Evidence of meeting #27 for Procedure and House Affairs in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was article.
A video is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Jody Wilson-Raybould Liberal Vancouver Granville, BC
—and other departments and agencies to solicit feedback, and all of those individuals have secret or beyond secret clearance.
Conservative
Blake Richards Conservative Banff—Airdrie, AB
That's understood, but I'm limited in time. We have to get some sense. You're indicating clearly that you believe it was not in your office that this occurred, and so it must have occurred either from the PMO or the Minister of Health's office. We need to have some sense as to who we would need to call.
Would you know how many staff? Who would have had access to these documents in the Prime Minister's Office for example?
Liberal
Jody Wilson-Raybould Liberal Vancouver Granville, BC
Given the references in terms of the departments that were involved in the development of this legislation, there's a substantial number of people who were involved. Given the magnitude and the transformative nature of this legislation, of course the Prime Minister's office saw the legislation, so there are many people that saw it.
Conservative
Blake Richards Conservative Banff—Airdrie, AB
Thank you. It would seem that the next step would be to call officials from the Prime Minister's Office and the Department of Health.
Thank you very much.
Liberal
Liberal
Joël Lightbound Liberal Louis-Hébert, QC
I first want to thank you, Madam Minister, for being here. I think all issues of privilege ought to be taken seriously. We certainly take that seriously here, and we appreciate the rigour you bring to this committee and your presence.
The first thing I want to ask you is regarding the procedures, especially as they pertain to draft legislation and the directives of the Privy Council Office, because you went quickly on them. I noted that you talked about the mark it has to have.
I'd like you to elaborate on those policies, especially as they concern draft legislation.
Liberal
Jody Wilson-Raybould Liberal Vancouver Granville, BC
There are different levels of security that are assigned to documents. Documents that go to cabinet, memorandums to cabinet, are subject to the confidence of the Queen's Privy Council.
In terms of the development of legislation, as I indicated in my remarks, people that are considered involved and that have security clearances would be employees that are responsible for the developing of the policy and the proposal, in this case to myself as the minister, the ministerial department, and department staff, and personnel that support me in terms of making particular policy choices, central agency employees who advance the policies and the proposals brought forward by departments of supporting ministers, and legal advisers providing advice on the policy on the proposals and the issues that are subject to cabinet discussion.
All of those documents that contribute toward that are marked as subject to the confidence of the Queen's Privy Council and are secret documents. In order to review and participate in those documents, you have to have a high level of security clearance.
Liberal
Joël Lightbound Liberal Louis-Hébert, QC
It's fair to say that based on your inquiries with your exempt staff and your deputy minister, all of these procedures were followed by your department.
Liberal
Joël Lightbound Liberal Louis-Hébert, QC
Based on that inquiry you've made, there is no breach in the chain of possession, so to speak.
It's clear that a material copy of the bill could not have ended up in the wrong hands, because those policies were followed and there was no evidence of a leak, let's say, a lost USB key or whatnot.
Liberal
Jody Wilson-Raybould Liberal Vancouver Granville, BC
That's correct.
There was no evidence of that, and individuals are obliged to come forward and disclose that if in fact that were to ever happen.
Liberal
Joël Lightbound Liberal Louis-Hébert, QC
Okay.
My other question is that the policy you've just described to us is applicable across all departments. All ministers or departments are subject to that PCO policy.
Liberal
Jody Wilson-Raybould Liberal Vancouver Granville, BC
Every department and staff and departmental officials are subject to those policies.
Liberal
Joël Lightbound Liberal Louis-Hébert, QC
My last question comes back to the article. I read the article, and I've read it a couple of times in the course of our study. It seems to me that anyone who would have paid attention to a lot of the comments that were made by the government regarding the protection of vulnerable people could have inferred that those exclusions would be somewhere in the bill, especially if you consider the experience of the Quebec National Assembly, in that those exclusions are in the Quebec bill as well on assistance in dying.
Would it not be possible that this could have been an educated guess as well, that protection of the vulnerable would necessarily include or could include those elements that we see in the article? I would like to have your take on that.
Liberal
Jody Wilson-Raybould Liberal Vancouver Granville, BC
It's a possibility that it was an educated guess.
There were substantive discussions that had transpired over the course of many months from the special joint committee to recommendations made by the provincial-territorial panel and the external federal panel on medical physician-assisted dying at the time.
The answer to the question is that it's possible.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Larry Bagnell
Okay.
We've finished early, so we'll go on for a five-minute round. Mr. Reid.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON
Minister, with regard to your response to Mr. Lightbound's question a moment ago, am I to understand that you were saying that the information contained in The Globe and Mail article would have been known to members of one or more external panels that you had named?
There were two external panels that you made reference to just a moment ago.
Liberal
Jody Wilson-Raybould Liberal Vancouver Granville, BC
In my response to Mr. Lightbound's question on whether it is possible that somebody could have made an educated guess that there were these items that would have been considered in the legislation, I spoke about the special joint committee. The point I was making, perhaps very inarticulately, was that there have been some substantive conversations about physician-assisted dying, medical assistance in dying, and more controversial issues, whether the immature minor, advance directives, or persons suffering from mental illness, that were considered in many different reports, including the report of the special joint committee.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON
Okay.
I must say, while this is not conclusive, the wording used in Ms. Stone's article suggests that it would have been a narrower circle of people. I'll just read what it says again:
Those three issues...will be alluded to in the legislation for further study, according to the source, who is not authorized to speak publicly about the bill.
Although, obviously Ms. Stone would have taken care to keep the identity of her source confidential, to me it does suggest somebody who's somewhere inside one of the departmental apparatus. I'm not sure what the plural is, apparati? At any rate, it suggests somebody within one of the departments of government as opposed to an external panel. That's just my sense.
I want to go back to this question. The kind of person who's likely to leak something, if it is a deliberate leak, and this does seem to me like a deliberate leak, is someone who's involved in communications. You must have information as to where these documents were circulated, the later drafts of the bill, the summary of the bill, because this could have come from the legislative summary.
Do you have information as to which people in the PMO would have seen that, or do we need to go to the PMO to ask the question as to which people in that department would have had access to either the bill itself or to the summary draft of the bill?
Liberal
Jody Wilson-Raybould Liberal Vancouver Granville, BC
Leaving aside your lead-up to the question, as I said, with a substantive piece of legislation such as this one, not only the Department of Justice but other departments involved in the production of the legislation, central agencies, and certainly because of the magnitude of this piece of legislation, the Prime Minister's Office would certainly have been privy to this proposed legislation.
Liberal
Jody Wilson-Raybould Liberal Vancouver Granville, BC
All of them would obviously have the appropriate levels of security to be able to review such documents.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON
But it's not an infinite list. We're trying to narrow it down to get to the problem of the issue.
Would you be able to get back to us, perhaps in writing, with a list of all the individuals who were informed of it, or at the very least, the departments that were in the loop and those that were not with regard to either the law itself or the legislative summary?