Procedure and House Affairs Committee on May 31st, 2016

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Thank you.

Mr. Reid.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

Thank you, Arnold, for that.

What we are trying to do is get information, through the analyst, that helps us determine where the rules lie and where the conventions lie. That is information as to background.

As for this incident, the obvious thing is to try to find out additional facts as to the source of this particular leak. I think the best way of doing that would be to invite as witnesses the minister's chief of staff, Lea MacKenzie, and the minister's senior communications adviser, Joanne Ghiz. I could be wrong. Those may not be the individuals who were there at the time. If I am mistaken, then I would want to adjust the names, but they could provide us with information. They could confirm to us that they themselves were not the source of it, that it was done deliberately—assuming that to be the case. In addition, they could indicate how large the circle is as to individuals who had access to the documentation at that point.

At some point, either someone was careless and it slipped out, which is highly unlikely—I say that because we would have more than this select slice of information, were that the case—or someone deliberately leaked some of the information, which I think is the only plausible hypothesis. At any rate, those two could provide information.

I would be happy to have the minister herself here. I understand that we can't force the minister to come and also, in all fairness, I suppose the minister is presumably designing the policy, as opposed to designing the communications strategy. The minister is not a communications expert, but I would move that we have those two come as witnesses.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Mr. Christopherson, go ahead.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

I might add to that. Again, I don't want to make a mountain out of a molehill. I was surprised there was no answer at all, and I am still not getting an answer. Mr. Chan says he doesn't know, and I accept that, of course.

The chief government whip was here, and we can't even get an answer to the question of whether the government, after apologizing for something they said was horribly wrong and shouldn't have happened, conducted an internal investigation. Did they have an investigation?

The other thing is that our notes tell us that, back in 2001—I realize it is going back aways—in the resolution to that issue, which is similar to this but of course not quite exactly the same.... They then updated and revised their “Guide to Making Federal Acts and Regulations”. That was 15 years ago. I don't even know if such a thing is around, but there has to be some kind of a guidebook and policies that exist today. I can't imagine we would go from 2001 with detailed processes, only to find out in 2016 that everything is gone. It is possible, but it would be surprising.

To me, Mr. Chair, it would be worth our time to talk to the chief government whip, again, to reiterate why he apologized. Mr. Chan, supported by other colleagues of his making that argument, says he is not sure what exactly the breach is, and yet their own chief government whip at the time felt that he owed the House an apology and gave one. Clearly, to some degree, even the whip acknowledged that a breach had taken place, at least a prima facie case of a breach.

In bringing in the chief government whip, I would have at least two questions. One, what is the current version of “Guide to Making Federal Acts and Regulations” and any successor documents that are now in place? I don't know what the new government has done vis-à-vis that policy with regard to where it was in the last government. Maybe that is something we need, too. Two, did you change it? Did the government change the process? Did the Conservatives actually have something right in that case, and the government now has monkeyed with it and made it worse? I don't know, so I think we deserve to know that.

Those two questions alone are worth calling in the chief government whip. Why did the chief whip believe there was a breach? What was it that he was apologizing for? Is there or was there any kind of an internal government investigation to find out who the culprits were?

Third, what policies or guides are in place vis-à-vis “Guide to Making Federal Acts and Regulations”? I think those would be at least three pertinent questions, off the top of my head, that would be properly placed before the chief government whip, so I would suggest his name, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Mr. Chan.

[Arnold Chan, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

Let me respond to Mr. Christopherson's assertion that the chief government whip apologized for a breach. I think he apologized. He said, “We apologize if there is a finding of a breach.” I would invite you to read the record more carefully with respect to his comments in the House of Commons.

I don't have an opinion with respect to the chief government whip. I do want to respond to Mr. Reid's suggestion about calling two staffers from the Minister of Justice's office. I would be of the view that it would be more appropriate on the doctrine of ministerial responsibility to simply call the minister.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

I'm not against that at all, believe me, but I think that we can't require the minister to come here. When I say that, on the other hand, the Liberals can vote anything, and you can also arrange to have the minister not appear. Ultimately whether we have witnesses, be it the minister or the minister's staff coming here, is up to you all and not up to us.

[Arnold Chan, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

No, I follow.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

I'm still going to move that we invite these individuals. The possibility also exists, and this worries me, that the minister would say truthfully, “I don't know, someone else handled that stuff”, but that reason would be insufficient. The minister did have a lot on her plate and may genuinely not know. I'm going to keep these names before us, but I do take the point to very much welcome the minister's presence here. In fairness to the minister, we might want to wait until Bill C-14 has been dealt with, because she does have something else on her plate at the moment.

[Arnold Chan, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

I wanted to clarify with the clerk, have we made a request from this committee for an invitation, for the availability of the minister on this issue yet? I can't remember, because I've been in and out, and I apologize.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

The committee hasn't made a decision on inviting her, but the committee did want to give her a heads-up because of her limited time that we may be calling her in June. The clerk did give her that heads-up.

[Arnold Chan, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

Mr. Reid, I would invite you to amend your motion. You could speak to the two individuals in question, but I still think the doctrine applies that the minister is responsible, so she can give the testimony on behalf of these two staffers.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

I'll take you up on the invitation. Understanding that the minister is responsible under the doctrine of ministerial responsibility, but also accepting the reality of life that she is not omniscient...I stand to be corrected, but I guess she's not omniscient. If she is, I'm going to want to ask her about the stock market.

Let me amend the motion to invite the minister, accompanied by her chief of staff and communications adviser. At that point, I think it would be clear to all of us this is the normal practice. The minister might be the one answering questions, but she would have the capacity to turn to these people for assistance if she gets stuck on any point.

[Arnold Chan, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

I leave it to the minister to respond in terms of who would support her in giving her evidence that would ultimately be helpful to this committee, but I am typically reluctant to call specific officials, unless we had evidence in advance that they were somehow involved in the situation. I see none right now to suggest that, and I think it breaches the convention with respect to the doctrine of ministerial responsibility. We call the minister, and the minister calls whatever support that she requires.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

I'll say in response to that, I do not mean to suggest these individuals are culpable. That's something we simply can't know. They're merely people who are in positions that deal with this kind of material. They would have information at a more detailed level than the minister would, I suspect, as to how many hands this information was in, what the processes are for security of the material, and that kind of thing. I'll leave it there.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Mr. Christopherson.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

I don't know if Mr. Reid would take it as a friendly amendment to include the chief government whip, and whether you want me to formally move an amendment, or whether you want a separate motion. I'm in your hands on that. I'm in concurrence with the starting point of those two.

I did want to state to Mr. Chan and others that this business of staff is always a tricky one. Bear in mind that this committee always retains the right to demand any—and I think I've got the three right—papers, people, and documents, or at least close to that. That right is absolute.

As a matter of convention, starting with the minister, since they're accountable in keeping staff out of the direct line of fire if there's no need for them to be there, is a good one. I'm prepared to support that notion as we approach it, but I just hope that no one thinks that this necessarily ends it, or that we can't go to staff. Having been a staff—and I'm one of those, and there are quite a few around here—it's easy for us to put ourselves in those shoes and the last thing you want to do as a staffer is to be at the end of the table facing the opposition members and whatever might come. I get that. However, at the end of the day, if we have to do that to get at what we determine to be the truth, we still have that right. One is the niceties of how we'll approach it, and the other is, if we have to, the reserve of actual authority and power that this committee does have to produce whatever it wants to appear at the end of the table.

[Arnold Chan, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

I would agree with that if it were evidence that comes out perhaps through disclosure from the minister.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

I'm willing to take that approach. I think Mr. Reid is too. I'm hearing him. I don't want to put words in his mouth, but my sense is that he was prepared to go that way as long as we understand that if we start chasing our tail or we're going in circles or bringing in a staff person to give direct evidence that is clearly needed to assist the committee in their work, then that's where I'm going to go. Then we'll talk about how we do that because once they're there, it's a unique situation whereby all this power is in our hands and you have very few rights. You have no lawyer. You're protected from any kind of court action, based on anything you say, but nonetheless there's no bigger court than Parliament at the end of the day.

Hopefully, we have a meeting of the minds in how we're going to approach this as the details come up.

I would just come back to the point, Chair, if you're considering my request to have the chief government whip here, is it part of Mr. Reid's motion, or do I need to do a separate motion? I'm in your hands, sir.

[Arnold Chan, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

I would suggest a separate motion, Mr. Christopherson.

I want to respond to the suggestion of the chief government whip. I just don't think the chief government whip would add anything. Your concern ultimately is if there's an investigation, it would be a departmental one. Obviously, the department that is responsible for the process would be the one that would have conducted reviews, so I think the starting point for me is the minister.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Chair, if you're allowing the dialogue back and forth, I hear your point, but I still think it's relevant that this “Guide to Making Federal Acts and Regulations”, and whatever its current 2016 version is...it would seem to me that this is under the responsibility of the whip. If you want to say to me that's under the responsibility of the House leader, or whoever you want, I don't care, I just want somebody in here with some responsibility for that policy to talk about what it is and to tell us whether or not it's been changed from what the previous government had. I think that's very relevant.

[Arnold Chan, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

I have no idea.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

As I said, I don't care. Just give us a government representative, preferably an elected one, who can answer what is the current policy that we're referring to in 2001, and has this government made any changes to that protocol policy from what the last government had? These are very valid questions, I think.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

It might be the Privy Council Office.

[Arnold Chan, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

It might be the Privy Council Office. I just don't think it falls.... The whip is not technically—