Mr. Speaker, I rise today on a question of privilege in response to your ruling of April 27 regarding the decision and the question of privilege raised by me with respect to making available to members of Parliament and to Parliament itself the unredacted documents related to the Afghan detainee issue.
I wish to inform you, Mr. Speaker, that despite extensive negotiations and discussions over the last several weeks, as you suggested, there is no resolution to this issue with respect to the four parties sitting in the House. I wish to advise you of the concerns that we in the NDP have raised throughout these proceedings and wish to put on the record today.
Fundamental to your ruling, Mr. Speaker, was that parliamentarians would have access to unredacted documents as requested by the House order in December of last year. Three of the parties in the House have decided to reach an agreement for a process, but that does not include access to unredacted documents as outlined in your ruling.
There is a class of documents, which the government has the ultimate and unilateral right to indicate as being matters of cabinet confidence or matters of solicitor-client privilege. These documents will not go to the committee that has been proposed, so the committee will not see them. These documents will go to a panel of jurists who will decide whether or not they are indeed matters that are considered cabinet confidence or solicitor-client privilege, in which case they will not be seen by parliamentarians.
Fundamental to your ruling, Mr. Speaker, is that Parliament, in exercising its right to hold government to account, would have access to these documents. Fundamental to holding government to account is the ability to answer the questions: What did the government know? What advice did it receive? What decisions did it take in response to that advice and information? None of that information will be available to members of Parliament.
The process that appears to have been agreed to is that one member of Parliament from each party would sit on the committee, but the second fundamental problem with the process is that the committee is designated as that of a committee external to the House of Commons. In other words, it would not be a House of Commons committee charged with holding the government to account. The people on the committee are members of Parliament, but the committee is designated as being external to Parliament. It would not report to Parliament. It would not report to you as Speaker. It is not in keeping with the traditions of Parliament itself of holding the government to account.
This committee will not be able to make reports on any substantive matters that obviously holding the government to account involves and will really be a vetting committee that cannot reach any conclusions whatsoever. It will merely report on procedures and any methodology that it wishes, but there is no mechanism for reporting to Parliament or to you as Speaker.
This disrespects Parliament. It disrespects the role of parliamentarians in holding the government to account by instead substituting a judicial role to look at the documents and make decisions about them.
We advocated during this process that there was a need, if we were going to have a proper process, for a committee of parliamentarians to have access to staff. It is a very simple matter. We are talking about thousands of documents, some have suggested even hundreds of thousands of documents. But the constraints put on this process include: no support from any staff; no ability to bring any notes into any meeting; no ability to bring any notes out of any meeting; or as we suggested, experts in this area, such as special advocates who are already designated with the secret classification and are experts in arguing before courts, particularly the Federal Court, as to the whole process of balancing the need for disclosure with the claims of confidentiality.
In fact, there is no balancing process in the process that has been set out. It is only a question of whether a matter is a national security issue or not, not whether it should be disclosed despite the fact that it may have national security implications.
We see as well in the issue of cabinet confidence or the solicitor-client privilege category that once again, the decision is not whether something ought to be disclosed, despite the fact that it may come under that category, but the issue is whether it is or is not a matter of cabinet confidence. If it is a matter of cabinet confidence, it will not be disclosed even for parliamentarians who are given the job of playing the role of Parliament in holding the government to account which they will not be able to do.
We had certain other issues with respect to how the committee was established. We also had issues that were matters of procedure that were very important to us. However, the fundamentals are what I have stated. What we see in fact is a group of parties that has reached this agreement and is looking desperately for an agreement, even though it significantly interferes and undermines the historic ruling by you on April 27.
This ad hoc committee, even though it is external to the House of Commons, will be covered by the in camera rules and will not be allowed to discuss what goes on nor complain about matters of substance. We find this to be unacceptable.
Mr. Speaker, in light of all of the above, and the fact that we do not have an agreement as you provided for in your ruling of April 27, I am asking you today to indicate to us, as you said in your ruling, “if in two weeks' time, the matter is still not resolved, the Chair will return to make a statement on the motion that will be allowed in the circumstances”.
In these circumstances where there is no agreement or resolution by the four parties in this House, I am prepared to move a motion that would incorporate the matters that were proposed by us, in keeping with your ruling, which is a different memorandum of understanding than the one which I think you will see later today which provides for the protection of national security, provides for ensuring confidentiality, provides for an oath to be taken by members of the committee, provides for proper reporting to you as Speaker and to the House, and provides for access to all unredacted documents.
These are missing from the agreement that appears to have been entered into by the Conservatives, the Liberals and the Bloc, but we are not prepared to enter into such an agreement. We are not prepared to ask our leader to sign such an agreement. We would like you to advise what motion you would consider appropriate in these circumstances.
As I have indicated, I am prepared to move a motion that would set out a memorandum of understanding or a process whereby the committee of parliamentarians could have access to these documents with the kind of support that is required and with the full access to the documents as outlined in your historic ruling to Parliament, which we believe has been significantly watered down by the government and agreed to by two of the opposition parties.