Mr. Speaker, again, I would refer you, in keeping with the spirit of your ruling from last autumn, with respect to these issues. In any event, members can be reassured that my comments will be much shorter than the two hours or so of submissions that were made back in June.
On March 25, this House adopted an order requiring the attendance of three witnesses before the ethics committee: Rick Theis, the Prime Minister's director of policy and cabinet affairs, was to appear on March 29; Amitpal Singh, the Deputy Prime Minister's policy adviser, was to appear on March 31; and Ben Chin, the Prime Minister's senior adviser, was to appear on April 8. The order also contemplated that the Prime Minister could appear on behalf of any or all of those individuals. In the end, as confirmed in appendix A of the second report, none of them appeared before the ethics committee.
On page 82 of the House of Commons Procedure and Practice, third edition, various categories of known contempts of Parliament are noted, including, “without reasonable excuse, failing to attend before the House or a committee after being summoned to do so” and, “without reasonable excuse, disobeying a lawful order of the House or a committee”.
Parliamentary Privilege in Canada, second edition, at page 239, outlines the importance of treating Mr. Theis, Mr. Singh and Mr. Chin's disregard of the March 25 order of the House as contempt. It states:
Disobedience to rules or orders represents an affront to the dignity of the House, and accordingly the House could take action, not simply for satisfaction but to ensure that the House of Commons is held in the respect necessary for its authority to be vindicated. Without proper respect, the House of Commons could not function.
A moment ago I quoted Bosc and Gagnon's caveat of “without reasonable excuse”. I would argue that could be addressed very quickly considering that none of the three witnesses offered any excuse for their absences. I do acknowledge that two cabinet ministers wrote to the ethics committee's chair to indicate they would appear on behalf of the witnesses, but that does not constitute an excuse from the witnesses personally. In the alternative, I would say it does not amount to a reasonable excuse.
In the present case, it is quite clear the House adopted an order and the order was breached completely, since there was no effort by the witnesses to comply with it in any way, nor was any excuse advanced by them to be weighed by the House or for the committee to assess and report its findings.
I now wish to turn to the government's role in preventing Mr. Theis, Mr. Singh and Mr. Chin from appearing as witnesses at the ethics committee. The government has freely admitted to this course of conduct, both in advance and at the time of the scheduled appearances. In his remarks to the House on March 25, the then government House leader said, at page 5234 of the Debates, “I say here today that ministers will instruct their staff not to appear when called before committees and that the government will send ministers instead to account for their actions.”