Evidence of meeting #55 for Procedure and House Affairs in the 41st Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was parliamentary.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Clerk of the House of Commons, House of Commons
I'm exhorting you to an education role.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Joe Preston
Far be it for the chair to ever hurry my favourite witnesses.
I think that will bring us to a conclusion.
Mr. Williamson, you're not going to let that happen, are you? There is a Conservative spot open there, so take it.
Conservative
John Williamson Conservative New Brunswick Southwest, NB
No, it's not. I can at least finish the sentence.
Could you remind us what the documents were that the auditor wanted to release? I believe I know.
Deputy Law Clerk and Parliamentary Counsel, House of Commons
They were essentially e-mails about witnesses' appearances, about who would be coming. There might have been some about the Auditor General's presentation, or things like this. They were very innocuous.
Conservative
John Williamson Conservative New Brunswick Southwest, NB
The point I'm trying to make is that they were innocuous, but they actually dealt with.... I think the point the clerk was making was that it comes down to a question of the free flow of information. It wasn't financial. It was that dialogue, that freedom to have that discourse—
Conservative
Deputy Law Clerk and Parliamentary Counsel, House of Commons
And witnesses.
Conservative
John Williamson Conservative New Brunswick Southwest, NB
And it did not deal with the disbursement of tax dollars or the efficiency of.... I think that's an important point.
The point I raise in bringing this up is very much that as we have the ability to speak freely on the floor of the House of Commons, which we understand is our right, we have the right as parliamentarians to express dialogue amongst ourselves in the certainty, as we do in camera and elsewhere, that this right shall not be infringed upon.
Deputy Law Clerk and Parliamentary Counsel, House of Commons
That's correct. Ultimately privilege is the control of the House over its own proceedings, so it's the House itself that decides how it wants to deal with privilege and what issues it wants to be changed or not. That's ultimately the question here.
Conservative
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON
Very briefly, the question, whether innocuous or not, is not something that ultimately the commissioner is in a position to decide on, nor should she be in a position to have to decide on that kind of question.
Thanks to the Access to Information Act, I am sent, the odd time, a piece of correspondence from the commissioner asking me to sign off—“Is it okay that we release the piece of correspondence that you sent to a minister?”—presumably because someone is looking to see what the content of that correspondence would be. Typically these are cases in which I have written to a minister because I found the department is not working out and doing its job properly, and the minister's personal intervention is needed.
Ultimately, whether I sign off or not—it doesn't happen all the time, but it has happened a few times—is based on whether there is anything in the item that indicates the identity of the individual in question. Sometimes you can put it together from the facts, and these can be things that are embarrassing to them. Some degree of sensitivity to this has to remain in the system or we will find ourselves abusing the...I won't say the rights or privileges, but we'll be abusing people, if we aren't careful. That would be the unintended consequence.
I'm not sure I can point to a solution for it. I think what Mr. Martin said is valid, that there is a distinction between what we're allowed to do without violating the law and what the public thinks is a legitimate limit. That's an area that we want to keep as close as we can. But we have to remember that there is this second item that won't become obvious until somebody gets hurt.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Joe Preston
Thank you for summing up as well as I could, Mr. Reid. That's great.
Thank you very much.
We will suspend for a minute while we go in camera.
[Proceedings continue in camera]