Information & Ethics Committee on Aug. 21st, 2019

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Zimmer]

Ms. Raitt, please finish, if you would.

[Lisa Raitt, Conservative, Milton, ON]

I'll start from the beginning.

I move:

That the Committee request Aaron Wherry, author of “Promise and Peril”, a biography of Justin Trudeau, table all recordings, notes and other materials that he collected during his interviews of the Prime Minister that relate to materials that fall outside of the Order in Council waiving Cabinet confidence in the SNC Lavalin matter so that the Committee can determine whether the Prime Minister breached Cabinet confidence.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Zimmer]

Ms. Raitt, can you say that one more time for the record?

[Lisa Raitt, Conservative, Milton, ON]

More slowly? I will.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Zimmer]

Exactly.

[Lisa Raitt, Conservative, Milton, ON]

I move:

That the Committee request Aaron Wherry, author of “Promise and Peril”, a biography of Justin Trudeau, table all recordings, notes and other materials that he collected during his interviews of the Prime Minister that relate to materials that fall outside of the Order in Council waiving Cabinet confidence in the SNC Lavalin matter so that the Committee can determine whether the Prime Minister breached Cabinet confidence.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Zimmer]

Thank you, Ms. Raitt.

I have Mr. Angus to speak to the motion.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. You've been an excellent chair these past four years. I want to thank you for being non-partisan and keeping everybody on the straight and narrow. I have enormous respect for your work.

I have enormous respect for Ms. Raitt, but I have to vote against this in the strongest terms.

We cannot use our power as parliamentarians to target journalists. We cannot demand that journalists turn over evidence. We cannot demand that journalists testify before us. That is not the role of our committee. The role of our committee is to hold parliamentarians to account, not journalists. Sometimes they don't write the nicest things about me. I can't bring them forward and ask them why; that's their role. There has to be a strong separation between the role of journalism and the role of parliamentarians, and that's our committee's role.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Zimmer]

Thank you, Mr. Angus.

I'll go to Mr. Erskine-Smith.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Mr. Angus made a point that I was going to make as well.

I think it's improper for any number of reasons. It is a standing practice for our committee that there be notice. I would have expected some conversation in advance if there wasn't to be notice. Regardless, forget process, on substance it's not something I can support. I completely agree with Mr. Angus.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Zimmer]

Thank you, Mr. Erskine-Smith.

We'll go back to Ms. Raitt.

[Lisa Raitt, Conservative, Milton, ON]

Thank you.

I appreciate the commentary of the two members.

If it is about whether that becomes public, I understand the concerns. My concern is that the Ethics Commissioner should have all the information that he was not allowed to have with respect to cabinet confidence. That is being freely given to other people and digested in a way that is more, I would say, sympathetic to the Prime Minister.

I'll withdraw the motion, because I believe that the members don't agree with me that it's important to move ahead.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Zimmer]

The committee would have to agree to have that motion withdrawn. Is it the will of the committee to do that?

You'd like to vote on it.

Is there any further discussion on the motion?

[Steven MacKinnon, Liberal, Gatineau, QC]

A recorded vote.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Zimmer]

It's a recorded vote.

(Motion negatived: nays 7; yeas 2)

Is there any further discussion today?

I believe we've exhausted the motions and are ready to head home. Thank you, again, for coming to Ottawa.

We're adjourned.