Mr. Speaker,there are a couple of points that I think are important to underline in light of the government's intervention and response to the question of privilege.
Mr. Speaker, I should point out that in the report that was submitted by the committee, at the bottom of the report, just before the chair signed off, there is a copy of the relevant minutes of proceedings. I want to underline that because it does give you a full overview of the debate within committee on this issue. I think that is important because it is in context that we are debating this point of privilege.
One of those points is not only the minister saying that, on the one hand, she was not aware of who put the “not” in the document, she was not able to divulge that, then she conveyed in testimony that she was very well attuned to what was in the proposal. That is important because when I asked her questions at committee, I asked if she had read the proposal and she had assured us that she had. That is important because of the dates. She had the sign-off from senior officials on this to approve the proposal and when we came to the point of trying to find out from her how this process worked, she was not able to tell us.
This is where I believe our privileges were compromised and where there is a prima facie case of contempt. As I mentioned in my intervention yesterday, the 1978 decision by Speaker Jerome was notwithstanding that the information that was provided to an hon. member back in 1973, and this was with regard to the opening of mail by the RCMP, there was no knowledge of it at the time. It was later found out that there was, in fact, knowledge and that there was withholding of information from hon. members.
I need to underline one thing here. There is a certain standard of conduct that all hon. members should all ascribe to, that is, telling our colleagues exactly what has happened in a truthful manner.
Cabinet ministers are held to a higher standard, for obvious reasons. They have to absolutely assure all members that they are divulging all information because of the nature of their position.
I say that because when we asked for information about how this decision was made, to be polite, the minister was evasive. She would not tell us who intervened to change this document, which I will speak to in a moment, and she led us to believe that she was not involved. That is clear, when we look at the sign-off of her deputy minister and others, the fact that she had this on her desk for the period of time she did, the fact that she said that she had studied this proposal for the time that she had and, at the end of the day, she could not disclose to hon. members who actually made the intervention to kill the proposal.
This is the higher standard I am speaking of. It is not good enough to shrug and say, “Well, I'm sorry. I should have told you I directed someone to do it, but I didn't." I think that is something that needs to be ascertained and Mr. Speaker, if you connect it to the 1973 intervention of an hon. member which led to the 1978 decision of prima facie from Speaker Jerome, you will see that there is an argument.
Finally, there is the document. I respectfully disagree with my colleague from the Conservative Party when he said that normally people would not see this document, maybe it was sloppy, maybe it could have been done differently, but it is not something we should concern ourselves with because, at the end of the day, the minister said it was her decision.
The problem is that it is the whole focus right now because it is important. It is a legal testament to whether or not this proposal was going to be approved.
To go back in time, the nature of bureaucracy and why we have documents is so that there is accountability. My friend says it is not important because normally we would not see these documents, and that this is just the way things happen, that it was sloppy, but we should not worry about it.
The only way to hold government to account, and this applies to the private sector as well, is to look at documents and contracts. This essentially was a contract, a proposal put forward to government, approved by upper levels of the bureaucracy and given to the minister to sign off.
That is the way this works. How else can we have accountability unless we look at documents to ascertain how decisions were made in this place? I know the government does not like that. It would prefer that none of us see anything. We have seen that before with the Afghan detainee documents.
At the end of the day, Mr. Speaker, I encourage you to focus on the document, the impression that was given by the minister, what was divulged by her, and at what point hon. members were actually given access to how that decision was made. I think a prima facie case will be found. As I said before, I think that Speaker Jerome's decision will help in that instance.