Murray Rankin

[Alleged Interference in Justice System, February 28th, 2019]

Madam Speaker, I wish I could say I was happy to be here tonight but I am not. I am very disturbed and Canadians should be as well.

What are we talking about? There is a motion on the floor that we invite the Prime Minister to come to justice committee and answer questions under oath about this entire affair.

We just heard the parliamentary secretary in his attempt to defend the indefensible. How did he do that? He first talked about what a great day it was for parliamentary democracy yesterday. If anybody watched the same show I watched, if everybody attended the same hearing I did, I do not know how anyone could ever conclude that.

He did not talk about substance. He was happy to talk about process. Then he did something we have all seen before, it is called the Liberal change the channel. He talked about poverty in his riding and so forth. What he did not talk about was what was on display for all to see, which was an attempt by an obviously credible witness, a person who took copious notes, texts and emails and demonstrated through careful, thoughtful, measured testimony that everyone would know to be credible, that an attempt was made at the highest level of our system of government to interfere with the decision of an independent attorney general.

My friend opposite talks about his interest in constitutional law. He talks about the rule of law. This is not a rhetorical statement rule of law. This is the foundation of our democracy. What we heard, if it is to be believed, and I say for the record with absolutely clarity that I believe her, was that an attempt was made at the highest level after she had made her final decision on a particular matter to try to get her to change her mind.

Let me be clear. There is nothing wrong with the Prime Minister changing his cabinet. That is his role and his prerogative. Therefore, getting rid of her as the attorney general is fully his responsibility. There is also nothing wrong with her as the minister of justice talking among her colleagues about the economic, political and other ramifications, even partisan ramifications, concerning a particular decision.

I have just been reminded, Madam Speaker, that I have the good fortune of sharing my time with the hon. member for Timmins—James Bay.

What we heard should shake Canadians' faith in our system. We should be concerned, and that is why we need to get to the bottom of this, and we will.

My friend had two defences when he did talk about substance ever so briefly. The first was that we had a process at justice committee, and I will come back to that. The other one, which we have heard the Prime Minister use in one of his many excuses, was that we had another process, which is the independent Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner. He told us not to worry as a complaint was made by my hon. friend.

All of a sudden we are supposed to think that is a great institution, except for one thing. There is not a chance that the institution is going to find there is a problem here because it does not have jurisdiction over the issue at question.

Section 9, which is the basis of the complaint, goes like this, that public officers are prohibited from seeking to influence a decision of another person so as to improperly further another person's private interests. Guess what. The former Commissioner, Mary Dawson, made clear on I do not know how many cases that this only included economic interests, money, not private political interests. This smokescreen surely will not work, but it was a good try.

Let us talk about justice committee on which I am honoured to be vice chair. I want to say at the outset that I have enormous respect for that committee and particularly the Chair. I admire the way in which the hon. member for Mount Royal has conducted our hearings. He has done so in a very fair manner in very difficult circumstances, and that is not a surprise. He is a very intelligent, well-meaning individual who has led us to unanimous reports on just about everything we have done in the years I have been on that committee. Canadians who watch and think we do not always get along and scrap and so forth would not understand that we have done some great work.

However, I have to say this. What I experienced at committee the other day was very disturbing. The hon. parliamentary secretary says that it is great that we have a process whereby we will hear from the former attorney general and then a couple of other witnesses will be dribbled out and maybe if we need them, we will get to the others.

How can a person listen to what the former attorney general said yesterday and not cry out for those 11 people she named to be put on the stand and be cross-examined? How can we not hear them? Maybe we will, and we should not worry. That is not good enough.

The Prime Minister made a great deal of waiving the so-called solicitor-client privilege. The lawyers I have talked to have great doubts whether that even applies. Let us say it does. Certainly, cabinet confidentiality applies.

What the Prime Minister did was quite interesting. He said that he was going to waive it up until that magic moment when she was removed as attorney general. Everything after that, we could not go there. What happened after that? She resigned. Listening to her testimony yesterday, she was very careful to not tell us why.

We saw the principal secretary of the Prime Minister, Mr. Butts, tender a letter of resignation and mysteriously reference the former attorney general. Why? We cannot go there. We are not going to be allowed to know anything about what happened after she was removed from her job as the Attorney General of Canada. Why? Maybe someday the Liberals will waive it. I asked that yesterday at committee. Members may have heard that. The Liberals, to a person, voted me down.

I stood in the House today and asked the government if it would change that and allow us to get to the truth, so Canadians watching, who are concerned about our democracy, would have the opportunity to see it all, to learn it all and to hear the whole story. I am sad to say that was also refused.

Therefore, we have a Conflict of Interest Commissioner who has no ability to get at this at all. We have a justice committee that seems to want to vote against any effort to get at the truth. What are we left with? We are left with the imperative to have a judicial inquiry into this.

The Prime Minister has said that the best disinfectant is sunlight. People may remember, with sadness I hope, what happened when the Gomery inquiry shone a light into what happened in the sponsorship scandal. The government changed as a result because Canadians got to understand corruption at the highest level. We had the Charbonneau Commission. People were riveted to that because we got to understand how that system worked. We have had inquiries in my fair province of British Columbia, which I am not very proud of as well, about corruption over the years.

If we cannot get these institutions to do their jobs, the Conflict of Interest Commissioner or the justice committee, because the government will vote with the majority to swat down our efforts to get to the truth, then we need to have a public inquiry. There is no other way around it. Canadians deserve it.

Again, if Canadians did not watch the testimony of the former attorney general yesterday, they must. They must hear her devastating, chronological, careful, sophisticated account of what she experienced. Among the things she experienced was an attempt to browbeat her to change her mind.

I said earlier and will say again. No one sang, “Please don't remind us that somehow it's not appropriate to talk in cabinet about the economic and political ramifications of a decision.” The Shawcross principle, which we have learned so much about, says that once a decision is made, that is it. The former attorney general said as clearly and as often as she could that she would not interfere with her independent director of public prosecutions. She should have said, “What part of no don't you understand?” when the Clerk of the Privy Council threatened her. There were veiled threats, not just once, twice, but three times in one day she told us.

We have a sad story for which Canadians deserve to get an answer.

Do we live in a democracy, which I have been proud of all my life to be part of, where the rule of law means something, where we do not have politicians telling our law enforcement community what to do, or do we live in a system like in some other fledgling democracies in other parts of the world where politicians call the shots?

A line was crossed here, if one believes even a little of what the former attorney general had to say. We have to hear from the Prime Minister. I support this motion. Canadians deserve to know what happened.

[Alleged Interference in Justice System, February 28th, 2019]

Madam Speaker, I listened with great interest to the parliamentary secretary to the minister of justice, and I wonder if people who might be watching this debate recognize what has happened.

First he talked about process and then he talked about poverty, but he never really talked about substance.

The process, he said, was that it is a great day for parliamentary democracy, and then he talked about poverty and what is going on in his riding. What he did not talk about is the testimony of the former attorney general. I never heard him once say that he did not believe her.

I was there. I am the vice-chair of the committee, and I say to Canadians to watch it and believe it.

What she said, among other things, was that people in the Prime Minister's Office do not believe that politically interfering is a problem and that there may be solutions and that although they are not lawyers, there has to be one—in other words, if the rule of law was not applied.

As a fellow graduate of the same law school, is the member not ashamed of what he saw yesterday?

[Justice, February 28th, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday we heard explosive testimony from the former attorney general. It directly involved the Prime Minister of Canada, and Canadians still have not heard the whole story. The Prime Minister is not allowing the former attorney general to discuss anything that happened after she was removed from her role. Yesterday the Liberal majority on the justice committee voted no when I asked that she be able to tell us what happened after that date.

Will the Prime Minister stop trying to save himself and remove the restrictions that he imposed on her so she can tell her entire story?

[Justice, February 27th, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, from the beginning of the SNC-Lavalin saga, the Prime Minister sent mixed messages to Canadians. First, he refused to allow the former attorney general to speak at all. Then he gave in but only a little bit. This week, she wrote the justice committee and said that she will not be able to tell us anything as to what happened after January 14.

Are these the actions of a Prime Minister who says that sunlight is the best disinfectant? Enough is enough. Will the Prime Minister let the former attorney general tell her story, speak her truth and tell Canadians exactly what happened?

[Justice, February 25th, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, on September 4, SNC was told there was no deal. On September 17, the Prime Minister and Privy Council clerk met with the former attorney general to discuss SNC. On December 5, the Prime Minister's top staffer, Gerry Butts, met with her to discuss it. On December 18, the Prime Minister's two top staffers met with her chief of staff to discuss it. On December 19, the Privy Council clerk called her to discuss it. On January 14, the former attorney general was fired from her role.

How can Canadians, who are reviewing these facts, not conclude there was relentless pressure to have her change her mind?

[Justice, February 25th, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister has told Canadians to “heed very carefully” the words of Privy Council clerk Michael Wernick.

Last week, that clerk said, “I do not see where the former Attorney General was a solicitor. The matter was never discussed at cabinet...So she was not giving advice to cabinet. She was not advising the Prime Minister.” Therefore, he concluded that solicitor-client privilege did not even apply here.

Since the Prime Minister has said we should heed the clerk, I have a simple question. Will he allow the former attorney general to speak her truth?

[Business of Supply, February 25th, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Cowichan—Malahat—Langford for his reminder that on two or three occasions, the former attorney general has used the expression “speaking truth to power” and has asked to do so. As he said, she has also retained a former Supreme Court justice as her counsel to give her advice.

It sure seems to me that she has something to tell us. It sure seems to me that she wants to speak her truth. However, I am very sad to say I have yet to believe the government wants to hear that story.

Canadians have a right to hear her for all of those constitutionally vital reasons I described earlier. I hope the government will get beyond its talking points and its political imperatives here, think about the big picture and why it is reasonable that people want to know whether there was improper interference in the exercise of her independent prosecutorial responsibilities. Yes or no?

[Business of Supply, February 25th, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, I respect and admire the hon. member for Wellington—Halton Hills' constant efforts to improve and reform this institution and so many other institutions. Therefore, I take very seriously the points he makes about the Constitution.

As he talked about respect for the constitutional order, it allows me to quote a sentence from the late Mark Rosenberg of the Ontario Court of Appeal, who was an expert in these matters and one of Canada's leading criminal lawyers ever. He wrote this in the Queen's Law Journal:

The most important of these constitutional conventions is that although the Attorney General is a cabinet minister, he or she acts independently of the cabinet in the exercise of the prosecution function.

That was the most important one he thought, which is really important.

The Supreme Court also said in 2002 that we had to respect the fact that an attorney general was “fully independent from the political pressures of the government.”

Was that line crossed here? It does not appear to me that the Liberals are that anxious to find out. If it is simply partisan politics before an election period, I guess we can understand that they would throw back at us that somehow we are just trying to make political hay out of this, that there is nothing here and to drive on. They might be right that there is nothing here. However, they will not let us find out if they hide behind solicitor-client privilege, will not waive it if it does indeed exist, and will not let us hear from the people who need to come and advise Canadians as to what happened.

[Business of Supply, February 25th, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, the first point made by the member for Sackville—Preston—Chezzetcook was that ministers of the Crown could share information and discuss it with others. As I said in my remarks, I not only think it is right, but that it is necessary for an attorney general to speak with his or her cabinet colleagues and others about the issues before that attorney general. In fact, Lord Simon in England said that one would be a fool not to in many circumstances, and I agree.

However, the role of a cabinet member minister of justice is very distinct from the role of an attorney general. In places like England, he or she would not even sit in the cabinet because of the concerns we see today. Therefore, proper discussion is fine.

The member pointed out that the Clerk of the Privy Council, Mr. Wernick, said that there was proper discussion. First, he was not at all of those meetings, and he could not have been as there have been so many, with the former attorney general, and he acknowledged that. Second, he is not the arbiter of whether there was proper discussion or whether the line I referred to was crossed. Third, looking at the facts as we know them, an objective, reasonable person would say that with all this pressure coming from so many different people it looks like there was improper pressure.

[Business of Supply, February 25th, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of the motion before us to compel the Prime Minister of Canada to appear before the justice committee to answer questions in this affair, which has grown and changed over the last couple of weeks in quite dramatic ways.

I would like to begin by indicating what I would like to say in my remarks by way of outline. I would like to provide a bit of history about how we arrived here and the changing narrative of the government side. I would then like to talk about the role of the independent Attorney General and how precious that is in our democracy. I would like to try to then refute the argument that somehow everything is fine because the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner is going to have carriage of this. Lastly, I would like to talk about the issue of deferred prosecution agreements or remediation agreements, which have been put into the Criminal Code quite recently, only coming into force in September of last year and which are at the centre of this issue.

With that in mind, I would like to talk about the sequence of events that has led us here.

A Globe and Mail story reported that there apparently had been pressure put on the former attorney general in respect of a criminal prosecution. The Prime Minister's immediate response, and there were many, was that he did not direct her to do a particular thing.

That wording is important, because I think it is common ground between the government and the opposition that directing an independent attorney general to do something with a criminal matter is wrong. It is in fact unconstitutional, violating one of the key constitutional conventions of our democracy, and that is that we have the right to an independent, not political, decision-maker when a person is going to be subject to criminal charges.

The Prime Minister started by saying that he did not direct her to do certain things. However, that was never the story in the first place. The story was that she was pressured to do certain things, and I will come back to that.

Then, of course, the clerk appeared last week to say that there was vigorous debate, but there was simply lawful advocacy, no inappropriate pressure. I will develop why this matters in a moment.

There is a convention, a decision, called the Shawcross principle, which was generated in 1951 by a labour attorney general in the United Kingdom. It talks about the line that cannot be crossed. That is now a part of Canadian law and is referred to as the Shawcross principle. That line is that it is absolutely appropriate, and in fact sometimes very desirable, to have an attorney general discuss matters with his or her cabinet colleagues, but the final decision has to be his or her decision alone. The question before us is whether or not there was pressure that crossed that line, which, of course, comes to what happened.

On September 4, an independent person called the director of public prosecutions communicated to a company called SNC-Lavalin that there would not be a deferred prosecution agreement, that she was going to proceed in her decision with a prosecution of this matter in criminal court. Thereafter, it appears that the former attorney general, who has the ability under the statute to reverse that, to give a direction to that person, decided not to budge. I do not think the law even applies here, as I will describe in a moment. However, even if the law did apply in these circumstances, it is not my judgment that there ought to be a deferred prosecution agreement in these circumstances. It is her decision and her decision alone.

Then what happened was that on September 17, this issue came up in cabinet with the Prime Minister. We have heard testimony to confirm that. On December 5, the Prime Minister's powerful chief of staff, Gerry Butts, confirmed that there was a meeting at the Chateau Laurier where this issue was discussed again.

We must remember that the decision of the independent director of public prosecutions had already been made and it was not to be changed, as said by the attorney general.

On December 18, there was a meeting between Katie Telford and Gerry Butts, of the Prime Minister's Office, and the chief of staff to the former attorney general on this topic.

On December 19, the Clerk of the Privy Council, the most powerful public servant in the country, Mr. Wernick, told us at committee that he needed to “check in” with her to give her context in a phone call. Then there was Christmas, as usual, in December, and then there was a cabinet shuffle. Mr. Brison decided that he would leave, as we all know. There were only a couple of people affected by that cabinet shuffle, one of whom was the former attorney general, who was removed from that position and, as everyone knows, shortly thereafter resigned from cabinet.

The issue is whether there was inappropriate pressure upon the former attorney general. If there was, there are those who would argue that there was an obstruction of justice. When there is interference, reasonably perceived by an objective person, with the administration of justice, that is obstruction. It is a serious criminal charge, and we need to get to the bottom of it.

The question then becomes, was there inappropriate pressure? Was that line I talked about crossed? Let us examine it for a moment. First, it would appear to a reasonable person that the former attorney general did feel that this pressure existed. Imagine how many times this issue came up after the final decision was made. Imagine how many different people, both in the bureaucracy at the highest level and in the Prime Minister's Office at the highest level, tried to speak to her about this issue. “What part of 'no' don't you understand?”, I hear her say. I was not there.

The Clerk of the Privy Council felt that he could advise us that, in fact, there was no inappropriate pressure. With the greatest of respect to an honourable senior public servant of great experience and service to Canada, how does he know? Was he at every one of those meetings? There were 50 meetings with people from SNC-Lavalin. There were 18 meetings with the Prime Minister's Office alone. He was not there, nor was he there when meetings with the former attorney general were taking place, out of earshot, at the Chateau Laurier or who knows where. With great respect, first, he does not know, and second, he is not the former attorney general and cannot tell us what she felt and inferred from that conduct.

Let us look at the objective standard of whether this line was crossed. There were so many different people and so many different conversations and so much relentless advocacy to change a position. What about the consequences for not doing so? She is gone. The government does not like to hear the word “fired”, so I will say that she was removed from that role. I guess there were consequences, some would infer, from that undue pressure. I would, but I want to hear from her.

That takes us to the justice committee. The parliamentary secretary made much of the fact that this independent master of its own procedure at committee is going to get to the bottom of this. Excuse me, but we tried to do so. We tried to get other people than simply the former attorney general to come to committee, and we were swatted down like flies. They said that maybe after they heard from her, they might allow us to hear from the other people, the only other people who can tell the other side of the story. One would think they would want that if they felt there was nothing going on here, but they do not seem to want that.

Maybe there is another theory. Maybe the straw that broke the camel's back in the mind of our former attorney general was that the government continued to have a yawning gap between the rhetoric and the reality of indigenous law reform. It is no secret that the former attorney general was pushing hard on that. She made a number of speeches that seemed to suggest that she was unhappy with that. Frankly, maybe this clumsy effort to pressure her in this matter and then to have her removed was the straw that broke the camel's back. I simply do not know.

We heard this morning from the hon. parliamentary secretary, and from the Prime Minister on many occasions and from the Clerk of the Privy Council at committee, that we should not worry. They are going to have an inquiry by the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner, and that is going to be good enough. With all due respect, it will not be good enough, because it is almost certain that there will not be anything found to be wrong in these circumstances, not because of the facts but because of the wording of section 9 of the Conflict of Interest Act, under which the commissioner has said he will do an investigation.

Mr. Dion, the investigator, said that he has “reason to believe that a possible contravention of section 9 [of the act] may have occurred”. Section 9 prohibits a public office holder from seeking to influence a decision by another person so as to improperly further another person's private interest, which is what he said he is going to look at. However, here is the punchline: All the other cases that have ever been decided by former commissioner Mary Dawson and others have said that there is nothing in the act to suggest that political interests are to be included in the concept of private interests. If it is money, okay, but if it is other things, no. Therefore, there is very little likelihood that it will lead Canadians any closer to the truth, which we must have in these circumstances. Frankly, it is not about the Prime Minister and interests. It is about whether there was interference with the independent role of the former attorney general.

What about these deferred prosecution agreements, which was what was at stake here? I have to say that there is a great deal of griping as to whether these agreements would even be applicable in these circumstances. I have mentioned that they have not been used, because they are brand new. They were put into an omnibus budget bill, which kind of sounds like the Harper government. At the end of a big budget bill, we had a couple of sections thrown in.

I was on the justice committee. We had a half hour or an afternoon on this particular section, and I can assure members that the words “SNC-Lavalin” were never mentioned. We had no idea that this was what was at issue. These things were described as important changes to deal with white collar crime.

Deferred prosecution agreements do have a role to play in our system, but they may not be applicable here, because there are certain conditions set out in the Criminal Code before they can apply. For example, one has to voluntarily disclose wrongdoing, admit corporate responsibility, make reparations to people, and so forth. Maybe there was just no way this square peg could fit into that round hole. It may just be that there was no way these even applied.

What would we expect an attorney general to do? “I would love to help you, but in fact, the law doesn't allow it”. The punchline here is that under the corrupt foreign practices legislation Canada has, if the defence says that it is going to be harmful to our national economic interest, it is not applicable. The whole lobby by SNC-Lavalin, this gigantic 50-times-they-met-people lobby, was to try to tell us about the national economic interest. Therefore, for a number of reasons, people are wondering whether the former attorney general was being asked to do something that was simply not possible or was, in fact, illegal.

What were they trying to do if that was the case? Were they trying to get something done that was illegal, or were they trying to get the law changed so we could fix it? Today we read in the The Globe and Mail something that may be the answer. If one is found guilty of bribery or fraud abroad, one cannot do business with the Government of Canada for 10 years. However, do not worry, it appears that help is on the way. We are going to change that and say that we may give some discretion to some public servant to kind of change that 10 years to maybe six months, a slap on the wrist or something. If we cannot do it one way, if we cannot pressure an Attorney General to perhaps change things, then we will find another way to fix it.

This is serious. Transparency International reported in its 2018 report that Canada is lagging its fellow OECD countries on this issue. We are not doing the job. We have “regressed”, to use the word it put in its 2018 report. Therefore, it is serious. At the OECD and other places, the Prime Minister and Canada have talked about how we are right behind efforts to get at international white collar crime, bribery abroad and the like and that we were with them all the way. Well, maybe this was just another broken promise, and maybe that is what the former attorney general was thinking when she resigned.

The Liberals promised modest deficits when they ran, but they broke that promise. In my part of the world, they promised to redo the process that gave us this dreadful project that is going to do serious harm to southern resident killer whales and the indigenous way of life on the coast. They promised to “redo” that. He came to my riding and said that. I was there. However, he did not do that.

The Liberals promised to change the electoral system. My colleagues will remember that. I think it was several hundred times we heard the promise that the last election would be the last one under the first-past-the-post system. Of course, the Liberals changed their minds on that as well.

However, the promise I think Canadians have the right to care about the most, the one that was probably the most important, if one were to stand back from it, in a democracy, and the one that certainly got my attention, was the commitment to openness and accountability. I was completely in favour of that. I did a lot of work in the earlier part of my life on freedom of information. I believed the Liberals. I wanted to believe the government.

“It is time to shine more light on government”, it said in the Liberal 2015 campaign program.

“Openness and transparency will be our constant companions”, the Prime Minister said.

I would like to have a little openness and transparency at the justice committee. I would like to have an opportunity to hear from the protagonists in this important debate, the people in the Prime Minister's Office and the former attorney general.

I can tell members that I am not very optimistic, because Mr. Wernick, who has been 37 years in the public service, concluded, in an answer to a question I posed, that solicitor-client privilege does not apply here. It is not about litigation privilege. Solicitor-client privilege is about when a lawyer gives advice to a client and has to go to the grave with any secrets he or she hears in advising that client. Lots of lawyers say that it is simply not applicable in these circumstances, because we are not talking about advice. We are talking about whether a person was browbeaten in the exercise of her authority as the former attorney general. That is the issue here.

With regard to litigation privilege, there are two lawsuits. One is a case in Montreal, I believe, which has to do with fraud and bribery. It has nothing to do with what is going on here, nothing, not a thing. It does not talk about litigation and public privilege and the Attorney General. The second case is what most lawyers who do administrative law would call a Hail Mary pass. Believe it or not, SNC-Lavalin is seeking a judicial review of the prosecutorial discretion of the independent director of public prosecutions because she made a mistake in how she exercised her discretion. If ever there was a Hail Mary pass, it is that one. Those are the two cases the government wants to hide behind on the basis of litigation and public privilege.

Let us just review this. First, Mr. Wernick says that there is no such thing in these circumstances. I agree with him. Second, we have no advice to the government in the circumstances at all. That is not at issue. Third, the government refers to litigation privilege in two cases that have literally nothing to do with this. I am very proud of our justice committee chair, who concluded that any effort to use the sub judice rule in that regard would not likely be of any merit. I do not see that as an issue at all.

I know that we can get caught up in the weeds here. I know that we can get right into the specifics while Canadians wonder what the big deal is. This is not climate. This is not the housing crisis. This is not the opioid crisis. However, this is our democracy. This is about whether we live in a banana republic or not. Do we live in a country where we respect the rule of law and the independence of the Attorney General, or do we not? Are we prepared to take a risk and not thoroughly investigate whether there was improper interference, at the highest level, with the role of an Attorney General of Canada? I am not saying that there was. I do not know. I was not there. However, the Liberals would use their majority in the justice committee to not allow us to find that out, to hide behind solicitor-client privilege. The Attorney General could not tell us what it was or what was so complicated. He could not tell us who could waive it. Read the testimony.

Canadians deserve answers. We need to get to the bottom of this. It is important for democracy. It is important for the House of Commons. It is important for Canada.