Procedure and House Affairs Committee on May 7th, 2020

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

It's part of a point of order, though, so could you let me finish?

I await the advice, but I want to point out that I think we need to take this quite seriously. We have a copy of a report that's marked confidential, and putting MPs in a position where we're not certain whether or not we're doing something inappropriate is dangerous. I just want to point that out.

I get your point that this has happened before, but we're talking about a report here that is marked confidential.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

The second thing I'd like to point out is that, as I've stated before, there is an order from the House that all our meetings be publicly broadcast, so that's the other thing to note.

If you give me a moment I will try to address some of your concerns as well as I can at this point. I think those are the two main things: This is what the committee has been ordered to study, and it has been specifically stated that these meeting must be publicly broadcast, and that includes the draft report. This brings us to today, when we are going through the draft report so that we are able to adopt it.

I understand your concern and I'll try to get some more advice on that as well.

[Christine Normandin, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Madam Chair, I would like to ask a question before you request the clerks' opinion.

Despite the request by the House...

[Eric Duncan, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

I have a point of order.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Hold on just a second. I have a speaking list now on this point of order, so maybe everybody—

[Eric Duncan, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

It's an audio issue.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Yes, there is an audio issue as well.

I have a speaking order at this point.

Mr. Gerretsen, you did raise your hand as well.

[Christine Normandin, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

I believe I raised my hand first.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

You're at the bottom of the “raise hand” list, so I don't know if Ms. Normandin perhaps raised her hand first and I should go according to that list, or....

We have a list and it's Madame Normandin, then Ms. Blaney, then Mr. Richards again and then Mr. Gerretsen.

Please give me just a moment and then I will proceed with that list.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

The clerk has just established once again some of the points that I have already mentioned. We're not the first to be doing this in public.

This part is not what the clerk has said but what I am about to suggest. It increases transparency, yes, and there are no rules against our doing this in public. That's why it has been done in public before. It is an adopted norm, I guess, but in this case we really have no choice because we have been ordered by the order of reference adopted by the House. It requires all committees meeting virtually to be webcast to the public on ParlVU, so it's quite clear that we must be in public.

As for the report, yes, I agree that it's a confidential draft report, so it's not to be circulated so that someone can print it and then further circulate it. Discussing the report will of course reveal certain aspects of the report, but it's still not the same as publishing the report before it's edited and is in its final version.

That's all I can say for now. We'll carry on with the list that we have. If you'd like to get on that list, then please just raise your hand in the “participants” toolbar, and I can hear from you.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Is the list related to the point of order?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Yes, the list is related to the point of order.

Madame Normandin.

[Christine Normandin, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you.

Some points have already been raised by my colleagues, but I would like a clarification. Did I understand correctly that, even if the committee decided to go in camera, it would not be possible because of the order of reference it received from the House?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

That is correct.

Next we have Ms. Blaney, please.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

I think this is an important conversation, and I'm a little concerned as well. I just wanted to share that.

At the beginning of our committee, we did have a phone meeting where we discussed witnesses, and I'm just wondering if that was in camera.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

No, it was not.

I'll confirm that meeting was also webcast, but only audio was heard. I'll check with the clerk.

Ms. Blaney, I just got confirmation again that what I said is, thankfully, correct. It was a public meeting, and the audio was recorded in that one.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Next up we have Mr. Richards.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

Thank you.

I won't belabour this, but there are two things that remain a concern or that I certainly have doubt about in my mind.

I understand what you indicated and the advice you've received, Madam Chair. However, I note that we have a copy of a report—I assume we all have it in front of us—and it clearly says “confidential” on it.

As a member of Parliament, it has always been drilled into me—and has been something I've taken very seriously—that when I have a report that is confidential, I am not to share it with anyone or reveal any of the contents of it. I can say with all certainty that I have never revealed a thing from a confidential report to anyone. Even in cases like this where we've had draft reports marked confidential, we've had discussions as a committee on whether we could talk to our caucuses about them, because they've had potentially significant impacts on caucus meetings. We've had to make those kinds of decisions. I guess that then takes some of the confidentiality away, but we make that decision. Maybe that's something we can do as a committee. I don't know.

I feel we haven't squared that circle yet. The report says “confidential”. I get that we've been asked by the House to do something, but there are contradictions here. I think we need to completely address those so we can all feel comfortable that by participating in these conversations we're not doing something inappropriate. That's the first point.

To be fair, you mentioned that we'll be disclosing certain aspects of it. I would argue there is the potential that we will basically disclose the entire report, depending upon how we go about it and how much discussion there is on certain parts. It isn't insignificant. We have to figure out how we reconcile these things.

The second thing was raised briefly by Mr. Brassard. He didn't raise it as a breach of privilege, but I would say it goes that far. He asked what would happen if he were to mention something proprietary about Zoom. I think that was his example. There are other potential examples.

We're all covered by parliamentary privilege in committee meetings—that's my understanding—but it was not made clear to us during the hearings when questions were asked of certain individuals.... I don't know that we had a clear answer so as to be completely confident that we are in fact covered in this video conference platform. I think that would leave some concerns in people's minds, especially when we are talking about potentially revealing the contents of a confidential report publicly.

If someone were to have concerns about Zoom, for example, or maybe indicate there was dishonest testimony by a witness, whatever the case might be—I'm not saying that any of those things have happened or will happen—what if they they felt they were covered by privilege and they were not?

I'm still a little concerned about the situation. I'd like to see how we could square those circles. I'm not wanting to prevent this from occurring, but I also don't want to put anyone in a bad spot or get anyone into hot water here, including me, obviously.

I'm not confident that we're in that position. I look forward to hearing some of the thoughts of others, but I'm not sure I'm comfortable here.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Mr. Gerretsen.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

The House of Commons tasked us with the responsibility of doing something and the motion was unanimously supported, including by the Conservative Party, to have meetings, set out in a certain manner—in this case to be public—and to address the report in a public fashion and report back.

This notion of parliamentary privilege being breached is a gigantic red herring. To suggest that your parliamentary privilege is breached because you choose not to be part of the meeting, because you're concerned over it, is not.... That's the same thing as saying that Internet access throughout Canada is a parliamentary privilege issue. It is not.

Parliamentary privilege is when somebody intentionally tries to impugn your ability to do your job. If you choose not to do your job, the job that the House of Commons has appointed us as a committee to do, then that's a choice that you make and it's certainly not impugning anybody's parliamentary privilege. We've been tasked with the responsibility of doing something in a certain manner, which we've set out to do, and it has been done exactly as indicated to this point.

My suggestion would be that we get on with this and that we deal with the actual report, because that's what we've been asked to do. Every party that's represented in this meeting has been asked to do that by the MPs in their party who unanimously voted in favour of this. I would encourage us to get on with the actual work that we have to do.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Sorry. We're having technical difficulties and we just need a brief suspension due to that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

We're back. We'll resume now.

I'd also like to remind all of the members, as we begin again, to wear their headsets when they intend to speak, or perhaps they have some kind of mike or headphone device that will result in better voice quality for the interpreters.

Mr. Richards, if you have your headset, could you please wear it?

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

Unfortunately I've forgotten it today, so I don't have it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Do you have anything that might help improve the quality of your sound?

Anyway, we're going to have the clerk address some of these things, but before he does, I did want to put in my two cents about the privilege issue. It's not really my two cents, but what we've heard before this committee from our legal experts and law clerk is that privilege extends to committees no matter where they are. If a committee is travelling, privilege would extend to that travelling committee as well, so it's not because of the member's location. Thus, I believe this is a formal proceeding of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, and therefore, privilege would apply to these proceedings regardless of the location or how it's being broadcast.

That has been my understanding from what we've heard from all of the witnesses.

We'll hear from our wonderful committee clerk, Justin.