I'm always surprised, sir, but it's an honour to be here. I prepared some remarks which, with the permission of the committee, I will read, because I tried to be very precise in my expression of things.
My observations on the privilege issue raised in the House of Commons by the Honourable Vic Toews, the Minister of Public Safety, on February 27, 2012, are those of a non-lawyer and an outside observer of the unfortunate events that occurred in the House of Commons in recent weeks. These events are too well known to be recapitulated here.
Mr. Toews raised three issues of privilege: one, the use of House resources for the so-called Vikileaks30 account on Twitter, which he claimed was used to attack him personally, thereby degrading his reputation and obstructing him from carrying out his duties as a member of Parliament; two, an apparent campaign to inundate his office with calls, emails, and faxes, which he contended hindered him and his staff from serving his constituents and preventing constituents with legitimate needs from contacting their member of Parliament in a timely fashion; three, the videos posted on the website YouTube by the so-called Anonymous on February 18, 22, and 25. These videos contained various allegations about the minister's private life and made specific and disturbing threats against the minister.
On the first, the Speaker ruled on March 6 that in view of the unequivocal apology of the interim leader of the Liberal Party, he was prepared to consider this particular aspect of the question closed.
On the second, the Speaker concurred with an earlier ruling by Speaker Milliken, which was that while the member had a legitimate grievance because the normal functioning of parliamentary offices had been affected, the members involved and their constituents had still maintained the ability to communicate through several means, and he thus could not find a prima facie case of privilege.
On the third issue, which to Mr. Toews was the most troubling one, the Speaker ruled that:
...when duly elected members are personally threatened for their work in Parliament, whether introducing a bill, making a statement, or casting a vote, this House must take the matter very seriously.
He concluded that the online videos did, indeed
...constitute a direct threat to the minister in particular, as well as other members. These threats demonstrate a flagrant disregard of our traditions and a subversive attack on the most fundamental privileges of this House.
The House referred the matter to the procedure and House affairs committee for investigation.
My remarks here will deal with only a few of the issues this important matter of privilege raises: first, the context and events that led to the anonymous threats against the minister; second, the issue of harm versus offence in this sort of verbal assault; third, the peculiar difficulties facing the House in pursuing this matter; and fourth, what punishment the House can impose if it makes a finding of a breach of privilege.
First is the context and events. This issue began with the introduction into the House of Commons of Bill C-30. Its long title when it was introduced and received at first reading was An Act to Enact the Investigating and Preventing Criminal Electronic Communications Act and to amend the Criminal Code and other Acts. Its short title, as introduced, was the Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act.
Mr. Toews was posed a question in the House: Mr. Speaker, the government is preparing to read Canadians' emails and track their movements through cellphone signals, in both cases, without a warrant.
How can we trust them not to use private information to intimidate law-abiding Canadians...?
In response, the minister stated:
We are proposing measures to bring our laws into the 21st century and to provide the police with the lawful tools that they need.
He added that the questioner
...can either stand with us or with the child pornographers.
Ms. Elizabeth May told the House that when the bill was first given to the opposition, its short title was the “Lawful Access Act”. The government had subsequently changed the short title to the more inflammatory Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act. Ms. May wondered if there was a point of order in this change. The Speaker found that there was not. A cynical observer might suspect that the government made the last change to the bill's title so that the minister could utter his one-liner that the questioner “can either stand with us or with the child pornographers”.
Opposition members of Parliament, much of the media, and many others found the minister's comment offensive.
Meanwhile, Vikileaks published the court record of Mr. Toews' divorce case on the web. Several government ministers accused the NDP of releasing the court document. Subsequently the interim leader of the Liberal Party, Bob Rae, informed the House that one of his party's staffers had leaked the information and that this staffer had been fired.
A point of privilege raised by Mr. Toews relates to only a very small part of this long and complicated story, which is the anonymous threat of bodily harm to the minister on a website outside the purview of Parliament. The matter that is the subject of this privilege investigation came to Parliament as one of a long series of events instigated by Mr. Toews' comment that the choice was to stand either with us or with the child pornographers. Nevertheless, it was a product of that statement.
It is worth noting that there were flaws in this bulky piece of legislation, that it deals with far more issues than child pornography, and that the original title, “Lawful Access Act”, more accurately described its contents than the title “Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act”.
Now I'll make some comments.
First, the minister's claim that a member can either stand with the government or with child pornographers, to say the least, denies the parliamentary principle that it is the duty of Her Majesty's loyal opposition to oppose and not acquiesce meekly to all proposals of Her Majesty's government. It was an unnecessary, aggressive, and inflammatory comment, in my view.
Second, I wonder whether there is a serious and identifiable harm involved in this matter or whether the threats made on the Internet are simply offensive. I take no sides on this; I do want to suggest that for an action or utterance to be found to constitute a breach of privilege, it should come closer to meeting the test of causing a harm rather than the lower threshold of being simply offensive.
Third, if the House determines that there has been a breach of privilege in this matter, what sanctions can it impose? At the time I write this, Parliament has not been able to identify the anonymous perpetrators of the web material at issue. Can the House find that there has been a breach of privilege committed by a person or persons unknown? Even if the perpetrators are unmasked and found guilty, what happens then? The House can put persons found in contempt of Parliament into custody, but this has been done rarely, and only in the distant past.
Fourth is the risk, arising from these events, of reducing public regard for Parliament and politics. The concept of and administrative studies on the tone at the top refer to how an organization's leadership creates the tone at the top and an ethical or unethical atmosphere in the workplace. The tone at the top has a trickle-down effect on employees. If top managers uphold ethics and integrity, so will employees, but if upper management appears unconcerned with ethics, employees will feel that ethical conduct is not a priority. In short, employees will follow the examples of their bosses.
In the question of parliamentary privilege examined here, the public is the parliamentary equivalent of employees. The tone at the top, as shown in the words and behaviour of MPs, affects public respect for and trust in their Parliament and parliamentarians. In my view, and I regret to say this, the tone at the top has not been entirely high in this issue.
Thank you.
