Members of the Liberal Party are applauding so I will quote some observations on this matter in a very precisely similar case from their former leader, the Right Hon. John Turner, on this question.
Let us put this in context. Last Thursday the government placed on the notice paper, in the name of the Minister of the Environment, notice for a resolution asking the House to approve ratification of the Kyoto protocol. On Sunday the Government of Canada, the same government, ran television advertisements during an important sports event knowing that the ad would be viewed by millions of Canadians.
The television ad spoke of the challenges of climate change. It showed a young Canadian, naturally, holding, naturally, a maple leaf. By the sheerest of coincidence, that ad began running last week before the Grey Cup game, just as the government was deciding on the date for the debate respecting ratification of the Kyoto accord. It rolled out a scroll of organizations that have pronounced themselves on climate change or on the Kyoto protocol. These are prestigious organizations, such as the Royal Society of Canada and several others, but one organization was not on that scroll. The Parliament of Canada was not on that scroll because the Parliament of Canada has not pronounced itself on that issue.
By our law and practice, policy positions of the Parliament of Canada cannot be advertised before they have been adopted by the House of Commons and by the other place.
I do not know whether the advertising contract was tendered or was simply given out to a friend who happened to be hoving by from the Liberal Party. We can only guess at the cost. It would be thousand and thousands of dollars, maybe more than that given the extent of the coverage and the prime time in question. What we do know is that it constitutes a contempt of Parliament.
The sole message to be taken from the ad is that the Kyoto protocol should be ratified. That is the very question that the government is to put to the House and to the other place for a positive or negative decision.
I contend that the practice of using public money to sway public opinion on an issue that is actively before Parliament for a decision is a constructive contempt of the House. It is a deliberate effort on the part of the crown to buy votes in the House of Commons in support of the Kyoto protocol.
The use of taxpayer money to influence a decision by Parliament has been the subject of numerous questions of privilege. I will spare the House of going through the detail and argument of each one of them but one quotation from September 25, 1989, might be to the point. It draws upon comments made by the then leader of the opposition, a former Liberal prime minister of the country, the right hon. John N. Turner. He talked about similar ads and described them this way:
These ads are a flagrant circumvention of a fundamental parliamentary principle that it is the House of Commons, the representatives of the people from every province and territory in this country; that it is we as mandated by the people of Canada; that it is we the fiduciary of the people and only we on behalf of the people of Canada, who will have full control over--
--the policy that this Parliament adopts.
Mr. Turner went on to say:
The right rests with parliament. It does not rest with a few slogan writers in a Tory advertising agency.
Well neither does it rest with writers in a Liberal advertising agency, as was the case here. It was wrong then and it is wrong now. It was a contempt then and it is a contempt now of the House of Commons.
Speaker Fraser delivered a very important ruling directly on this issue on October 10, 1989, found at pages 4457 to 4461 of Hansard. Let me take members through the context. At that time the Speaker was not prepared to make a finding of a prima facie case for a breach of privilege as such that would merit acceptance of motion by the Chair. However he was much less emphatic on the question of contempt. It is my contention that the ruling of the Speaker set the stage for acceptance in the future of a motion dealing with contempt. The Speaker put the cabinet and the public service on notice that future speakers would be entitled to be much less lenient. Let me set the context. I am reading here from the selective decisions of Mr. Speaker Fraser. The context reads:
In August 1989, during the summer recess, the Government placed an advertisement in newspapers across the country stating that the proposed new Goods and Services Tax (GST) would come into effect on January 1, 1991. When the session resumed on September 25, 1989, the Rt. Hon. John Turner (Leader of the Opposition) raised a question of privilege relating to the said advertisement. He was of the opinion that by placing newspaper advertisements announcing an effective date for the GST, the Government denied the role of Parliament in the imposition of taxes and thereby prejudiced proceedings in the House and its committees. Other members also participated in the discussion. On October 10, 1989, the Speaker delivered a ruling--
I will now quote from parts of that ruling. First, Mr. Speaker Fraser at that time distinguished the issue of privilege from the issue of contempt. I quote here from Hansard. Mr. Speaker Fraser said:
...when members claim that a certain action constitutes a breach of privilege, they must specify which privilege is affected.
Contempts, on the other hand, cannot be enumerated or categorized. As Speaker Sauvé explained in a ruling on October 29, 1980, at page 4214 of Hansard:
...“while our privileges are defined, contempt of the House has no limits. When new ways are found to interfere with our proceedings, so too will the House, in appropriate cases, be able to find that a contempt of the House has occurred”.
Broadly speaking, contempts are offences against the authority or the dignity of the House of Commons. They include situations which cannot specifically be claimed as breaches of the privileges of the House. As noted at pages 71 and 143 of Erskine May, twentieth edition:
“Each House also claims the right to punish actions, which, while not breaches of any specific privilege, are offences against its authority or dignity, such as disobedience to its legitimate commands or libels upon itself, its officers or its Members. Such actions, though often called 'breaches of privilege', are more properly distinguished as 'contempts'.
It would be vain to attempt an enumeration of every act which might be construed into a contempt, the power to punish for contempt being in its nature discretionary.... It may be stated generally that 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”.
Mr. Speaker, that was the distinction by Mr. Speaker Fraser, your distinguished predecessor, between a contempt and a privilege.
Later in his judgment Mr. Speaker Fraser reviewed specific facts in the case then at issue with regard to the GST and, based upon a strict reading of the practices of Parliament with regard to the cases in the GST case, he concluded:
It is difficult to find prima facie contempt.
He then went on, and it is to these words that I want draw the House's attention:
However, I want the House to understand very clearly that if your Speaker ever has to consider a situation like this again, the Chair will not be as generous. This is a case which, in my opinion, should never recur.
That was Mr. Speaker Fraser then. The situation has recurred specifically in this case.
Speaker Fraser went on to say:
I expect the Department of Finance and other departments to study this ruling carefully and to remind everyone within the Public Service that we are a parliamentary democracy, not a so-called executive democracy, not a so-called administrative democracy.
I believe it is in the interest of our parliamentary system of government to have a clear statement from the Speaker which cannot be misinterpreted either in debate or by a vote. ...which I hope will be well considered in the future by governments, departmental officials and advertising agencies retained by them. This [GST] advertisement may not be a contempt of the House in the narrow confines of a procedural definition, but it is, in my opinion, ill-conceived and it does a great disservice to the great traditions of this place.
If we do not preserve these great traditions, our freedoms are at peril and our conventions become a mockery. I insist, and I believe I am supported by the majority of moderate and responsible Members on both sides of the House, that this ad is objectionable and should never be repeated.
Mr. Speaker Fraser went on to conclude:
I have deliberately made this ruling with great care in order that if ever this issue has to be debated and considered by this House again these comments will serve to guide the House in its deliberations.
Mr. Speaker Fraser could not have been more clear. The situation that he dealt with regarding the GST was precisely the same as the situation that we are dealing with here with regard to an advertisement paid for by public funds without the authorization of Parliament, designed to try to influence the vote of members of the House of Commons and of the other place. It is wrong. It was declared to be wrong by Mr. Speaker Fraser and it is still wrong today.
There is a long history of the abuse of advertising by the government, including Groupaction, Groupe Everest, the long, dismal list of patronage and of corruption. What that meant was that in awarding advertising contracts the government regularly ignored the rules. Here, in exercising advertising contracts, it is ignoring the rights of Parliament and spitting in the face of a ruling by the distinguished former speaker of the House of Commons, Mr. Speaker Fraser.
The important point is not just that Parliament has been warned, but that the public service, the government, all of us have been on notice since 1989 that this sort of advertising was and is an affront to Parliament. Yet that affront has been repeated again by the government with a deliberate attempt to try to get ahead of Parliament and influence its views improperly.
Having been warned clearly, the government should not have stepped over the line. The fact that it has done so should be sufficient for the Speaker to now resolve the issue in favour of a prima facie finding on the issue of a possible contempt and to allow the House of Commons to determine the issue as the House may see fit.