Evidence of meeting #30 for Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics in the 41st Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was chair.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Dean Del Mastro Conservative Peterborough, ON
I'd ask that you encourage the member to use parliamentary language, not unparliamentary language.
The Chair NDP Jean Crowder
Thank you, Mr. Del Mastro.
I need to remind the members that we use parliamentary language.
NDP
Charlie Angus NDP Timmins—James Bay, ON
I certainly appreciate that, but we've seen very unparliamentary actions, Madam Chair. A man who hides behind “in camera” every chance he gets in order to pull the stunts he has shouldn't be worried that he's called a bully. If he wants me to call him something a little more appropriate for Parliament...once we get in camera, he'll be able to do his normal stunts anyway.
I think it is important that we have this discussion in public, because the public expects accountability from parliamentarians. What they expect from the ethics committee is for us to be doing the business of government, not carrying out the personal bully witch hunts of the parliamentary secretary. But unfortunately this is what has happened within our committee.
On the issue of the summons, Madam Chair, we go back to the fact that you had ruled that this was not even within the purview of our committee and that this was a personal vendetta that had nothing to do with the work of our committee. The obedient gang backing Mr. Del Mastro just reminded me of being in grade school. He had his gang, and there were more in his gang than in our gang, so he was able to push his weight around. We were dragged into this very sordid affair on an issue that I personally find very disturbing.
I do not want to get involved in knowing anything about Mr. Toews' personal life. I don't know why the fact that a former staffer released information regarding his divorce.... I don't even know if such a matter is an issue that any parliamentarian in any jurisdiction would want to have to be dragged into. But Mr. Del Mastro seems to think that this would be something that would be—I don't know—fun or interesting to get involved in. Mr. Carroll has been fired. The issue has been adjudicated by the Speaker, who ruled it a non-issue because of the apology from the Liberal leader. I think the issue is why we would be expected to take something back to the Speaker when the Speaker has already ruled on it. It again turns this into a monkey show.
Mr. Del Mastro has been quite adept at turning this into a monkey show on numerous occasions. He attempted to bring a judge before our committee, and that was ruled out. He tried to challenge the Federal Court and almost precipitated a parliamentary crisis, and we had to have Mr. Rob Walsh provide a very clear legal opinion. He has made all kinds of accusations in the House about illegal campaign donations that he seems to be the only one to know about.
He dragged the Ethics Commissioner here. She was quite embarrassed to have to participate in this process, and then she had to tell Mr. Del Mastro that he had made all these outrageous claims but he didn't supply any evidence. But he's the parliamentary secretary to the Prime Minister, so he gets to stand up day after day in the House and throw this muck around, without feeling any obligation to have any dignity towards his office.
My personal concern here is that because he's got a bigger gang than everybody else, we, as parliamentarians, are dragged along in this process of absurdity. Whatever Mr. Del Mastro needs to change the channel on, for example, the issue of widespread electoral fraud, he's going to actually drag out Mr. Toews' divorce and drag out a former Liberal staffer. Whether or not he's under medical treatment, I have really no interest in because I don't think it's the issue of our committee. But here we are once again in the Dean Del Mastro kangaroo court, and I find it personally objectionable.
Madam Chair, the one thing I have learned as a parliamentarian is that you may be elected because of your party brand, but the only thing you have in this House, and the only thing you leave with, is your personal integrity as a parliamentarian. So if you decide that you're going to use your role as a parliamentarian to be a bully and to be a thug...and maybe that's not parliamentary language, but if that's the way you're going to play it—
NDP
The Chair NDP Jean Crowder
Mr. Angus, I'm just going to interject there. I need to ask you to refrain from using unparliamentary language.
NDP
Charlie Angus NDP Timmins—James Bay, ON
Excellent, Madam Chair. I don't know if there's parliamentary language about bullying. The only thing we have as parliamentarians is our integrity, and in coming to committee we're expected to do the work of this committee. But instead we have been sidetracked by the personal vendettas of Mr. Del Mastro again and again. I don't see parliamentarians other than him engaging in such activities, and it's poisoned the well of our committee.
I point to O'Brien and Bosc on page 150. It indicates that the House hasn't given the committee the power to punish any misconduct, breach of privilege, or contempt directly, and that committees cannot decide these matters; they can only report them to the House. Only the House can decide if an offence has been committed, and Speakers have consistently ruled that, except in the most extreme situations, they will only hear questions of privilege arising from committee proceedings upon the presentation of a report from the committee that deals directly with the matter, not as a question of privilege raised by an individual member.
The report that we are supposed to prepare, now that a summons has been issued for a member to come before us who is not employed by the House at all, is asking the Speaker to intervene in a matter that the Speaker has already ruled on. I think this is where we are going to start to look once again like our committee is being dragged down the road of embarrassment.
If Mr. Del Mastro had been on time this morning, he would have managed to pull all this in camera and the public wouldn't have known. As parliamentarians, we would have had to—
NDP
The Chair NDP Jean Crowder
Mr. Angus, it's not appropriate to refer to the presence or absence of members. The same rules apply as in the House.
NDP
Charlie Angus NDP Timmins—James Bay, ON
Certainly.
The role of in camera meetings protects the members of the Conservative government to pull these stunts and to drag the rest of parliamentarians—which I believe is an abuse of our privilege, because we don't think it's appropriate that this summons was issued, we don't believe this is the work of our committee, and we don't believe it is....
NDP
NDP
Charlie Angus NDP Timmins—James Bay, ON
—but I think it's very important that we do this in public because we are accountable to the public.
What is said in the dark, as it says in my old Bible, shall be exposed in the light.
They might have thought they were going to be able to pull this off in camera, where nobody could see them, but they miscalculated. We are now in a situation where we can debate this in public.
I'll go back to O'Brien and Bosc:
Unlike the Speaker, the Chair of a committee does not have the power to censure disorder or decide questions of privilege. Should a Member wish to raise a question of privilege in committee, or should some event occur in committee which appears to be a breach of privilege or contempt, the Chair of the committee will recognize the Member and hear the question of privilege, or in the case of some incident, suggest that the committee deal with the matter. The Chair, however, has no authority to rule that a breach of privilege or contempt has occurred. The role of the Chair in such instances is to determine whether the matter raised does in fact touch on privilege and is not a point of order, a grievance or a matter of debate. If the Chair is of the opinion that the Member's interjection deals with a point of order, a grievance or a matter of debate, or that the incident is within the powers of the committee to deal with, the Chair will rule accordingly—
NDP
The Chair NDP Jean Crowder
Mr. Angus, could I ask you to slow down a little? The interpreters are....
NDP
NDP
Charlie Angus NDP Timmins—James Bay, ON
I'll summarize it quite simply. The chair ruled and found that this was inappropriate and unacceptable behaviour. Mr. Del Mastro overruled her. The chair's ruling had very much to do with the fact that this was inappropriate for our committee, but also the fact that the Speaker had ruled on this.
The Speaker had ruled on three key elements of Mr. Toews' question of privilege.
One, his question of privilege was that he was outraged that he had to listen to phone calls from irate constituents. I know this government seems to have a touchy relationship with accountability with the public, but Mr. Toews felt that as a minister he shouldn't have to waste his time dealing with people who are justifiably outraged with this snooping bill, this attempt to spy on the personal affairs of Canadians, which quite rightly many thousands of people across the country objected to. That was his first point of privilege. Quite reasonably, the Speaker, who I think is an excellent Speaker, said this has not to deal with Parliament at all.
The second issue was the issue of the Anonymous threat against the minister, which the Speaker quite rightly passed on to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, because you cannot under any circumstances threaten a member of Parliament about a vote or threaten a minister about a bill, no matter how unpopular a bill is.
I certainly think this bill is one of the more unpopular bills this government has come up with. But someone may be hiding behind an Anonymous website or video, and whether they're 15-year-old kids in North York or whether they're some international mastermind hacker group, I don't know, but you can't do that. So Minister Toews was quite right to say that his privilege had been interfered with. The Speaker quite rightly moved that to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs.
Then it came to the third issue of privilege, which was the very distasteful, perhaps immature, Vikileaks30 tweets that released the details that are in the court record, which apparently people can see if they go to Manitoba. I have not looked at the Vikileaks30 tweets. I'm not interested in seeing them, but it was distasteful. However, you are in a situation then where perhaps it had been seen as a breach of privilege. But the staffer was fired, and at that moment the Liberal leader stood up and apologized in the House.
In my long political career, I've never been known to give any kind of political cover for the Liberal leader, and I never plan to in my career, but this is an issue of being a parliamentarian. Under the parliamentarian code, if someone apologizes for something in the House and the Speaker accepts it, then the matter is closed. So the fact that the Liberal leader, who politically I don't agree with, and I didn't even agree with him when he was the NDP leader, but that's a side issue.... The fact that he apologized...that is, and not to use sexist words, the gentlemen's conduct that Parliament has been based on for hundreds of years. Someone has to take responsibility and someone has to apologize, and they did that within the confines of the House.
The Speaker ruled that closed. But that wasn't good enough for the parliamentary secretary. I think the reason it wasn't good enough is because he's the man who has been the front guy having to explain away allegations of widespread electoral fraud, and he's been quite good at throwing as much muck as he can in whatever direction he can. It seemed to us that this became a very convenient stage for them to drag in a fired Liberal staffer and then beat up on him at our committee. It's simply not appropriate.
So given the fact that he hasn't shown up yet...I don't know if Mr. Del Mastro is going to stand outside his house with his posse and drag him here in chains, on a chain gang or something. That could be the next motion. But I don't think it's appropriate.
We think it's perfectly reasonable to rescind this, and this is why we're pushing this motion.
I'll turn the floor over to Mr. Dusseault.
NDP
Dany Morin NDP Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, QC
Madam Chair, I have a question for the clerk.
As my colleague Mr. Angus so rightly said, Mr. Del Mastro's witch hunt is a discredit to this committee. We are not here to deal with VikiLeaks and to organize Mr. Carroll's appearance.
Could the clerk tell us how much taxpayer money we have wasted so far and what the projections are, given that Adam Carroll has to appear before the committee?
NDP
The Chair NDP Jean Crowder
I'm going to interrupt there, Monsieur Morin. I'm not sure that's a procedural matter. That's more a question of information, or perhaps debate. I'm not going to let you continue with that point of order.
Conservative
Blaine Calkins Conservative Wetaskiwin, AB
On a point of order, Madam Chair, I'm not aware at which point a speaker who has just spoken can turn the floor over to another member of the committee. I believe the speakers list is a matter for you.
When I heard you mention the speakers list earlier, you mentioned my name immediately following Mr. Angus's. I'm just questioning whether or not you were mistaken at that point in time.
Who is actually the next speaker on the list?
NDP
The Chair NDP Jean Crowder
I apologize, Mr. Calkins. I did omit Monsieur Dusseault. He was on the speakers list. He and Mr. Angus raised their hands at the same time.
NDP
The Chair NDP Jean Crowder
So I apologize for that. You're after Monsieur Dusseault.
Yes, Mr. Andrews.