Irwin Cotler

[Government Accountability, December 15th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, the government has used or abused free speech with respect to justifying what has been characterized as reprehensible actions, but it has limited free speech with regard to the frequency of in camera committee meetings.

May I, in the spirit of the Christmas season, suggest to the government that it reverse priorities, namely, that it cease and desist from reprehensible actions and protect free speech and parliamentary democracy?

[Zelman Cowen, December 15th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to honour the memory of the late Sir Zelman Cowen, former governor general of Australia, and one of the great jurors and leaders of the 20th century. A distinguished constitutional lawyer and academic, Cowen attended Oxford. As a Rhodes scholar, he became dean of law at Melbourne University and served as provost at Oriel College, Oxford.

A truly remarkable human being, his inspiring leadership as governor general helped unify Australia at a time of national division.

I met with Sir Zelman Cowen and his wife, Lady Anna, in the summer of 2010 and told him that he had always been a role model for me, as he had been to so many others in Australia and beyond. Indeed, I had the privilege of delivering the Sir Zelman Cowen Oration on International Affairs upon my first trip to Australia in 1998, which was a particularly moving experience for me.

My sincerest condolences to the family and friends of Sir Zelman Cowen. May they all be inspired by his memory and may that memory serve as a blessing.

[Foreign Affairs, December 14th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, Naser Al-Raas, a Canadian citizen imprisoned in Bahrain for simply attending peaceful protests has been reportedly detained in solitary confinement, beaten, tortured and subjected to mock executions. Indeed, the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry has itself decried the criminalization of peaceful protests and condemned such torture.

Accordingly, will the Canadian government seek the immediate release of Mr. Al-Raas and the dropping of all charges, and ensure his safe return to Canada?

[Privilege, December 13th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, your ruling, interestingly enough, was as you said a technical ruling. I believe that on technical matters, since I was the only one to cite principles and precedents, there was not one intervention by any government member that referenced any principle and precedent, which should have been referenced in your ruling as they were. The ones that were referenced in your ruling, Mr. Speaker, would seem in my view to have accorded with the claim that I made in my question of privilege, not only on technical matters but on substantive matters.

While I have no other recourse and will always respect the rulings of the House, as all hon. members do, I think if you, Mr. Speaker, would revisit the principles and precedents that were cited in my submissions to you, and again I say none from the other side, you might at some point in the future reconsider this ruling.

[Tributes, December 13th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to pay tribute to two remarkable women in my Mount Royal riding.

Bracha Chetrit-Tritt was born in Jerusalem and came to Canada in 1962. She was a teacher for 35 years. Bracha has been an exemplary community volunteer, was involved in both federal and provincial politics for 30 years and was a founding member of the Group of 35 in the struggle for Soviet Jewry.

To a proud mother and grandmother, a happy 80th birthday.

Grunia Slutzky-Kohn was born in Belarus in 1928, fled the Nazis during the Shoah, and came to Canada in 1972. She became a prolific and gifted poet and writer about the Holocaust, children and peace, and is about to publish her tenth book as a tribute to her beloved Canada, in three languages.

Happy 83rd birthday, Grunia.

Ad mea ve'esrim. To 120 to both of them. We wish you all the best.

[Human Rights, December 8th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, there have been discussions among the parties and I think you will find unanimous consent for the following motion. I move:

That, the House of Commons joins the Senate of Canada in calling upon the Government of Pakistan to immediately release Ms. Asia Bibi, to ensure her safety and well-being, to hear the outcry of the international community and to respect the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

[Privilege, December 7th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, I rise again in the matter of the question of privilege I first raised on November 16. Simply put, the submission from the member for New Brunswick Southwest on Monday evening misstated the facts at issue, however inadvertently, yet again, while ignoring the attending breach of privilege. Moreover, he did not make any reference to the principles and precedents which support my position and which should guide your ruling.

I want to organize my remarks and ensure that we are all following House of Commons Procedure and Practice, second edition from 2009 by the recognized authorities O'Brien and Bosc. The member stated:

In conducting voter identification, the Conservative Party used its traditional voter ID script, with no mention of a byelection.

Either every person who has called, emailed, mailed or faxed my office, or talked to me in person about these calls is lying, or the member is utterly mistaken as to their content while ignoring the evidence.

May I draw your attention, Mr. Speaker, to a Huffington Post article, a copy of which was provided to the table clerks, along with samples of the emails and phone calls to my offices, wherein a constituent says:

I kept arguing with them. They kept insisting that there was a byelection and I'm politically aware and there isn't one.

Mr. Speaker, I will repeat. The constituent, and more importantly this constituent is representative of the calls received and the evidence you have received, said, “They kept insisting that there was a byelection...” “was” being the key word, not “maybe”, “could perhaps be”, “might be”. She said “was” and that she had to argue with the caller otherwise.

Any dispute as to the contents of these calls is quickly resolved by looking at the evidence my office has submitted to the table clerks. But, Mr. Speaker, I will remind you that you need not resolve the actual content of the calls prior to ruling. Indeed, as the Clerk of the House noted before the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs in 2002, reprinted on page 145 of O'Brien and Bosc:

The Speaker's role ought to be explained, and it is that the issue put before the Speaker is not a finding of fact, it is simply whether on first impression the issue that is before the House warrants priority consideration over all other matters, all other orders of the day that are before the House.

Indeed, Mr. Speaker, your role is finding whether there is a prima facie breach which O'Brien and Bosc reminds us means a breach, “on the first impression or on first glance”.

It is standard practice that you would take the matter under advisement as you have done, upon first being presented with it. However, I would assert that it is evident on its face, particularly as we begin a fifth round of interventions on this topic, that the matter is sufficiently serious and sufficiently prejudicial to warrant consideration by the whole House and subsequently at committee.

The member for New Brunswick Southwest asserts that my privileges have not been breached and that my parliamentary duties have not been sufficiently impeded. The member is ignoring that sowing confusion as to a member's identity is actionable on its face and alone a per se impediment.

While l believe that I made a clear and compelling case in this regard in my previous intervention, I would like to remind the House and that member, through you, Mr. Speaker, that there is another privilege avenue of which I have not yet spoken. Specifically, O'Brien and Bosc explained it:

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 or appears to be a contempt against the dignity of Parliament.

Admittedly, I have not delved much into the discussion of “contempt against the dignity of Parliament” in my previous interventions because the interference with my parliamentary duties was compelling enough on its face. Accordingly on this point, may I briefly remind all hon. members of what O'Brien and Bosc note re prima facie privilege:

...some matters found to be prima facie include the damaging of a Member's reputation and the usurpation of the title of Member of Parliament...

It went on to describe the reputational damage cases which I cited in my first intervention and where the matter at hand accords with the established precedents. While I realize that the precedents in O'Brien and Bosc are somewhat more recent on this point, may I draw your attention to the 1987 remarks of Speaker Fraser:

The privileges of a member are violated by any action which might impede him or her in the fulfilment of his or her duties and functions. It is obvious that the unjust damaging of a reputation could constitute such an impediment.

While the government member assertions that “calls were within the bounds of typical political discourse”, I believe that once there is a false and misleading statement of fact made that there is or will be a byelection and that the member has resigned or is about to resign, this clearly crosses the line and is constitutive of reputational damage.

Again, Mr. Speaker, it is you who informs the House of vacancy in the representation, not any party and certainly not any unsolicited phone call.

I realize that determining contempt against the dignity of Parliament is a somewhat subjective test. On this point, I would direct you to articles in the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, the National Post, an editorial in the Ottawa Citizen, columns in Le Soleil and other papers that all similarly conclude that these calls are “black ops”, “sleazy”, “odious”, “disgusting”, “Watergate-like”, “a new low in politics”, and much more, the whole bringing members and this institution into disrepute, let alone the clear reputational damage involved.

On this point, Queen's University professor, Ned Franks, a noted expert on parliamentary procedure, referred to the calls as “disgusting...a perversion of the system of representation”.

Similarly, Carleton University political scientist, John Pammett, said:

People are confused and negative enough about politics that they don't need that extra push to make them think politicians are crooks or not telling them the truth.

I think those quotes and other like commentary speak for themselves.

Elsewhere in his intervention, the member for New Brunswick Southwest replied to an intervention from the hon. member for Saanich—Gulf Islands regarding a 1985 precedent involving a newspaper ad that identified the previous MP as being the sitting MP. The government member said:

This is not comparable to the dispute before us today, for a simple reason. The newspaper ad caused confusion by stating that the seat in question was held by someone other than the person who held it.

While there is no less confusion caused by the misrepresentation in the matter at issue that I have resigned or am about to resign, there is also a long-standing principle in this place, and one need only search Hansard to see it repeated time and time again, such as by the Deputy Speaker on January 31, 2003, by the Acting Speaker on April 7, 2008, and by the Speaker on April 19, 2007, let alone in law generally, “...you cannot do indirectly what you cannot do directly”.

Accordingly, stating that there is a pending or imminent byelection clearly implies that the member is no longer serving. I do not think for a moment that, just as we would not tolerate calls that say “so and so is no longer your member of Parliament”, we should equally not tolerate these calls which, in their effect, if not also in their intent, convey the same false and misleading information that breaches a member's privilege.

Again, Mr. Speaker, I draw your attention to Speaker Bosley's 1985 ruling, which reads:

...anything tending to cause confusion as to a Member’s identity creates the possibility of an impediment to the fulfilment of that Member’s functions. Any action which impedes or tends to impede a Member in the discharge of his duties is a breach of privilege.

Mr. Speaker, I will conclude by addressing the final remarks made by the government member. He asserts that this practice will result in you being called upon to “rule on all matters of political activity” and that “You are being asked to send the House into territory where it does not belong”.

While my previous interventions sought to demonstrate that the conduct at issue has nothing to do with normal political activity, let alone the absurdity of trying to validate it under free speech, false misrepresentation is simply not protected speech inside or outside this House. This misconduct clearly falls into the territory of a breach of privilege on which you are asked to rule and for which ample precedent, as I have cited, already exists and has yet to be countered by anything said by government members who have yet to cite any relevant and pertinent authority in this regard.

Any ruling you make, Mr. Speaker, is directly on the point of parliamentary privilege. In other words, people can still discuss politics and people can still traffic in rumours, however distasteful that may be, as I noted already, but the line is crossed when false, misleading and prejudicial information is presented as if it were fact. This is when it becomes and constitutes a prima facie breach of privilege and becomes actionable in the House as past Speakers in the House itself have found.

In this regard, I would draw the attention of all members to the finding of a breach of privilege in the 38th report of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs in the first session of the 38th Parliament on a matter regarding ten percenters and applicable to the matter before us. In the privilege case discussed in that report, mailings were sent to the wrong riding and, as such, contained references to “your MP that were inaccurate in terms of the member's positions, voting record and committee assignments”. This was found to breach the member's privileges.

Simply put, while I have intervened already in this matter to demonstrate that it has no relation to free speech, I would note that, with specific regard to false statements made about members, it has already been found that such matters may constitute a breach of privilege.

As such, whereas the government member asserted on Monday, Mr. Speaker, “you are being asked to send the House into territory where it does not belong”, let it be known that the House has already been there, has already pronounced and has already found that such actions may constitute a breach of privilege.

Mr. Speaker, I sincerely hope that there need not be anything more said on this matter, lest we spend more time discussing matters irrelevant to your ruling such that a breach of privilege somehow becomes protected speech or that false, misleading and prejudicial misrepresentations of fact are somehow said to be within the bounds of political discourse, or that somehow it is relevant as to what members did or did not invoke such privileges in the past as distinct from the principles and precedents where such privileges were invoked and applied.

In closing, Mr. Speaker, you have the authorities before you. The table clerks have been provided with the evidence. I have canvassed all the principles and precedents in this matter and applied them to the case at hand. It should be abundantly clear that the matter is one for the whole House to resolve and, as such, I urge you to find a prima facie breach of privilege with all deliberate speed.

[Iran, December 7th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to join fellow parliamentarians from around the world representing the Inter-parliamentary Group for Human Rights in Iran to stand in solidarity on this international Student Day in Iran with those who are courageously protesting the Iranian regime's systematic campaign of fear, violence and repression.

We call for the immediate release of university students jailed for no other reason than exercising their rights to freedom of expression. We call for the immediate release of the imprisoned Baha'i educators and leaders along with all Iranian political prisoners.

To those brave students who advocate for a free and democratic Iran, who represent the hope for freedom and democracy, we proclaim here today that we stand with them, that we will be there with them and that we will share freedom and democracy together.

[Safe Streets and Communities Act, December 2nd, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, the government believed that the very title of the legislation, the “safe streets and communities act”, alone validated the legislation and made it self-justifying.

The government also believed, as I said, that it had a mandate. It keeps repeating it as a mantra: it had a mandate for this legislation. Therefore, why would it not bundle all nine bills together into one bill?

The government believed we had already debated these bills, so why should it not rush the bill through in 100 days? The very first piece of legislation in that bundle, the justice for victims of terrorism act, had never been presented in this House, regardless of what the government says. We never debated it in this House.

With respect to other bills, there are new members of Parliament, as the member for Gatineau mentioned, who ought to have the right not only to debate this legislation in Parliament for the first time, but also to consult their constituents with regard to this legislation. This was disrespect not only for the parliamentary process in this chamber, but also with respect to consultation with our constituents and to the policy process as a whole.

As well, it is the responsibility of a government, through its Minister of Justice, to certify that the legislation it is proposing has been shown to comply with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The fact is that those amendments by the government could have been tabled in this omnibus bill. The constitutionality being as suspect as it is raises for me, as a former minister of justice, some question as to whether they were properly filtered as to their constitutionality, let alone the bad policy contained in them.

I do not want to question the good faith of the government; I want to question the manner in which it proceeded, and that goes to the whole question. The government believed it was acting for victims and believed it was seeking to protect safe streets and communities; however, that cannot be done without appropriate consultation, without appropriate debate, without allowing members to engage with constituents, without filtering for constitutionality and without allowing the evidence-based considerations that underpin such policy legislation to be addressed and, where appropriate, to be acted upon through amendments and the like.

[Safe Streets and Communities Act, December 2nd, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question.

There has been a lack of respect shown throughout the process, not only when it came to the amendments we proposed, which were defeated, but also for the entire process. As soon as the bill was introduced in the House and debate began—only in committee was there a debate, none really occurred here—all of our amendments were defeated without any real discussion.

The same thing is happening today with the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice repeating that they have a mandate. They do not have a mandate to show disrespect for this institution, to introduce bills of questionable constitutionality or to put forward bad policy, which we see in this bill.