Information & Ethics Committee on May 17th, 2007

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

Mr. Chair, I would maybe move my spot over to the next, so that I'll have some time to gather my thoughts. I might possibly have some in the next few minutes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Tom Wappel]

All right.

I'll go to Mr. Reid, to whom I gave an opportunity to gather his thoughts.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate that. It was very helpful.

[The Chair, Liberal, Tom Wappel]

Please go ahead, Mr. Reid.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'll start, Mr. Chair, by saying that I got intemperate earlier on and made some inappropriate comments. I want to apologize for those, and to you specifically. That's not relevant to the point at hand, but I wanted to say that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Tom Wappel]

I took no offence.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Thank you.

The point behind trying to structure things as I've laid them out in the amendment is to allow us to proceed with the witnesses in an orderly fashion, and in a fashion that allows them to present fulsome testimony without our being—

[The Chair, Liberal, Tom Wappel]

Mr. Reid, that is true. You have made that point. It's clear why you moved the amendment. It's clear that you want an orderly procession of witnesses. That's why you've moved an orderly procession of witnesses. Do you have anything new to say?

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Yes, I'm trying to respond to what I think is Mr. Martin's incorrect observation that might cause him or others in the committee, if the impression is not corrected, to fail to see the necessity of what I'm trying to do here. He made a comment with reference to the provision of documents, and he stated that there is no requirement that witnesses before committees present what they're going to say to the committee. Of course that's quite true, but that wasn't the purpose of doing this. I can see, therefore, that what I've been trying to say has been misunderstood, and this is what I'm trying to clarify now.

The purpose of getting the first witnesses is to allow us to determine what documents we actually can see. Of course, we have to consider the documents at some point if we are to determine whether or not there was wrongdoing under the Access to Information Act. Of course, I still want to figure out what part of the Access to Information Act has been violated or potentially violated.

Certainly there's the provision of the relevant documents in which items were held back, or redacted, as they say. There's another version that, for all I know, may have been circulated. I saw a version being circulated by—

[The Chair, Liberal, Tom Wappel]

We don't know what was circulated. There's no evidence to that effect, other than your observation.

Carry on.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

All right, but I saw what I saw, Mr. Chair. Some members of the media have copies of it now.

[The Chair, Liberal, Tom Wappel]

There's no reference in the fourth report to anything other than the censored version of the report, which we're entitled to in any event, since it has already been in public.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

That's quite true. However, the first page of the report is available out there in an unredacted form. Sections are quoted in at least one Globe and Mail article, and possibly several, and therefore in other places. We actually do have more than one piece of evidence out there.

I have to assume there's a parent document from which these came. I don't know all the details of everybody who has it or exactly what is in these things, but as I went out when we were leaving the last—

[Carole Lavallée, Bloc, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Mr. Chair, his speech, his pep talk, has nothing to do with his amendment. He is going off topic.

[The Chair, Liberal, Tom Wappel]

Thank you for your advice, Madame Lavallée.

The motion that was passed requires us to urgently address the internal report of the department. We're getting the internal report of the department, as censored. We're told by the department that we're going to be getting it, as a committee, by noon tomorrow. What's your next point?

Mr. Martin.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

You just read the motion that was passed before by Madame Lavallée. The motion that is being debated currently is the concurrence on the fourth report.

[The Chair, Liberal, Tom Wappel]

You're absolutely correct. I was simply pointing out that the committee is going to be seized momentarily of the censored report, and I'm not really wanting to hear debate about an alleged redacted report at this point. The motion didn't talk about multiple reports; it talked about the internal report of the Department of Foreign Affairs, which we're going to get.

If the committee decides to go off on other angles after we've seen that report, or if the committee decides that it wants to see the full report, we can deal with that at that point. I'm just trying to bring some relevance to Mr. Reid's comments, so that I can make sure he stays on the topic of his amendment.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

So as I understand it, you are ruling that Mr. Reid's going off on this tangent and wandering in this direction is in fact irrelevant and therefore out of order.

[The Chair, Liberal, Tom Wappel]

What I'm asking him to do is bring his remarks back to his motion and refer to the report that is referred to in the fourth report, which is the censored version.

That's given you a little bit more chance to consider things, Mr. Reid. Are there any other comments on your motion?

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Yes.

The researcher has just given me her copy of the fourth report. I apologize; I must have left mine behind in the last committee room when we were trying to get over here. So I have that and also the original motion, which of course we are trying to address, and which is the parent of everything that is done here.

Does it actually say “the redacted report”?

[The Chair, Liberal, Tom Wappel]

It says the censored report. “Censored version”, I believe, is the wording.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Oh, it's “that the Clerk of the Committee request from the Department of Foreign Affairs, a copy of the censored version of the report.”

So we can't make the request to the Department of Foreign Affairs until this motion is concurred in. Is that the way it works?

[The Chair, Liberal, Tom Wappel]

We've already done it.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Oh, it's already happened.

[The Chair, Liberal, Tom Wappel]

Yes, but now we're talking about it because that was something we decided.

I was trying not to waste a lot of time. Given that the steering committee had agreed by consensus, the clerk quite properly called the Department of Foreign Affairs and asked for a copy of the report. In fact, he asked for it beforehand as a result of the motion that was passed in this committee, so that we could move things along, because the word “urgently” is in the motion.