Foreign Affairs Committee on April 28th, 2022

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

You should have given us time, in four months, to debate our motion.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Mr. Genuis, wait one second.

[Rachel Bendayan, Liberal, Outremont, QC]

I think it is extremely unfortunate that the Conservatives are playing politics when we have before us a panel of witnesses—

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

[Inaudible—Editor] documents to the House.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Order, please.

[Rachel Bendayan, Liberal, Outremont, QC]

Sir, the floor is not yours.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Colleagues, let's try to keep order, please.

[Rachel Bendayan, Liberal, Outremont, QC]

Mr. Chair, I would like to thank these witnesses for taking the time to be here today. I would request that we very respectfully excuse them from the rest of this meeting.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Is everybody agreed that we should, with our sincere thanks, ask our panel to disconnect at their discretion?

Thank you for being with us. We will hear from you in writing if you choose to add arguments to your submissions today.

Many thanks to the witnesses for their testimony. I thank them for sharing their expertise with us.

Madam Bendayan, you are next on the list. The floor goes back to you.

[Rachel Bendayan, Liberal, Outremont, QC]

That was my intervention. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Genuis, we'll go back to you, please.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Mr. Chair, let's be very clear about the situation here. We moved a motion about the basic democratic rights of parliamentarians to access documents. We moved that motion four months ago, and that was following a situation where the government took the Speaker of the House in the previous Parliament to court to prevent him from enforcing the rights of parliamentarians and then, after that, called an election to block further action by Parliament on this issue of the violation of privileges of parliamentarians.

It is a great and ancient right of parliamentarians to request any documents to use in the exercise of their functions. This government showed flagrant disregard for this core constitutional principle and then called an election after trying to take the Speaker of the House to court.

We came back in December with a motion to order these documents, to resume the work that had been done in a previous Parliament. Then, after that, you, Mr. Chair, and other members of the committee, did not give us an opportunity to have a conversation on that motion for four months. To suggest that we are somehow responsible for the fact that, in the presence of these witnesses, it was finally necessary to bring this forward is beyond outrageous.

If the chair had so much as offered my colleague, the vice-chair, the courtesy of a response to an email asking for 15 minutes to discuss this, we could have, I think, scheduled this well. There's a time slot that would have been available tomorrow for an hour, when we could have taken the time to debate this as well. From what I understand, that time slot is still available. We could have spent an hour tomorrow debating this issue. Instead, the request from our shadow minister Mr. Chong for an hour to debate the issue of the Winnipeg lab documents was completely ignored. When the government shows such disrespect for the basic right of parliamentarians to access documents, at a certain point we have to assert the importance of democratic norms.

I have news for this committee. There are international organizations that monitor and track the state of democracy, and they are identifying issues of democratic decline happening in Canada. I'll give you an example of that. In terms of the score given by IDEA, which is a Swedish think tank that evaluates democracy, Canada's score for checks on government has fallen substantially, from 0.77 to 0.68. We are behind peer countries in terms of effectiveness of Parliament scores and in terms of checks on government.

When we talk about questions of democratic decline and we see what is happening here in Canada with our own institutions, these are issues that we have to take seriously. I have a great deal of respect for the important work being done by witnesses, but if again the government is showing such disregard for our institutions and for the right of members of Parliament to request documents, then it is time for us to take action.

I note that the parliamentary secretary for foreign affairs, who was a member of the Special Committee on Canada-China Relations in the last Parliament, was very clear as well at the time—initially—saying that we should be able to access these documents. Members of that committee voted twice unanimously to request those documents, documents that his government subsequently refused to hand over, in violation of the privileges of the committee and of the House.

We've been on this saga for a long time. It's not a complicated saga. It's not a question of a logjam or of procedural complexity. This is an issue of the government failing to follow the law, failing to recognize the fundamental legal prerogatives of Parliament. These are ancient prerogatives, and they exist in parliaments throughout the world. Mr. Sarai talks about our obligations to other Five Eyes countries. Other Five Eyes countries have governments that respect the rights of their parliaments.

I could tell you that the United Kingdom is not going to have a problem sharing intelligence with Canada, even if Canada respects the rights of parliamentarians, because the U.K. shares intelligence with parliamentary committees and respects the right of parliamentary committees to make these requests.

The government's fudge here is to try to confuse us about the very obvious difference between the idea of a parliamentary committee and the idea of a committee of parliamentarians. This is an obvious distinction. To make it amply clear, a committee of parliamentarians could be any group of parliamentarians to get together and do anything.

If Mr. Aboultaif, Mr. Morantz and I have a scotch-drinking committee that meets once a month in Winnipeg, that would be a committee of parliamentarians because it would be a committee of people who happen to also be parliamentarians. That would be very different from a parliamentary committee, which is constituted by the House and has rights given to it by the House. That is part of the democratic functioning of our country.

When the government says that they're going to go off over here and create a committee of parliamentarians that they control and that are subject to a different set of rules, that is so fundamentally different from a parliamentary committee.

Mr. Sarai said that we've done this in other cases and we've created special committees. Yes, we've created special parliamentary committees. The Afghanistan committee that he referred to is a parliamentary committee. There was the Special Committee on Canada-China Relations and there have been other committees on pay equity and other issues in the time I've been a parliamentarian. Those are special committees of Parliament. They are parliamentary committees and, crucially, they have the rights of parliamentary committees, which include the right to request unredacted documents and to review those documents.

That is different from the government saying that they're going to create a committee over here of MPs and they're going to create new, specific rules that apply to it.

This is a fudge that the government is trying to insert into what is actually a very clear and simple issue. Here is the simple issue: A parliamentary committee is not just a committee of parliamentarians. It's not just a group of MPs who are getting together. A parliamentary committee has a special legal and constitutional role in this country. It exercises democratic functions. It reviews legislation. It plays a key role in the legislative process. It's not just here to hear witnesses and make policy recommendations. It can order specific things. It can order documents. It can review sensitive information, and it can give specific directions that in certain contexts have to be abided by.

Unfortunately, one challenge is that it has limited remedies, so when the government has, in the past, ignored the legal obligations that it has to respond to a committee, the committee's remedy is to refer that matter to the House. The House can take further action.

The question before us is simply whether the government is required to follow the law or if the government thinks of itself as above the law. Do members here want to insist on the principle that the committees have these rights or they don't?

I will note that members of all opposition parties, including members of the NDP, have been very clear in the past and consistent about asserting the existence of these rights. I recall that in the last Parliament there was a motion at this committee dealing with access to information about arms exports. It was put forward by former MP Jack Harris, and it was supported by at least all members of the opposition. I think members of the government may have even supported it.

Members of the NDP have, at times—I think consistently, in fact, up until this point—very much insisted on that very same principle. I think members should keep an eye on what is being lost if we start to allow the erosion of this principle.

I talked earlier about the question of declining democracy. This isn't something that we're just coming up with. Credible international think tanks that track and measure the state of democracy look at different variables and indicators. We do see, in terms of what is happening in the democratic life of this country, a lack of respect for democratic norms and a lack of respect for the law by the government. I could bring up all kinds of other examples that are in the news right now. I won't, but I think members are aware of them. The fact is that these things are contributing to the fundamental problems and challenges that we have here.

The question for members is this: Do we think that a chair who is a member of the government should be able to simply ignore, for months, the rights and wishes of members of Parliament to discuss an issue and, in particular, to bring forward the question of the right to access documents? Is this something that people are willing to—for a cheap deal—shrug off and say that they're going to replace a a parliamentary committee with a group of parliamentarians getting together under a rubric defined, established and controlled by the government?

We shouldn't just think about this as a short-term party thing, this way or that way. This is a fundamental principle of how our democracy works and the standards that we want it to work under.

Therefore, I hope we will support this motion. We will be able to move forward and finally do something that we should have done four months ago, that we probably should have done six months before that, which is to insist that, on the key issue of the Winnipeg lab documents and all the issues and questions that Canadians have around that, we allow parliamentarians to access those documents in the context of a parliamentary committee that has real power, power given to us not by government but by the people who elected us and by the constitutional framework that is so fundamental to this nation.

I hope that members of Parliament will look past any short-term considerations and seek to defend this principle, because if the NDP or any other party—

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Mr. Genuis, I apologize.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

—allow the erosion of that principle, it will have long-lasting consequences.

Thank you. I'm done.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

We're at the point that we had agreed to extend the debate to. Just before we probe to continue further, I want to probe with members in regard to a second panel that we have. They are supposed to start with us now, but we also have a speakers list that now contains four people.

Is there consensus to release the second panel? Is there a will to continue this discussion to the point where we'd tell our second panel that, unfortunately, we cannot hear them today?

[Rachel Bendayan, Liberal, Outremont, QC]

No, Mr. Chair, I would like the second panel.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Okay. Can we have views from other members?

It becomes a bit of a chicken-and-egg question, because we haven't adjourned this debate. There is a speakers list and it is going to continue. Just in the interest of practicality and the vote that's intervening—

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

It can be very quick.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

—I think this panel is not going to happen, with every bit of interest, but I just want to hear views. Would you agree that we would release under these circumstances?

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

I think it's sensible, under the circumstances, to release the second panel.

In any event, if members want them to wait around and see what happens, that's okay too, but I think it makes more sense to release them under the circumstances.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Madam McPherson.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

As devastating as it is for me to say this, I think it is very clear that what we were hoping to avoid, we will not be able to avoid. The opposition, the Conservatives, have decided that this is more important than getting to the bottom of vaccine equity. It is so disappointing.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

I don't want to continue debate, because we're at the point that we've agreed to stop the debate.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

I know. I think it is only fair to release the witnesses, and hopefully we can have them come back at another time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Okay. Is there any opposition to that? In light of the circumstances at the moment, we will thank our second panel and bid them farewell for the time being. We don't really have much of an option unless everybody wishes to withdraw from the speakers list and we change tack. At this moment, I don't see the will of the committee as being that.

With that, Madam Clerk, I think we will thank our second panel.

We are at the point at which we've agreed to stop for the vote. Is there consent to continue further for another, I don't know, five minutes, yes or no?

I see a shaking of heads, so that stops the discussion until we have the result from the vote. We stand suspended until that time.