Canada-China Relations Committee on May 10th, 2021

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Does this all string together? We're not losing the rest of the amendment, are we?

[The Chair, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

I was planning to ask the clerk to read the entire motion in due course before we vote on the main motion. Perhaps you'd like her to do that now, with what Mr. Genuis is proposing.

Is that what you would like, Mr. Harris?

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

I would like that at some point, because we're going on the fly here. We don't have the written version of the full motion.

It would seem to me that there are two separate things going on here. One is ascertaining fairness. I'm not sure how one might do that, but I guess that's why the amendment was made. I'd really like to see the whole thing, because I'm trying to piece together what Mr. Genuis had in his amendment, which begins “That the unredacted documents from the Public Health Agency of Canada be provided to the Law Clerk within 7 days, and should the documents not be provided, the committee report the following to the House”.

I don't know whether that is still the amendment. I thought the words of the amendment were what I received in bold from Mr. Genuis. I don't have anything from the clerk.

[The Chair, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

Let me ask the clerk to read to us the motion currently before us and then read what Mr. Genuis has proposed as an amendment to it.

[The Clerk]

Please correct me if I'm wrong.

The motion would read, “That the unredacted documents from the Public Health Agency of Canada be provided to the Law Clerk and Parliamentary Counsel within 10 days to review and ascertain the fairness of them and to report to the committee on them in the matter prescribed by the motion adopted by this committee on March 31, 2021”.

We would then go to the rest of the amendment provided by Mr. Genuis. Would you like me to read that as well?

[The Chair, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

Yes.

[The Clerk]

Okay. It continues:

And should the documents not be provided, that the committee report the following to the House: Your committee recommends that an Order of the House do issue for all information and documents, in the care, custody or control of the Public Health Agency of Canada and subsidiary organizations, respecting the transfer of Ebola and Henipah viruses to the Wuhan Institute of Virology in March 2019 and the subsequent revocation of security clearances for, and termination of the employment of, Dr. Xiangguo Qiu and Keding Cheng, provided that: (a) these documents be deposited, in both official languages, with the Law Clerk and Parliamentary Counsel no later than two weeks following the House's concurrence in this recommendation;

The (b) that was amended would read:

(b) the Law Clerk and Parliamentary Counsel discuss with the committee, in an in camera meeting, information contained therein, which in his opinion, might reasonably be expected to compromise national security or reveal details of an ongoing criminal investigation, other than the existence of an investigation, so that the committee may determine which information is placed before the committee in public; and (c) these documents be laid upon the Table by the Speaker at the next earliest opportunity, once vetted, and referred to your Committee.

[The Chair, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

I have Mr. Harris—

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

I have a point of order.

[The Chair, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

Go ahead on your point of order.

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

Mr. Chair, maybe I misheard, but I don't know if that fully captured where my amendment was.

The second sentence is very long. This amendment that I am proposing does not in any way touch the second sentence. It revises the first sentence to read, “That the unredacted documents from the Public Health Agency of Canada be provided to the Law Clerk and Parliamentary Counsel within 10 days to review and ascertain the fairness of them and to report to the committee on them in the manner prescribed by the motion adopted on March 31st, 2021.

Madam Clerk, maybe that's what you read and I just missed it.

That's what you read? Okay. My apologies.

[The Clerk]

No worries. That's what I have.

[The Chair, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

It's a lot of words—

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

On a point of order, Chair—

[The Chair, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

Go ahead, Mr. Harris.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

I do note that the latter part of the original amendment of Mr. Genuis still contains talk about laying the documents on the table and then sending them to the committee. Is that the question that Mr. Oliphant raised when we were talking about this?

The intention was really to replace the balance of everything after (a) with the (b) that was in the existing March 31 amendment. It was to replace everything after (a) with (b), which was the (b) paragraph in the amendment. Everything after that in (c)—that the documents be laid upon the table by the Speaker at the next earliest opportunity, and so on—would not be necessary, in my view.

Is that your understanding, Mr. Genuis? The procedure, if it goes to the House, is that the House just passes an order to have the balance of that document follow.

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

Mr. Chair, can I come in on that point?

[The Chair, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

You can, yes, if I have the consent of Mr. Oliphant and Mr. Fragiskatos. Please give me a thumbs-up if I have your consent, gentlemen.

Okay. They're all right with that.

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

We're talking about a couple of different things, but I do think (c) is still important following (b), because (c) prescribes the procedure that the Speaker will follow once the documents are reviewed. The procedure for (b) is that the committee considers the documents, but since it would be an order of the House, (c) is still important insofar as the Speaker would lay the documents on the table.

My understanding of the subamendment was that it was a subamendment to replace the original (b) with Mr. Harris's (b), but we would preserve (c). That's consistent with what I thought we'd decided to do.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

That doesn't make.... These documents are already in the hands of the clerk, and he's already discussing them with the committee. The committee has them, and he's determining which information may be placed before the committee. I don't know how they get to the House unless the clerk then takes them afterward from the committee and gives them to the House, and the House gives them back to the committee.

That was Mr. Oliphant's problem, I believe.

Was it, sir?

[The Chair, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

I have next Mr. Oliphant and Mr. Fragiskatos, and I believe that Mr. Chong is in the room and wishes to speak.

Go ahead, Mr. Oliphant.

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

I hated to do this, because we're getting into a problem. I drew a chart of what is supposed to happen, and this is not making sense to me now.

The first problem is that I think Ms. Zann's motion presupposes two sets of documents being compared, and I think that we've kind of lost that in the wording. It doesn't say that. However, I think her intention is that we have the redacted documents and the unredacted documents, and that they are compared and we are advised on.... “Fairness” is a word that I use all the time; it's sort of churchy and theological, and it has a just thing. I think “suitability” or “appropriateness” probably is the better word there.

There is a process, then, that we would engage. We would ask for the whole document to be given by the Public Health Agency of Canada to our lawyer. He and his shop would review them as to the suitability, based on the criteria that we already laid out in our very first motion. He would come back to us and tell us that it is suitable, in his mind. He doesn't do the redactions; he has two sets of documents.

Then if that doesn't happen—if we either don't get the documents in an unredacted form or we find them unsuitable—we have a process whereby we go to the House, and there's an order. They're then retrieved by the House, and I don't quite know how that happens, because I have several little cliffs in my drawing where I can't find the logic. Then we have something else that happens.

We also can't tell the Speaker what to do. I mean, that language.... I was just trying to figure out.... We can't presuppose. We can pass a motion and take it to the House, and the House can then do something, but we can't tell the Speaker what to do. The Speaker will do what the Speaker wants to do and will rule on something, and then we'll have something happen.

There's a string of pearls here that we put together that doesn't really work. I can let it go and just say, “Let the chips fall where they may,” but I'm not sure that we have a coherent set of steps. I was trying to say that because I wasn't sure when and where the law clerk got the documents and what he was supposed to do with them, and to whom he was supposed to report. To me, it felt like there was something not working.

That's where I'm at. I've only had a chance to draw out the problem. I haven't had a chance to come up with a solution, because I think the committee is getting to be of a mind.... In very general terms, we want the ability to find out what's in those documents. We would trust our lawyer to first see them and advise us, but then we would want to see them all if he says that these are inappropriate. We also would want to go to the House to be backed up and have a Speaker's ruling to make sure that what we are doing is within parliamentary procedure, and we would make that demand and give them another chance to get them back to us. Then the Speaker would decide what the ultimate consequences would be. We wouldn't decide what the ultimate consequences would be.

I like the intent of, I think, where we're all at. I think there's an agreement now about this, but I'm just not sure how it's supposed to actually mechanically happen and whether it makes sense.

[The Chair, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

Thank you, Mr. Oliphant.

Go ahead, Mr. Fragiskatos.

[Peter Fragiskatos, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

With regard to Mr. Genuis' proposed wording that he wishes to add, I just don't see where the need is. I know what he's getting at in the suggestion, but I don't think that this strengthens the motion in any way. It further confuses it, in fact. I would just maybe put it back to him to leave things as they were.

[The Chair, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

Thank you, Mr. Fragiskatos.

Mr. Chong is next.