Mr. Speaker, my question of privilege is in regard to another case where the media was given preferential treatment of information intended for parliamentarians.
I would also argue that the timing of the release of the information resulted in impeding the work of members of parliament.
My question of privilege charges the ethics counsellor with contempt of parliament for releasing information in a way that impeded members of the industry committee and of the House. The Minister of Industry tabled the same information in the House after the media had an opportunity to examine it. This contempt occurred yesterday.
While I recognize that the Speaker is reluctant to intervene in a committee matter, the circumstances in this case are extraordinary and have a direct link to the proceedings of the House.
Joseph Maingot's Parliamentary Privilege in Canada , on page 70, defines a proceeding in parliament:
Since two of Parliament's constituent elements, the House of Commons and the Senate, were established for the enactment of laws, those events necessarily incidental to the enactment of laws are part of the “proceedings in Parliament”. However, Parliament has also always been a forum to receive petitions, and the Crown's satisfying the grievances of members before granting supply eventually led to straightforward requests for information. Therefore, the events necessarily incidental to petitions, questions, and notices of motions in Parliament in the seventeenth century and today are all events which are part of “proceedings in Parliament”.
Mr. Maingot went on to say:
Privilege of Parliament is founded on necessity, and is those rights that are “absolutely necessary for the due execution of its powers.” Necessity then should be a basis for any claim that an event was part of a “proceeding in Parliament,” i.e., what is claimed to be part of a “proceeding in Parliament” and thus protected should be necessarily incidental to a “proceeding in Parliament.”
On page 72 of a 1939 report from the Select Committee on the Official Secrets Act, it states:
—a proceeding in Parliament covers both the asking of a question and the giving written notice of such a question.
The House has been seeking for two years, through the daily question period, evidence regarding the Prime Minister's stake in 161341 Canada Inc. The Minister of Industry promised members of the House that the information was coming. The appearance of the ethics counsellor at the Standing Committee on Industry yesterday was used as a follow up to the questions in the House and to the promise given by the industry minister.
The Leader of the Opposition asked the ethics counsellor:
Will the Corporations Directorate be communicating to the minister, and to you, the name of any fourth shareholder, whether it's Jonas Prince, whether it's the Prime Minister himself, whether it's some other person? Will they actually be communicating that to you so that the House can determine if the Prime Minister had a conflict of interest or not?
To which the ethics counsellor replied:
I expect that the Corporations Directorate will be responding to my letter. I'm not sure exactly when that will take place. But what my intention is, as I indicated to you in my interim reply, once I have that in hand, I will be responding directly to you and I am quite confident that will remove any lingering uncertainties.
Mr. Speaker, in the dying minutes of that committee meeting, after the ethics counsellor was finished as a witness—and you will find this in the last line of the minutes of the committee meeting—he tabled with the chairman the letter he claimed he would give to the Leader of the Opposition directly when he had it in hand. The ethics counsellor then marched over to the media, released the letter to the media and conducted interviews regarding the same letter.
That information should have been tabled as soon as he had it and it should have been part of the proceedings of that meeting. He had promised the Leader of the Opposition earlier that the moment he had it he would give it to the Leader of the Opposition but he withheld that information. It was contemptuous when he had that, not to have delivered what was asked of him. It was useless for the committee to release it at the very end when the questioning was over. It was as if he attempted to meet the criteria on some purely technical basis on the notion that the letter should have been tabled with members before the media.
However I would argue that what the ethics counsellor did was essentially give the media the first opportunity to scrutinize the letter and to do an interview with him. This was an indirect act that impeded the committee. The entire time the questioning was going on he withheld that critical information about what was in the letter which dealt with the question that the Leader of the Opposition had put to him.
Erskine May describes contempt as:
—any act or omission which obstructs or impedes either House of Parliament in the performance of its functions, or which obstructs or impedes any Member or officer of such House in the discharge of his duty, or which has a tendency, directly or indirectly, to produce such results may be treated as a contempt even though there is no precedent of the offence.
When the Minister of Industry tabled the letter in the House later, he too was guilty of contempt when he promised he would deliver it the moment he had it.
On March 20, the Speaker ruled that:
With respect to material to be placed before parliament, the House takes precedence.... To deny to members information concerning business that is about to come before the House, while at the same time providing such information to media that will likely be questioning members about that business, is a situation that the Chair cannot condone...I have concluded that this constitutes a prima facie contempt of the House.
I would argue that an act that has the same results as what you pointed out in your ruling is also contempt. This is what the authorities on parliamentary procedure would have us believe.
Mr. Speaker, I ask that you examine the committee minutes. The committee was divided into two parts: a question and comment period about the ethics counsellor and his role as the ethics counsellor, and a meeting concerning the Lobbyists Registration Act.
Mr. Speaker, as you go through those minutes you will find there is nothing about the letter that he tabled at the end of the meeting. There are no comments and no questions because we did not know the letter existed, even though he obviously had it in the pocket of his jacket.
Mr. Speaker, if you read the papers this morning you will see much discussion on the details of that letter but once again the media came before parliamentarians.
The House did not see the letter until much later that same day. The ethics counsellor may not report to directly to parliament but he has now put himself in a situation where parliament must deal with him directly.
The ethics counsellor must be held accountable for his actions. He knew full well that he had the letter in his pocket. He denied that information to the Leader of the Opposition when he was asked directly when that information would be available. He denied he had it. He said he would make it available as soon as it was in his possession. It was in the pocket of his jacket the entire time. He denied information to members of parliament that was germane to the subject matter and critical for us to do our job. He is in contempt of parliament.
I would ask, Mr. Speaker, that you find a prima facie case against him and I am prepared to move the appropriate motion.