Public Safety Committee on Oct. 16th, 2023

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Let's avoid crosstalk, please.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

This actually brings me to another point. Ms. O'Connell said that at the last meeting the Conservative contingent at the table was all male. I won't say it was a fabrication, but anyone consulting the record will know that there were female Conservative MPs who spoke on the record—

[Jennifer O'Connell, Liberal, Pickering—Uxbridge, ON]

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Ms. O'Connell, go ahead on a point of order.

[Jennifer O'Connell, Liberal, Pickering—Uxbridge, ON]

Mr. Chair, to clarify the record, what I said was that—

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

This doesn't sound like a point of order.

[Jennifer O'Connell, Liberal, Pickering—Uxbridge, ON]

—only male voices, once again, were interrupting when I had the floor.

That's what I said, and the member opposite just proved my point in real time.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Just on that point of order, Chair, that was not a point of order, and—

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Wait until I address you, please.

Thank you for the point of order, Ms. O'Connell.

Yes, Mr. Genuis, go ahead on that point of order.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Mr. Chair, respectfully, I think you will find that was not a point of order. Ms. O'Connell knows the rules and is using points of order to try to inject somewhat substantive arguments. I wonder if you could—

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

I did not find that that was not a point of order.

You may continue.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Was that a point of order? Chair, do you think it's a point of order when a member interjects to clarify their opinion on a subject?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

I think we're going off topic here. Let's go back to—

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

You're the chair. What's your ruling, that members can raise points of order to express opinions on matters and not even pretend they're raising issues of order? Issues of order are issues about the rules of the committee. The member said, “I have a point of order” and then said, “Just to clarify, here's what I said previously.”

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Mr. Genuis, my point is that the chair will make a determination whether or not it's a point of order, not you. I'm content that it was a satisfactory clarification. It's good for the committee to clarify these matters.

If you wish to carry on with this point of order, do so. Otherwise, please carry on with your debate.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Chair, I'm new to this committee. I just find it helpful to understand your interpretation of the rules. It sounds like when another member is speaking, I could also say, “On a point of order, I want to clarify my previous statement or my opinion on such-and-such a subject” and you would deem that to be a legitimate point to raise. Is that your interpretation of the rules?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

I have seen this happen on both sides on a frequent basis. I think, on balance, it is a fair point. Whether or not it's a point of order or a point of information, I don't know, but please carry on with your debate.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Okay. Maybe the clerk can clarify if a point of information is actually a real thing or is anywhere in the rules.

I'll let you come back to the committee on that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Mr. Genuis, if you wish to carry on—

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Yes, I do.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

—please go ahead.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Thank you. I'm happy to carry on.

The point of information—

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Chair, I have an actual point of order, and I'm going to reference House of Commons Procedure and Practice on decorum. It's that the chair may usually overlook “many incidental interruptions, such as applause, shouts of approval or disapproval, or mild heckling that sometimes punctuate speeches, as long as disorder does not arise.”

Colleagues, we do have a code of conduct now that governs how we govern ourselves in these committees. I would argue that the repeated heckling by Ms. O'Connell is.... It doesn't bother me—I mean, girl, I've seen it all—but I do think that it is adding to this disorder of the committee at present, and I think it is throwing off my colleague's train of thought.

I would just ask, Chair, that you encourage people to listen to colleagues' arguments, which they may or may not agree with—we do have a speaking order—and perhaps stop the heckling, which is my point of order on decorum.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you, Ms. Rempel Garner.

Mr. Genuis, do you wish to proceed?

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Yes, Chair, I do. Thank you.

I'll return to the point of the arguments and maybe allow you to review some of the rules around these points of order subsequent to the meeting.

Chair, I want to return to the point I was at before being interrupted by members opposite, which was to address the issues around the differences between the original motion put forward by Ms. O'Connell and the revised and amended version proposed by Ms. Rempel Garner.

One thing that I think should jump out is the fact that there is no reference in the government motion to the ministers responsible. The government motion wants to hear from various officials, including the deputy minister of Public Safety, and the Conservative motion seeks to follow the logical train of ministerial accountability and have the minister responsible at present for this file as well as the ministers responsible at the time both present before the committee.

I do think it is important that we hear from the correct point of accountability. I've been here for about eight years, and I've noticed this trajectory at committee where, when there are issues or problems, even issues or problems that do involve legitimate political accountability.... They're not just questions of public administration. They're issues that should have been and were brought to the attention of ministers and that involved questions of government policy. The impulse still is, on the government side, to have officials come in and provide testimony.

I think that officials providing testimony is extremely useful in certain kinds of contexts. We have officials here for possible consideration on the clause-by-clause stage of a bill, but their role is to provide technical expertise and information. We should not allow ourselves to mistake that role of providing technical context with the responsibility of ministers to be the ones ultimately accountable for the decisions of their departments. That's how our system works. It's based on the principle of ministerial accountability.

When officials are put in a position to testify, when in fact it should be the ministers testifying, I think, frankly, it's unfair to those officials, because they are career public servants. They're experts. They will faithfully implement government policy regardless of the stripe of that government, and they may at some point in the future be called on to implement the different policies of a different government. However, they are increasingly being brought to committees at the impetus of government members in place of what should be testimony provided by ministers. I think this is a kind of further erosion of the principle of ministerial accountability.

On this issue of the transfer of this heinous offender, Paul Bernardo, from maximum to medium security, I think there are legitimate and important questions we have to ask about ministerial accountability.

We see on a broad level that the government is embarrassed about this issue. They don't want people to be talking about this issue. They don't want people to be doing posts and speaking with the public about this issue, because they are embarrassed about it. In particular, they don't want to have ministers come before the committee, clarify what ministers knew and what decisions ministers made and really take responsibility for the fact.

Canadians don't elect officials, nor should they. Canadians elect the minister. They elect parliamentarians, and, through a process we all understand, we have ministers, who are elected members of the House of Commons in virtually all cases. They have that political responsibility for decisions that are made and, by extension, they have to take responsibility for the actions and decisions of their whole department. This is why it is proper that we have ministers come before the committee and provide that context.

In that light, I want to share this article from June about the former minister, which notes, in fact, the involvement of the minister's office. It's an article from CBC that says, “Staff in Mendicino's office knew about Bernardo transfer months before minister did, his office says.”

Just before I get into this article, I want to respond to something Mr. Bittle said earlier. When it comes to the issue of calling ministers, he sort of casually referenced that clearly a committee can't compel members of Parliament to appear before a committee and provide testimony. That was, of course, accurate. Members of Parliament cannot be compelled to testify before parliamentary committees.

I certainly don't understand, and I wouldn't defend this sort of casual disregard for the importance of inviting people, even if they can't be compelled. On most of the committees of which I've been a part, it has been the normal practice to invite a good many people who, if they choose not to appear, the committee doesn't compel, in some cases because they can't compel them and in some cases because they choose not to.

The power to compel witnesses who are not parliamentarians is still a power that committees use relatively rarely, so the idea that we would not pass a motion seeking to hear from witnesses simply because we could not subsequently compel those witnesses doesn't make a lot of sense to me. I would hope that proposing that motion would provide enough of an impetus to encourage those people to testify, and I hope the Minister of Public Safety as well as the former minister, in response to the request from this committee, would understand the importance of the issues that are associated with it and be willing to testify.

Again, that government members are resisting this push suggests there is a certain reluctance there, but I would hope that we could get to the point of extending the invitation and providing that opportunity at the very least. Who knows—maybe the minister and the former minister would welcome the opportunity to provide some clarification about what they knew when or didn't know when, or how these processes work.

In any event, I think the proper way of recognizing and respecting the role officials have is to say that they do critical work implementing government policy, but they are not the ones who are ultimately accountable for the actions of their departments. That responsibility resides with the ministers, and that's why we need to hear from the minister in this particular case.

I'll come back to the article I was referencing earlier about how staff in Minister Mendicino's office knew about Bernardo's transfer months before the minister did, his office said. The article reads as follows:

Staff in Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino's office knew for three months that serial killer and rapist Paul Bernardo would be transferred from a maximum to a medium-security prison—but didn't inform the minister until after it had happened—CBC News has learned.

The Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) said it first emailed Mendicino's office on March 2 to inform it that Bernardo would be moved to a medium-security institution. A final date for the transfer hadn't been determined at that time.

CSC said it sent a second email on May 25 to Mendicino's office saying Bernardo would be transferred four days later.

The minister's office now says it did not tell Mendicino about Bernardo's transfer until May 30, the day after the transfer happened.

A spokesperson at Mendicino's office would not disclose the names of who in the office knew, and would only say multiple members of his staff were made aware.

“The minister's office examined possible options for potentially changing the decision over the subsequent period, and were informed there weren't any,” said press secretary Audrey Champoux in a statement to CBC News. “The minister was informed of the transfer on May 30, including details surrounding lack of authorities to influence it.”

Mr. Chair, I'll pause there and just observe that we have only the word of the minister's own political staff as the basis for saying that the minister was not informed about this transfer. In terms of this idea of having senior officials appear before the committee, of course, typically senior officials would accompany ministers, but it seems that senior officials did inform the minister's office, no doubt with the expectation that staff would inform the minister, and we have the claim—a hard claim to swallow on some level—that the minister was not informed.

I'll note that this is not the first time critical information may have been sent to a minister's office. There have been past instances. We dealt with the previous minister for international development. Information was sent to his own email, and he said he hadn't checked his own email.

Chair, just in thinking about what the former minister was doing, he had a job to do, and that should include being informed about important developments that relate to his portfolio and ensuring his office is informing him of those developments and responding to them.

Just in looking at this, I think this underlines why, if we're going to get to the bottom of the issue of prison transfers, we need to hear from families and their representatives. We need to have them have an opportunity to present. We also need to hear from ministers and not allow the kind of obfuscation of responsibility that we consistently see from members of the government in various instances. I think this should underline the importance of hearing this information.

The article goes on, saying, “Families kept in dark”. This is really core to the advocacy we're doing. My biggest concern here is the impact on families and the revictimization that my colleague spoke about so eloquently. The article notes:

A lawyer representing the families of two teenage girls murdered by Bernardo said it's alarming that the minister and the victims' families were kept in the dark for nearly 90 days.

“If that is true, that staff truly kept this a secret from their boss, then that is an egregious abdication of responsibility and is profoundly unfair to the minister,” said Timothy Danson, counsel for the families of Kristen French and Leslie Mahaffy.

“This is precisely the kind of information that must be communicated [with] the minister because the buck stops with the minister.”

With that line, “the buck stops with the minister”, I think we clearly see that Mr. Danson has a precise understanding of how public administration is supposed to unfold in terms of who is responsible for such actions, a precise understanding, I should say, that I think seems to be lacking on the government's side.

These are some of the principal differences.

Maybe there's just one other note in terms of the victims' families. The government motion says one meeting and lists a fairly large number of people that I think would be difficult to accommodate during one meeting in any event. Our motion doesn't just say, “Tim Danson”. It says, “representatives of the victims' families, including Tim Danson.” The operative word “including” emphasizes our desire to allow victims' families, their representatives and others who may wish to come forward to be heard and to be able to present their testimony before the committee.

Mr. Chair, I did want to move a subamendment as well. There was some discussion back and forth about including the Union of Canadian Correctional Officers and hearing their perspective. That's not in the original motion, but I think it would be a worthwhile addition, and perhaps it will help get support for this amendment. When you're talking about security in prisons, when you're talking about whether a particular prisoner is appropriate for maximum security or medium security, I think a perspective from those who are responsible for security operations in prison should be included in the conversation.

I think that would be a worthwhile change. It was mentioned, so I'm going to propose an amendment that adds it in.

As well, my colleague spoke about the case of another prisoner, another killer, Nicholas Baig, who was transferred to medium-security prison. Considering this case in the context of this motion so that the committee can indeed do a broader look at the issue of these prisoner transfers.... As my colleague mentioned, this isn't the first time this has happened. We've seen a pattern from this government, sadly, of prisoners being transferred, a lack of proper engagement with the families and revictimization happening in the process.

I'm going to propose, Mr. Chair, a subamendment that has two parts. The first part of the subamendment is to add, after the “Commissioner of Correctional Service Canada Anne Kelly”, the following: “Union of Canadian Correctional Officers”. That's kind of the first part of that amendment.

Then, after “Tim Danson”, add “and representatives of victims of Pickering native Nicholas Baig, who stabbed his nine-month pregnant wife to death, was convicted of murder, given a life sentence and was transferred to a medium-security prison”.

Those are the subamendments I will put forward, and I will conclude my remarks at that point.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.