Mr. Speaker, there is a real possibility that the House of Commons will be in the state of suspension after this week. It is widely rumoured that the Prime Minister will stop the House from meeting with the use of prorogation of the session.
We all know that the Auditor General has in preparation a major report covering a number of matters. If Parliament is prorogued the report would remain secret until a new session is convened. Under the Constitution that could be a year from now.
Each of the sections of the Auditor General Act governing the reporting of the Auditor General to the House contains the instruction for the conveyance of the report from the Auditor General to the Speaker and from the Speaker to the House of Commons.
It is what the Speaker does with the report that should concern each of us.
In various sections of the act it states:
--the Speaker of the House of Commons shall lay each such report before the House of Commons forthwith after receiving it or, if that House is not then sitting, on any of the first fifteen days on which that House is sitting after the Speaker receives it.
There is an obligation on the part of the Speaker to table any report. It is a matter of practice rather than statute that a report is kept confidential until it is actually tabled.
On numerous occasions we on this side of the House have argued that the House should be the first recipient of such reports in order to protect the rights of members to see the reports and to be able to respond to them inside or outside the House.
I stress that this is a matter of practice and this has been reinforced by many assertions that premature disclosure of such a document is contemptuous to the House.
However we know that the House has the ability to waive any claim if it wishes and, in this case, I think most Canadians would agree there is greater public interest to be served by getting this report into the hands of the members and the wider community, including the public servants and departments touched by the Auditor General's report.
Simply put, it is not in the public interest to have this report remain secret because of a claim that the House of Commons requires to see it first.
Certainly the House will want—and the act requires—the report be tabled and be received officially into the records of the House. That action triggers certain things, including the referral of the report to the Standing Committee on Public Accounts under the authority of the Standing Orders.
However it is only practice that keeps the report secret between the time it is received by the Speaker and the moment the Speaker tables it.
I am not prepared to argue that the Speaker should unilaterally release the anticipated report. I do argue that the House should give an instruction to the Speaker to make the report public if Parliament has been prorogued.
While there is an assumption that there will be a new session of this Parliament, this is only conjecture. The election could be called at any time and this report would remain secret from Canadians until after an election. This is not in the public interest.
There is a remedy, Mr. Speaker. Without altering the Speaker's statutory duty to table the report in any new session and this is important the report should be tabled in the new session so that the automatic reference to the public accounts committee is not compromised or laid open to question. Without altering the duty to table, the House could waive its claim to the right of first access and the Speaker could be empowered to make the report available to members and the public when it is received.
Therefore, Mr. Speaker, I ask for unanimous consent to move that notwithstanding any practice of the House, when the Speaker receives the report from the Auditor General during a period when Parliament has been prorogued, the Speaker shall cause the report to be made available to members and the public immediately; and that the House, in this instance, hereby waives its undoubted right to confidentiality of the report until it is laid before the House.