Yes.
For the record, Mr. Chair, I wanted to bring forward this motion of privilege originally because of the Speaker's decision, which we just heard this past week. As you know, the decision by the Speaker had not been conclusive. He was conclusive in that he ruled on the question based on the evidence he had before him, which, as you know, if you read the decision--and I encourage everyone to read the decision--was based on the information that was provided to him in the House. He then essentially tasked this committee to follow up, and it was a matter of us following up on our responsibility.
The Speaker said that
The Speaker ensures that replies adhere to the dictates of order, decorum and parliamentary language. The Speaker, however, is not responsible for the quality or content of replies to questions.
He then went on to say, Chair, that
In most instances, when a point of order or a question of privilege has been raised in regard to a response to an oral question, the Speaker has ruled that the matter is a disagreement among members over the facts surrounding the issue. As such, these matters are more a question of debate and do not constitute a breach of the rules or of privilege.
However, he went on to say that the decision he rendered was based only on that back and forth--the question and the response to oral questions in the House.
He says later on in his decision that
The parliamentary secretary to the government House leader was not mistaken in his assertion that any and all statements made in committee, even when those have been repeated verbatim in the House, remain the business of the committee until such time as it elects to report them officially to the House.
So he was saying that I couldn't take the information that was rendered in this committee to look at his decision. He says that
If there are issues about the proceedings in the committee, it is incumbent upon the committee itself to deal with them and, should it deem necessary, to report to the House on the matter.
And for that reason, Chair, I think it's important.
It will be noted later on that he had concerns with the way the decision was made to de-fund Kairos, and I'll just repeat those. In fact, my colleague from the Liberal Party already mentioned this in the House in his oral question today.
In his decision, the Speaker says:
Any reasonable person confronted with what appears to have transpired would necessarily be extremely concerned, if not shocked, and might well begin to doubt the integrity of certain decision-making processes. In particular, the senior CIDA officials concerned must be deeply disturbed by the doctored document they have been made to appear to have signed.
He then goes on to say:
However, despite the obvious frustration expressed by many of the members who have intervened in this case and the profoundly disturbing questions that evidently remain unanswered in view of these same members, the Chair is bound by very narrow parameters in situations such as this one. It may sound overly technical, but the reality is that when adjudicating cases of this kind, the Chair is obliged to reference material fully and properly before the House.
So that leads us, Chair, to where we are today, and that is our work.
As a member of this committee, I think it's incumbent on us to raise a question of privilege. And the question of privilege is the following: Did solely the minister reject Kairos's funding, or did someone else do it after she approved the funding in the first place?
We have just heard in the House that she has now said that she directed someone to put the word “not” into the document that was the basis for Kairos being denied funding.
Mr. Chair, I present to you some of the evidence from committee, where the minister, after being asked by members of this committee if she was the one who wrote “not”, said no, she wasn't, and that in fact she didn't know who did it.
As of today, in the House, the minister has stated--and it's in Hansard--that she did direct someone to write the word “not” into the document.
There's no other way to look at this, Chair, but that the minister lied to this committee, misled this committee, and that's an affront to our privileges. So in the finding from our committee, we would have the blues where she said she was not aware of who put in the word “not”, and also that today she has said in the House that she directed someone to put the word “not” into the document that was the basis for the Kairos funding being cut.
As a result, Mr. Chair, I think we have to report to the House that our privileges have been compromised and we bring this forward to the Speaker and follow up with the concerns he had about the evidence that he could look at to make a decision.
In light of what the minister has stated today, clearly we need to know more, obviously, and not just why she told us at committee that she in fact didn't know who wrote the word “not” into the document that led to Kairos losing its funding, but who that person is.
And why did she mislead us as honourable members?
For purposes of a report, I would cite the blues that our staff can put together from that committee meeting, where it is clear that the minister had ample opportunity to tell us clearly what happened--who wrote that word, and if it wasn't her, who she directed to write that word. And if we can have that in report form so we can send it to the House as a report, I think that would be helpful.
Finally, I think this is something that will require more than what the minister did today in saying now that--I guess because she was caught--she was sorry about what had happened. Our job is not to rule on that. It's to rule on what happened in this committee and our question of privilege.
I would like to have that report to the House with the blues of her testimony to this committee in which she stated that she was not aware of who wrote this word. Today she's saying that she had directed someone to write the word “not”. Obviously that's a case of a scenario where we have been misled, and our privileges have been compromised.