Mr. Speaker, I promise in the end of my statements to show my comments now relate to the matter at hand.
I am quoting from the letter from Mr. Cappe, the Clerk of the Privy Council, to the chairman of the Standing Committee on Procedures and House Affairs. He states:
I must also express to you my strong concern about the allegation by the Member for Renfrew--Nipissing--Pembroke that the Deputy Clerk of the Privy Council, Mr. Richard Fadden, may have intentionally misled Parliamentarians with respect to the deployment of JTF-2 on a military operation outside Canada.
I will now quote my letter to the chair of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs in response to the allegation of the deputy of the Prime Minister's. It states:
As a Member of Parliament for Her Majesty's Official Opposition, my constitutional role is clearly defined to scrutinize the actions of government in an atmosphere of professionalism.
A careful perusal of the unedited transcripts of our committee show at no point did I use the word “intentional” in reference to deputy clerk Fadden's testimony. It was a statement of the facts given to our committee on this point by Fadden and certainly if he was in error on a key historical fact as to whether or not Joint Task Force 2 (JTF2) had been deployed outside Canada in the past, then he might have been in error on other points. I was not aware that questioning the reliability of a witness, regardless of who they are, in that manner is inappropriate.
I believe you recognized this when you acknowledged that I kept to parliamentary language in my questioning.
It would seem that it is Mr. Cappe who is drawing an inference from my remarks and stating it as a given fact in his letter when he writes “intentionally misleading”. I draw your attention to the actual exchange:
(Myself):
As part of the combined force sent to Rwanda, elements of the JTF2 were also deployed. Given those facts, would you not agree that your deputy clerk has misinformed the committee?
(The Clerk of the Privy Council):
Did he mislead the committee? I don't think he did it intentionally, if that was your inference.
It is clear from this exchange and the rest of my testimony that at no point did I use the words “intentionally” or “misled”. Curiously, Mr. Cappe is not denying that Mr. Fadden may have misled the committee, only that he did not do so intentionally. In fact it would appear that Mr. Cappe was drawing an inference from my use of the word “misinformed” even though I pointed out that Mr. Fadden had not qualified his words when he repeated that the JTF2 had never been deployed outside Canada for any reason previously.
As the most senior political appointment to the federal public service by the Prime Minister, the Clerk of the Privy Council does have a duty and a responsibility to maintain the professional integrity of all servants. Equally so, I am sure you will agree, Mr. Chairman, that it would be inappropriate for a public servant, even if it was unintentional, to suggest limits on parliamentarians, certainly when it comes to what is appropriate in a parliamentary committee.
Unfortunately in my experience this is not the first time the Privy Council, through the counsel of security and intelligence co-ordinator, has found it necessary to write to the chair of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs to clarify comments to our committee recently. Mr. Fadden wrote to our committee chair on January 2 of this year regarding the contempt charges against the Minister of Justice in the premature release of the information outside the House on Bill C-36.
This evidence demonstrates that the Prime Minister's parliamentary secretary is not alone in this campaign of intimidation. The Prime Minister's ministry, the Privy Council, has been fully engaged in this campaign of intimidation. After the Deputy Clerk of the Privy Council appeared before the committee, and after I questioned the Prime Minister's deputy, the Liberal member for Toronto--Danforth openly threatened to fire witnesses who contradicted the Minister of National Defence.
These are hardly the actions of people concerned about the dignity of parliament. These actions themselves should be considered contempt. From the procedural book written by the member for Scarborough--Rouge River, The Power of Parliamentary Houses to Send for Persons, Papers & Records , at page 78 it references a resolution passed by the U.K. House from March 8, 1688.