Mr. Speaker, as always, it is a great honour to rise in this chamber; however, today I am rising on a question of privilege pursuant to section 48(1) of the Standing Orders. It is a question of grave importance because it concerns the new evidence that has come through the RCMP investigation, which suggests the Prime Minister provided misleading information to the House in terms of the deal that was struck between his former chief of staff, Nigel Wright, and Senator Mike Duffy. That deal was to pay the $90,000 of fraudulent living expenses for Mr. Duffy.
This is an extremely serious matter because we are dealing with the unprecedented situation of an RCMP investigation into the office of the Prime Minister, so the misleading statements are not only a breach of parliamentary privilege but are, more importantly, a breach of trust with Canadians, who expect that the House of Commons and its members will ensure that there is a standard of accountable government.
Therefore, Mr. Speaker, I will be laying out this case today and asking that you find that a prima facie case of privilege does exist so that this matter can be properly dealt with at committee.
I want to point out right away that I would have brought this issue sooner; however, the government decided to prorogue for the month of September, so this is the first actual opportunity to bring this issue before you. As well, in the interim period between last June and this September, a number of new evidence pieces have come forward through the RCMP affidavits that have provided a much broader picture of how much knowledge was actually in the Prime Minister's Office regarding Mr. Duffy and the relationship with Mr. Wright.
Mr. Speaker, I am not going to try your patience this morning by going through all the various evidence that has come forward. I want to focus particularly on one aspect, which was the issue of the payment that was made by the Prime Minister's former chief of staff, Nigel Wright, to Senator Duffy, and who in the Prime Minister's Office was aware of that deal.
We know that Nigel Wright and Senator Duffy had met over the issue of the $90,000 in fraudulent housing expenses, and according to the reports that have come forward through the media and through the RCMP, there was a deal whereby Senator Duffy would become silent on the scandal with the auditors in exchange for the $90,000 that then would be used as repayment for the expenses. When this became public, Nigel Wright resigned from his position.
Over the following days and weeks, during question period a series of very straightforward questions were asked of the Prime Minister regarding what he knew about the deal. The Leader of the Opposition wanted to find out who exactly in the Prime Minister's Office may have been aware that a particularly criminal act had occurred.
On June 5, 2013, the Prime Minister said:
Mr. Speaker, as I have said repeatedly, it was Mr. Wright who made the decision to take his personal funds and give those to Mr. Duffy so that Mr. Duffy could reimburse the taxpayers. Those were his decisions. They were not communicated to me or to members of my office.
However, we now know that this statement was false. On July 4, 2013, a letter surfaced from Corporal Greg Horton of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police that was filed as part of the application for a production order. In this document Corporal Horton explained that on June 23, 2013, the RCMP received a letter from Peter Mantas, the lawyer for Nigel Wright. This letter, Corporal Horton explains, advised that Mr. Wright recalls that he told the following people that he would personally provide the funds to repay Mr. Duffy's claim for secondary residence expenses: David van Hemmen, in the Prime Minister's Office; Benjamin Perrin, in the Prime Minister's Office; Chris Woodcock, in the Prime Minister's Office; and Senator Irving Gerstein.
As I pointed out, the first three individuals are or were working in the Prime Minister's Office, respectively as the executive assistant to the chief of staff, the former legal adviser to the Prime Minister, and the director of issues management for the Prime Minister.
The RCMP's letter also explains that the investigation revealed that the Conservative Party was initially going to repay the money for Mr. Duffy from the Conservative Party fund when it thought that the amount owed was $32,000. However, when it was confirmed that Mike Duffy had actually inappropriately taken $90,000, it was decided that this was too much money to ask the Conservative Party to cover. It was then that Mr. Wright apparently offered to cover the cost. The RCMP writes in its statement, “Some people within the PMO were aware of this arrangement...”.
According to the RCMP, the facts are clear. Under direct, clear and concise cross-examination, the Prime Minister stated in the House that the decisions to pay back the money for Mr. Duffy were not communicated to him or members of his office, but in black and white we can see that this is a complete contradiction of the evidence that has been provided by Mr. Wright to the RCMP.
There can be no doubt that within the weeks of cross-examining that occurred in the House, the Prime Minister would have sought answers from his staff regarding this issue. Can any Canadian seriously believe that in day after day of being asked to account for what happened in his office, the Prime Minister never sat down with senior staff to work out the facts of the matter?
It would also seem very difficult to believe that his staff would have heard him misstating the facts of the matter in the House and would have chosen not to correct him and would have let him intentionally state a falsehood.
This leaves us with two possibilities: either the Prime Minister's staff lied to him, which left him armed with untrue answers on the highest-profile story of the day and an unprecedented political scandal, or the Prime Minister himself perhaps chose to ignore the truth when being held accountable in this place.
Either way, this is an extremely serious breach of the rights and privileges of the members of this House, as well as a breach of the public trust to all Canadians.
I ask you, Mr. Speaker, today to defend the rights of our democratic institutions by finding that there is a prima facie case of privilege, of contempt of Parliament.
For the sake of clarity, let me remind everyone here of the rights that are afforded to members of Parliament so that they can carry out their duties on behalf of Canadians.
On page 75 of the 23rd edition of Erskine May's Treatise on the Law, Privileges, Proceedings and Usage of Parliament, parliamentary privilege is defined as:
....the sum of the peculiar rights enjoyed by each House collectively ... and by Members of each House individually, without which they could not discharge their functions...
Parliamentary privileges are of the utmost importance not only for parliamentarians but, more importantly, for Canadians, who put their trust and faith in their elected members to legislate on their behalf and to hold government to account. Therefore, they trust that government will provide truthful answers in the House. These are the basic principles that are of paramount importance if we want Canadians to continue to believe and take part in the democratic process.
Breaches of privilege can take many forms, but the one we are dealing with--misleading the House--is one of the most serious. Page 111 of Erskine May states that:
The Commons may treat the making of a deliberately misleading statement as a contempt.
The second edition of House of Commons Procedure and Practice by O'Brien and Bosc also tells us on page 111 that the provision of misleading information constitutes a prima facie breach of privilege.
Let me also quote from page 63 of Erskine May, which tells us:
...it is of paramount importance that ministers give accurate and truthful information to Parliament, correcting any inadvertent error at the earliest opportunity.
I would add that this is an even important responsibility for the Prime Minister himself.
There is no doubt that providing misleading information to the House is a serious offence and a breach of our collective privileges.
Now, again, it may be that the Prime Minister himself was unaware of the actions of his staff, but it is still a breach of our privileges for his staff to have misled the Prime Minister. His staff watched him providing these misleading statements in the House, and previous speakers have ruled that this is as much a breach of privilege and contempt for parliamentarians as if the member himself had made these statements.
On December 6, 1978, in finding that a prima facie case of contempt of the House existed, Speaker Jerome ruled that a government official, by deliberately misleading a minister who in turn provided misleading information to a member, had impeded the members in the performance of their duties and consequently obstructed the House itself. Speaker Jerome said:
The complaint which is the subject matter of the question of privilege is not directly a complaint about the minister. Indeed, it is founded on the fact that it is one of the minister's officials who has calculated to contrive this deliberate deception of the House.
In the same vein, on February 25, 2004, Speaker Milliken reminded the House:
It is not, of course, absolutely necessary that the minister be aware that a document is misleading in order for a contempt to occur.
It is a very unusual and disturbing case we have before us. I have never heard before of a Prime Minister and, by extension, the House being deceived by members in the Prime Minister's Office.
Mr. Speaker, in your ruling on whether this is indeed a prima facie case of privilege, I would like you to consider the following quote from Erskine May's Parliamentary Practice, page 136, which states:
It may be stated generally that any act or omission which obstructs or impedes either House of Parliament in the performance of its functions, or which obstructs or impedes any Member or officer of such House in the discharge of its duty, or which has a tendency, directly or indirectly, to produce such results may be treated as a contempt even though there is no precedent of the offence.
It is deeply troubling to think that the Prime Minister could have been deceived by members of his staff, but I think you would agree, Mr. Speaker, that it would be even more disturbing to discover that the Prime Minister knew of the deal between former chief of staff Nigel Wright and Mike Duffy and then intentionally misled the House when he stated that neither he nor anyone in his office knew about this deal.
Mr. Speaker, on May 7, 2012, you stated the following regarding a similar case:
It has become accepted practice in this House that the following elements have to be established when it is alleged that a member is in contempt for deliberately misleading the House: one, it must be proven that the statement was misleading; two, it must be established that the member making the statement knew at the time that the statement was incorrect; and three, that in making the statement, the member intended to mislead the House.
The first of these conditions has clearly been met. Statements were made in the House by the Prime Minister that have been shown to be misleading by official court documents.
The other two elements, however, do need to be clarified, and this is the reason I am asking you, Mr. Speaker, to find that there is a prima facie case so that the issue could be studied at greater depth by the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs.
Did the Prime Minister know at the time that the statements he gave to the House were misleading? We cannot answer this question with certainty at this point, but if he did not know, then at least according to the RCMP, three senior individuals within the Prime Minister's Office, two of whom are still employed there, knew and failed to tell the Prime Minister, and thus are culpable of the Prime Minister's misleading of the House.
Did the Prime Minister intend to mislead the House? Again, we will only be able to answer this question after having the opportunity to hear the facts on the matter from all individuals involved.
Let me repeat that whether the Prime Minister misled the House intentionally or as a result of being misled by his own staff, members of Parliament have had their privileges breached and democracy has suffered as a result. Canadians have not been able to receive a truthful answer from the head of their government.
This situation is unacceptable. Truth is never an option if we want our democratic institutions to work properly. That is why I am here today, and why I have explained the situation at length to my colleagues and to you, Mr. Speaker. I hope that the proper committee will be able to study this matter in depth and shed light on what has transpired.
On December 6, 1978, Speaker Jerome said:
The job that I have in matters of privilege is a preliminary, procedural review of the matter to determine whether in fact it touches the privileges of the members of the House of Commons or the House itself. ... The House itself makes the decision on whether the motion shall carry, whether it shall be amended, or in any way altered and, in fact, whether there is a contempt. I do not make that decision; the House does.
I believe that the facts before us clearly indicate there has been a breach of our privileges, and this must be further studied. The only question seems to be whether the Prime Minister deliberately misled us or whether the Prime Minister's staff lied to him. The truth will only be revealed through proper investigation at the appropriate House committee, but what we do know and what is clearly and totally avoidable is that misleading statements have been made to this House, which is not only a prima facie breach of the privileges of all members but also of all Canadians who put their faith in government.
I cannot insist enough on this point. Yes, I have stood here and presented procedure and technical points, but this is the more important point: parliamentary privileges are principally of the utmost importance for Canadians. In times of cynicism, voter apathy, and disengagement, Canadians need to have a basic trust in our democratic institutions. To that end, the severity of having a Prime Minister providing misleading statements about a criminal investigation must be addressed.
Mr. Speaker, if you find that indeed this matter does need further looking into, I am prepared to move the appropriate motion to have this case referred to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs.
I would like to leave the final word not to me but to another hon. member of this place, who spoke on two consecutive days. On January 31, 2002, he said:
I would suggest in the strongest possible terms that members of the House of Commons must be able to rely on the information they receive in response to questions placed to ministers. This goes to the very cut and thrust of the responsibilities of members of the House of Commons. A high standard has to be met....
On February 1, 2002, the same member said:
Integrity, honesty and truthfulness in this Chamber should not ebb and flow like the tides. This should be something that is as solid as the ground we walk on and as solid as the foundation of this very building in these hallowed halls. Every time we come into this Chamber, we should be reminded of that.
Mr. Speaker, those words were said by the hon. member for Central Nova who, incidentally, is now the Conservative Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada.
These are wise words. I hope that the minister and all the members will follow them and I leave the decision in your hands, Mr. Speaker.
