Mr. Speaker, the government accepts that the practice and procedure before parliamentary committees is governed by parliamentary convention. However, parliamentary privilege does not relieve public servants of their obligation to protect sensitive information that relates to national security, national defence or international relations when appearing before a parliamentary committee.
Parliament has recognized the importance of protecting confidential information in statutes such as the Security of Information Act, the Canada Evidence Act, the Access to Information Act, the Privacy Act, and of course, the Criminal Code.
The principle of public interest immunity is also well established in the common law. There is an equally well established parliamentary convention that committees will respect common law privileges and Crown immunity, particularly in relation to national defence, national security or international relations, and not require the disclosure of injurious information.
While section 38 of the Canada Evidence Act may have no direct application to the committee's proceedings, the values that underline that provision are also reflected in parliamentary convention.
I refer you to the authoritative text, Maingot's Parliamentary Privilege in Canada, at page 163, which states:
By convention, a parliamentary committee will respect Crown privilege when invoked, at least in relation to matters of national and public security.
The documents that have been provided to the committee by the government were redacted, pursuant to section 38 of the Canada Evidence Act, for the purposes of the public interest hearing before the Military Police Complaints Commission. These redactions were necessary, given the MPCC's decision to hold public hearings into complaints it had received. This provided the MPCC with the power to compel testimony and documents, and the hearing was therefore a proceeding under section 38 of the Canada Evidence Act. Before it announced public hearings, the MPCC was investigating the detainee complaints and was given full access to thousands of pages of unredacted Canadian Forces and Department of National Defence documents.
While section 38 of the Canada Evidence Act may not apply directly to the proceedings of the committee, the values that inform this legislation passed by Parliament are consistent with the parliamentary convention that injurious information should not be disclosed in a parliamentary setting.
Accordingly, the process under section 38 of the Canada Evidence Act serves as a useful surrogate to identify information that should not be disclosed to a parliamentary committee, because its disclosure would be injurious to national security, national defence or international relations. As previously noted, this is completely consistent with parliamentary convention.