Evidence of meeting #28 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 leak.
A recording is available from Parliament.
12:40 p.m.
Liberal
12:40 p.m.
Liberal
Ruby Sahota Liberal Brampton North, ON
All jokes aside, I'd like to reiterate that it is a very serious matter. Given the fact that members' privileges are such a serious matter, we need to define what we are looking at. There needs to be some line drawn as to where we go on this. Was there actually a premature disclosure of a bill?
What we have before us—and even the minister testified to this very fact in her testimony that day—is that there was no premature disclosure of a bill.
The Conservatives, a few of the colleagues here, Mr. Schmale and Mr. Richards, have mentioned that perhaps the reporter had even more knowledge than one would have because she was able to deduce, or take rumours and turn them into what may or may not be in the bill, which was actually in fact inaccurate, in part. I would disagree. That does not qualify to be greater knowledge. If the reporter had greater knowledge of the actual bill, Mr. Chair, they would have included contents of the actual bill.
From what we have in both reports from the CBC and The Globe and Mail, we really don't see any of the contents of the bill that was tabled before the House. We have what may have been educated guesses, things that were talked about a lot previously in the media, or rumours and speculation. We don't have actual content.
I think it's important to bring up the fact that the minister did indicate that anybody who actually worked on that bill, or had that bill, would have had better knowledge than what was presented in the actual report. They would have known that the statement made about those suffering from psychological conditions was actually incorrect. They are included in the bill, and they're not an exception.
So on the point about having intimate knowledge, I would disagree. I don't believe this was intimate knowledge or the actual contents of a bill. I believe we should be taking this seriously in committee, but we shouldn't be heading down the road of a witch hunt or a Spanish Inquisition, if you will. Mr. Reid so nicely brought that up, and that's what it's starting to feel like to me here today.
Because it is so serious, I'd just like to reiterate that we should keep it to the premature disclosure of a bill and whether core parts of the legislation and anything substantive were mentioned. We don't have any of that before us here today. My position is that we need to very careful about dragging in what could be hundreds of people, which would not lead to anything in the end. Right now, this committee has already had five meetings on this very matter, so I believe we have been taking it very seriously. We have not stonewalled the opposition by any means. We have not been unwilling to bring in the justice minister, the attorney general, the acting clerk, and the law clerk and parliamentary counsel. They have all been before this committee to talk about this very issue. So I believe we've been taking the matter quite seriously. However, we've not been left with a lot of evidence at this point. So how can we justify going on when there are so many other important matters for this committee to address?
It really does seem like a wild goose chase. We are talking about a few rumours, some speculation that was in an article, nothing that was actually stated in the bill, and we're running with it and trying to figure out the hundreds of people who may have, at some point, had some knowledge of or access to the bill. But the fact remains that had a person with actual knowledge, who had access to the bill, leaked it to the media, we would have had a better source, we would have had actual information about the bill.
In conclusion, I'd just like say: what leak? There was no leak.
We keep stating that as if it were a fact. The opposition keeps stating that there was a breach as if it were a fact. Our job here, at this committee, is to find out whether there was a breach. This is a prima facie case, and we haven't come to any conclusion. We're trying to investigate this, not trying to accuse anyone or have an inquisition. We're trying to investigate, and, at this point, after five meetings, we have yet to come to any solid evidence of there being a breach, or being a leak.
Because this matter is so important, I would suggest that we treat it as such and don't get carried away with wasting this committee's valuable time on any more meetings that are probably going to lead to nothing, because we're at nothing right now.
That's all I have to say. Thank you.
12:45 p.m.
Liberal
Arnold Chan Liberal Scarborough—Agincourt, ON
I want to thank Ms. Sahota.
I may slightly disagree with you on a few points.
I don't think I was sufficiently clear in my opening statement, so I want to get back to some of the points that Mr. Richards made.
I want to thank Mr. Reid for his long dissertation. It reminded me of listening in one of my classes to Elmer Driedger on the interpretation of statutes. Your knowledge of history is always very illuminating, and I thank you for it.
I want to get back to what is really the issue before this committee. I think that's where I wasn't sufficiently clear, so I'm going to reiterate it.
The issue is not whether, in fact, there was an unauthorized disclosure of information. That's where I slightly depart from Ms. Sahota's point. The issue before us is whether there was, in fact, a breach of members' privilege, which is why, at the beginning, I suggested to this committee that we call the acting clerk and the law clerk and parliamentary counsel to establish the nature of the privilege. I think we know what that is, which is, were parliamentarians disadvantaged by having a premature disclosure of the bill before it was tabled in the House of Commons?
Then the next issue for me is getting to the threshold of crossing what is a breach of members' privileges. It has been our position from the get-go that in order for there to be a breach of members' privileges, it actually requires a substantive disclosure, that after the notice of motion was tabled in the House that Bill C-14 was coming forward, someone was in possession, on an unauthorized basis, of the bill before it was tabled by the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada in the House of Commons. So far my point is that we have had no evidence to date that that had taken place. The article does not in any way indicate that happened.
The point I was trying to make earlier is that the only person who has actual knowledge of whether they had the bill is Laura Stone herself. She is, from my perspective, the only witness who really can answer that question, and it's a very simple question. She doesn't have to disclose her source, she simply has to disclose whether she actually had the bill itself.
I want to get back to the earlier point. When we were asking questions of the acting clerk and the law clerk and parliamentary counsel about the nature of members' privilege, I'll be frank, I don't think we got, necessarily, a satisfactory answer. I think this is where there is a disconnect between the official opposition and the government. Obviously, as Mr. Christopherson has suggested, you want to take a more expansive view of the rights and privileges that you have, particularly when you're in opposition, but it is my view, again, that we have to be very clear on what we're defining and what the nature of a member's privilege is.
From my perspective, the only way that you're going to have a breach as it relates to this particular issue is if the bill had been in the possession of somebody before it had been tabled in the House. That's been my view from the get-go, and that's why I don't, Mr. Richards, have any sympathy with respect to these particular motions. If Ms. Stone is prepared to answer the question, a very simple yes or no, “Yes, I had a copy of the bill”, I might have some sympathy to these particular motions, some of them, but that's not the evidence before us, and that's exactly my point, which is why the government can't support it at this time.
I want to make it very clear that our role is to investigate the issue of whether there was a breach of members' privilege. From my perspective, that threshold has not been met yet. Once you meet that threshold, then we get to the question of what this committee's role and responsibility is, which is to investigate.
If you want to get back to the original motions that are before us, that's my point about why, from my perspective, you're going about it in a roundabout way. It's a fishing expedition rather than getting to the heart of the matter, which is, did the reporter have the bill? Did somebody, not authorized, have the actual substantive contents of the bill in advance of us, as members of Parliament? If the answer to that is yes, then these motions have some validity.
Thank you.
12:50 p.m.
Conservative
Jamie Schmale Conservative Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON
There are a couple of things I'd like to continue on.
I'm sorry—
12:50 p.m.
Conservative
Jamie Schmale Conservative Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON
Perfect. It won't be up to some people's standards, but I'll see if I can start.
We're talking about whether there is something here. Let's look into this a little bit more. The minister said that when she went back at her department after this became public in the House, she asked her political staff whether or not there may have been a leak. She asked them: “Yes or no”? She sent her deputy minister to ask the people in the bureaucracy who had access to this bill if they were the source of the leak, and the answer came back as no. Okay, so the answer was no.
Back in a previous life when I was a little younger and in a bit better shape, I was a hockey referee. When I gave a penalty, no matter to whom, the player always said it wasn't them. I thought I was a pretty good referee. However, here we have a witness who will take the word of, I don't know how many, people that they were not the source. Then do we just give up there? I'd like to think we don't give up there.
I'd like to go back to the article of April 12. Look at the wording. For those of you who are former journalists on the other side, look at the wording: “according to a source familiar with the legislation”. The words “according to a source” is pointing you right there, is telling you right there.... Look at some of the wording, that the bill “will exclude”, and “Sources say the Liberal cabinet”, from the CBC on April 13. It is very clear.
I'll even quote my friend Andrew Scheer, from Regina—Qu'Appelle, a beautiful part of the country, I'm sure. He said, “I hope the House agrees to send this to the procedure and House affairs committee so that the committee can look into what happened, perhaps determine who did it,”—that is what we hoped to do, but we seem to be hitting a wall—“perhaps determine what systems could be put in place to avoid this type of thing [from happening] in the future, and if the culprit is found, bring that detail back to the House for the House to decide what to do with it further.”
Right now we have really nothing, but we want to get there. We want to take those steps to get to the next phase, but we can't do that if we don't know who had access to the bill, and if the bill gives us somewhere to go, this list gives us somewhere to go, somewhere to start, that, to me, says this is the next step. Yet some are saying that we've had one witness and that that's good enough.
No, that's not good enough. I'll even quote Speaker Lamoureux from 1971, who said, “Privilege is that which sets hon. members apart from other citizens giving them rights which the public do not possess...”. That means they get the first view of the bill, which goes back to the very clear wording of the article here, that “according to a source familiar with the legislation...”.
Again, how do we get there? On the question of privilege versus contempt, the parliamentary law clerk has noted that a breach of privilege refers directly to the breach of a specific right, power or immunity claimed by the House or its members as necessary to fulfill their parliamentary functions. In contrast, contempt of Parliament refers to an offence against the authority or dignity of the House that impedes the work of the House or its members.
Mr. Chan, sir, it's right here, in a quote from 1971.
What we are looking at is very clear. To say that one witness is good enough.... We talked about a number of other things. We talked about the source of the leak. Okay, again, let's find out. Saying, let's draw the line, is unacceptable, because somebody clearly is the source of this leak. Will we find that person? Maybe, who knows? We can't do it without proceeding with this investigation.
The Speaker has referred it to us, and then it just seems as if it is going to disappear and fly off the radar and that it's no big deal. Well, it is a big deal. For sure, it's a big deal. Then you say, “Well, I don't know if this is true. I don't know”, but how does someone get that much detail? How does a reporter get this much detail as to what is or isn't in the bill? You just don't make that much up. If you work for the The Beaverton or The Onion, I guess you could, but this is The Globe and Mail. You just don't make it up, and you don't write with this kind of language if you're just looking up in the sky and hoping the words fall to you. It doesn't work that way.
As a reporter, I think back, where did I get my sources? Well, you talk to the rank and file. You talk to people in the communications department, sometimes politicians—but for the most part rarely, if ever, which is why the communications staff at the PMO are on this list. As Mr. Richards said, if the other side would like us to call the Prime Minister, we're more than happy to do that.
How much time do I have, Chair?
1 p.m.
Conservative
1 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Larry Bagnell
—this discussion another time. I'm sure everyone will get a chance to continue it.
The meeting is adjourned.
