Madam Speaker, on February 3, Althia Raj, in the Huffington Post, reported on a leak from a recent meeting. She reported:
Several government sources, speaking to The Huffington Post Canada on condition of anonymity, said a decision to abandon the Liberals’ election promise of making the 2015 election the last held under a first-past-the-post system was reached after a two-hour discussion at the January cabinet retreat in Calgary. Only one cabinet minister was opposed.
She added that the “Newly minted Democratic Institutions Minister strongly opposed a referendum, and her arguments persuaded some skeptics.”
When I read that, two things struck me. First, this was the first time, and I actually wrote my notes down at this time, in 16 years as a member of Parliament that I had seen a cabinet leak. These things simply do not happen--cabinet leaks as opposed to leaks from caucuses. They are unheard of. Second, this was not one source leaking from cabinet, it was from two sources. The note I made to myself at that time was, “These things just don't happen. The note was not a single source, there were several. Several sources equals this was a deliberately approved leak, approved at the highest level.” I noted as well, “This is a blow-by-blow description of a cabinet meeting.”
This is very problematic. Cabinet leaks are strictly prohibited. They are confidences of the crown. The Manual of Official Procedure of the Government of Canada says on page 17:
Meetings of Cabinet are secret...Any announcements after meetings are made by the Prime Minister at a press conference or by press release, or can be made by the responsible minister.
However, details of cabinet meetings are never made public. This is such a serious matter that if a minister resigns as a result of a discussion that took place in cabinet, the minister must actually seek permission to make public the grounds on which he or she has resigned. That is how seriously cabinet conferences are taken.
Let me quote from the appendices of the Manual of Official Procedure. This is the letter one would send if one had resigned:
As I am bound by my oath as a Privy Councillor I do not feel feel I can properly justify the course of action I have chosen to follow [in resigning] unless His Excellency the Governor General releases me from this oath so that I may publicly disclose the reasons for my resignation as I gave them to Cabinet.
That is how seriously this is taken. In the case of this leak, this struck me as preposterous and so, on February 7, I asked the government House leader the following question:
Given the existence of two anonymous sources, this does look like a coordinated effort to allow the Prime Minister to spread the blame for changing course [on electoral reform] to the entire cabinet. However, I could be wrong about the source of leaks. Therefore, has a Privy Council Office investigation been launched into these leaks from cabinet?
The response I got, which was most unsatisfactory, from the House leader was, “Mr. Speaker, no, it has not.”
The question is, has an investigation taken place and why, if one has not taken place, should we believe anything other than that the Prime Minister himself is responsible for these leaks from cabinet?