Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to respond to the question of privilege raised yesterday by the hon. member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley.
I have been clear over the past two days, just as I was on February 1. Service Canada does not have individual quotas for staff.
As I have also said before, there are performance targets to help protect the benefits of the unemployed from fraud.
There is a clear difference between a quota and a target, and that is simply that there are no negative consequences for staff who fail to meet targets.
As with any business organizations, managers work with their staff to set out general expectations or indicators over the course of the year. Within the federal public administration, career progression is clearly set out by the Public Service Employment Act and is established through a merit-based process.
The documents referenced by Le Devoir, which were cited by the official opposition House leader, are not used as part of the merit process.
As I have said before in this place, Service Canada was able to stop almost half a billion dollars in ineligible payments last year. However, the employment insurance program still lost hundreds of millions more due to fraud. This is why we continue to work on behalf of Canadians and employers who pay premiums to ensure that their money is used properly.
This is no contradiction. Service Canada and I have been clear that Service Canada does not have quotas for staff.
The House leader for the official opposition cited your ruling on May 7, 2012, where the Chair set out a three-part test for establishing a contempt for deliberately misleading the House.
The first part of that test is that it must be established that the statement was misleading. In this case, the statements are not misleading because they are not contradictory. Therefore, I respectfully submit that the analysis must stop here.
Before concluding, let me quote page 510 of House of Commons Procedure and Practice, second edition, which states:
In most instances, when a point of order or a question of privilege has been raised in regard to a response to an oral question, the Speaker has ruled that the matter is a disagreement among Members over the facts surrounding the issue.
In fact, this approach seems to have guided your immediate ruling on February 4, 2013, when the Chair addressed a point of order from the hon. member for Acadie—Bathurst on one of my February 1 question period responses.
At page 13629 of the Debates you stated:
I think what we have here is a question as to an interpretation of what was said or how it was said. It is not for the Chair to rule on.
One final authority that I would cite is the ruling of Speaker Milliken from January 30, 2008. At page 2434 of the Debates, your immediate predecessor stated:
...as I have mentioned before on various occasions in this House, any dispute regarding the accuracy or appropriateness of a minister’s response to an oral question is a matter of debate; it is not a matter for the Speaker to judge.
Therefore, I would like to submit that this dispute about my response to an oral question is likewise a point of debate and certainly not a prima facie case of privilege.