Mr. Speaker, I rise to draw your attention and the attention of the House, which is difficult, as you know, to a letter I received from the leader of the government in the House, dated January 28, 2004, a copy of which was also sent to you and all the other House leaders.
This letter concerns the answer given by the government to Question No. 37 in the previous session on February 14, 2003. After providing its initial response, the Chrétien government later admitted that the answer provided was deficient. Since then, the new government has become involved and has accepted responsibility for providing an accurate answer to Question No. 37. This is the subject of the letter I received from the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons.
The leader of the new government has also written to the member for Edmonton Southwest and has provided certain information. However, I am not dealing with the accuracy of that information at this time. My objection is that the information provided has not been placed before the House of Commons by government. The government, having accepted responsibility for the accuracy of the answer to Question No. 37, has an obligation to make a full statement in the House of Commons and has an obligation to correct what it knows to be a false answer.
The government also has an obligation to the House to make known what steps it has taken to ensure that the information provided to Parliament has been accurate, is accurate and will be accurate in the future. This is a primary duty for any government.
Mr. Speaker, you will be familiar with the precedents that require the House to be informed when it has been given inaccurate information. You will also be aware that in the past the House has treated the deliberate giving of false information as contempt.
Several things are clear here. The House was given inaccurate information. The new government has accepted responsibility for that false answer. It has issued public statements giving new information, but it has failed to bring that new information to the House of Commons in order to make it part of the parliamentary record. It has also failed to give that information to every member of the House of Commons by presenting it to the House. I should also note that it has failed to assure the House of the measures taken to guarantee the integrity of the answers posed to the government by opposition members.
I maintain that this constitutes contempt of the entire House by writing only to House leaders and to the member for Edmonton Southwest. The government House leader has withheld this information from other members of the House, particularly those who are not affiliated with any political party. Indeed, he may have withheld it from the entire Liberal backbench.
The government House leader wants Parliament--and I dare say Canadians--to believe that he has corrected this wrong by posting the information on a website. I would remind the government House leader that the House of Commons is by no means a website and should not be treated as such.
There is also reason to believe that the government withheld this information from the member for Edmonton Southwest until a time when it could bury this bad news among other media activity on the day it was released.
You will recall, Mr. Speaker, that at his news conference on that day the Prime Minister stated that it was a “good news day”. Clearly, news management was on the Prime Minister's mind.
I believe that a committee examination could well find that the detailed information contained in the letter by the government House leader was available in early January but withheld from the member for Edmonton Southwest until January 28.
The procedures used by the government House leader in this case are contemptuous to individual members of Parliament and indeed to the collective House. Should you rule in my favour, Mr. Speaker, I would be prepared to move that this matter be referred to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs to determine if contempt of the House has occurred.
I have that motion ready, Mr. Speaker, should you require it.