Evidence of meeting #33 for Procedure and House Affairs in the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was perception.
A video is available from Parliament.
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Conservative
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Some hon. members
Oh, oh!
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Conservative
The Chair Conservative Joe Preston
It's about exercising it....
Mr. O'Toole, for four minutes, please.
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Conservative
Erin O'Toole Conservative Durham, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Following that last exchange there seemed to be some conflict between the testimony of Mr. Christopherson and the testimony of Mr. Saunders. Then I realized that you're the only one here actually giving testimony here today, and so I'm going to review some of my last questions potentially for Mr. Christopherson's benefit.
You said that since 2007 there has been absolutely zero role or interference by the attorney general in the prosecution of election offences. Is that correct?
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Director of Public Prosecutions, Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, Public Prosecution Service of Canada
That's correct. By law the attorney general cannot intervene in elections cases, and that has been respected.
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Conservative
Erin O'Toole Conservative Durham, ON
So your department or agency, which Mr. Christopherson referred to in terms of a political line in a flow chart, is independent and there is no operational flow chart. Is that correct? There is no role by the attorney general in any of your prosecutions.
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Director of Public Prosecutions, Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, Public Prosecution Service of Canada
The only roles the attorney general has with respect to prosecutions are set out in the legislation itself, our legislation. It allows the attorney general to issue a directive in respect of a particular case if he so wishes, and allows the attorney general to assume conduct of a prosecution. It also allows the attorney general to intervene in a case involving provincial prosecution, or to issue a directive with respect to prosecutions generally. Each of these measures, if taken by him, has to be done in transparent fashion. He has to publish, for example, any directive in respect of such a case in the Canada Gazette, the idea being that transparency is an important protection of prosecutorial independence.
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Conservative
Erin O'Toole Conservative Durham, ON
With respect to the budget, I'm sure that every department in this fine city would love to have direct access and fund themselves, but that's generally not how things work. When your teams are involved in prosecution in areas of federal jurisdiction like fisheries or transportation and more funds are needed because there is more activity happening, do they go through your agency for budgetary requests? Is that how it works currently?
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Director of Public Prosecutions, Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, Public Prosecution Service of Canada
No we have a hybrid funding formula. Most of our funding is what's called A-base funding, in that we receive an appropriation from Parliament with respect to that funding. A very small amount is what we call cost recovery funding, where agencies will fund a prosecution, but we have agreements with these agencies to ensure that mutual respect is maintained for the independent investigative function and the prosecutorial function.
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Conservative
Erin O'Toole Conservative Durham, ON
With regard to the reporting mechanism, you specified that the commissioner would have a separate report within your report, or a separate public report. If the commissioner felt that more funds were needed because more investigations were going on than in the previous five years, could he put that in his report to make sure that it were publicly available?
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Director of Public Prosecutions, Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, Public Prosecution Service of Canada
Yes.
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Conservative
Erin O'Toole Conservative Durham, ON
Would that be the same for the rest of your department if there were areas that were overtaxed? In your annual report would you talk about the areas that are incurring more expenses, and those sorts of things?
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Director of Public Prosecutions, Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, Public Prosecution Service of Canada
Our annual report is more about the activities of the previous year. We tend to make statements regarding our financial situation in the departmental performance report, or the report on plans and priorities. Those are the documents where you would will find statements of that nature.
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Conservative
The Chair Conservative Joe Preston
Thank you very much.
That finishes our rounds of questioning today. We have a request from Ms. May for unanimous consent for one small question.
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NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
On a point of order, Mr. Chair, we have a few more minutes left, so can we just ask questions until our time is up? That would be after Ms. May; I wasn't going to stop her. So Ms. May would have one question and we would then just finish the round in the usual fashion.
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Conservative
The Chair Conservative Joe Preston
A round would be a government question and then the other, though there might not be enough time to do that and finish any of the committee business that was deferred.
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NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
There would be two minutes for the Green Party, two minutes for the Liberals, and then we'd be done.
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Conservative
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NDP
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Conservative
The Chair Conservative Joe Preston
We're dealing with Ms. May's question first.
Do I have consent for Ms. May to ask one question?
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Conservative
Tom Lukiwski Conservative Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK
Mr. Chair, with all due respect to Ms. May, can we continue with the practice that we've established that when a member of any political party who is recognized around this table wants to give up their time to ask question to Ms. May, they can certainly do so.