Mr. Chair, through you to Mrs. Redman, thank you.
Some of those measures outlined there are already in place. For example, if a draft report is sent around to members' offices, we ask for a signature so that there's proof that the document actually reached there. The business of numbering the copies wouldn't be difficult, so it wouldn't really create an administrative burden.
I think more problematic for the enforcement of the regime that's being discussed is, first of all, attributing guilt with some degree of certainty as to who has done this, because in some cases you have a blurring, where clear positions have been taken in the public sessions in which witnesses were heard and no doubt those public positions also manifested themselves in the in camera hearing. So it becomes a judgment call as to whether you're divulging what went on in camera or whether you're talking about something that is already on the record in some other form.
Committees themselves, I think, have a very good sense of that. They have a good sense of when they've basically been betrayed. The terrible thing with all of this is that it really does rest on the notion that one's word of honour means something.
I agree with Madam Picard. I think there's been a trivializing of the notion of confidential documents, perhaps partly because things are stamped “confidential” when it really makes no sense; it's just a proliferation, and nobody takes it too seriously. But I think we need an aggressive education campaign of members to say this is something we take seriously and this is basically the linchpin on which everything depends, because if we can't depend on one another's word, then where are we?
That's my little cri de coeur there.
With regard to the question of sanctions and the earlier discussion that this committee had about the whole question of how to handle parliamentary language and unparliamentary carryings on in the chamber, I worked with the advisory committee to Mr. Fraser many years ago, and in that context we had recommended that there be sanctions. They were basically financial penalties. That never really got anywhere, but maybe it's something you might want to revive.
Right now, really, in all of the precedents we have, the apology of the member in question is taken. A member is taken at his word. A very laudable example of a situation in which someone made a mistake and the committee was prepared to accept that person's word occurred last October, when there was a problem with the subcommittee on the review of the Anti-Terrorism Act. A member raised it on the floor of the House, and then the other member came in later to say that, yes indeed, he had been responsible and it was completely inadvertent, and he apologized unreservedly. That seemed to me a best example of what might happen and how it could be dealt with.
The difficulty occurs, of course, in the case that somebody has deliberately leaked the information. With the 24-hour-a-day media circus, whoever gets out there and gets the message out first is thought to have some kind of advantage. When I looked at the newspapers today, there was a discussion of a government bill as though it was absolute fact; it's on notice today. This is common coin in the media.
There is trivialization of discussing these matters. I think people perceive themselves, in a sense, if they really do respect the rules, as ultimately being penalized in the larger political gamesmanship that's going on, so you look for every advantage and you do whatever it takes. That's always, I think, particularly unfortunate. But it does seem to me that the culture of each committee very much belongs to the committee, and the committee itself can, I think, demand a certain level of behaviour or of integrity from its members. If the integrity isn't there, then the committee should be able to call someone to task on it and report back to the House.
The only thing the House really does now, in the two instances we found in terms of our precedents recently, is censure by the Speaker. Those were two incidents involving the mace. The trouble with the incidents is that, because it involves the mace, it is highly symbolic. It almost seems like a bit of a circus. Nobody takes it too seriously, and it all looks very arcane and peculiar to the viewing public. You then wonder whether someone being called to the bar of the House or whether someone having to stand in place to receive an open censure from the Speaker is something that would be a sufficiently shaming situation in order to be a deterrent to this kind of action.
But you would be better placed than I to know whether it might work.