Procedure and House Affairs Committee on Nov. 19th, 2024

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Good morning, colleagues.

I hope you all had a good constituency week.

We have some familiar faces here for the meeting 133 of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, and a friendly reminder to our witnesses—although I doubt that you need it, as you help implement the rules that I'm about to go over. Please make sure that when your earpieces are not in use, you are placing them securely on the stickers in front of you to protect our colleagues in the booth who are working very hard on our behalf.

Colleagues, today we have two different hours to continue the two different studies we've been working on.

We will divide our time between two different studies during this meeting.

The first hour is going to be on the question of privilege related to cyber-attacks targeting members of Parliament. We've talked about this on a number of occasions, and this is a continuation of that discussion.

In the second hour we'll be resuming our discussion on Bill C-65, the bill that will make changes to the Elections Act.

With that, I would like to welcome back Mr. Eric Janse, Clerk of the House of Commons; Stéphan Aubé, chief executive administrator; Michel Bédard, law clerk and parliamentary counsel; Patrick McDonell, Sergeant-at-Arms; Jeffrey LeBlanc, deputy clerk, procedure; and Benoit Dicaire, chief information officer.

Mr. Janse, I understand that you'll be speaking on behalf of your colleagues here. The floor will be yours for five minutes, at which point we will go into our lines of questioning.

The floor is yours, sir.

[Eric Janse, Clerk of the House of Commons]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair for inviting me and my colleagues to appear before you again regarding the question of privilege related to cyber-attacks targeting members of Parliament.

Members will recall that we previously appeared on June 4 of this year. We trust that our testimony will assist the committee in its study.

After the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs ordered the provision of documents from the House of Commons Administration and government institutions in May 2024, and following the appearance of administration representatives before this very committee on June 4, 2024, the House Administration gathered the documents in its possession to respond to the order to provide documents.

In reviewing these records, the House administration found that most of the documents relevant to this order were email exchanges from the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security, or CCCS, which is part of the Communications Security Establishment Canada, or CSE.

After some discussion, the House Administration has provided CSE with documents from the CCCS in both official languages. CSE has committed to providing them directly to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, with the redactions requested by the committee. CSE was in a better position to redact its information in accordance with the committee's order for the production of documents.

To ensure that all documents were disclosed to PROC, the House administration reviewed the documents produced by CSE and identified three documents that CSE had yet to disclose to PROC. Those were sent directly to you last week by the House administration. I note that we worked with CSE to make the redactions requested by the committee.

The House administration also identified two internal documents responsive to the order, which we provided to PROC on August 9. Those consist of an internal report and an email exchange between the House administration's IT security branch and various senators and members of Parliament, in both official languages. Redactions to the documents were made as requested by the committee to protect personal information, to protect information on the vulnerability of the House of Commons computer communications systems and methods employed to protect those systems, and information that would be injurious to the detection, prevention or suppression of subversive or hostile activities.

That concludes our opening remarks.

We look forward to your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

My goodness, the efficiency with which you operate would make you a great candidate to be the Clerk of the House of Commons, Mr. Janse.

Mr. Cooper, the floor is yours for six minutes.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Chair, since we are on the subject of a question of privilege and we have the law clerk, Mr. Bédard, before us, I want to ask Mr. Bédard some questions regarding the letter that he submitted to the Speaker yesterday relating to the question of privilege that has seized the House of Commons.

Yesterday, the Government House Leader, Karina Gould, stated on CBC that the government has complied with the House order to turn over documents related to the green slush fund.

Could you confirm that, pursuant to the House order, the government is required to turn over all documents related to the green slush fund on an unredacted basis?

[Michel Bédard, Law Clerk and Parliamentary Counsel, House of Commons]

Thank you for the question.

[Lindsay Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

I have a point of order.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Yes, Ms. Mathyssen, on a point of order.

[Lindsay Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

I would just like to call the relevance of that question, sir.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

I was consulting with the clerk during that introduction by Mr. Cooper. I would agree: I'm not sure that it's relevant to the cyber-attack.

Mr. Cooper, I've stopped the clock. Before we turn the floor over to Mr. Bédard, I'm going to give you an opportunity to explain where you see the relevance between what we have asked the House administration to be here today for and this, which can help inform a decision. If you can just clarify that, it would help us dictate where we go from here.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

It is relevant insofar as this is a matter dealing with a question of privilege. We have a question of privilege that the House is seized with. The law clerk is here before us. He sent a letter yesterday to the Speaker relating to that question of privilege. The government House leader has made certain representations, and I wish to pose questions related to whether the government has complied with its requirement to turn over documents to the law clerk, pursuant to the House order.

How it ties into this question of privilege is that we have documents that the government has withheld from this committee related to this question of privilege, so it's part of a pattern of obstruction and non-disclosure by this government.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Okay.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

I have a point of order.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

On the point of order, go ahead, Mr. Turnbull.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

By that argument, anything referring to the question of privilege would be relevant to this committee proceeding today, and that's not the case. Obviously, this is about a particular issue. The witness had been called here to answer the committee members' questions, and I think we should stay focused on what is relevant to this committee, which is in the notice of meeting—if we need to maybe read that back to Mr. Cooper, though I'm sure he can read it himself.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Okay.

I have Mr. Duncan and then Mr. Gerretsen on the same point of order.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

What Mr. Cooper laid out is that this is about the government's record and the seriousness with which it takes questions of privilege and, in the case here, document production.

Yes, sadly, there are many questions of privilege being dealt with. Our committee deals with them and is primarily tasked with dealing with them, but in terms of their relevance, it's absolutely relevant when we look at other document production requests. The government, as Mr. Cooper laid out, incorrectly asserted yesterday that they are providing all the documentation on a question of privilege when they're not.

It is absolutely relevant to this, in showing and demonstrating that the government is not taking document production seriously, including in this question here before us and another one that's ongoing right now. I think it's absolutely relevant to get the scope and confirmation from the law clerk about whether the government, on other questions of privilege and other requests for document production, is meeting them.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Thank you, Mr. Duncan.

Mr. Gerretsen, go ahead.

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

Notwithstanding the fact that I would love to engage in this discussion with Mr. Cooper, I would love to read out how Larry Brock, a Conservative member, has made comments to the effect that if you want to get a document, you go to court and ask for warrants for production of documents. I'd love to get into that discussion, too, and notwithstanding that, perhaps Mr. Cooper and I will have another opportunity to debate that at another time.

I would completely concur with the comments by Mr. Turnbull and, to be fair, your initial assessment of this, Mr. Chair, in trying to find where the relevance is here.

The only thing both Mr. Cooper and Mr. Duncan have been able to offer is that these both have to do with questions of privilege. To Mr. Turnbull's point and to your initial assessment of this, they have not in any way whatsoever shown you what you asked for, which is to demonstrate where the relevance is.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Okay. Thank you very much, folks, for your contributions.

Colleagues, this is what I'm going to do.

Mr. Bédard, I'm going to give you an opportunity to respond as you see fit to the discussion that we've been having briefly.

Mr. Cooper, the clock has been stopped. I'm going to ask that when the floor returns to you, we look at bringing our line of questioning back to what we've invited our witnesses here for today. Let's just provide the opportunity—

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

I have a point of order.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Yes, Mr. Gerretsen, go ahead.

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

Are you extending this opportunity to everybody, then? When it's my turn, will I be able to ask a completely irrelevant question, but then—

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

I may—

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

—the follow-up questions will have to be relevant? I just want to know so that I'm well prepared.

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

[Inaudible—Editor]