Mr. Speaker, I have some submissions. I generally accept the facts that have been presented. However, I would like to state at the outset that this should not be taken personally by any member because this is a matter of importance to all hon. members.
I received a phone call from the member for Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar on Friday at about 4:30 when I was at the airport. I was advised that a copy of the draft report from the finance committee was sent by one of her staffers, Russell Ullyatt, and that it was sent to three lobbyists. This information has been confirmed by others. A Google search and other sources of information would indicate that these three parties to whom the draft report was sent via email all have notable ties to the Conservative Party of Canada.
I asked the member what she had done and, contrary to what the parliamentary secretary to the government house leader just told the House what action she took, she told me that the first thing she did was to go to the chief government whip. The member did not mention that.
The chief government whip is a Privy Councillor. Over and above his responsibilities as a member of Parliament, he also has a responsibility as Privy Councillor to abide by, to protect and to defend the laws of Canada and the rules of Parliament.
It has been confirmed to me by two different parties, and I guess these will have to stand as allegations, that the whip's response to the member for Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar was that the matter should be left with the committee and that she should not to take any further action. This is significant.
The member for Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar may in fact find herself to be a victim of detrimental reliance. She is a member of a caucus and the whip tends to tell its members what to do. However, the member, also as a member of Parliament, has responsibilities and those responsibilities are laid out in O'Brien-Bosc and in our standing orders.
I want to start by giving a reference out of O'Brien-Bosc, second edition, 2009, from chapter 3 under “Privilege versus Contempt” on page 82. I will not read all of it, but for the information of hon. members because this has come up before and we need to understand, it states:
It is important to distinguish between a “breach of privilege” and “contempt of Parliament”. Any disregard of or attack on the rights, powers and immunities of the House and its Members, either by an outside person or body, or by a Member of the House, is referred to as a “breach of privilege” and is punishable by the House. There are, however, other affronts against the dignity and authority of Parliament which may not fall within one of the specifically defined privileges. Thus, the House also claims the right to punish, as a contempt, any action which, though not a breach of a specific privilege, tends to obstruct or impede the House in the performance of its functions; obstructs or impedes any Member or officer of the House in the discharge of their duties; or is an offence against the authority or dignity of the House, such as disobedience of its legitimate commands or libels upon itself, its Members, or its officers. As the authors of Odgers’ Senate Practice (Australia) state: “The rationale of the power to punish contempts, whether contempt of court or contempt of the Houses, is that the courts and the two Houses should be able to protect themselves from acts which directly or indirectly impede them in the performance of their functions”. In that sense, all breaches of privilege are contempts of the House, but not all contempts are necessarily breaches of privilege.
The House of Commons enjoys very wide latitude in maintaining its dignity and authority through the exercise of its contempt power. In other words, the House may consider any misconduct to be contempt and may deal with it accordingly. Instances of contempt in one Parliament may even be punished by another Parliament. This area of parliamentary law is therefore extremely fluid and most valuable for the Commons to be able to meet novel situations.
The rest of the section goes on to list the kinds of things that would constitute contempts or privileges. Coincidentally, the very last item says:
divulging or publishing the content of any report or evidence of a select committee before it has been reported to the House.
That is exactly what we are talking about.
As a further reference, I would refer to a situation that occurred in the House during the tenure of Speaker Parent. There was an incident involving, I believe, officials of either the justice department or of the Journals Branch who assist members of Parliament in the drafting of private member's bills. Inadvertently, cross conversations went on between those officials and the clerks at the table. This came forward as an issue of a breach of privilege because of the confidentiality requirement with regard to draft private members' bills. They cannot be disclosed and, just as our draft report of the finance committee says, they are confidential. It must be respected. It is the right of the member to have that respected.
Mr. Speaker, you may recall what happened there. There was a long debate in the House and at the very end, before the time for government orders had expired, a motion was moved by the Bloc House leader, after consultation with House leaders, that the matter be referred to procedure and House affairs. It required unanimous consent. The motion was posed by Speaker Parent and when the Speaker asked if there was unanimous consent, a member had walked into the chamber and said “no”. The Speaker then said, “There is no consent”, and then said, “It being 5:30...”. I remember very precisely because at that moment I rose in the chamber, as a pretty young member of Parliament, on point of order.
My point of order was that the only member of Parliament who had said no had just walked into the chamber, had not heard the debate, had not participated in any fashion in the debate and was not aware that there was all party consent for that motion. As a consequence, my point of order was that the question be re-put. The Speaker suspended the House, allowed the House leaders to convene again and after they took the member out in the back room and roughed him up a little bit, they came back, moved the point again and the matter was carried and referred to the procedure and House affairs committee.
The importance of this particular example during my tenure is that it was the Speaker who was at risk in terms of the contempt or the breach of privilege because it is the persons who report to the Speaker who had been involved in that breach by that cross communication. We have a parallel here where the member for Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar did not herself disclose this confidential document to any other persons. She has declared that and I trust her. The people who work for her, however, did and they sent it to certain people who have been characterized as being strong supporters of the Conservative Party. Is this a culture in the offices of the Conservative member? Is this what is being told? We do not know and in fact we do not have all of the information.
However, the intentional conveyance of confidential documents affects every member of the committee. It exposes members to pressures and undue influence as they finalize their report and it also prejudices the freedom of all the participants. It means that now that the report is out in the hands of at least three lobby firms and who knows who else, they will now know which party supported or recommended certain aspects of the presentations of the 451 submissions and 155 witnesses who we heard.
Now, because we are at the drafting stage, these members could be prejudiced or pressured into taking another position. It puts us at risk. It interferes with our freedom to make good laws and wise decisions, which is part of our prayer each day.
Just to give an idea, this is just one of the emails that came back. It has to do with Lynne Hamilton, the vice-president of public affairs of GCI Group. The email went from the staff member to Ms. Hamilton. The simple response was “I heart you”. I assume this refers to “I love you”.
That was the reaction. This was important. This was valuable. This was something that we are going to have a good time with.
Interestingly enough, the wording of the transmission of the report to Ms. Hamilton by Mr. Ullyatt, was:
Thought you may want a peak at this in its infancy.
That was the message, which was signed “Russell”.
Those are most of the facts, but there are some points that have not been mentioned. One, as I indicated, is that the Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons maybe conveniently, I do not know, left out the fact that the first person to find out about this was the Chief Government Whip. I would have expected the Chief Government Whip to know to protect and to defend the rights and privileges of parliamentarians, and he did not. That is an issue to be dealt with.
The member for Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar had a conversation with the member for Kings—Hants. He has advised me, and I think he may want to rise to confirm, that his sage advice to the member was to contact each of the lobbyists and tell them that this was by mistake, that it is confidential and they should destroy everything, recover whatever copies have gone out and mitigate the damage.
That was not done. As a matter of fact, it was not until yesterday's finance committee meeting, and I hope I am not divulging confidences as that was an in camera meeting, so maybe I should just say that I am aware that the chair of the committee had to call each of those lobbyists last night while the committee was not meeting. We had suspended, and that is what he was doing.
There was no attempt by the Chief Government Whip nor the hon. member to mitigate the potential damage. Not all members were contacted, as well. I had phoned several times but only got voicemail, so I do understand that some members may not have been able to get through.
I think those are the substantive issues. I would certainly support the motion by the sponsor of this question of privilege.
I would like to raise one last point. Should this go to the procedure and House affairs committee, I am sure it will be well taken care of. Even if it is viewed that it should not go to that committee, I believe there is another issue that the House must deal with. We, as a Parliament, have not had an opportunity to discuss possible amendments to the Standing Orders for a variety of reasons, such as prorogation of the first session so that 60 sitting days never occurred, an election, and things like that.
We have a situation where when things happen at committee, we have a delegated authority to do certain things. We cannot sanction people. We cannot deal with it. It has to come to the House. The only way we can do that is to report to the House.
If we have a situation where a member's conduct is way out of line and needs to be dealt with, but the structure has a balance of members in it who have the ability to frustrate the issuance of a report, there will never be a reckoning of a member's conduct or speech or whatever matter may come forward that is disrespectful to the committee, to parliamentarians and to Parliament as a whole.
The second one has to do with leaked reports. We could not do it unless we had a report. In certain circumstances, whether in a majority Parliament and even in minority Parliaments where the opposition parties are co-operating, it can frustrate the reporting of any matter to this House. There is not a mechanism where an important matter that is in the best interests of parliamentarians and of Parliament can get on the table and be dealt with to mitigate the damage.
I understand that the chair of the procedure and House affairs committee is aware that these have been problems in committees in the past, but they have not been discussed in this House. I would like to write a letter to him and suggest that we might do this. This matter may be the watershed point at which we need a protocol, a checklist, or a Standing Order amendment so that when things happen in this place that should not happen, and all hon. members agree, we should have a very swift disposition. We should have this matter go through a protocol which ensures that if someone has given bad information, or information which frustrates the rights and privileges of members, it be dealt with immediately. It is something on which we cannot wait.
I am aware of situations, and one situation would certainly be the Mulroney-Schreiber hearings, where it was months before certain things could be dealt with. We do not have the delegated authority in committee to sanction or to deal with these things. It would only be the House, and in fact the Speaker on the recommendation of the House, or the committee that it is referred to.
Having said that, Mr. Speaker, it is a very serious matter. I would sincerely hope that you would look at the details and consider this matter to be meritorious of being referred to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs.