Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order to ask for a ruling regarding the announcement of the entire legislative agenda by the government House leader outside the House at the National Press Club yesterday morning.
I raise this matter in the following context. The report of the modernization committee recommended on page 4:
First, it is important that more ministerial statements and announcements be made in the House of Commons. In particular, topical developments or foreseeable policy decisions, should be made first--or, at least, concurrently--in the chamber. Ministers, and their departments, need to be encouraged to make use of the forum provided by the House of Commons. Not only will this enhance the pre-eminence of Parliament, but it will also reiterate the legislative underpinning for governmental decisions.
This report was adopted by the House. One of its authors is the government House leader who signed off on the report and moved the motion to have it adopted.
My first question to the Chair is, would this not be considered a matter of misleading the House, to say in an official report and to Parliament that something will be done and then turn around and do something else?
I also want the House to consider this in the context of the leak of Bill C-15 and Bill C-36 in the previous session. When the context of the bill was leaked, the Speaker ruled the matter to be a prima facie question of privilege. Obviously leaking information about government legislation that is intended for the House is a serious matter. The Speaker ruled on this matter and said:
In preparing legislation, the government may wish to hold extensive consultations and such consultations may be held entirely at the government's discretion. However, with respect to material to be placed before Parliament, the House must take 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.
This is what the government House leader had to say during the debate on the question of privilege:
I cannot say much more other than to apologize on behalf of whoever is guilty of this. I use the word guilty because that is what comes to mind, given the respect that I have for this institution.
I will repeat that line, “given the respect that I have for this institution”. He continued:
Anyone who breaches that respect is guilty of an offence in my book.
I believe the House leader for the Conservatives referred to this as privileged information. Actually it is more than that. It is secret, secret in the very sense of government secrecy.
Mr. Speaker, I ask you, if leaking information on one bill is an offence to the House, surely leaking the entire agenda to the press club is offensive to the House.
To give an idea of the impact that this had on me personally, I refer to yesterday's CBC Newsworld interview by Don Newman. He was interviewing all the House leaders and in his lead-in comments mentioned that he was going to talk to us about the legislative agenda and then mentioned that this agenda was announced at the press club yesterday morning.
I had no idea of the contents of that announcement. Don Newman knew more than I did and probably more than any other House leader on the panel, except maybe the government House leader. I did not expect to hunt down this information because such an announcement, at a minimum, should have been given to the House leaders at the House leaders' weekly meeting, or perhaps in the House during the Thursday question or by a statement by minister.
The government House leader put members, and particularly the House leaders, at a disadvantage and gave a huge advantage to the media.
How can this be defined as respect for this institution as the minister said in the House?
I also want to mention that the Minister of Canadian Heritage made a major announcement yesterday outside the House regarding parks. Also, today before question period our solicitor general made a statement to the media regarding questions put to him yesterday in the House. Therefore, they knew before we did.
Is it some sort of a government strategy to fan out all over the country and misrepresent the role of Parliament? The government's dismissive view of the House and its members is contemptuous.