Mr. Speaker, I am not going to take too much time in speaking to the prima facie case of privilege, but it is important that we understand a couple of things about this issue.
I want to get back to the issue, that of KAIROS, because often that gets forgotten in this place. This is an organization which, as referenced earlier, has done stellar work. If we examine the evaluations of the department and consider the history of KAIROS, it has done stellar work for over 35 years.
The foreign affairs committee considered the issue of Sudan and the referendum that was about to happen. We studied the issue of Sudan, in particular, the south of Sudan. The referendum went fairly smoothly, but we needed experts before committee to tell us what was happening on the ground in Sudan. The committee asked to have KAIROS appear before the committee. This was after the decision was made by the minister to cut funding to KAIROS. The representatives from KAIROS provided very cogent arguments as to what the government should be doing.
It is important that we consider what we are talking about. It is not some partisan group. It is an ecumenical group. It is a group of churches that has been doing work abroad for 35 years. As someone who has travelled a bit in Africa and elsewhere, I can say that we need people on the ground who know what is going on in these areas. The department knows that. The minister knows that.
Seven million dollars is not a lot of money, but it is an important amount. It would also leverage money. KAIROS, as a group, was also able to raise money. Leveraging money is a responsible fiscal decision as well. It is really important that we understand what the issue is. It is about KAIROS. It is about the way the decision was made.
KAIROS is known around the world for the work it does. It is not about partisanship. It is not about the notion some on the other side have of KAIROS advocating on certain issues. That has been dealt with and I am not going to open that up again. The advocacy that was done, which I would be happy to share with some of my colleagues, was on things like dealing with impunity on sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
I laud the government for recently bringing out an action plan with respect to UN resolution 1325 to deal with the profound challenges of violence against women and the use of women in conflict. The gravity of this issue is such that we have a UN resolution, to which the government responded with an action plan. It was something we all wanted to see. We would like to see more money and action with respect to that action plan, but we know that we must have people on the ground who know what they are doing and what they are talking about.
We heard about the horrific gender violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The government said it was concerned about the military being able to get away with sexual crimes and that it was happy with some actions that were being taken. What it forgot to consider was the people who had been doing the work on the ground to help women and girls, who are extremely vulnerable in the DRC, to fight sexual violence and to make sure that this culture of impunity is challenged. KAIROS was doing that work. It was helping young women. It was helping girls to fight against the culture of impunity. Yes, it was advocacy.
If we examine the evaluations of the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade and of CIDA, we will actually find that one of the categories under which it puts its program funding is advocacy. Advocacy is not a dirty word. Advocacy is what we do when we help people take control of a situation, in a chaotic situation, in a precarious situation such as what is happening in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
When we look at the merit of the work that KAIROS does, it is really important that we understand why this decision was made, not just the way the information came out from the minister. It is important to understand the government's decision.
The government has said many times, in both the House and at committee, that it could not fund everyone. We understand that. It said that it would provide funding for other programs, giving the impression that it was unable to fund KAIROS because there was not enough money.
People believed the reason KAIROS did not get the funding was because there was not enough money. The problem with that is it is counter to the decision that was made and contrary to the advice given by the department. The deputy minister signed off on this funding. This program was in line with the programs the department believed should be funded. It was never made clear that there was not enough money throughout the debate or in the documents on record.
The minister said that it was her decision. What was that decision? Was her decision not in line with the government's policies, even though the department recommended funding? The buck stops with the minister. Yes, she has the authority to decide whether funding goes ahead or not.
However, the confusion lies in the impression that was given to members of the House and committee. The government said that it would like to fund KAIROS but it did not have the money. Then we were told, and this is the party line now, that what KAIROS was doing was not in line with the government's priorities. That obviously needs to be cleared up.
There is one other thing that I find difficult to comprehend from the responses I have heard from the government. The minister had the application by KAIROS on her desk for two months. Why did the minister suddenly feel the need to doctor the document, which is what some members have called it? Others have called it a fraudulent document.
The fact is the minister had the document in front of her for two months. The story provided to us was that she was out of town and asked someone to use her signature stamp on the application. At some point, she directed someone to put the word “not” in the document. What is slightly unbelievable is that in 2010 we have not come up with a procedure or a form that would allow a minister to decline the advice of a department. That is hard to conceive.
That begs another question. Were there other applications in which the minister or someone else did the deed and inserted the word not? Members of the House and committee were told that the government wished it had a paper process in place, but it did not, so someone was directed to put the “not” in the document thereby changing the decision. I find that difficult to understand. Some members find it difficult to believe. I will leave that as it is.
What other decisions were made in that manner? Government members make it sound like there was a procedural problem. They tell us that problem has been changed so everything is fine now. What other documents went to the minister and she made her decision by inserting a word into the document? That is important for us to understand.
At the end of the day, when we have the evidence that was in front of us at committee, the evidence that was in front of us in the House and the evidence that the Speaker ruled on, it leaves some holes in terms of full disclosure. Full disclosure is important. If we look at the argument I made on this privilege motion, it goes back to Speaker Jerome's decision of 1978 with regard to the RCMP and the opening of people's mail without people knowing it.
The assertion at the time was the minister of the day said that this was not happening. The McDonald commission was established, following many allegations of improper conduct by the RCMP of the day. Alas, it came out during the McDonald commission that the RCMP was opening people's mail without their knowing it.
The minister was obliged to know those facts. That is why that reference was made by us in this decision. It is important for the minister, who asked someone to put the “not” in the document, would know who the person was. It is a basic notion of accountability. If ministers are directing people to change documents, it is incumbent upon them to at least tell us who those people are.
This is not about, guess what I am thinking. That is what the government seems to put forward as an argument. Because we did not ask the right question, therefore the minister is off the hook, so to speak. In our system the minister, as a cabinet minister, should be held to the highest standard. It should not be about a minister waiting to see if we ask a certain question and then giving us a certain answer.
It is about full disclosure for full accountability. That is where I find the issue of privilege to be most cogent. The minister did say at committee that she did not know, and she was confused at times. She clarified later that she did not mean to convey that she was in line with the department's decision.
However, she did say that she did not know who put the word in that changed the outcome of the decision. Most reasonable people reading that, and certainly I was in the room when it happened, would be under the impression that she had nothing to do with it. Why do I say that? If people are asked if they are responsible for changing a document and they say that they do not know, we would assume they were not involved in that process. It is that simple and that is what we are left with.
If the minister had been living up to the standard of full disclosure and accountability, and frankly the standard that we should hold all cabinet ministers to, she would have said that she did not know who put the word in, but that she did direct someone to do it. I think that would have helped.
The way it has framed by the government is that nobody asked the exact question of who put the “not”. We asked the minister who did it. We have to ask ourselves if it has come to this. We are talking about basic accountability.
What we want to know, further to what we have already had, is why the minister, after having this document on her desk for two months, rushed to have someone else doctor the document, someone she claimed to not even know?
Even if we find that she told us everything she knows, we have a problem with accountability. Basically the minister phoned in a decision to someone, we do not know who, to change the work that was done by KAIROS and all of the people in the department who had looked over this application and said that it should be endorsed.
I do not think we can have confidence in is the kind of procedure, where a minister out of town, phoning in and saying that he or she wants someone to insert a word to negate the decision that was signed off on and not know who that person is. We still have no idea who the person was.
You know what it is like around here, Mr. Speaker. People are hired by all of us to do our work. We are talking about a $7 million application and I want to know that the minister is aware of who is doing the work and, in this case, who has inserted the word. We should at least know who did that. We also need to know the timing.
As has already been expressed, other cabinet ministers were in other parts of the world talking about why the government denied KAIROS funding. We now know they have seen the error of their ways and it was erroneous information. The Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism had no idea what he was talking about. He was talking about a different organization. A minister who is not even related to the portfolio was making claim on why a decision was made. Then there is the minister herself directing people to change documents and we do not know who the person is.
In the end, the decision of the Speaker was a wise one and we will need answers to these questions in the procedure and House affairs committee.