Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you, Minister, for joining us this morning, or this afternoon, depending on time zones. It's always nice to have our ministerial counterparts before committee.
I want to start by going back a bit into the past, to Bill C-76.
When this bill was introduced in the House of Commons in the previous Parliament, there was an unfortunate decision to amend subsection 91(1), despite objections from the Conservative Party and the motion that I myself brought forward, which would have corrected it. Unfortunately, it went ahead and was ruled unconstitutional.
My concern is that Justice Davies was quite scathing in her criticism of your own department at PCO. She wrote in her decision, “More importantly, the advice given to the Standing Committee by Mr. Morin”—a senior adviser at PCO—“that the inclusion of the word 'knowingly' in subsection 91(1) was unnecessary, redundant and confusing was, for several reasons, incorrect and potentially misleading.”
She goes on to write, in paragraph 58, “To the extent Mr. Morin testified about the import of removing 'knowingly' from subsection 91(1), his comments were inaccurate and cannot be taken as reflecting Parliament's true intention.”
Minister, this was a senior adviser to your own department, the Privy Council Office. I'd like to know what measures you have taken to ensure accountability exists within your department and that unconstitutional advice to this committee will not happen again.