Madam Speaker, to reaffirm, I am quoting a passage from the Constitution itself, something that defines the House and defines the very issue at play as well.
Not to send a spoiler alert across the way, but I will have some more interesting quotations coming up later in my remarks. I know the member for Winnipeg North will be very intrigued to hear some of those quotations on this important issue. After all, I believe that no member has contributed more to this very debate than the member for Winnipeg North. I believe he has had north of 300 interventions on this very debate. I do congratulate him on his verbose contributions to the extensive debate he is taking part in.
Let us get back to the important, constitutionally protected, issue at hand. Those privileges, immunities and powers that were held by the House in 1867 and by the United Kingdom, its predecessor, continue today and have some of their roots dating back centuries. In fact, some of the greatest protections that we have as parliamentarians originate in 1215 with the Magna Carta.
I am going to give another quote for the member for Winnipeg North. From the United Kingdom Parliament:
Magna Carta was issued in June 1215 and was the first document to put into writing the principle that the king and his government was not above the law. It sought to prevent the king from exploiting his power, and placed limits of royal authority by establishing law as a power in itself.
How true that is, and 800 years later, the Magna Carta still stands as the principle that no person, king or ruler is above the law. I have but 20 minutes to express my points, and I could go on at great length about the Magna Carta alone, but let us jump ahead a few centuries to 1688. I know members will be intrigued with the discussion on the Glorious Revolution of 1688.
I would note that the long-term impacts of the 1688 Glorious Revolution, a revolution that did not have bloodshed, I might add, are so important to where we are today and the rights that we have as parliamentarians, not for our own purposes, but on behalf of the people that we have the honour of serving.
I want to quote the Hon. John Dalberg Acton, one of the great UK parliamentarians, from his writing Lectures on Modern History. He wrote this about the Glorious Revolution:
...it is the greatest thing done by the English nation. It established the State upon a contract, and set up the doctrine that a breach of contract forfeited the crown—the former, in the English Convention; the latter, in the Scottish. Parliament gave the crown, and gave it under conditions. Parliament became supreme in administration as well as in legislation. The king became its servant on good behaviour, liable to dismissal for himself or his ministers. All this was not restitution, but inversion. Passive obedience had been the law of England. Conditional obedience and the right of resistance became the law. Authority was limited and regulated and controlled. The Whig theory of government was substituted for the Tory theory on the fundamental points of political science. The great achievement is that this was done without bloodshed, without vengeance, without exclusion of entire parties, with so little definiteness in point of doctrine that it could be accepted, and the consequences could be left to work themselves out.
I point this out because our Constitution, our history of a parliamentary government in Canada, has a proud, long and respected history. This country and this system of government was built on those powers, where power was removed from the absolute Crown and given to the people's representatives, who are here to express the common sense of the common people.
I am sure the Speaker would agree that parliamentary democracy ought to be protected, and it ought to be done with the protection of each and every member of the House. Constitutional expert, the late Peter Hogg, expounded on this in one of his seminal works, Constitutional Law of Canada, 5th edition. I know the member for Winnipeg North is eager to hear this quotation from the great, late Peter Hogg. He wrote, on page 314 for those following along at home:
The Crown is, of course, subject to its Parliament or Legislature. So long as a legislative body acts within the limits of its powers, it is free to make its laws applicable to the Crown (or government), just as it is free to make its laws applicable to other legal persons within its jurisdictions. Any other conclusion would be inconsistent with the supremacy of the legislative branch of government. Indeed, it was settled in England as early as 1561 that the Crown was bound by any statute which applied to it, and this is one of the fundamental principles of the British constitution that was received in British North America Act.
This reaffirms the very clear essence of this privilege debate. The House ordered the production of unredacted documents. It was not, “If you have time, would you be so kind as to provide these documents?” It was an order of the House and an order of the House's parliamentarians. Indeed, it comes down to the very essence of responsible government. Members will notice that in the subamendment we are debating, we are requesting the presence of certain experts, one being a senior official at the Privy Council Office who had some interesting things to say on responsible government.
However, let us dig a little deeper into the importance of responsible government. By the time the fathers of Confederation were discussing plans to become a united Canada, it became clear that it was preferable to continue with the constitutional precedents inherited from the United Kingdom and not to adopt a system similar to what had been done in the United States.
On February 6, 1865, the then attorney general, who was soon to become the first prime minister, the Right Hon. Sir John A. Macdonald, rose in the House of the Province of Canada to provide his thoughts on responsible government. He said, “In the Constitution we propose to continue the system of Responsible Government, which has existed in this province since 1841, and which has long obtained in the Mother Country. This is a feature of our Constitution as we have it now, and as we shall have it in the Federation”. That is from page 33 of the debates from the third session of the eighth provincial Parliament of the united Province of Canada
The first prime minister went on to explain that having cabinet held responsible to the legislative branch was an effort to avoid giving too much power to the executive branch, as had been seen elsewhere, including south of the border. Macdonald went on to say, “With us...the Representative of the Sovereign, can act only on the advice of his ministers, those ministers being responsible to the people through Parliament.” It is the essence of parliamentary democracy that Parliament is supreme and that cabinet is responsible to Parliament. It can neither ignore nor refuse an order of Parliament simply because a minister, or even a prime minister, may disagree with it.
Where does this bring us today?
In normal cases, ministerial responsibility means that the minister ought to take responsibility for the challenges within their department. When the House leader of the opposition made his initial question of privilege, he referenced a memorandum he had obtained from the Privy Council Office at the beginning of this Parliament. That memorandum was written by a certain Paul MacKinnon, and it states, “Public servants do not share in ministers' constitutional accountability to the Houses of Parliament but support ministers in this accountability”. He also wrote, “the ultimate accountability for deciding what information to withhold from or release to parliamentarians resides with the responsible minister.” As such, where is the accountability from the accountable minister?
The Liberal government may believe that the rights and privileges of Parliament do not matter, but we will soon see if the responsibility of the minister responsible is there. It is time that the Prime Minister and his ministers hold themselves accountable to Parliament.
I want to recognize that the current minister was not the minister of the early days of SDTC. Who was the minister? That minister was Navdeep Bains, who has since left cabinet and politics. We have now twice attempted, at the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, to hear evidence from the former Liberal minister Navdeep Bains. He may no longer be a Liberal minister, but he sure still talks like a Liberal minister with his empty statements that mean nothing and are intended to convey nothing. He refused to answer even basic questions at committee about dates and names, and he even refused to confirm where he was currently employed. This is further evidence that Liberals, even after their careers in politics are over, refuse to accept responsibility and accountability for their actions.
This brings us to the subamendment before the House today. I must admit that I was slightly disappointed with the original ruling in that I do not believe the best course of action is to refer this to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. I know a member opposite is wondering why I would have concerns with the procedure and House affairs committee, but the member knows very well of past Liberal scandals where lengthy filibusters occurred at that committee. They were led by the member for Whitby, or the member for Hull—Aylmer, who tried to prevent us from getting to the bottom of important Liberal scandals, such as the WE Charity prorogation scandal or the foreign interference scandals that we have seen.
That is why I think the amendment and the subamendment are so important to strengthening the motion of the Speaker's ruling. The subamendment would ensure that both Paul MacKinnon, the former deputy secretary to cabinet, and the Privacy Commissioner would appear as witnesses. Paul MacKinnon, as explained by the opposition House leader on September 26, is an official at the Privy Council Office who authored the memo that I cited earlier. It is important for him to explain before members of Parliament what he meant by, “the ultimate accountability for deciding what information to withhold from or release to parliamentarians resides with the responsible minister.” In my view, the ministers relevant to the June 10 motion have not been held accountable.
The other witness the subamendment proposes is the Privacy Commissioner. The commissioner is obviously an expert in the matter of protecting documents and could also provide valuable insights to the rules and procedures for providing papers and records based on an order of the House of Commons versus other means, such as an access to information request. I might add as well that the Privacy Commissioner is a former officer of Parliament as the former law clerk, so he also has the added benefit of knowing and understanding the rights and privileges of the House.
This subamendment, if passed, would further strengthen the main amendment and ensure that we would get the answers necessary. This debate could be over today if the Liberal government were to simply hand over the documents as ordered by the House so that they could be provided to the RCMP to do what it will with them. This is to ensure that the accountability of the House is upheld.
