Mr. Speaker, the third report of the committee, I think, was misrepresented by the parliamentary secretary. He referred to it as being one line, but I think for certain that the member should be aware of exactly what it says. It is a little bit longer than one line.
It states:
On Thursday, November 26, 2009, the Special Committee agreed to report the following motion:
That the Committee believes a serious breach of privilege has occurred and members’ rights have been violated, that the Government of Canada, particularly the Department of Justice and the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, have intimidated a witness of this Committee, and obstructed and interfered with the Committee's work and with the papers requested by this Committee.
Therefore this Committee reports the breach to the House so that it can consider the matter.
A copy of the relevant Minutes of Proceedings Meeting No. 17 is tabled.
Mr. Speaker, it is not one sentence. I think the parliamentary secretary may have misspoken by suggesting that somehow the motion made by the hon. member for Ottawa South has to make all arguments and stand on its own. In fact, Mr. Speaker, any member of that committee could come to this place now, I believe, under a matter of personal privilege because his or her own rights have been violated pursuant to O'Brien and Bosc. If the member would like to check page 89 of the latter under the rights and privileges of members, this argument has been made many times in this place with regard to a member's right to freedom of expression, which has to be informed. To be informed, the member must have access to information.
That is the thrust of the matter before us, that the information was withheld.
It has not been mentioned yet, but there are other parties in addition to the witnesses who had the information or documents. These included Amnesty International, which had a press conference and was showing a CD that the documents were on.
There was Christie Blatchford, who reportedly, and it is even in today's Hansard, has had the documents and is making judgments on the commentary of other parliamentarians with regard to the matter before us today.
If we are talking about delays due to translation, why is it out in the public domain?
The rights of members have been breached. There is no question about it in my mind, but that is why it has been brought here.
With regard to one last point about the committee's activity, I have been a chair of the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics and conducted the hearings with Messrs. Mulroney and Schreiber. Early in the proceedings there were a couple of cases where Mr. Karlheinz Schreiber in fact had documents and was reading from and referring to those documents. As chair, I asked for and in fact demanded on behalf of the committee that those documents be made available. They were released to us. We did have the consent of the Bloc to circulate them in the language in which they appeared, subject to the documents being translated as quickly as possible. This committee could have done that. Nonetheless, those documents were released to us.
Therefore, there are examples of committees being able to access the necessary information to do the jobs of committee properly.
Notwithstanding that the government members of the committee do not support what this report says, I believe that even an individual member coming before this place and making these arguments and claims has a substantive basis or prima facie case of privilege. I look forward to the Speaker's decision, particularly as it relates to the requirement of what must come from committees in order to address a matter before committees. It has been a point that has come here so often, where the Speaker has had to rule that it is committee business and to take it back to committee.
However, I hope that is not case with this. I hope that the committee's report and its motion and the minutes attached to the report substantively bring this matter to the House for full disposition.