a time as that's required, but the one that needs to be moved first would be the motion to ask that the distribution lists be provided. Would you like me to read that one back? It's been read into the record. It's been provided on notice. Do I need to read it again?