Madam Speaker, it is always an honour to rise in the House and speak on behalf of the wonderful constituents in Calgary Midnapore. Today we find ourselves in a situation of privilege. I will just briefly review the timeline of events. On June 10, the House adopted a motion calling for the production of various documents related to SDTC to be turned over to the RCMP for review. Of course, we have also referred to this as the green slush fund. This is what those at home would know this as.
In response to the motion adopted, departments either outright refused the House order or redacted documents that were turned over, citing provisions in the Privacy Act or Access to Information Act. Nothing in the House order necessitated redactions. The House enjoys the absolute and unfettered power, or it should, to order the production of documents that is not limited by statute. These powers are rooted in the Constitution Act of 1867 and the Parliament of Canada Act. In a response to the failure to produce documents, our Conservative House leader, the member for Regina—Qu'Appelle, raised a question of privilege, arguing that House privilege had been breached due to the failure to comply with the House order.
On September 26, the Speaker issued a ruling on the question of privilege and found that the privileges of the House had, in fact, been breached. Now, I wish I could say this is the first time this type of privilege has been breached, but we have come to see that it is a practice of the government to withhold documents, not only from the House but in committee as well. It is a tactic of this government and it is an action that obstructs democracy because it does not allow us, the Canadian public and, in this case, the authorities' access to the documents so that they can review the information in full to act upon it, and for Canadians to decide upon it.
This is of course why the NDP-Liberal government, for the past nine years, refuses to hand over documents. Members want to withhold information. They do not want to be judged on this information because it would certainly be found damning. What other reason could there be? They are simply trying to hide something. This is not a new practice for the Liberal-NDP government.
One example is the carbon tax. We had a situation where the Liberal government was declining to release its internal analysis of economic impacts of carbon pricing and refusing to say why it was keeping the data secret, even as it criticized the federal budget watchdog for an error in its analysis of the policy. I have behind me our wonderful shadow minister for natural resources, the incredible member for Lakeland. I know that she has dealt with this specifically in her work. She has faced obstruction of information relative to carbon tax pricing and relative to the natural resources sector. She will remember that this has taken place several times before. That is just the first example where data was withheld on the impacts of carbon pricing.
It is the same reason we are not having the carbon tax election right now, which Canadians want so badly. The government has withheld information on the carbon tax because it does not want to be judged on it. It would just give Canadians more information and more reason to distrust the government, to not feel confident in how it is running this country. It is evident for Canadians when they go to the grocery store, when they go to the fuel pump, when they pay their heating bill every year, and it not just families, but businesses and community organizations, too.
This is just one example. The second example I will give of withholding documents is in the foreign interference review. Here we have an article that states, “Liberals blocking access to 1,000-plus documents, says intel-oversight panel reviewing foreign interference.” Another reason that the government wants to hide these documents is a result of, again, democracy and fairness in our elections. I am actually quite concerned about the carbon tax election when we have it.
The wonderful member for Wellington—Halton Hills was attempting to speak today, and members of the government were chastising him for speaking up against foreign interference when his family was targeted.