Information & Ethics Committee on May 17th, 2007

[The Chair, Liberal, Tom Wappel]

Yes, the wonderful thing about committees is that we can decide to do virtually anything we want, provided it's legal.

I now have Madame Lavallée, followed by Mr. Van Kesteren.

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

You currently stated, Mr. Chairman, that, in committee, anything was possible as long as it is legal. Now, games are being played, and I must admit that I don't have a great deal of talent in that field. People are acting like clowns and are introducing one amendment or subamendment after another.

Furthermore, in the last amendment submitted by the Conservatives, clearly to filibuster, we find the words "in camera", "confidential" and "secret". From a government that claims to be transparent and to be applying the Accountability Act, it sounds like dirty words, if I may say so.

Mr. Chairman, Mr. Tilson criticized you earlier for having called witnesses this morning. You will get no criticism from me. The motion I introduced was passed by the majority. According to that motion, the committee should immediately consider this issue. That is what you are doing and you have done it well. I thought that this morning was already a little too late, but I may be in a bigger hurry than the others.

Furthermore, when the steering committee met, the majority agreed on the report. Once again, you did a good job. The secrecy, the in camera meetings, the confidential information and the kind of filibustering that we are seeing now from the Conservative members are quite typical of a government that has things to hide. This kind of situation always leads us to discover major scandals.

I am not going to draw a parallel with other scandals: I think that the members of this old Conservative government know what I'm talking about. I am saying "old Conservative government" not only because it's been in power for more than a year and a half—and I think that it's starting to be quite a long time—but also because it's old in terms of its behaviour and the way it wants to hide information from the public. This is unacceptable.

Mr. Chairman, we are here in the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics. It's quite ironic to see that Mr. Van Kesteren's amendment goes against access to information and the disclosure of information, and asks for in camera meetings and for some information to be kept secret. I too am going to start to use big words: it's unacceptable; it's censorship.

For all those reasons, Mr. Chairman, I will be voting against this amendment and I would like to do so as soon as possible so that we can hear from the witnesses who are here in this room. They're waiting to testify. We have invited them. This was a decision made by the majority here, in the committee, and the steering committee. If the Conservative members are serious, they will stop playing games. Then we can invite our witnesses to testify.

[The Chair, Liberal, Tom Wappel]

Merci, madame.

I have three people on the list: Mr. Van Kesteren, Mr. Dhaliwal, and Mr. Reid.

Mr. Van Kesteren.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to address some of the allegations, some of the charges, from members opposite.

This is a sincere compromise.

[The Chair, Liberal, Tom Wappel]

You have to deal with your motion. You have to debate your motion.

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

Mr. Chair, I just heard a volley of charges from Madam Lavallée, and I feel I should be able to answer some of those charges. I will address my motion, sir, because I think my motion will be tightened up. I hope Madam Lavallée is listening, because I listened to her, and I hope she listens to me.

This is a sincere outreach to come to a compromise. I will adjust my motion. The motion should read that when we have an opportunity to read it...and that would be, by the sounds of things, 24 hours. The reason is this. We've heard a multitude of charges of secrecy and hiding the facts, and Mr. Martin has just had a grand old time....

I'd like to remind members across, again, that we were right in the process of another study, a very important study, and while we had witnesses there, cameras were brought in. We thought that it was because of the witness we had. But no, lo and behold, Mr. Peterson brought in the CBC because the Information Commissioner was going to be there and there'd just been a report in The Globe and Mail.

You want to talk about abuse. That was abuse of the system, just a spectacle. That's exactly what it was. So obviously—

[The Chair, Liberal, Tom Wappel]

Mr. Van Kesteren, I have to interrupt you, on a point of information, so that people listening understand. Reporters did come in, but to the best of my knowledge, and I was at that meeting, there were no cameras. If cameras did come in without the permission of the committee or without the House's pre-approval, that would be totally improper, and I would not allow it.

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

I know, sir. We did give them permission, but we were told it was because we had a new Information Commissioner and that's why the cameras were there.

[The Chair, Liberal, Tom Wappel]

You're referring to the meeting with the Information Commissioner, not the secrecy that you were talking about.

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

Yes, sir. And the whole session was devoted to nothing other than just trying to embarrass the government. Yes, we're very sensitive about those things, and we ought to be. We've not had a proper opportunity to investigate these things.

Now, if we didn't want to compromise, we would not make this proposal. This is a simple proposal. I have to think that members opposite.... As I said to Mr. Martin, it's like waiting one day, and your birthday's tomorrow. It's one more sleep. You can hang on. Just give us that opportunity to look at this report, which we have not had opportunity to look at.

We're having witnesses who are going to deal with that report before we've even had a chance to look at it. That's just common courtesy. If you're really interested in cooperation between governments, and I think that's what we're talking about, forget the secrecy stuff. We're going to find out, Mr. Martin, what happened here.

On the government side, we don't want to have a report coming out that is totally biased to this report. So give us that simple opportunity to look at that report. That's the compromise that I'm presenting you with. It's a compromise. We can get out of here or we can sit here all night and keep chattering about nothing.

To wrap up, I'm prepared to say—and Mr. Chair, I leave it to the clerk to do that properly, and if it's acceptable to members opposite—that if we are given opportunity to look at that report, which is coming out tomorrow, I think that's a fair compromise.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Tom Wappel]

Thank you, Mr. Van Kesteren.

Mr. Dhaliwal.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm listening to the members on the government side and I look at it this way. Number one, if we have nothing to hide, we don't have to put this meeting in camera. Number two, on this report that we are talking about, the members on the government side had one week to ask for it from the government or the Department of Foreign Affairs. In fact, they should have been kind enough to get that report and circulate it to all of us so that we would have access. To date, we don't have that report available to us either.

[David Tilson, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

Well, you have. You have something over there.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Newton—North Delta, BC]

No.

[The Chair, Liberal, Tom Wappel]

Go ahead, Mr. Dhaliwal. Don't engage in—

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Okay, I'm sorry.

I usually don't take the floor, Mr. Tilson. If you can give me just a few seconds to talk, I'm very respectful to you any time you speak.

We do not have that report, and never have either. We have shown the documents we had to Mr. Reid. I'm sure he will agree that this report, 2006...whatever this report is, we don't have access to that either.

Personally, I feel we should go ahead and listen to these witnesses even if it's public. Let's be open and transparent. Big deal. If we have nothing to hide, we should be as open and as transparent as possible.

The other thing I want to do is this, and I don't know if I have to make a motion, but it seems as if it's becoming a tradition for this meeting to be this long every week. Why don't we just change the time from nine to eleven o'clock or, with the consent of all the members, from nine to maybe two o'clock, or even eight o'clock in the evening, so we don't have to change the room every week. This is what I would like to say.

I would urge all members, let's get on with this important task we have in front of us, and be open and transparent to the public and listen to those two witnesses we have today.

[The Chair, Liberal, Tom Wappel]

Thank you, Mr. Dhaliwal.

Mr. Reid.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I have three very specific comments I want to make, all of which I think are very strictly relevant to the question before us, the amendment that's been proposed by Mr. Van Kesteren.

And in saying this, I am simply responding to comments made by other committee members, because I know you're anxious to make sure we stay relevant here. When people say things in the committee, we're all speaking with the intention of trying to cause others to consider voting the way that we are leaning towards voting. Therefore, it's important for me, if I hear something that I think was incorrectly stated, to set the record straight, and this is what I'm trying to do in my first comment.

Mr. Martin, in his comment, said this is a public document; these guys are members of the government; they have access to it; they've had access to this stuff, I think he said, for a week. I understand why he might think that, but actually there are several misstatements, or errors, in that.

One is that we're actually not members of the government. We are members of the Conservative Party. We certainly support the government, but in terms of actually being office holders, sworn in, that sort of thing.... A lot of committees have parliamentary secretaries, and this is an exception, so--

[An hon. member]

No, it's not.

[The Chair, Liberal, Tom Wappel]

Mr. Reid, I'm listening intently, so please don't be sidetracked by other members.

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

All right. That's the first thing.

In terms of being a public document, when a document is no longer secret, it doesn't mean that it's then posted on a website or made readily available in that way. Having been a researcher in a former life, and I actually employ a researcher as well right now, when we hear about documents that are public and are of interest, we regularly make an effort to pursue them. That doesn't happen immediately. We have to go through all the same channels as everybody else. We do not necessarily immediately find these things coming to us.

On the assumption that we've all had the document and therefore we're all thoroughly apprised and can ask fulsome questions of the witnesses, in saying this, I think Mr. Martin is labouring under a misapprehension. I just want to draw that to the attention of all members, including Mr. Martin, so they'd be aware that while I'm sure it was meant sincerely, it's actually factually incorrect.

The second item does relate to the idea that the report, which is going to come in, will then release the testimony we've heard here. If I understand this correctly, I think there's a bit of a problem with this. Although Mr. Van Kesteren ran the idea by me before he introduced it, now that I'm thinking about it, there may be a problem here.

The purpose, I think, of having the redacted, translated version of the document is, I assume primarily--maybe there are other reasons--to allow us to engage in fulsome questioning of the witnesses so we can look down and see what's being discussed and what's in the report. That can't happen because the report is happening tomorrow and the witnesses are here today. So we actually got things backwards. We would make the information public in, more or less, 24 hours from now, but it wouldn't actually assist us in that particular task. I might be wrong. There might be another reason for doing this.

The only other reason I could think of--and this is my third point, Mr. Chair--was that if we receive the documents tomorrow in both official languages, they become available to us then. In terms of the general public, our friends in the media and so on, is there anything that prohibits any of us at that point, if we contact the clerk, from taking the documents and using them in a forum outside of the confines of this committee in order to give context to our comments and remarks and responses that inevitably we'd presumably be asked to make with regard to the substance of what the witnesses had said, which would become public at the same time? Would we actually have access to those for that purpose?

That's a question, but I think it's relevant to the motion.

[The Chair, Liberal, Tom Wappel]

Do I understand the question to be that once the censored version of the report is provided to the committee, can you comment on it publicly?

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

I'd get a copy from the clerk, and therefore--

[The Chair, Liberal, Tom Wappel]

Well, of course you'll get a copy, no question about that.

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

--comment on it publicly, yes.