Debates of March 28th, 2000

Privilege

[Ken Epp, Reform, Elk Island, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I feel privileged to be able to stand in Canada's House of Commons once again in defence of democracy and in defence of the people whom we are here to represent.

The issue before us this afternoon is a very serious one. It has to do with an allegation that my colleague from Lakeland has disclosed a document which was marked confidential. It was brought to the attention of the House. The Speaker has ruled that in fact there was a prima facie case.

As a result the chairman of the immigration committee has made a motion. Since we have not heard it for a while, I will take this opportunity to read it so that we know what we are debating. The member for London North Centre moved:

That the matter of the premature disclosure of the committee report by the member for Lakeland be referred to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs.

That is the motion we are debating and the vote that will subsequently be held on this question is whether or not the issue should be referred to the committee.

If we vote against it then it is the end of the matter. If we vote in favour of it then the issue will continue in the procedure and House affairs committee which, after hearing more evidence, getting down to the nitty-gritty and hopefully ferreting out the facts, will come back with a report to the House.

That report, if it finds the member guilty, will probably include some sanctions. If the committee finds the member not guilty then it will so recommend. When the report is brought back to the House there will be another motion that says we concur in the report. Whatever the report says, if that motion carries then the member will have to live by that decision. It is a long, drawn out process.

However, I would like to point out to the people who perhaps are a little fuzzy on what is exactly happening that a deeper principle is being attacked or debated here: the degree to which this place is democratic.

I certainly concur with the fact that in order for us as the board of directors of the corporation called Canada to direct our affairs in a proper way, we must have rules which regulate our debate and regulate our work in committees. It is absolutely important for all of us to agree with and to follow those rules. It must be done in an orderly fashion. There is no question or debate on that part.

We do find from time to time that while members of the Liberal governing party have a majority not only in the House but also in the committees, there are too many occasions in which the rights and privileges of members who are not part of the governing party are ignored, abused and sometimes trampled on.

It is very interesting. I happen to be a member who on one occasion did go to the procedure and House affairs committee. It was one of these cases where we had a huge question on whether or not it was proper or improper to display a little flag on the corner of our desks. Thinking that was fairly proper, I said that I would display my flag. When the Speaker ruled that was not acceptable, I accepted that ruling strictly and totally because of my commitment to making this place work.

I know the Speaker made the ruling. I also know that by the rules, just like in a hockey game, I am not permitted to challenge the Chair. We need some place of final authority. We may not always like it. I will tell you frankly, Mr. Speaker, I did not like it, but I did accept it.

Members will notice that since that time some five years ago I have not displayed my little Canadian flag on my desk strictly out of respect for the process, even though I disagree with it.

I suppose I would do the same if I were falsely accused of some bad crime and landed in jail. I would gladly spend my time there because I agree with the process even though I was improperly convicted. I do not know how committed I would be to the cause at that time, but that is how it works in this country.

I think this member has expressed his frustrations in the committee. I have experienced those same frustrations. I remember one occasion when I was substituting in the committee. I guess I have a reputation, at least in our party, of always being available. Whenever someone has to go away on other parliamentary business and there is a vacancy for a representative of our party in a committee, they will phone me and ask if I can go.

I was substituting in committee. We got to the point where we were doing clause by clause consideration of a bill. It was late at night. It was one of those bills that the Liberals thought they had to get through. It was probably 10.30 or 11 o'clock at night. A strange thing happened. The chairman said shall clause so and so pass. My colleague and I said yes and no one said anything else.

You know the rules, Mr. Speaker. If you call for a vote and there are two votes in favour and none against, does the thing pass or fail? The fact of the matter is that if two say yes and no one says no then it should pass.

As I recall, in our motion we were trying to amend a particular clause. Two of us having said yes and no one having said no, I was surprised when the chairman said that the motion was defeated. I said that the chairman could do not do that. He said “I just did”.

We must remember that this was a Liberal chairman of the committee. I said “No, you can't, based on the rules of democracy”. Every organization in this country is based on democracy. When there is a vote, the vote must be declared according to what the members said. Two of us had said yes. Nobody said no. The motion had passed. That is what I said to the chairman, and he said “No”.

At that time the sleepy Liberals woke up when we got into a bit of a shouting match. I would not let it pass because it was wrong that the chairman could overrule the decision of the group. I objected, and I objected louder and louder. I would not let him off the hook.

Finally he said he would call for a vote to see whether or not the ruling of the chair should be upheld. By then the Liberals had awakened. There were one or two more of them than the rest of us. Even though they did not know what had gone on, since they were sleeping, they at that stage, on command, voted in favour and upheld the ruling of the chair.

Consequently I rose in this place on a question of privilege and told the Speaker what had happened in committee. I related the story. I will frankly confess to you, Mr. Speaker, that I was very disappointed in the Speaker's ruling. The Speaker ruled that the committee was champion of its own affairs. It can do whatever it wants. The ruling stood and our amendment stood defeated because the chairman declared it so, even though the majority of the votes in that particular meeting said it had passed. That was the end of the matter.

This is the first time I have raised it since it happened a number of years ago. The only reason I am talking about it now is that it fits in the context of what we are debating. Again, I did not like the ruling of the Speaker but he is the final authority. I accepted it, and that was the end of the matter, but it is still wrong for a chairman of a committee to have such unilateral power. That is not acceptable.

[Jim Peterson, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

Oh, come on.

[Ken Epp, Reform, Elk Island, AB]

It is not acceptable that the chairman can do things which are straight out and out undemocratic.

[Jim Peterson, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

He did not do that. He is the best chairman I have ever seen.

[Ken Epp, Reform, Elk Island, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I have just related the story. I was there, the member was not. I was there and that is exactly what happened, and there were other people who heard it.

Mr. Speaker, I will not listen to the heckling member on the other side who does not want to listen to facts. I want to talk about the issue that we have before us.

It is on issues like this on which democracy is trampled by a majority government. I say this as kindly as I can to Liberal members. They have an obligation, as do you, Mr. Speaker, to preserve the democratic process. When there are decisions made which run roughshod over the opinions and the ideas of other members, the frustration level grows.

In the instance that we have before us, I would say that it is not only because the member for Lakeland is in the riding adjacent to mine that I stand in his defence, but because of his proximity I frequently run across little things that he does in the riding. Sometimes people come to me and say “We have such and such a problem” and I ask “Where do you live?” and find out that the person lives in the other member's riding. So we have some dealings back and forth.

When the hon. member stands in the House and says “When I did what I did I thought I was doing what was correct because we had voted in committee that this was to be a totally public process”, my inclination is to accept that what the member is saying is in fact how he interpreted it at the time.

There is the other argument, which I will let other members make, that even though the committee voted that this was to be totally public, in fact the final report was not to be released before it was tabled in the House. That argument could be made and I will let others make it. It has validity.

However, I have a very serious question to pose. Every committee that I have been on since I was first elected in 1993 has issued a number of reports and I cannot think of very many which actually remained secret until they were tabled in the House.

There were a number of times when I was quite convinced that indeed Liberal members were talking to the press about specific issues which were in finance committee reports. There were some things which were in the reports that were leaked to the press before they even came to the committee in the wording that was quoted in the press. No other member even knew about it, except for the chairman of the committee.

That is almost impossible to prove and I can understand why the Speaker has been in a dilemma on numerous occasions when we have pointed it out. Not being able to prove which individual leaked it, as there is no paper path, it is very difficult to follow it through. The Speaker has, on every instance, until this one, ruled that that is the way it is. This time that is not the way it is.

This time we are told the member for Lakeland must stand in front of a tribunal to defend his actions. In his own words, the only difference between what he did and what the Liberal members have done over and over again is that he did it openly, in front of cameras, at a press conference, whereas they did it surreptitiously. That is the only difference.

The last budget is a perfect example. How many reports were in the press in the weeks leading up to the budget? It used to be that ministers of finance would resign if the budget was leaked, and that was not very long ago. But in this particular round of government, with the Liberal finance minister that we have, all of these ideas are floated out there and then in the end we are amazed to find that the budget speech given on Monday was fairly accurately reported in the press the Saturday before.

There are no repercussions any more. It seems to me that the true lack of respect for this democratic process has come from the government on the other side because it enjoys a majority. Government members won the election. They will not win the next one if I can help it, but they won the last election and they won the one before that, so they have more members than we do.

I appeal to them that in order to gain and to keep the respect of the Canadian citizens for this boardroom we must respect each other. As I must respect government members, I appeal to them to respect those of us on this side and stop routinely defeating every amendment that we put forward.

There were a lot of people who wondered about the long Nisga'a vote. I have had conversations with people. They asked me if that was the best we could do in parliament, to stand up and sit down for four days. In my more jovial moods I said that maybe somebody recognized that I needed the exercise.

However, there is a deeper answer. Yes, we did vote on many amendments to Nisga'a, not only because of members of our party, but because of the people we represent and in fact thoughtful Canadians right across the country who were very opposed to that bill in the form in which it was presented.

We had a few substantial amendments which would have ameliorated the concerns, but the Liberal government, with its majority, would have none of those. We said that the issue was so important that one way or another we would spend at least a week of the time of parliament on the issue, not one hour or two hours.

The government has the habit of using time allocation. I have a list here. There are several bills which have been before the House on which the Reform Party has only had maybe 30 minutes of debate before the government has invoked time allocation. There is no respect for it. So I said to some people that when we have—

[Jim Peterson, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order.

[Ken Epp, Reform, Elk Island, AB]

Mr. Speaker, please stop your stopwatch.

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. McClelland)]

I cannot recognize the point of order because the member is not at his place, so there is no point of order.

[Ken Epp, Reform, Elk Island, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I view that simply as a tactic to reduce my speaking time.

I said to many people on that occasion that our reason for voting was because we were going to spend a week on it. It was an important issue for thousands of Canadians. The Liberal government had the choice to decide whether we would use that time debating or whether we would use that time voting, because I believe it had advance notice that we would oppose that bill with every means possible. We did that because the government said “Closure. Time allocation. This is finished”. We had no choice but to spend that time voting because of the importance of the bill to members of our society.

I plead for better democracy. I plead for giving our members an opportunity to really be heard and not to be ignored. I insist that all of us in the House, elected by the people in our ridings, are here to do a job.

In conclusion, I would amend the motion that has been put by the hon. member. I move:

That the motion be amended by deleting the word “premature”.

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. McClelland)]

The amendment is in order. Debate is on the amendment.

[Steve Mahoney, Liberal, Mississauga West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I wonder if the member putting forward the amendment understands the word premature. It seems to me that the word simply means something that came early, as in a premature baby. How about that? Something came before it was ready. The fact that the report was released by the hon. member when it was only 50% completed might, although it is a stretch, qualify it as being premature.

How can the member justify putting what is almost a comical amendment—even though it is in order, as you have ruled, Mr. Speaker—to delete the word premature, which obviously is the crux of the matter? If the report was not prematurely released, then perhaps the member would not have been found guilty of releasing it prematurely by the Speaker.

[Ken Epp, Reform, Elk Island, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I can answer that question. That is exactly why it was removed. It presupposes the guilt of the person before it goes to committee. That is why we would rather have the motion state that there was a disclosure and let the committee determine whether there was something untoward in that action.

I will answer his question. Do I understand the word premature? Yes, I do.

[Joe Fontana, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to take this opportunity on behalf of the committee to comment on the important work that we try to do as a committee.

I have spoken many times to the member for Lakeland and thanked him very much, not only for his questions in committee but for his approach to the subject matter, our refugee determination system, which is of concern to Canadians. We must ensure that the system works well.

The committee was working well together in dealing with this issue, which is important to all Canadians. It is unfortunate that it has come to this procedural wrangling, and it is unfortunate that the member released a report that was still in progress and still being worked on.

The Speaker has already ruled that there was a prima facie case of privilege. At that time I could have moved a motion to censure the member, but I did not. I said that I wanted this issue to move to the procedure and House affairs committee where it could be aired and where the member for Lakeland and other members could talk to the committee. I sat on that committee for two years and had to deal with some of the issues which hon. members have talked about, such as the leaking of confidential reports by all members of the House.

The procedure and House affairs committee found that to be an unacceptable way for members of the House to conduct themselves. At the end of the day, all we are trying to do in this place is the nation's business and the work as well as we possibly can.

The point that seems to be missed here, which the member for Lakeland is trying to confuse, is not whether it was appropriate to go into in camera meetings, but whether there was a motion duly put to the committee as to whether we ought to go in camera. We were discussing options. We were discussing a summary of what the witnesses said. We had yet to move to debate on the confidential document, and for that we all agreed that it should have been, and was, done in public.

The moment we start to draft a confidential report with recommendations, at that point we must all respect the rules of the House. We must respect one another. We cannot sit on every committee. Therefore, it is incumbent upon every member to do the nation's business in committee on behalf of all 301 members of the House, and only release information to the public after it has been reported to the House. That will ensure that members of parliament will get to know and decide before the public as to what should be made public and what should be concurred in.

I must admit that the member for Lakeland was upset so he decided to release the report which was confidential and in fact that is why it was contrary to the rules. Perhaps he was upset because he thought the immigration minister had already written a piece of legislation without the input of the committee.

We tried to point out that was not the case. It was not the case. A minister and the ministry over a period of time have to consult with Canadians, provincial counterparts and a number of people on a number of issues before a bill is put forward.

Because he was so disturbed that perhaps all of the hard work that was done by the committee would be for naught, the member decided it was incumbent upon him to take a confidential report which was only half complete and call a news conference for the purpose of letting the public know what the committee was dealing with in regard to our refugee determination system.

The Speaker earlier today heard all of the evidence put forward by me and the member for Lakeland, and in fact he found there to be a prima facie case of privilege. I might be mistaken but I also heard that the member for Lakeland expressed an apology. I hope that is the case.

Some members are saying those are the rules of the House. We are trying to be helpful here. We are trying to learn from one another. We are trying to ensure that the House is respected, that we can move forward and work together as much as possible in a non-partisan way in doing the nation's business.

If the member has already apologized to the Speaker and to the House, I would suggest that the House would be best served if I withdrew my motion. I ask for unanimous consent to withdraw my motion on the basis that the member has already apologized to the House for the breach of privilege.

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. McClelland)]

I am sorry I was not paying close attention, but I have been informed that the member for London North Centre is prepared to withdraw his motion. If the member is prepared to withdraw his motion, then he would have to do it formally.

[Joe Fontana, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am prepared to formally withdraw my motion. I do that on the basis that there has been consultation among the House leaders and that I heard earlier this afternoon that the member for Lakeland has apologized to the House for breaching the privileges of the House and for releasing the report.

Perhaps you could ask him to confirm that he has apologized to the House. If that is the case, with the unanimous consent of the House I am prepared to move that I remove my motion to refer the issue to the committee.

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. McClelland)]

Because it is the amendment that is before the House, we would have to ask to remove the amendment and the motion. Speaking for the Chair, it would be an elegant way to move beyond this.

The hon. member for London North Centre must request that the amendment and the motion be withdrawn.

[Joe Fontana, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, in the spirit of moving beyond this, I had asked whether or not the member for Lakeland was prepared to confirm that he had apologized to the House.

I just asked him personally while you were standing and asking me to do so. He said that he was not prepared to confirm that he apologized to the House. Therefore I am not moving that my motion be removed.

[Jim Peterson, Liberal, Secretary of State (International Financial Institutions)]

Mr. Speaker, in light of the fact that the hon. member for Medicine Hat, the finance critic for the Reform Party if that is what I should call it, has not had an opportunity during a month of question periods since the budget to ask any questions about the budget, I would be happy to answer any questions on it that he might have at this time.

[Leon Benoit, Reform, Lakeland, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I have presented the situation as I see it. I have pointed out some concerns I have with the way the committee is operating. I have also heard the ruling of the Speaker.

Since I have examined the ruling of the Speaker, it is clear that the Speaker said that a motion should be put forth to refer the matter to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs because I had violated some rules.

Because of that ruling by the Speaker, I do apologize. I would never intentionally breach the rules of this House. I do apologize. I hope that the committee can move forward in a much more democratic fashion in the future.

[Joe Fontana, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. On the basis of what the hon. member for Lakeland has just said, I would move, with the unanimous consent of the House, that my previous motion to send the matter to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs and the amendment be withdrawn.

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. McClelland)]

Does the hon. member for London North Centre have the unanimous consent of the House to move the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[Some hon. members]

No.

[Joe Jordan, Liberal, Leeds—Grenville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am losing track of to whom I am directing the question. Is it the hon. member for Elk Island?

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. McClelland)]

The hon. member for London North Centre was on debate. Therefore the question or comment will have to be directed to him, but I am sure the hon. member for Elk Island is all ears.