Mr. Speaker, at the time of these events, I was the parliamentary secretary. At this point, I am simply the member for Kootenay—Columbia.
I do have some information that might be of value.
First, I take note of the three points the member brought to our attention, that the statements were misleading, that the statements were known to be misleading and that the statements were intended to mislead.
If I may, Mr. Speaker, I would like to draw to your attention that at no time in the member's presentation did he make any assertion that the minister made any misleading statements. In fact, I do not doubt for a second that the member, his colleagues and his research people will have combed over every solitary word that the minister may have uttered in the House or outside of the House. I note he did not say that the minister made any statement that misled the House.
With respect to myself, on March 15, I did make the statement that CIDA thoroughly analyzed KAIROS' program proposal and determined that it did not meet the agency's current priorities. For that, I have to apologize to the House. It was an inadvertent mistake on my part. I do apologize. As a person who has been around the House for 17 years, I take that failing on my part very seriously.
Second, the member says that the responses, obviously referring to my responses, because I have clearly determined that the minister's responses were never questioned by the member in his statement just now, were tailored to forward the narrative. This falls into the category of sometimes there is a lot less than meets the eye. In this instance, I was given to the impression that CIDA, as with any agency or any ministry, should take direction from the minister. Had it taken direction from the minister on behalf of the Government of Canada, the recommendation coming to the minister would not have been to recommend. In fact, it would have been against recommending. The fault, then, lies that the agency itself was in fact giving the minister advice that did not reflect the priorities.
I was mistaken. I took a look at the priorities of the government, which by the way I fully support because it gives the government the opportunity to more correctly direct where our funding should go. My presumption on March 15 was that CIDA, as an agency, would have made that recommendation.
If we take a look at it, first, the minister has not been cited with any evidence by the member that she made misleading statements and second, I was wrong, I did make a mistake and I apologize to the House. The second point, though, that I knew they were misleading, I have already clearly stated I could not have known. It was simply a mistake on my part. Third, that I intended to mislead, one follows the other, does it not?
With all due respect to the hon. colleague, the fact is this has been a change in policy that has been unacceptable to him, to KAIROS and to other people in that industry, and so be it. That is part of the political process and part of the discourse that we get into.
In fact, there is no place for a question of privilege other than perhaps, should you, Mr. Speaker, choose to censure me as having been a little bit overzealous in my representation of what I presumed CIDA was going to be doing.
In fact, there is absolutely no case for a question of privilege.