Official Languages Committee on Feb. 14th, 2012

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

Mr. Chair, a member must have the floor to move a motion.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Yes, but he is asking for unanimous consent. Do we have unanimous consent?

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

If he withdraws the motion, the result will be the same. He can move it again.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

I don't think a member can withdraw a motion. In order for this debate to collapse, we need a motion that the debate be adjourned. So if there's unanimous consent to move that motion, I'll grant the floor to Monsieur Gourde.

There's no unanimous consent.

Mr. Aubin, you have the floor.

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Given the bilingual nature of the Canadian federal government, two Canadian Hansards are maintained, one in French and one in English. This makes Hansard a natural bilingual concordancer, and it is often used to train French-English machine translation programs. In addition to being already translated and aligned, Hansard is large in size. New material is also always being added. All that makes Hansard an attractive corpus. However, its usefulness is hindered by the fact that the translations, although accurate in meaning, are not always literally exact.

As my grandfather used to say, it is always better to get the information straight from the horse's mouth. That requires our work to be public in most cases. I want to reiterate that the Standing Orders provide for the situations when we can proceed in camera, or when it is preferable to do so. But those situations are far removed from the motion we have been divided over for a few days.

And if all those openness tools we have given ourselves are not enough—it is almost strange that an NDP member must talk about this, but I am doing so because, for once, I must recognize the Senate's wisdom—I will read a short section of the Rules of the Senate of Canada regarding committees. You will see that the wording is incredibly specific:

92. (1) Except as provided in sections (2) and (3) below, all meetings of Senate standing and special committees shall be held in public and only after public notice.

There is an old saying we often use: what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. I assume that what's good for the upper house should be just as good for us. I repeat:

[...] all meetings of Senate standing and special committees shall be held in public and only after public notice.

Reference is made to sections (2) and (3), which I read to see what the exceptions were. Section (2) says the following:

(2) Except as provided in section (3) below, a standing or special committee may decide [...]

It is not automatic; we may decide.

[...] to hold an in camera meeting to discuss its business only when the agenda deals with any of the following: (a) wages, salaries and other employee benefits; (b) contract negotiations; (c) other labour relations; (d) other personnel matters; (e) consideration of any draft agenda; and/or (f) consideration of any draft report of the committee.

I think that the two last items I listed, (e) and (f), are totally relevant to Mr. Harris' amendment, where he asks:

That the motion be amended by adding after the words “in camera” the following: “with the consent of at least one member of the opposition or a vote by the committee at the start of any sitting where committee business is to be discussed”.

The committee must be given the agenda, become familiar with the meeting content and decide whether proceeding in camera is necessary.

Section (2.1) says the following:

(2.1) Meetings of the Committee on Conflict of Interests for Senators shall be in camera unless the committee accepts the request of the senator [...]

That is less important. I don't think this is a conflict of interest situation.

Section (3) says the following:

(3) Meetings of subcommittees of any standing or special committee: (a) except as provided in sub-paragraph (b) below, shall not be subject to the provisions of section (1) or (2) above [...] (b) when clause-by-clause consideration of any bill is before the said subcommittee, shall be in public.

So the rule is that the meetings are public, and the exception is that they can be in camera if the members agree. Once again, that is exactly what Mr. Harris' motion says. We will continue to have public meetings, unless a request to go in camera is accepted, “with the consent of at least one member of the opposition or a vote by committee at the start of any sitting of the Committee where committee business is to be discussed”.

I will leave it at that. But I still think that it is important to draw attention to the wisdom of the upper chamber, whenever appropriate.

I have also briefly looked through the papers in an attempt to find out whether the issue we have been grappling with for a number of hours is an issue only for the Standing Committee on Official Languages. Let me remind you that I came up with two hypotheses about our disagreement. The first one was that we are subject to this motion because the government party wants to impose an ideological vision. I was hoping this hypothesis was false and I still hope so. My second hypothesis was that this motion—and, as a result, this amendment—are the outcome of a procedural disagreement that we were not able to resolve among ourselves. So the solution was to take an arbitrary and high-handed approach to resolve it by moving a motion that could be summed up as “Shut your mouth”. I hope that is not the case either.

As I looked through the papers...

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Lotbinière—Chutes-de-la-Chaudière, QC]

A point of order, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Go ahead, Mr. Gourde.

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Lotbinière—Chutes-de-la-Chaudière, QC]

I hope that those words—more or less parliamentary—that came from Mr. Aubin will not be in the report.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Yes, Mr. Bélanger?

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

That is not a point of order, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Let's all try to use some restraint language so we don't inflame our passions.

I'll give the floor back to Monsieur Aubin.

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I was not directing those words to anyone in particular. It was just a feeling that I had. If anyone around the table, whatever their party, was offended by those words, I would gladly take them back, but that does not change what I think.

So let me go back to the newspapers I looked at. I found an article that I would like to share with you. It is very short. And it was published in Le Devoir on December 14, 2011. That is still quite a long time ago. The title is “Government wants committees in camera, complains opposition”. The article reads as follows:

First gagged, then blindfolded: the opposition is criticizing the government's attempt to force parliamentary committees to go in camera, far from the eyes of Canadians and reporters. The New Democratic Party (NDP) and the Liberal Party have criticized in unison the total lack of transparency on the Harper government's part, a government that is abusing its majority and that wants to control everything in Parliament with an iron fist. Although the rule has been to hold most of the parliamentary committee proceedings in public, the Conservatives are trying to make that the exception, adds the opposition. On Tuesday, a Conservative MP on the government operations committee moved that all future business be conducted in camera.

As an aside...

[Bernard Trottier, Conservative, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

A point of order.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Go ahead, Mr. Trottier.

[Bernard Trottier, Conservative, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

Mr. Chair, he did not quote the motion correctly. It says “the Committee business of the Committee”. It is the same motion.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

That is not a point of order.

[Bernard Trottier, Conservative, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

I ask that it be corrected because it is not true.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

That deals more with the debate.

So I am going to go back to Mr. Aubin.

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

It seems ill advised to correct a journalist on the job. I am reading an article from Le Devoir. If it does not faithfully report the motion, there is nothing I can do about it.

So I will continue to read what was published, as I said, in Le Devoir on December 14, 2011. I will read the last sentence again in order to pick up the thread:

On Tuesday, a Conservative MP on the government operations committee moved that all future business be conducted in camera.

That's where I left off. As an aside, let me say that, as much as I have been rejecting my first hypothesis—and I reiterate that I still want to reject it—when I read this article and see that our committee is not the only one subject to such a motion, I must admit that my concerns are growing. That is the end of my digression. I will go back to the article:

The public would only be able to see witnesses who bring their expertise to parliamentarians. But they will not be able to know why those witnesses were selected, why others were excluded, and, more importantly, why the committee chose to do some studies and not others.

It seems to me that this is exactly what Mr. Menegakis' motion means: "That all Committee business of the Committee be conducted in camera.” If that’s the case, then I agree with the article:

The public would only be able to see witnesses who bring their expertise to parliamentarians. But they will not be able to know why those witnesses were selected, why others were excluded...

It seems to me there is a blatant lack of transparency.

I will continue reading:

Going in camera also prevents MPs from discussing what takes place behind the closed doors. The same manoeuvre was used on the official languages committee, a committee that has no state secrets to hide...

We have to remember that national security was one of the top criteria not only for going in camera, but also for almost automatically choosing to go in camera. That's just common sense. And it seems pretty obvious that, although the issues the Standing Committee on Official Languages is dealing with are significant, we are not talking about national security.

Let me go back to the article:

The same manoeuvre was used on the official languages committee, a committee that has no state secrets to hide, noted Yvon Godin, NDP MP on the committee. As to whether other committees have been affected, Liberal MP Marc Garneau said that it was possible, but he could not talk about it...given that it was in camera.

Mr. Chair, this simple answer is very telling of how the culture of secrecy is trying to become established and certainly at the expense of our freedom of speech and the quality of our parliamentary work.

I am going back to the article:

In House today, government leader Peter Van Loan denied the allegations, saying that the government was acting in a transparent and responsible way, drawing sniggers from the opposition.

That is the end of the quote from the article published in Le Devoir on December 14, 2011.

In light of this article, there were a number of comments from the public, as is increasingly the case with blogs popping up everywhere. I will read you some of the comments in response to the article, because they give me the energy I need to keep on fighting. Actually, person by person and comment by comment, I have realized that our fight is just.

Raymond Saint-Arnaud, a subscriber to Le Devoir, posted a comment on Wednesday, December 14, 2011 at 5:50 p.m., with the title “The Canadian parliamentary system is very sick”. This title is repeated as the first sentence: “The Canadian parliamentary system is very sick”. That is not my repetition, but Mr. Saint-Arnaud's. I would imagine that the idea behind the repetition was to reinforce it. I continue with Mr. Saint-Arnaud’s reply:

Mr. Harper shows contempt for real parliamentary institutions by forcing parliamentary committees to go in camera. Mr. Harper is a budding dictator.

As I said, it was signed Raymond Saint-Arnaud.

This is what another subscriber wrote:

Follow the rules to the letter? If the opposition keeps following the rules of Harper's parliamentary system, they will be fleeced. There might be some anonymous leaks...

You can draw your own conclusions.

On the same day, Wednesday, December 14, 2011, NL said the following:

Not just a lack of transparency, but an attempt to assimilate... ...it is a manoeuvre allowing the government to infringe on constitutional language rights. It is an attempt to undermine Canadian “bilingualism”... to undermine the fundamental right to use French in parliamentary proceedings. The risk is that none of the people present at a committee like that will be able to publicly say that the Conservative majority is imposing English on everyone as the only language of work. If a witness was true to their conscience and made this public, they would be found in contempt of Parliament for breaking the in camera rule.

Mr. Chair, I can honestly tell you that I don't agree with the comments in that reply. However, I think that it is a clear example of the shift that would take place if we were forced to go in camera and transcripts would no longer be available to check what really was said, what the person speaking actually thought. The information would not be consistent from one person to another.

Let's see what Pierre Rousseau wrote on Wednesday, December 14, 2011. He titled his answer “Defenestration of democracy!!!”, original as it may be. I for one had trouble understanding it, but the following lines might make it clearer:

It is unbelievable to see how this majority government (with less than 40% of the votes cast) insists on governing behind closed doors in order to hide as much as possible from the voters' watchful eyes! That is starting to seem like full-blown paranoia. We can say that Canadian democracy (as rickety as it might have been) is about to go out... the window!

I guess those last few words explain the title.

Here is another reply called “Good old dictatorship”:

How we miss it! No need to think anymore, no need to vote anymore, everything in the hands of our enlightened duce, the demigod of the Rockies. Canada could be right up there with North Korea. We would have statue contests.

If it was a joke, I would probably find it distasteful and I would not feel like laughing. The problem is that those types of comments are now publicized because people feel really wronged when it comes to their right to access to information. We obviously cannot expect all Canadians who follow politics a few minutes a day, or a few hours a week, to have a completely informed and defined opinion on all the issues at the core of Canadian politics. Imagine how things would be if they did not have access to a reliable source of information. I worry that this type of shift will become more pronounced and everyone will lose out.

Mr. Guy Lafond suggests some sort of remedy:

A very good training course is currently being given to the public service of Canada. It is called “Adventure in Leadership”. It is only a few days of training that can go a long way when it comes to parliamentary matters. Something to think about...

Pierre Coutu talks about a Canadian spring. It is the spring that we all await, but that is probably not going to come this morning. So we have to keep our hearts warm this Valentine's Day, since we cannot warm our bodies in a public square.

A Canadian spring? I would be happy with a Quebec spring, but okay, for humanity’s sake, getting rid of this government would be a blessing! They are so mean it makes you sick... But we knew that before the election (prorogations and other questionable tactics). So where are those 40% Canucks, who essentially supported them?

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

A point of order, Mr. Chair.

I ask that we suspend the proceedings for about 10 minutes to discuss.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

We've been asked to suspend the committee for

five minutes, is that it?

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

For 10 minutes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Is it the will of the committee to suspend the sitting for 10 minutes?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

We're suspended for 10 minutes.