Citizenship and Immigration Committee on May 6th, 2024

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

I disagree with the member's interpretation.

The previous chair occupant made a ruling and considered it a substantive new motion. We then started debating it. We've had a debate now. You can't, three persons into the debate, try to deem a motion no longer acceptable after it's been received and accepted by the chair.

You've returned as the chair, and you're occupying it now. A ruling's already been made, so you can't do this after the fact. It's not a valid point of order to raise a matter after debate has already commenced on the motion.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Madam Kayabaga, go ahead on a point of order.

[Arielle Kayabaga, Liberal, London West, ON]

Thank you.

I tried to raise a point of order earlier to the vice-chair of the committee, who ruled to accept the motion. I continue to challenge the chair on the same motion. This is a motion that is being debated elsewhere.

If I can quote the committee proceedings, House of Commons Procedure and Practice, 3rd edition, 2017 procedural info from the House of Commons of Canada, it says in the section on moving motions:

A member of a committee may move a motion at any time in the normal course of a meeting, provided that:

the notice period, if any, has been respected;

the motion is not a substantive motion or a subsidiary motion where such a motion is already being debated (a committee is required to deal with such motions one at a time);

I'm going to finish the other points too, just to make sure that I'm reading this entire section.

the member has the floor to move the motion and is not doing so on a point of order; and

moving the motion does not violate any rule the committee may have adopted in respect of the period in which motions can be moved.

Mr. Chair, you were not here. The meeting was being presided over by the vice-chair. I made a similar comment that this motion was being debated elsewhere, and the vice-chair unduly accepted this motion without actually following procedure.

These are committee proceedings. They are in the procedural information manual of the House of Commons of Canada, which clearly states that a motion that is being debated elsewhere cannot be a substantive motion. I tried to say this earlier. Unfortunately, Mr. Chair, the ruling of the vice-chair was false.

Therefore, I will continue to contest that this motion is not a substantive motion and that we cannot debate it right now. I think that the mover of the motion would be better served if they resumed debate rather than moving this motion right now.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Thank you, Madam Kayabaga.

Madam Kayabaga, you have every right to challenge the Chair.

My position is that the officiating chair at the time took the decision, and I follow his decision.

I'm chairing the meeting right now, and if you are not happy with the chair's decision, you are welcome to challenge me.

[Arielle Kayabaga, Liberal, London West, ON]

Mr. Chair, unfortunately the ruling of the previous occupant of the chair, who was the vice-chair, was not procedurally sound.

Therefore, you cannot go off a non-procedurally sound ruling to move forward with the committee. I would like more information. Perhaps the clerk can provide us with more information. We would have to suspend until we find that information, Mr. Chair.

I don't see how we can move forward with a non-procedurally sound proceeding happening in the committee right now.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Do you want to challenge the chair, or do you want the clerk to speak on this?

[Arielle Kayabaga, Liberal, London West, ON]

Could we take a moment, Chair, so that I can inform myself on what needs to be done? I think I'd like some time to make that decision, but we can't move forward right now.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

There are only two things, Madam Kayabaga. Either you can ask the clerk to intervene—

[Arielle Kayabaga, Liberal, London West, ON]

Yes, I'm requesting that the clerk intervene, because there was a non-procedurally sound procedure that happened.

Before I challenge your decision or your ruling, Mr. Chair, I'd like to hear how we—

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

If you challenge my ruling, again, this is non-debatable. I have to take a vote if you're challenging the chair.

I want you to make it clear. If you want the clerk to say something, he will. Make sure those two questions are very separate. One is going to the clerk to give direction to the committee. The second one is challenging the chair.

Do you want—

[Arielle Kayabaga, Liberal, London West, ON]

I'm sorry. Go ahead.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

You can't mix those two. I want you to be very clear in your deliberations.

Do you want me to give the floor to the clerk to answer your question on whether this motion is a substantive motion and in order?

[Arielle Kayabaga, Liberal, London West, ON]

Well, there's that, but it's also the fact that a non-procedurally sound decision was made by the vice-chair.

Mr. Chair, on principle, if we're going to follow the rules of the committee, this was not procedurally sound and I would like to challenge that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Thank you. There is a challenge to the chair's ruling.

We will take a vote on that.

(Ruling of the chair sustained: yeas 6; nays 5 [See Minutes of Proceedings])

The floor is with Madam Zahid, and then I have Mr. Kmiec, Madam Kayabaga and Madam Kwan on the list.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Can you please clarify where we are now?

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

We are debating the motion of Madam Kwan.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

I would like to say, in regard to this motion brought by Ms. Kwan, that I think it is very important that we provide some specification, so there is clarity. It is important that we specify what redactions should be made and how it should be. Because of the Privacy Act, we should not be mentioning things that are under cabinet confidentiality. I think that as a committee, we need to provide clarity on what specific information...and how that information should be redacted. Something has to be specified.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Thank you.

Mr. Kmiec.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I support Madam Kwan's motion to have this document provided to us. At different points in the committee's testimony that was received in public, different departments told us they did review or conduct internal investigations or inquiries of some sort. This motion would basically have them produce one of those to be given to this committee.

The law clerk's office will be the ones to determine the redactions. I don't agree with Mrs. Zahid's contention that we need to give more directions. It's at his discretion. It's at the discretion of the office. It's been done many times in other parliamentary committees.

I'll point out, too, that in July 2022, the Liberal government appointed Philippe Dufresne to become the Privacy Commissioner of Canada. He was the previous law clerk of the House of Commons.

Obviously, I trust the public servants. I don't know why she or they wouldn't trust them to do the work correctly. The Access to Information Act doesn't apply here. We want the unredacted documents.

I'll also point out that when Senator McPhedran came before the committee and they provided documents, those were provided to us unredacted, with full emails and full names as well.

In a moment of transparency, we'd want the government to provide that document in full and unredacted to the law clerk. The law clerk's office can then determine which parts of it should not be given over to committee to form part of our testimony that's available to the public.

I don't know why they're trying to hide this document even more.

Let's proceed to a vote, get this over with and get this document into the public sphere.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Thank you.

Madam Kayabaga, do you have anything to say? Your hand was up. Okay.

Madam Kwan.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

I will just make a very brief comment, and I hope we can get to a vote on this.

I trust the law clerk in their work; they will make that assessment accordingly.

I just want to make it very clear as to why this motion is so important to our study. It is because Senator McPhedran indicated that she got the inauthentic facilitation letter from George Young, who is no longer with government. In that exchange she also indicated—and an email was provided to the clerk as part of the submission of information from the senator—that George Young indicated he had received this unauthenticated letter from someone in GAC. We don't know who that individual is. I think it is important for us to find out.

Part of the study was to try to get to the bottom of this issue, so if we don't ask for the information, we will never know and we will be unable to get to the bottom of it.

This is why I think it's absolutely essential. To that end, in terms of the rules that would apply with respect to documentation, the independent Office of the Law Clerk, I believe, will be able to do this work in such a way that respects the rules of the House and that will respect all the requirements accordingly.

The law clerk is experienced in this office, and they've done this work, as indicated, in other committees as well, so we should leave it to them to undertake this work. I hope the committee can move forward with this motion; let's vote on it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Thank you.

We cannot go to the vote yet, because the speaking list has not been exhausted.

Madam Zahid.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Through you, before we vote on this motion, I would like to ask a question of the clerk of the committee.

Based on some previous history and previous examples, when the committee—not just this committee but any other committee—has requested from the law clerk some information, were there some parameters defined, or was it left to the discretion of the law clerk to redact the information? If you have some examples, could you share them with us? Are there usually parameters specified when requesting the production of documents for personal information, or has it usually been at the discretion of the law clerk?

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Thank you, Madam Zahid.

I'll go to Mr. Clerk.

Go ahead, please.

[The Clerk of the Committee, Mr. Rémi Bourgault]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Yes, there is precedence for the law clerk doing this kind of work. However, at the moment, based on the way the motion is written, the law clerk will probably have to come back to the committee in order to get some parameters before doing the redaction itself. Right now, it is clear that the law clerk will probably get back to the committee on that.

One point also I'd like to raise, if I may, Mr. Chair, is that the motion doesn't state that the government should provide the document in both official languages, which could be quite important in order for the law clerk to redact, but would be getting all the documents already bilingual from the department itself.

The law clerk has already done that in the past, but usually there are some kinds of criteria given to him. Right now, it's possible the law clerk will get back to the committee saying, “Okay, I've received documents. How exactly do you want me to redact them?”