Debates of June 21st, 2021

Documents Related to the Transfer of Ebola and Henipah Viruses to the Wuhan Institute of Virology

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Mr. Speaker, on a point of order, could you at least consider hearing the rest of the point of order by the government House leader?

[The Speaker, Anthony Rota]

I have made my statement. I ask all members to sit and wait while we consult. It is a matter that we must go over. As I said, this is a very unique situation. I want to make sure that we get it right on all sides. This is not to show any favouritism to one side or the other; I just want to go over it.

The Chair is in the hands of the House. Nothing in the order of June 17 provided for the possibility of taking measures, nor does the order give the Chair the authority to respond to the situation the House is currently facing. It is up to the House to decide.

I will go back to the hon. government House leader and ask if the point of order he is raising is directly related to what we are discussing now. If it is not, I would ask him to please inform the House and we shall continue.

The hon. government House leader.

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the point of order is totally related.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. Correct me if I am mistaken, but I believe you were interrupted while trying to finish the statement you were making. You were admonishing the Public Health Agency of Canada, and I think you should be able to finish your statement before there is a point of order responding to that statement. I think you should have the right to—

[The Speaker, Anthony Rota]

To correct the hon. member for Banff—Airdrie, I was done and about to dismiss Mr. Stewart when the hon. government House leader rose on a point of order to bring information forward. It was brought after. Right now we are dealing with that to see if it is directly related.

This is what I am going to do. I will listen to what the government House leader has to say and then determine relevance afterward. If it is way out of whack, I will stop him, but I believe what he has to say is related.

I stopped the hon. member because what he brought up was not exactly correct.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

I have a point of order.

[The Speaker, Anthony Rota]

I think we will listen to what has to be said and then we will deal with that after.

The hon. government House leader.

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is totally related.

The president of the Public Health Agency of Canada has worked diligently to try to comply with the order of June 2, 2021. He has done so in a manner that balances the rights of parliamentarians to have access to information with the duty of the government to protect information related to national security and privacy.

The Parliament of Canada Act states in section 4 that the privileges, immunities and powers of the two Houses are to be those that were held in 1867 by the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, and such privileges, immunities and powers as are defined by an act of the Parliament of Canada.

The Parliament of Canada, in exercising its legislative authority to define the privileges of the Houses, may circumscribe those privileges and has done so. A statute may be made expressly applicable to the Senate and the House of Commons or may apply implicitly, by necessary intendment.

As well, statutes of Parliament may impose duties of non-disclosure on government officials. As the Supreme Court observed in Canada (House of Commons) v. Vaid in 2005, “Legislative bodies created by the Constitution Act, 1867 do not constitute enclaves shielded from the ordinary law of the land.”

Furthermore, in Chagnon v. Syndicat de la fonction publique et parapublique du Québec, Justice Rowe, in concurring with the majority of the court, added, “...expecting a legislature to comply with its own legislation cannot be regarded as an intrusion on the legislature's privilege. It is not an impediment to the functioning of a legislature for it to comply with its own enactments. Accordingly, when a legislature has set out in legislation how something previously governed pursuant to privilege is to operate, the legislature no longer can rely on inherent privilege so as to bypass the statute.”

Parliamentary privilege has been circumscribed by valid statutes, and the House of Commons cannot now choose to relieve itself from their application.

As we know, the Minister of Health referred the matter and provided unredacted documents to the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians, given the expertise of the members of the committee in matters of national security. The committee has a broad mandate to review Canada's legislative, regulatory, policy, administrative and financial framework for national security and intelligence. It may also—

[The Speaker, Anthony Rota]

I would ask the hon. Leader of the Government in the House of Commons to be very specific in his point of order. He is giving many details, but I do not believe that this is necessary.

I will let him continue for a few minutes and I hope that he will have time to finish his comments. I want to ensure that we hear from everyone to the greatest extent possible before giving my ruling.

[Pablo Rodriguez, Liberal, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the connection to the matter before us will soon be clear.

Of course the government wants to collaborate. That is what it has been trying to do from the start, in a way that respects parliamentary privilege and extremely important national security issues.

I am going to skip a whole section of my presentation and jump right to my proposal.

We are putting various options before you, all of them valid, in my opinion. I think it would be worth your while to read them so that we can find a solution that works for all parliamentarians and all parties.

I will not be very long.

The first option relates to what I call a memorandum of understanding regarding Afghan detainee documents. In response to the ruling by Speaker Milliken in 2010, the government and the opposition agreed to a memorandum of understanding that created an ad hoc committee of parliamentarians to review national security documents. It included safeguards and a panel of arbiters to determine how the relevant and necessary information could be made available to MPs and the public without compromising national security. A similar memorandum of understanding could be used for the review of the documents that the House has ordered.

As a second option, the Law Clerk and Parliamentary Counsel could be assisted by national security specialists.

The motion adopted by the House on June 2, 2021, states, in part:

(d) the Law Clerk and Parliamentary Counsel shall confidentially review the documents with a view to redacting information which, in his opinion, could reasonably be expected to compromise national security or reveal details of an ongoing criminal investigation, other than the existence of an investigation;

(e) the Speaker shall cause the documents, as redacted pursuant to paragraph (d), to be laid upon the table at the next earliest opportunity and, after being tabled, they shall stand referred to the special committee;

While the government accepts that the Law Clerk and Parliamentary Counsel has the appropriate security clearance to review the information, we do not believe he has the necessary training or expertise in national security-related information to make the necessary assessment. Disclosing sensitive information could have a number of negative side effects for our intelligence agencies. These include, inter alia, revealing covert methods of operation and tradecraft and investigative techniques; putting at risk human sources and their families; and identifying or helping to identify employees, internal procedures and administrative practices. Finally, it could have a severe impact on Canada's reputation as a responsible security partner.

Assessing the damage caused by disclosure of information cannot be done in the abstract or in isolation. Seemingly unrelated information can be used to develop a more comprehensive picture or “mosaic effect” when added to information already known, thereby revealing further tradecraft. Declassification of documents needs to undergo a review which takes into account the potential impact on covert methodologies, sources and relationships.

The government is open to providing the unredacted documents to the Law Clerk and Parliamentary Counsel if the House of Commons agrees that national security specialists can assist him in this process and that other appropriate safeguards be put in place.

It is our hope that the government and the opposition can come to a reasonable solution that ensures that the government can continue to respect its obligations to protect national security, and the House of Commons can effectively do its work.

[The Speaker, Anthony Rota]

The hon. member for Louis-Saint-Laurent on a point of order. Other hon. members can then rise on a point of order.

The hon. member for Louis-Saint-Laurent.

Alleged Non-compliance with an Order of the House

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Mr. Speaker, what my friend, the government House leader, just did is completely unacceptable. He disregarded the ruling you made on June 17.

If the member had something to say about this matter, he could have done it at the appropriate time, 10 days ago, when the member for Kingston and the Islands responded to my well-researched speech. That was when the government leader should have made the argument he made just a couple of minutes ago, instead of having the member for Kingston and the Islands give a speech, although I must say it was an interesting one. However, you considered the strength of the arguments and made a decision. You acknowledged that our proposal was a fair one.

We proposed that the president of the Public Health Agency of Canada attend at the bar of the House to receive an admonishment and to deliver the documents. When this matter was duly put to a vote on June 17, it then became an order.

That order contained two elements. The first was that the president, Mr. Stewart, attend at the bar of the House. I see that he is still there, which is good. The second is that he be admonished by the House, and that is what you did.

However, the story does not end there. The June 17 motion was very clear. The majority of the House of Commons, all of the opposition parties, voted in favour of it. He was supposed to deliver up the documents related to the Winnipeg lab without redaction. That demand has not been met.

That is why I am informing you that I am raising a question of privilege related to the fact that this order of the House was not followed, given the refusal of Iain Stewart, president of the Public Health Agency of Canada, to produce certain documents when he attended at the bar, contrary to the order adopted by the House on Thursday, June 17.

Standing Order 48(2) normally requires that I give one hour's notice if my question of privilege is not one “arising out of proceedings in the chamber during the course of a sitting”.

Mr. Stewart received the order to attend at the bar of the House this day for the purposes of “delivering up the documents ordered by the House, on June 2, 2021, to be produced, so that they may be deposited with the Law Clerk and Parliamentary Counsel under the terms of that order”.

Mr. Stewart was here but he did not deliver what we were asking for. This is why we are talking about a question of privilege here today.

I want to stress that that is the real issue. The order of the House required two things: that Mr. Stewart attend the House to receive the admonishment, which he has done, and that he produce the documents, which he has not done.

That is why the House is once again debating this issue. This is an important question of privilege related to what happened here a few minutes ago.

House of Commons Procedure and Practice, third edition, at page 82, lays out the well-established list of types of contempt of Parliament.

I will refer members to the ninth and tenth items.

It includes:

...without reasonable excuse, refusing to answer a question or provide information or produce papers formally required by the House or a committee;

without reasonable excuse, disobeying a lawful order of the House or a committee;

Both of those have happened before our eyes today.

There is no question that Mr. Stewart was aware of the order made Thursday. He testified before the Standing Committee on Health on Friday, and said he was aware of the motion adopted in the House of Commons. That is a good thing.

Parliamentary Privilege in Canada, second edition, states, at page 240, “Disobedience of rules or orders is an obvious contempt and would include refusing to attend at the Bar of the House after the House had so ordered, refusing to personally attend and to produce the documents requested by a committee…”.

The documents Mr. Stewart was to produce were requested on four distinct occasions, last spring.

[The Speaker, Anthony Rota]

The hon. member for Kingston and the Islands on a point of order.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. We have now had Mr. Stewart here for about half an hour. He has been standing diligently at the bar. I think it would be appropriate for the Speaker to allow him to leave now, so he can get back to the important work he has been doing over the last 15 months looking to protect this country.

I would ask that the Speaker allow Mr. Stewart to leave at this time. I think the Conservatives, the NDP and the Bloc have proven their point, and now it is time for him to be able to depart.

[The Speaker, Anthony Rota]

I do not believe that is a point of order.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[The Speaker, Anthony Rota]

Order, please.

I would like to point out that I had discussions with the Sergeant-at-Arms prior to Mr. Stewart's coming here to ensure that, should Mr. Stewart want to sit, there would be a chair for him there. There is one there, so he can be comfortable, if he prefers to sit.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[The Speaker, Anthony Rota]

Order.

The hon. member for Kingston and the Islands was going to ask for unanimous consent. I will let him proceed with that, and then we will continue with the hon. member for Louis-Saint-Laurent.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would ask for unanimous consent to let the president of the Public Health Agency depart at this time.

[The Speaker, Anthony Rota]

All those opposed to the request of the hon. member will please say nay.

[Some hon. members]

Nay.

[The Speaker, Anthony Rota]

There is no unanimous consent.

I would like to remind the hon. member for Cambridge that his face does show up when he speaks online. I do not want to embarrass him, but there is enough tension in this room. We do not need it coming in.

[Brian May]

I am not embarrassed, Mr. Speaker.

[The Speaker, Anthony Rota]

Mr. May, please stand down.

The hon. member for Louis-Saint-Laurent.