Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order to unreservedly apologize to the House and to the member for Red Deer—Mountain View, to the hon. government House leader and to the Parliamentary Secretary to the government House leader, with respect to the handling of the governmental response to Order Paper question Q-50.
The government response from Natural Resources Canada to Q-50 is incorrect, and for that I apologize. Not only that, my office provided information to the government House leader's office to prepare a response to the question of privilege raised on February 19 by my colleague from Red Deer—Mountain View.
The information was provided and vetted by my department, which stated that the reason that a nil response was provided to Q-50 was that the contracts with Pembina Institute were grants, not contracts. I now know that a mistake was made, and this information was false.
In giving the government House leader's office that information, I have undermined its efforts to clear the record, and I am very sorry for that.
I want to correct the record. I will table a revised, correct and accurate response to Q-50 as soon as possible. I want to assure the House that I did not knowingly or intend to mislead the House. I take this matter extremely seriously. I am discussing the matter with my departmental officials to ensure this does not happen again. It came to light they made an error with the search terms when conducting the search.
I also want to express my deep regret to the member for Red Deer—Mountain View, who was simply seeking information in order to discharge his duties as a member of Parliament.
Again, I am deeply sorry to all members present and to the House.