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?