Evidence of meeting #54 for Procedure and House Affairs in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was document.
A recording is available from Parliament.
12:10 p.m.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON
I see, so it was an access to information request. That's what I've been arguing all along. Okay.
12:10 p.m.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON
Hang on. No, I think the point is it can't go where I was going to suggest, it would have to....
12:10 p.m.
Liberal
12:10 p.m.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON
Sorry about this.
The way it's written, it's a little hard to insert it there.
I think what we should do is make it paragraph 4.1, then.
12:10 p.m.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON
So the document obtained through the Access to Information Act.... Or maybe we should just say whatever the document number is. There's an actual number on that document. I don't have a copy of it with me. Without having to cite it, can we assume that number is cited, so we're referring to the document, not the manner in which it was achieved?
12:10 p.m.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON
Okay. So document number whatever “...was meant to be an internal document, deemed to be a cabinet confidence under the terms of Canada's access to information legislation because it is advice to a minister and was made public only through an administrative error. The minister could not have had an expectation that this document would be made public except after a delay of several decades.”
12:10 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Joe Preston
All right.
So we have the wording. Are we okay on the wording of that?
Monsieur Godin, on that.
I'll take a speakers list.
12:10 p.m.
NDP
Yvon Godin NDP Acadie—Bathurst, NB
No one said this was a Cabinet confidence. Even Ms. Oda never said that. The document is clearly marked “unclassified”. Mr. Reid is just making something up here and he would like us to include it. That is the way he would have liked things to have occurred. It's just ridiculous.
Mr. Chairman, can you tell me exactly when a witness, either the Minister or someone else, might have told us that the document that was released was a Cabinet confidence?
12:10 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Joe Preston
I'm not here to give testimony.
Members of the committee certainly can offer amendments.
Mr. Lukiwski is next.
12:10 p.m.
Conservative
Tom Lukiwski Conservative Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK
Just for Monsieur Godin, I mean, he's not been in cabinet.... Well, perhaps you have provincially, but certainly not federally.
It is common knowledge and common practice, frankly, that advice to ministers is cabinet confidence.
12:10 p.m.
An hon. member
That's your statement.
12:10 p.m.
An hon. member
That's hearsay.
12:10 p.m.
Some hon. members
Oh, oh!
12:10 p.m.
Conservative
Tom Lukiwski Conservative Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK
I mean, any clerk of the Privy Council will testify to that.
12:10 p.m.
NDP
12:10 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Joe Preston
Mr. Lukiwski has the floor. I will put you on the speakers list again, and you can repudiate anything he says.
12:10 p.m.
Conservative
Tom Lukiwski Conservative Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK
Mr. Chair, neither did we hear witnesses that the sun comes up in the morning and sets at night, but it does; that's a fact.
