Madam Speaker, I am indeed grateful for the opportunity to rise and participate in this debate today on the subamendment. I had the privilege to speak to the amendment and so it is a great opportunity to pick up where I left off and to speak to this important subamendment to this privilege motion.
The fact is, though, we are still where we were. The Liberal government continues to refuse to release the documents it has been ordered to produce by this very House. The Liberals do not wish to turn over the documents that will help to uncover clear corruption that has occurred at the green slush fund. Sadly, corruption has benefited Liberal insiders during the entirety of these nine years of the Liberal government. It is of vital importance that no matter how hard Liberals try to push it away from Parliament, we must continue to pursue this issue. No matter how many times the member for Winnipeg North comes up with an attempt to shrug this off, we will continue to pursue this on behalf of all Canadians.
After all of these days of debate, the facts remain clear. First, taxpayer money was taken by conflicted board members of SDTC to benefit their own financial and business interests. Second, and equally important for the integrity of this place, the House has still not been provided with the documents necessary and there has been no indication of when, or even if, the money of these conflicted payments will ever be paid back.
In the time between when I spoke to the amendment and now as I speak to the subamendment, more and somewhat interesting information has come to light. In my previous intervention, on October 8, I discussed the importance of Parliament being the grand inquest of the nation and the necessity of the power of the House to send for persons, papers and records. Unfortunately, those in the Liberal cabinet and those in the bureaucracy seem to fail to understand this essential, constitutionally protected power of Parliament.
This indifference was clearly on display last week at the Standing Committee on Public Accounts. On Wednesday, October 23, a high-ranking official, a deputy secretary in fact, at the Privy Council Office, one of the highest bureaucratic offices in this country, appeared. I asked the deputy secretary a very clear question: “Do you accept that Parliament has the constitutional authority to call for documents without redactions?” I did not get an answer. Instead, I got invalid excuses that ignored the key constitutional facts.
The right of Parliament to send for documents is not limited by any policy or statute. As explained in Bosc and Gagnon:
No statute or practice diminishes the fullness of that power rooted in House privileges unless there is an explicit legal provision to that effect, or unless the House adopts a specific resolution limiting the power. The House has never set a limit on its power to order the production of papers and records.
It is, quite frankly, unacceptable that the Privy Council Office and its senior officials have chosen to ignore that fact. It is a simple fact that Parliament and its committees are the grand inquest of the nation. Our constitutionally protected ability is to call for the documents that we deem necessary, as the House did in June of this year when we ordered that the documents be provided to the law clerk, unredacted, to be provided to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
The power of the House to send for persons, papers and records is an old power indeed. It is part of the very essence of our work within parliamentary democracy. Our Constitution, since the founding of our country in 1867, has affirmed such a right. In fact, the British North America Act, now called the Constitution Act, 1867, lays this privilege out in section 18:
The privileges, immunities, and powers to be held, enjoyed, and exercised by the Senate and by the House of Commons, and by the members thereof respectively, shall be such as are from time to time defined by Act of the Parliament of Canada, but so that any Act of the Parliament of Canada defining such privileges, immunities, and powers shall not confer any privileges, immunities, or powers exceeding those at the passing of such Act held, enjoyed, and exercised by the Commons House of Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and by the members thereof.