Mr. Speaker, I will be responding to two matters of privilege that have been raised and provide comments.
In particular, I am rising to respond to the question of privilege raised by the member for Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes on Thursday, September 24, respecting the production of documents ordered by the Standing Committee on Finance in the previous session.
The member argues that the government did not respect the finance committee's motion, while at the same time acknowledges that the government provided the requested documents to the clerk of the committee on August 8, 2020. It was the opposition parties who wanted the law clerk to review these documents for the purposes of additional redactions. Liberal members on the committee agreed to the motion. I want to be clear: The government respected the finance committee's motion and provided the documents on time. The government also provided exactly the information that the committee requested in its motion. The only things excluded were matters of cabinet confidence and national security, which the committee spelled out in the motion.
In preparing the documents in response to the committee motion, public servants respected their statutory obligations under law. The government provided the documents, which were 5,600 pages, on the date requested by the committee. Due to the time needed for the law clerk to do his work, Parliament was prorogued before they were properly given to the committee. As a result, not only did the finance committee cease to exist with prorogation, but the committee did not fully have these documents. It is therefore difficult for the opposition to argue that the government did not comply with the committee's motion when they were not in a position to take such a determination since they did not have the formal law clerk-approved documents.
The second issue was that there was no report from the finance committee to the House. The hon. member for Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes correctly cites the relevant section from the House of Commons Procedure and Practice, 2017, which states, “If such an order is ignored, the committee has no means to enforce the order on its own. It may report the matter to the House and recommend that appropriate action be taken. It is then a decision of the House whether or not to issue an order for the production of papers.” There has been no report from the finance committee and the hon. member knows that committee business does not carry over from one session to the next.
My hon. colleague also states that the Speaker needs to take extraordinary steps to intervene now to prevent actions “to keep our committees from considering substantive business until November”. I would like to draw the attention of my hon. colleague to a motion that the House adopted immediately upon the opening of the House, a full day before he gave and made his intervention. In addition to allowing the House to meet in a hybrid format and to vote remotely to ensure the safety of members and their staff, the motion also stated that the Standing Committee on Finance must hold an organizational meeting as early as October 8 but no later than October 9. The hon. member knows that the opposition holds a majority on the committees and that the finance committee will decide its agenda at that time.
Furthermore, the motion enabled all committees to meet either virtually or in a hybrid format, which means that it can meet to transact any business it wants as of next week. It is therefore incorrect to state that the government can use procedural tactics to delay the finance committee from considering substantive business until November.
The member argues that there was no ability for the finance committee to report the matter in the question to the House. I would refer the hon. member to the motion adopted by the House on March 24, 2020. I quote the section (i) of that motion where it states:
(i) starting the week of March 30, 2020, the Minister of Finance or his delegate shall provide the Standing Committee on Finance with a bi-weekly report on all actions undertaken pursuant to parts 3, 8 and 19 of the COVID-19 Emergency Response Act and shall appear before the committee to discuss the report, provided that, until April 20, 2020, or any date to which the adjournment period is extended pursuant to paragraph f), if committee is not satisfied with how the government is exercising its powers under the Act, it may adopt a motion during a meeting by videoconference or teleconference to report this to the House by depositing a report with the Clerk of the House which shall be deemed to have been duly presented to the House on that day.
Since this matter was not before the House and the documents were not formally before the House or the committee, it would be difficult, if not impossible, for the Speaker to make a determination on whether the committee's motion was respected. While the government asserts that this issue does not constitute a prima facie case of privilege, I want to make it clear that when the finance committee restarts on October 8 or 9, if it readopts the motion and is not satisfied with the way the government has provided documents to the committee, the government is prepared to work in good faith with the committee to address any concerns that it may have.
This matter has raised a number of unique circumstances. I will note that the procedure and House affairs committee has undertaken two studies on how our House should operate in a pandemic. It therefore makes good sense to ask this committee to undertake a study of the Standing Orders and practices, and once complete, report its findings to the House.