Information & Ethics Committee on Feb. 25th, 2009

[Russ Hiebert, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC]

Can I just finish?

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

Please.

[Russ Hiebert, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC]

In fact, “he maintained”--that's you--“that this committee was encroaching on the mandate of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs”.

I could go on at length, and I might choose to at some point, but that is the point I'm trying to get at here, Mr. Chair. How can a future committee pick up on a previous committee when the study that the committee was looking at was ruled out of order?

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

If I may, would you happen to have the transcript to which the Speaker is responding that identifies the study he was giving a ruling on?

[Russ Hiebert, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC]

I have just this portion that I just read.

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

I understand, because I know that well. I went there, and that was with regard to the study that was proposed to the committee by the Conservatives, supported by the NDP, to study the fundraising practices of the Liberal Party. I ruled it out of order because it didn't have to do with public office-holders, and that alone would make it out of order.

Mr. Hiebert very clearly, if you check the transcript of this committee, has asserted that the Speaker's decision was with regard to the in-and-out study, not the study of the Liberal fundraising practices. As a matter of fact, the chair was overruled by the committee to go ahead and do the study on Liberal fundraising practices, and we in fact commenced that study and even had a witness list, because it was provided by Mr. Hiebert and colleagues. We just decided to go for it, because the committee decided it wanted to do it even though it was beyond our mandate.

I know where this is going. The members need to read my ruling on the motion to do the in-and-out study—based on the motion that was proposed by Mr. Hubbard at the time—to explain that we're not talking about what happened during an election campaign at which none of the people were public office-holders. In fact, they were all members of the official opposition or new elected members. However, if you read my decision, our work was not based on whether or not they broke the law with what they did, which is the subject matter of court cases right now; it is with regard to, subsequent to being elected and subsequent to becoming public office-holders--and I named them—the ministers and parliamentary secretaries, who in fact were public office-holders and who as public office-holders filed election expenses returns with Elections Canada, which the Chief Electoral Officer ruled had claimed expenses to which they were not entitled, and therefore there was a pecuniary interest. And that was part of the Robert Thibault case about the pecuniary interest, because he was threatened with a law suit.

So these public office-holders filed, according to the Chief Electoral Officer, misleading election expenses returns. That is the basis on which it falls under the mandate: that we have public office-holders; that they did something that was contrary to the law of Canada based on the decision of the Chief Electoral Officer; and that there was a pecuniary interest to them, and that was his decision. Whether that's taken to the courts doesn't matter to us; what matters is what the Chief Electoral Officer said. And there was definitely a pecuniary interest, because there would have been rebates received or claimed by those public office-holders to which they were not entitled.

The motion that was adopted was to try to determine whether or not the Conflict of Interest Act and the ethical guidelines for public office-holders, which were produced by the Prime Minister, were robust enough to address this, and if not, whether this committee should make recommendations to Parliament for changes to the conflict of interest guidelines or ethical guidelines for public office-holders.

I encourage members to read the facts of the 38th meeting in the last Parliament to understand why I ruled that the motion to look into this matter was in order and was within the mandate. I can go further. This matter subsequently went to the Speaker on the last day of the last Parliament, and it was raised on a matter of privilege. I believe it was with the Conservative whip, and his privilege issue was that the committee was doing work that was beyond its mandate. If you look at that—and this is something else the committee is going to have to consider: whether or not this is the way things should work—the Speaker said he had no material or reports from the committee on that particular study and, as a consequence, had nothing on which he could give a ruling; however, should a subsequent report come to the House, the Speaker would consider whether that report dealt with matters that were beyond the mandate of the committee, and if so, he would not permit the report to be tabled.

It is complicated. I understand. And I wish we had had all the consultations with Elections Canada on the status and with Mr. Walsh with regard to some of the legal questions and with regard to some other matters. But as the chair, I have to respect the rights of an individual member to submit a motion. The motion, as all members know, is simply to resume work from the prior Parliament, just as we did with the privacy study that we were doing. It is no different. It's no different in its factual effect. The member has given proper notice. She has brought it before us. We can discuss it.

There may be some time for some discussions about maybe our being able to unravel this a little bit and maybe do it in a different fashion. Mr. Dechert made an attempt at that. Unfortunately the member would prefer to move forward with her motion at this time. The members also know that the same motion could be brought again at another time if the circumstances should change, etc. So everybody has options.

But at this time, the chair is not going to make a decision for the committee on this matter. The committee can entertain itself for meeting after meeting after meeting after meeting, talking about things, and I'm keeping a list of points made. I will try to enforce relevance and repetition, and there will come a point at which there is no new information for the committee, and we'll just have to put the question. So that's what we're faced with.

I want the members to consider very carefully what we're doing here, and not to stray off, because I'm not going to allow any latitude to start meandering in areas that end in discussions that have nothing to do...and once a point is made, it's made. I don't want to see other members being substituted in here and go right back to the beginning and try to take us back to ground that is already covered. Substitutes coming to this meeting, or people who weren't there in the first place, have a duty and an obligation to inform themselves before they come here so that they do not put us into a situation where the committee's time is being wasted.

I raise that because we've been through this before. It was a little bit painful, and we did get through it, but we do know that the committee of the last Parliament made a determination, and it was a vote because the decision of the chair was challenged on the admissibility of the motion to look at the in-and-out implications to the public office-holders. It was challenged, the chair was sustained, and the committee commenced. We did some work near the end of the last Parliament. We also had some hearings during the summer.

Now we are at a point where there is a question about whether or not this matter should be picked up and resumed and whether it's in the public interest to do so. The member has made that motion. Her motion is in order for members to consider, and we will have to take a decision at some point.

So I'm in the hands of the members. I'm not going to instruct the members on how to conduct their affairs, but if you can, have some discussions with each other or have some rethinking or whatever. We have other work to do that we can get on to right away, but that is going to take collaboration among the members of the committee, if that exists.

Mr. Hiebert, are you complete? Would you like to carry on, or would you like to pass the floor to Mr. Dreeshen?

[Russ Hiebert, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC]

I'm pleased to pass the floor. Yes, that's fine.

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

Mr. Dreeshen.

[Earl Dreeshen, Conservative, Red Deer, AB]

Thank you very much.

I guess I'm one of those new members who is trying my very best to get up to speed on the things that have happened. I know that as a member of the public I was somewhat bewildered with this committee during the last Parliament. I didn't understand--and perhaps you have helped to fill in some of that information--how a committee could pick one particular political party and try to make decisions about their actions, when it seemed that perhaps this was something that was happening in other political parties as well.

I've also heard and have now read about the rebukes from the Speaker regarding the actions of the previous committee, but again, as you've indicated, perhaps the context of that might be somewhat different, and I appreciate that.

I guess really what I'm looking at is this. There are so many other important things we've heard about in the last few meetings, and I hope we would be able to concentrate on that.

I'm not sure whether I'd have anything else perhaps to add to this particular motion. I just wanted to let you know that we'll be trying our very best to get up to speed on some of those areas, but I believe this is one horse that has been beaten to death.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

Mr. Siksay.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Thank you, Chair.

I want to thank Madame Freeman for bringing this matter to the committee, because I think it is important that we give consideration to resuming this study, especially given the importance that it was seen to have in the last Parliament. I don't think we should, as parliamentarians, raise issues without the political will to follow through on them, especially when they are controversial issues and when they create controversy. For that reason we need to complete our work on this particular issue.

Chair, I want to thank you for your clarification on it, because that's very helpful to me as a new member of the committee. I know you'll do your best to keep our focus on what we should and can be considering, given the limitations of our mandate and the limitations of previous rulings. That was very helpful to me, and I appreciate that we need to take care in how we proceed on this issue.

I agree as well that we need to keep our appointment with the legal counsel, Mr. Walsh, to hear and to further understand issues of contempt of Parliament, because they do seem to bear on the work before us in a number of areas. And again, as a new member of the committee, I want to have an understanding of those issues and I think he is the appropriate person to at least get us started on that. I don't think we have to delay consideration of this motion to hear from him, but I do believe it is very important that we hear from him and I know that is the next item on our agenda after we consider this motion.

That being said, Chair, should we pass this motion, I hope it would go to the agenda and planning committee for scheduling. I know we've already made other commitments of work we're going to do. I don't see this motion superseding those decisions that were already made, and I would see that this goes into the hopper, so to speak, to be scheduled for our future work.

Chair, I just want to say that I too have been concerned about how parliamentary committees seemingly became bogged down and became very partisan and dysfunctional in the last Parliament. I just want to say that I'm prepared to work to find ways we can move forward with an appropriate agenda and complete the work before us in the interest of the folks who sent us here.

Thank you, Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

Mrs. Block.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar, SK]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I am not sure how long a grace period lasts for a new member of Parliament or how long we can plead that we are new members of Parliament, but I appreciated the caution that you shared with us earlier when you reread the original motion that you were dealing with as a standing committee. I perhaps would be seeking some clarification either from you or other members who were on this committee during the 39th Parliament just with regard to the wording that Madame Freeman has chosen in the motion where she asks us to “resume the study it began during the Second Session of the Thirty-Ninth Parliament regarding the Conservative Party's election campaign expenses during the 2005-2006 election campaign”.

You have intimated that the work that was happening was work that was happening after the election, when election expenses were being submitted to Elections Canada once these candidates became members of Parliament and parliamentary secretaries. So I am thinking that this wording in this motion is somewhat misleading to what you had stated.

Also, I would love to know who the witnesses were during that study and what the hearings were all about, because we're being asked to deem all that work that was done to have happened now, and with nine new members on this committee, we're either taking it on faith.... I guess we go back and we look at all the work, read through everything that's happened, and get ourselves up to speed so we know what that work was. Or could I ask for a list of the witnesses and the basic context of those hearings?

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

Again, the chair is going to be a little reluctant to defend, or whatever, Madam Freeman's motion. And I looked carefully, because the wording is not exactly what I would have used, but the intent here is clear.

To help you a bit, I also noticed the word “regarding”. If you look back at the original motion, it states, “investigate the actions of the Conservative Party...during the 2006 election”. So it's in both, and I think it would be very difficult for someone to argue that what we were doing in the 39th session, the so-called in-and-out hearings, is not what Madam Freeman is referring to. So I've ruled it in order.

You ask a very good question with regard to, if we do this...and Mr. Siksay also has made some assumptions about how we might do this. I've given it a bit of thought. As a broad indication, this committee would not embark on any work until the members have received all the documents, transcripts, exhibits, lists, everything, from the officials and the resources we have. I have kept mine in some semblance of order. I have a pretty good idea of how large they are, and I would say there are probably about 2,000 or 3,000 pages of testimony and exhibits, etc.

This will not happen quickly. Should this pass--I'm speculating, and I shouldn't be--it has to be a given that everybody has to be up to speed. There has to be enough time, and members have to have an opportunity to ask questions so their starting point is clear. I give you that undertaking.

Back to you, Mr. Dechert.

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Obviously I still think it would be very helpful to have the advice of the legal officer of Parliament that what we're doing is within the purview. But we've had that discussion. Hopefully we'll hear from him later today. Then we may be in a position to revisit this discussion.

However, you mentioned in the description of your ruling from the last Parliament that you had come to the conclusion that some of the members involved in the events the study looked at became public office-holders after the fact and they filed candidates' returns. For the record, I note that it's a candidate's return; it's not a public office-holder's return. Every candidate for office, whether or not they are elected, files that same return. It seems to me that's putting a retroactive interpretation on the term “public office-holder” that is not mandated by the standing order

How far back would you go if your ruling were to stand? Somebody might have done something 40 years ago in an election and then subsequently become a public office-holder. If returns were made, they were done as candidates, not as public office-holders.

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

Okay, when did you file your election expenses return for the last election?

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

I filed it in mid-January, I suppose. But I wasn't a public office-holder then, and it didn't have anything to do with me being a public office-holder. It still doesn't.

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

But it was after Parliament started.

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

That's true.

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

Perhaps I'll just clarify this for you.

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

But it would be like an income tax return. It's not.

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

No, I understand that.

The ethics officer comes into play here, as Mr. Hiebert knows. With respect to the issue with Mr. Robert Thibault where he was sued by Mr. Mulroney, he was actually prohibited from speaking in the House. It had to do with being in that position at that time. These people were in fact public office-holders, as defined. During the time they were public office-holders they filed election expenses returns, which were ruled to be misleading or false returns by the Chief Electoral Officer.

[Russ Hiebert, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC]

They didn't do so as public office-holders.

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

No. This was after.

[Russ Hiebert, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC]

That was inconsequential to their applications.