Mr. Speaker, I appreciate all of the comments by my hon. colleagues. I particularly appreciate the comments from the hon. member for Yukon for being so brief. I will also observe brevity. As you know, I have made an intervention on this a few weeks ago. I am also firmly convinced that you will give all submissions on the matter your most careful consideration.
I only want to make two quick comments on the interventions made today by the member for St. John's East and the member for Scarborough—Rouge River.
With respect to the comments made by the member for St. John's East, he stated in his intervention that the special committee on Afghanistan may put into place provisions or mechanisms to deal with the security issue to ensure that sensitive documents are treated appropriately. The fact is, and it was verified by the member for St. John's East today, there are no such mechanisms in place currently. The committee has not put any provisions in place currently to deal with matters of national security to ensure that those matters are dealt with appropriately.
I reiterate my position that while it is fine to say the committee may put in such provisions, we have seen none. The House order of December 10 speaks not of any provisions, of any mechanism. I believe we cannot, simply on a wish and a prayer, hand over documents concerning national security issues to a committee that does not have any provisions to ensure that confidential and security matters will be observed in the manner in which they should. That is the first point.
With respect to the comments made by my colleague from Scarborough—Rouge River, while I appreciate his submission, I would also point out that my colleague has obviously been a learned man. He is sincere in his comments. I believe you would agree, Mr. Speaker, that all comments and all submissions made by members of the House should be taken seriously and their words should be taken at face value.
I would point out some of the words that my colleague from Scarborough—Rouge River stated about five years ago, in fact in April 2005. These comments and statements were just recently brought to my attention and that is why I am entering them on to the record today, but I would suggest that his comments are as relevant today as they were in 2005. While the member for Scarborough—Rouge River in 2005 was a member of the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics, he stated:
In my view and experience of national security areas, where I've been fairly involved over the last 15-plus years, the foreign partners of Canada would have absolutely no appetite to begin sharing information with Canada on security matters if access were to be in the hands of an access commissioner.
I would suggest to you, Mr. Speaker, that this is a clear admission by the member for Scarborough—Rouge River that sharing sensitive security information, unredacted, could cause serious implications for Canada's national security. In other words, our allies would have to think twice about sharing sensitive intelligence about Canada.
I realize that in the statement on April 2005, the member for Scarborough—Rouge River was referring to providing unredacted information to an access commissioner and not to members of Parliament. However, I would suggest, and I think it is fair to say, that the member should agree with me when I say that our foreign partners would probably be as uncomfortable with Parliament sharing information with members of Parliament as they would be uncomfortable with Parliament sharing sensitive information with an access commissioner, particularly so, since we have already had an example where members from the special committee on Afghanistan have broken confidentiality provisions by tweeting comments from in camera sessions.
How would our allies and our partners worldwide have any confidence that Parliament would be able to treat national security issues with the proper respect that they deserve when we have on record evidence of members of that committee breaking those confidences by tweeting confidential information? I repeat, we cannot take assurances from the opposition members that national security documents, if provided in an unredacted form, would be treated with the confidence and propriety that they deserve.
We have no proof of that, and as I said only a few moments ago, I would suggest that the comments by the member for Scarborough—Rouge River in 2005, stating that we should not hand over sensitive documents to an access commissioner because it would be inappropriate and would not give our security partners worldwide the confidence to continue to provide us with sensitive intelligence information, are just as relevant today as they were then.
It is a clear admission, as I said before, a clear admission by the member for Scarborough—Rouge River that we have to be able to allow the executive to determine when matters of national security need to be preserved and not turned over to Parliament or any committee.
Mr. Speaker, I know you will consider this submission and all submissions with all the gravity and judiciousness you can muster. Finally, I would say that I hope, on behalf of all parliamentarians, these interventions are given the most gravity your office can possibly give them and a ruling will come down as quickly as possible so Parliament can move forward.