Evidence of meeting #49 for Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics in the 39th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was elections.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4:30 p.m.
Bloc
Carole Lavallée Bloc Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC
I am prepared to introduce a motion to move on to the second part of the agenda.
4:30 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Paul Szabo
Oh, I know, I know, but she said “I would like to do this”. That's not a motion.
4:30 p.m.
Bloc
4:30 p.m.
Conservative
Gary Goodyear Conservative Cambridge, ON
Mr. Chair, she has the floor and she can table a motion with the floor. She's allowed to do that.
4:30 p.m.
Bloc
Carole Lavallée Bloc Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC
Mr. Goodyear, I have the floor. Be quiet, it's my turn. Take your time, raise your hand and request the floor. Do as I have been doing for four days, Mr. Goodyear, and for longer than that even.
4:30 p.m.
An hon. member
He's defending you.
4:30 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Paul Szabo
Order.
Now, let's understand. The way Madame Lavallée expressed her desire was almost like a suggestion. The issue is whether it's a motion. Mr. Goodyear reminded me that she can make a motion, and she can.
I simply want to clarify, Madame Lavallée. I apologize. I was listening through my earpiece, but the translation was that maybe we should move to some other business. If you want to make that motion, it is “I therefore move that we move to some other...”. If I could get the proper wording.... I think we just had it here. The proper motion is that the committee proceed to another order of business, or the next order of business, if that is your wish.
On our order paper, the next one is committee business, which is going to deal with the selection of witnesses, Mr. Martin's arrangement, etc. Is your intent to move the motion to move to the next order of business?
4:35 p.m.
Bloc
Carole Lavallée Bloc Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC
You are quite right, Mr. Chair. Yes, that is my intention.
4:35 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Paul Szabo
That's it. Okay, as long as everyone understands.
This is not debatable, and I have to put the question.
Madam Clerk, would you please put the question to the members that the committee move to the next order of business and call the roll.
(Motion agreed to)
4:35 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Paul Szabo
The committee has decided to move forward on our work agenda for the day.
Mr. Mayrand, as with all other witnesses, I'll offer you an opportunity to make any final statement or comment to the committee, if you wish, sir. Otherwise, you are excused.
4:35 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Paul Szabo
Thank you.
I need some direction from the committee. If I may, I need to get something clear.
On August 12 Mr. Goodyear went through a list of matters he wanted answered or documents to be provided. They're all available. Most of them have been put out. But I want to go through and make sure the points raised by Mr. Goodyear have all been properly answered so my undertaking to do that as soon possible can be fulfilled. It will take a few minutes, unless you want me to delay this until some other time.
I do want to report and answer questions you raised in your intervention of August 12.
4:35 p.m.
Conservative
Gary Goodyear Conservative Cambridge, ON
Well, Mr. Chair, I appreciate the efforts you put forward on this issue and I will ask you to continue with your efforts. However, it's clearly too late to be looking over new evidence at this point. Those documents should have been provided to us a long time ago. Please continue with the effort, but it's too little, too late.
4:35 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Paul Szabo
Then what I will do, very simply, is for your edification.
Members will know that the documents provided by Elections Canada pursuant to a request by Madame Jennings, the 1,000 pages, have been photocopied. They are only in English. Rather than circulate them to you on your desks, which are already full, they are here on this table.
Those are the O'Grady testimony, the Vézina testimony--
4:40 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Paul Szabo
Yes.
I'm going to quickly go through this. I'm going to give the executive summary version as opposed to the detailed version, so if Mr. Goodyear wants any further effort on my behalf....
The first item I'm going to forget.
As for the second item, with the combination of Mr. Mayrand, I think we've had a good talk about that one.
Concerning the third item, it states here, “a new procedure”, and you wanted to know if the witnesses were informed that they would in fact be sworn in. I checked the record. In fact, the committee asked that all witnesses be sworn in, starting on that date. I asked members if they wanted that, I asked around the room, and they said yes. So they were all discreetly sworn in. That was not my decision; I asked.
4:40 p.m.
Conservative
Gary Goodyear Conservative Cambridge, ON
Mr. Chair, just to clarify that, I'm not asking about whose decision.
4:40 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Paul Szabo
And you can ask me at the end here.
Regarding item four, you were asking about Mr. Finley. The simple answer is that in fact there was a vote at committee not to hear Mr. Finley. Therefore, it was the committee's decision that he not be there. So I'm not going to carry that further.
There was a point about chairs making every effort to accommodate witnesses, which has come up a number of times. But you stated here, “You did not allow Mr. Finley to do that”. Well sir, with due respect, I did, when I spoke to him before the meeting started. I offered to hear him in the afternoon, to which he said no. I also had offered to hear him on Thursday, and he said that was inconvenient. However, I don't think there was anybody around this table who didn't agree that he was a very important witness and that we should hear him. I hope we get that opportunity.
I want to move forward quickly. I don't want to take up too much time.
Number six was the witnesses.... No, that would bring debate. I don't want to do that.
Number seven says, “All of the Conservative witnesses were deemed to be irrelevant by you, sir.” I think the transcripts are fairly clear.
For the edification of those who aren't aware, when the committee considered doing this study, there was an amendment and a subamendment. The amendment was to broaden it to cover all parties. The subsequent subamendment was to extend it to any previous election year. Both the amendment and the subamendment were defeated by the committee—a decision of the committee not to look at other parties or other years.
Therefore, when the proposed witness list came from the Conservative Party, as I explained—and in the transcript it's clear that it related to other parties or other election years, except for Mr. Sears. I had instructed members to provide a rationalization as to the relevance of a witness. All that was submitted with regard to Mr. Sears was a name. As a consequence, I rejected it simply because there was no apparent reason he was relevant to the committee's business.
That decision to eliminate those witnesses was not challenged by the committee. It was accepted by the committee and we moved on. Had it been a problem.... Now, I don't want to carry this any further, but those are the facts.
Number eight was with regard to the fact that we never have closing statements. Well, we had closing statements in this committee for each one of the witnesses of the Mulroney-Schreiber hearings. Yes, and you remember that. You were there.
In number nine, the point raised was, “You have not provided this committee or at least this side of the room with all the documentation.” It is true that no committee member has all the documentation yet. They should before I finish. But in terms of the reference to this side of the room, again I have to assure all honourable members that if one member has it, all members have it. It's not distributed by me; it's distributed by the clerk. I have full trust that the clerk has discharged her responsibilities in the best interests of the entire committee.
Point number 10 is that you would like a list of all the summonses. That was distributed to the members on August 5, more than a week before we started our hearings. Yes, you did, because.... I prepared it myself, in terms of typing it up. It is the one that shows the word “summons” as one column, and it shows the days of our hearings and the witnesses, morning and afternoon. It shows summons, yes or no. That was circulated in both official languages to committee members by e-mail on August 5. So you do have the list of all the summonses that were issued; that was on August 5. We have extra copies, if you'd like to have one.
Copies of all of the summonses have been distributed to the members already? You asked for copies of all the summonses I signed. I believe those have been circulated to members, so we'll discharge that.
You also wanted the script the clerk has given, and I think you've been provided with the letter we would send. The information in that letter of instruction or request is the same information as would be communicated by phone. They don't have a separate telephone script from the letter script; we should actually communicate the same.
So that letter you've received has been represented to me by the clerk as the information they use for purposes of a script. They've been doing it so long that they don't even read it anymore; they know it by heart.
With respect to phone logs or similar records, which is basically the daily report the chair was receiving to monitor their progress.... Again, I did not make any of the phone calls to any witnesses myself.
Just as an aside, the proposed witness from the public prosecutor's office was Brian Saunders . I may have received a phone call from Chantal Proulx, but she was never a proposed witness.
You now have this. We've taken out all the private phone numbers, e-mails, addresses, so should this get in the public domain we will not be causing hardship to cabinet ministers and members of Parliament by putting out their private contact information.
All the other information is up to date as of yesterday.
With regard to the comments of calls, when they were made, what answers were given, etc., that is verbatim from this master copy. You have that in your package. That's called the call log.
You wanted the names of the clerks who made these calls. Of course Miriam Burke and Erica Pereira were two of the four clerks, and they had a number of colleagues. I don't think it was just four people; I think there were more. On Fridays they only have one person there, who is called a duty clerk. And to keep busy, because it is not busy, the duty clerk was probably also making calls.
Whoever made the calls, they're aware of who contacted whom. All the calls were made by employees of the committees directorate, and they work for Parliament. I'm very comfortable with the directorate having made the calls.
You wanted copies of the affidavits of service. You have received those. You also wanted the content of discussions between the clerks and the witnesses, which are actually on the call sheet--the document you received. You have it as two items, but it's all covered by one document.
You also wanted copies of correspondence where accommodations or other arrangements for witnesses were discussed, suggested, or agreed upon. The only one is Mr. Mayrand. There is the letter you have, which was July 28, I believe.
On June 25, I wrote to Marc Mayrand--all members got this letter--advising him of the timeframe and that I wished to confirm that July 15 and 16 were convenient dates for his appearance. He ultimately got back to us. He did indicate in his letter that there may be questions he can't answer. I indicated to him that I doubted the committee wanted to put him in a position where he may prejudice or compromise any other proceeding. I undertook that this would certainly be the case.
As it turns out, the letter from Mr. Walsh, giving the official law clerk's version of how the sub judice convention works, etc., really applies to everybody. When we have a witness before us, we may not even know they are party to a proceeding.
In any event, Mr. Mayrand is the only one who had any discussion, and of course that was our very first witness. His letter was sent to all members on July 3 by e-mail, the Mayrand letter.
I agree with you that the chair shouldn't be spending much time talking to the media.
As to the adjournment, I'm not going to go there.
As to this proceeding denigrating parliamentary procedures, okay, thank you, I accept your thing.
If you'd like to discuss any of these finer points with me, I'd be happy to do it at any time.
4:50 p.m.
Conservative
Gary Goodyear Conservative Cambridge, ON
Thank you for telling me this.
There are a couple of things that were not on the list, and I'll mention that, but I'd like to correct the facts—
