I am now ready to rule on the question of privilege raised on June 18, 2024, by the member for Vancouver East concerning foreign interference and alleged reputational harm to members of Parliament, as a result of the publication of a report by the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians, also known as NSICOP. The report, tabled in the House on June 3, 2024, discussed the threat of foreign interference in Canada's democratic processes and institutions.
In her intervention, the member quoted several extracts of the report supporting the idea that members of Parliament might have, wittingly or semi-wittingly, assisted foreign state actors in undermining Canada's democratic processes and institutions. The fact that the report failed to disclose these members' identities raised questions and cast a pall over the entire House. As evidence to this, the member reported that on the street in front of Parliament, individuals were, “shouting, questioning and jeering [at the members of Parliament] about who the traitors may be.”
She added that the unsubstantiated suspicions were damaging to members' reputations individually and to the House collectively. She concluded by arguing that these suspicions diminished members' and the House's effectiveness and impeded their ability to carry out their parliamentary duties.
According to a long-standing practice, certain conditions must be met for the Speaker to find a prima facie question of privilege. House of Commons Procedure and Practice, third edition, page 142 states:
...the Speaker must be convinced that a prima facie case of breach of privilege has been made and, second, the matter must be raised at the earliest opportunity. If the Speaker feels that these two conditions have been met, the Speaker informs the House that, in his or her opinion, the matter is entitled to take precedence over the notices of motions and Orders of the Day standing on the Order Paper.
My predecessors have on occasion rejected questions of privilege on the sole basis that they were not raised in a timely manner. As members can discern, the inherent logic behind this rule is straightforward. It presupposes that if a question of privilege is so important as to require it to take precedence over all other matters of the House, the member raising it presumably would have taken their first opportunity to bring it to the attention of the Speaker.
On May 29, 2008, Speaker Milliken, at page 6277 of the Debates, indicated that:
It is true that members wishing to raise a question of privilege must do so at the earliest opportunity.
However, there is an important nuance.... In this case, as in others, it is not so much that the event or issue complained of took place at a given time, but rather that the members bringing the matter to the attention of the House did so as soon as practicable after they became aware of the situation.
The Chair has always exercised discretion on this point given the need to balance the need for timeliness with the important responsibility members have of marshalling facts and arguments before raising matters of such import in the House.
I note that at least two sitting weeks passed between the release of the NSICOP report and the moment that this matter was raised with the Chair. The facts raised by the member in her arguments had become apparent well before her intervention. The Chair is of the view that the member for Vancouver East had prior opportunities to raise her concerns. As such, this question of privilege fails to meet one of the two conditions to find a prima facie question of privilege.
Nevertheless, the Speaker would like to address the substantive element of the member's concern. The member argued that because the NSICOP report claimed that one or more members were working for a foreign entity, but failed to name them, it raises suspicions about all 338 members, which impeded us all in our effectiveness in carrying out our parliamentary duties. I understand the point the member is trying to make.
To find a prima facie question of privilege on substantive grounds, members must be able to demonstrate how an individual member, or the House collectively, has been interfered with in carrying out their functions. House of Commons Procedure and Practice, third edition, at page 148, states:
In deliberating upon a question of privilege, the Chair will take into account the extent to which the matter complained of infringed upon any Member's ability to perform his or her parliamentary functions....
While a member should always care to make this link when raising a question of privilege, it is not enough to assert it in some general way. The member must demonstrate, concretely, how they, or the House, were impeded in the discharge of their functions, and, most important, that evidence exists as to the material interference.
While I understand that findings presented in the NSICOP report are serious and appear to create suspicions about certain members, that in itself is not a basis to establish that this question of privilege merits priority of consideration over all other House business.
Furthermore, the Chair notes that the NSICOP report was made public not only in the interest of public disclosure but also to assist members of Parliament in their understanding of the threat foreign political interference poses to our democratic institutions.
For these reasons, I cannot conclude that either of the necessary conditions has been met to establish a prima facie question of privilege on the matter raised by the member. I thank all members for their attention.
