Mr. Speaker, I rise today to respond to three questions of privilege that were raised in the week of March 18.
I will begin with the question of privilege raised by the hon. member for New Westminster—Burnaby on March 18 with respect to answers given by the Minister of Justice and the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice during question period on February 7 and 8, 2019.
In his speech, the hon. opposition member argued that on the aforementioned days, the minister and the parliamentary secretary stated that neither the Prime Minister nor his office exerted any pressure on the former attorney general with regard to deferred prosecution agreements, and that since the media reported a different version of the facts afterward, the minister and parliamentary secretary had misled the House.
On January 31, 2008, Speaker Milliken ruled on a similar question of privilege. The matter was raised following the release of information that contradicted the statement given in the House earlier by the then minister of national defence on the Afghan detainee policy. He said, “...any dispute regarding the accuracy...of a minister’s response to an oral question is a matter of debate....”
This statement, which was also quoted in the NDP House leader's intervention, is echoed in House of Commons Procedure and Practice, third edition, which states on page 516:
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. As such, these matters are more a question of debate and do not constitute a breach of the rules or of privilege.
Furthermore, I would like to refer you to your predecessor's ruling of April 29, 2015. That ruling, which can be found on page 13198 of Debates, was about the appropriateness of the then minister of defence's response to a question pertaining to Canada's military involvement against Daesh. The former Speaker said:
...as your Speaker, I must take all members at their word. To do otherwise, to take it upon myself to assess the truthfulness or accuracy of Members' statements is not a role which has been conferred on me, nor that the House has indicated that it would somehow wish the Chair to assume, with all of its implications.
In the same decision, the former Speaker reminded the members of the following conditions for breach of privilege with regard to the misleading statements:
...first, the statement needs to be misleading. Second, the member making the statement has to know that the statement was incorrect when it was made. Finally, it needs to be proven that the member intended to mislead the House by making the statement.
As previously cited in the April 29, 2015, decision, the Speaker “must take all members at their word.”
Finally, I would like to remind the House that in the ruling dated April 16, 2002, Speaker Milliken, while speaking about the broader concepts of freedom of speech and the presumption of truthfulness, said the following:
If we do not preserve the tradition of accepting the word of a fellow member, which is a fundamental principle of our parliamentary system, then freedom of speech, both inside and outside the House, is imperilled.
As such, I respectfully submit that this is a question of debate and as such does not constitute a prima facie question of privilege.