Mr. Speaker, certainly I was going to give more of an underpinning of the supremacy of parliamentary privilege with respect to the attempts by the executive to use solicitor-client privilege to fetter that absolute right. I will condense down to where I am going in a few minutes of remaining time to show you and my friend, the deputy House leader from the Liberals, what the request to respect the individual and collective rights of parliamentarians should be. In particular, my parliamentary privilege to fulfill my individual and collective function has been impeded by the Prime Minister's inappropriate use of solicitor-client privilege to bar full consideration of the facts underlying the SNC affair, the Shawcross doctrine and the crisis that has really gripped the government over the last two months. I will narrow in now to be quick.
Yesterday in this chamber, the Prime Minister said he has provided this waiver. He said, “We issued an unprecedented order in council waiving solicitor-client privilege and cabinet confidence, allowing her to speak fully on the matter.”
That does not jibe with the order in council he refers to. I am happy to table this order in council afterward. It is 2019-0105. In two parts it is limited to “while she held that office”. That is in two different sections with respect to that waiver. It then goes on to say, “waiver does not extend to any information or communications between the former Attorney General and the Director of Public Prosecutions”.
There has been no full waiver here. It is clear that the full waiver would include any conversations that might be bound by solicitor-client privilege after a cabinet shuffle. The former attorney general became the Minister of Veterans Affairs, a position I hold in very high regard as a former occupant of that position, on January 14. Between January 14 and February 12, when she resigned her role in cabinet, a number of conversations were likely held. We know for a fact that on February 11, when the Prime Minister was in Vancouver, there was a discussion where he said the fact that the former attorney general was still in cabinet showed “full confidence” in and by the former attorney general. In response, she resigned the next day, so certainly there was not full confidence both ways.
Parliament, to fulfill our function individually and collectively, needs a full waiver. The Prime Minister has told Canadians there has been a full waiver when there has been a partial waiver. The member for Vancouver Granville needs to be able to inform the House about all discussions, free of privilege considerations, until the present day.
I will put one more thing on the record, because I think it is important to know. Although her own colleagues are suggesting she can come in here at any moment and rise on a point of order, the member for Vancouver Granville has professional obligations as a lawyer. The Law Society of British Columbia's rules of practice, section 3.3-2, states, “A lawyer must not use or disclose a client’s or former client’s confidential information to the disadvantage of the client”. Therefore, that member, who has been seeking advice from a former Supreme Court justice, is taking her Privy Council, cabinet and professional obligations seriously at a time when the Prime Minister suggests that he has provided a full waiver. He used the word “fully” yesterday. There is a month where clearly that waiver has not been provided.
Therefore, for the Prime Minister to live up to the claim that he has provided the former attorney general with a full waiver, he needs to do exactly that, including conversations in Vancouver on February 11, because lawyers have obligations to their clients long after the client relationship ends. The member for Vancouver Granville should not be forced to walk away from her professional obligations when the simplest answer, whenever there are solicitor-client considerations, is a waiver of those protections by the client, which is the Government of Canada, in this case represented by the Prime Minister.
What I am asking you to do is a bit extraordinary, because I am not asking you to find a prima facie finding and to refer this to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. My privilege has also been violated by the executive's use of committees, both justice and ethics, to circumvent or stall the full explanation and exploration of, and deliberation on, these events.
Therefore, I take the extraordinary step to ask you, on behalf of all parliamentarians in our collective function, to invite the member for Vancouver Granville to speak fully on the record in this chamber, not burdened by any solicitor-client privileges, going all the way to the present day, which would include any conversations and continued pressure that happened after her shuffle to Veterans Affairs. If you give a declaratory judgment or statement telling the member that parliamentary privilege supersedes any legal obligation she has to the Law Society of British Columbia, to her former client, the Prime Minister, or to her status as a privy councillor to show and reaffirm that parliamentary privilege is absolute, I would ask the Chair to take that extraordinary step of inviting the member for Vancouver Granville to speak, unfettered, in this chamber. It is within your power. Parliament can let her speak.