Peter Van Loan

[PRIVILEGE, October 22nd, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, very little of what was just said by the opposition House leader was relevant to the actual question of privilege in question.

I was disappointed to hear him put into the Prime Minister's mouth words that the Prime Minister never spoke in an effort to support the question of privilege he is seeking to have you rule on, Mr. Speaker.

The Prime Minister's comments have been clear. What he had said is clear. It is not what the opposition House leader said he had said. He had said that Nigel Wright, in the matter in question, took full responsibility. He had said that Nigel Wright took sole responsibility. Those are the words he has spoken in the House, not the words that the opposition House leader said he spoke.

[PRIVILEGE, October 22nd, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I rise at this time to respond to the question of privilege raised by the member for Timmins—James Bay, regarding the Prime Minister's remarks in question period on June 5, 2013. These comments are supplemental to my initial comments last Thursday. I assured the House that I would return, and that is what I am doing right now.

The assertions of the member for Timmins—James Bay for the NDP are absurd. They are more a political stunt than a question of privilege. From the outset, I would like to point to the ruling of Mr. Speaker Fraser of May 5, 1987, on pages 5765 and 5766 of the Debates. He said:

I would remind the House, however, that a direct charge or accusation against a Member may be made only by way of a substantive motion of which the usual notice is required. This is another long-standing practice designed to avoid judgment by innuendo and to prevent the overextended use of our absolute privilege of freedom of speech. One of my distinguished predecessors, Mr. Speaker Michener, in a ruling on June 19, 1959, which has frequently been quoted in this House stated that this is a practice demanded by simple justice.

As I told the House last week, the Prime Minister has been very clear on this matter. He had no knowledge of Mr. Wright's personal payment until May 15, after it was reported. The file was handled by Nigel Wright, and he has taken sole responsibility.

As the Prime Minister said during the summer adjournment, after this new information came to light, “when I answered questions about this in the House of Commons, I answered questions to the best of my knowledge”.

We also heard this Monday, from the right hon. member in question period. Let me refer to the blues:

I answered based on the information I had at that time.

What is more is that the Prime Minister told us this and made this record clear during the first question period he attended after the subsequent news became public over the summer. The case presented by the opposition centres on a ruling of Mr. Speaker Jerome in relation to evidence heard at a royal commission. The unique nature of that case was later explained in a ruling of Mr. Speaker Francis on January 24, 1984 at page 701 of the Debates. He said:

In every case, except one, that I have studied that is relevant to the issue involved, the Speaker has ruled that there was no prima facie case of privilege. The question I have to answer is whether the facts in this instance require that this one decision by Mr. Speaker Jerome in 1978 should be the relevant precedent. In the 1978 case, there was evidence before the McDonald Commission that the then Solicitor General had been deliberately misled by officials under his jurisdiction. That evidence was the specific element which led Mr. Speaker Jerome to find a prima facie case of privilege and to allow the usual motion to be put to the House. In the present case before the Chair there is no such admission of wrongdoing or of wilful omission by officials or by the Minister.

The admission in question was described by Madam Speaker Sauvé on May 27, 1981 at page 9979 of the Debates in another ruling that distinguished the 1978 case. She said:

That precedent has to do with a letter which had been improperly drafted by the RCMP and which they admitted had been improperly drafted....

As pointed out by the hon. member for Timmins—James Bay, Mr. Speaker, your ruling of May 7, 2012 at page 7649 of the Debates articulated a three-part test for establishing a contempt in relation to misleading the House. Referring back to the words I just quoted from my right hon. friend, the claim by the hon. member opposite fails in no fewer than two respects of that test you articulated. First, no answers given in the House were known to be incorrect. On Thursday, I quoted from the Prime Minister's July comments. On Monday, we heard from him here in the House.

Citation 494 of Beauchesne's Parliamentary Rules and Forms, sixth edition, states:

It has been formally ruled by Speakers that statements by Members respecting themselves and particularly within their own knowledge must be accepted.

This is echoed by Mr. Speaker Fraser on November 1, 1990 at page 14970 of the Debates. He said:

...it is a fundamental principle and long-established convention of the House to accept as true the word of an hon. member.

On the second branch of that three-part test, there was no intention whatsoever to mislead the House in any way, shape or form. The necessity of intent is a consistent thread through countless Speakers' rulings over the years. For example, Mr. Speaker Parent, on October 19, 2000 at page 9247 of the Debates, said:

Only on the strongest and clearest evidence can the House or the Speaker take steps to deal with cases of attempts to mislead members.

Madam Speaker Sauvé addressed situations like this on May 27, 1982 at page 17824 of the Debates. She said:

The Chair cannot give precedence to a motion offered under the head of privilege unless it can be determined, prima facie, that a contempt has been committed....Assertions have been made to that effect, but they remain assertions, and as such do not provide grounds for the Chair to find a prima facie breach of privilege.

Unlike the hon. member for Timmins—James Bay, let me offer a fact. The Prime Minister's actual conduct is entirely consistent with the answers he provided. On May 28, the Right Hon. Prime Minister said:

On Wednesday, May 15, I was told about it. At that very moment, I demanded that my office ensure that the public was informed....

That is the expectation he set for his own office and for his own staff. His immediate direction to staff to issue a public statement indicating that such a payment from Mr. Wright occurred is the action of someone being open and candid with the public. It is not the conduct of someone seeking to hide anything. That is also entirely consistent with his answers here in the House.

If the Prime Minister set such a clear expectation for his staff, how can the hon. member for Timmins—James Bay reconcile his allegations with the words of the Prime Minister? As I mentioned earlier, it is long established that members are taken at their word. The Prime Minister has been forthright, he has been public about this matter and he has been clear about this in both word and in deed.

In conclusion, I respectfully submit that there is no prima facie case of privilege. Therefore, Mr. Speaker, you should be able to dismiss the question based on the ample arguments here presented without the need for further interventions on the point.

[BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE AND ITS COMMITTEES, October 21st, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I am very puzzled by my friend, because she seems to be objecting to the notion of doing the same thing all over again. Her posture is to let us do the same thing all over again.

Never mind that we made some decisions on the combatting contraband products act. Let us go back to the start and debate it all over again. Never mind that we had votes and advanced the prohibiting cluster munitions act to implement that international treaty. She says to go back and do it all over again. She is the one who wants to do it all over again. Notwithstanding that the not criminally responsible reform act is in great demand by victims and their families, notwithstanding that it advanced with the support of other parties, including the opposition, she wants to go back and do it all over again. The member wants to debate the tackling contraband tobacco act all over again and toss out the hard work of members of Parliament in advancing the process. It is the same with the Canadian Museum of History act and the same with the first nations election act.

If they are concerned and do not want to do the same thing all over again, they should do what we are proposing here. The members of the opposition should support this motion to allow those bills to be restored at the stage they were at when this House rose in June so that the work is not lost, so that the bills people care about can continue to advance, and so that Canadians' interests can be respected and the work of parliamentarians on these important bills can be respected.

[BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE AND ITS COMMITTEES, October 21st, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, it is not one of my pastimes, but maybe my hon. friend will be interested in enlightening or educating me.

In any event, the reason we broke and had a throne speech is that it is actually a pretty normal thing to do. We had worked pretty hard, and there were only a few substantive bills left on the Order Paper. We have done a tremendous job in getting through our work, so it was a natural time for it, as happens in many parliaments. In fact, there have been well over 100 prorogations since Confederation, and it is a normal pacing to do that to allow for a refocus of the agenda. We have done that. We have seen it. It ensures that our focus on job creation and economic growth remains. It also ensures that we are looking out for ordinary Canadians with an agenda to help consumers, from unbundling TV channels that are offered to cable subscribers to tackling unfair roaming rates.

All of these things reflect what Canadians want. They are the product of our discussions. At the same time, there is a very important commitment to balance the budget in 2015, and on top of that, to bring in reasonable balanced-budget legislation. It would not be a straitjacket type of legislation but rather legislation that would ensure that when a government does respond to a crisis, which it needs to be able to do economically, it would then place a priority, after the fact, on getting the budget back into balance, paying down the debt, and getting the deficit reduced. It would be much as our Minister of Finance has done in ensuring not only that Canada has done well recovering from the 2008 economic downturn but that our deficit has already been more than cut in half.

As was said in the throne speech, the Minister of Finance is on track to deliver that balanced budget in 2015 to ensure that Canada maintains the strongest fiscal position of any of the major developed economies, something that we have enjoyed throughout this time, thanks to the leadership of the Minister of Finance and the Prime Minister. These are all things that were reflected in our throne speech. They are things that he may regard as a failure but are things that we on this side of the House regard as the successes that are most important to Canadians.

[BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE AND ITS COMMITTEES, October 21st, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, what my friend failed to mention was that the motion before you, at least the portion of it that would restore government bills, is actually a fairly standard motion at the time of a new throne speech and follows thereafter. In fact, we had such motions in 1991, in 1996, in 1999, in 2002, in 2004, and in 2007. It is not unusual; in fact, it is almost what we might call standard operating procedure. That is why it is normally done as a unanimous consent motion.

However, there were a couple of things that changed here.

One is that in drafting the motion, on the government side we decided to not just deal with government bills but to try to be fair to everyone. We decided to look at all the other things that were going on in Parliament in which other people had an interest.

We knew that the member for St. Paul's had expressed an interest in seeing the committee on murdered and missing aboriginal women continue. We thought that made sense as something members wanted to see. There were other committee mandates out there; an example is the study that the procedure and House affairs committee is going to do into members' expenses. That was requested toward the end of when we were sitting in June, and we thought it would be silly to extinguish it. That is something that had been asked for by the opposition, and the independent members actually had standing on that committee protected, so we wanted to ensure that they could have their interests protected as well.

Therefore, we went beyond just dealing with government bills and looked for everyone's interests to be protected. We looked at anything that anyone had proposed and at all committee mandates that were in place. It was a balanced approach that ensured nobody suffered a disadvantage. It was not just the usual approach of only pursuing the government bills; it was to reflect everybody's interests.

Instead we hear from members of the NDP almost a different kind of approach, which is that not only do they not want a fair and balanced approach, but they want to cherry-pick only the stuff they care about and then allow everything else to be dropped.

That may be one approach to doing business. I am not sure it is productive. I am not sure it is constructive. It certainly does not respect the hard work that was put in by parliamentarians on advancing those bills last spring.

We want to see the work of parliamentarians and the interests of all parties respected. We think that this is a balanced motion that does exactly that.

[BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE AND ITS COMMITTEES, October 21st, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I think the greatest way to respect democracy is to respect the democratic decisions made in the House, including the decision made on the first nations elections act to deliver democracy to first nations and give them greater democratic rights.

In fact that bill, one of the bills we are discussing and one that passed at second reading on division, would establish an alternative modern-day legislative framework apart from the Indian Act system. It would provide for a more robust election system that individual first nations can choose. It would be up to them to choose whether they wish to opt in, but they can choose to do so. It is actually based on recommendations provided by the Atlantic Policy Congress of First Nations Chiefs and the first nations Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs.

We have a bill to provide greater democracy for first nations, a bill that they have proposed, that is optional, and that advanced in the House. The New Democrats would now have us believe that although it passed on division, they now wish it to go back to the beginning. That would not be a step forward for democracy, but a step backward. That is why a bill like this is a positive one.

At the same time, the motion that we have in front of us is one that would also restore the mandate for the committee looking into murdered and missing aboriginal women. It is balanced in that we are dealing with everybody's mandates, mandates that everyone put forward. The issue the member mentioned is very important to her; that would again be a reason to support government Motion No. 2.

Our approach throughout in preparing this motion has been to go beyond the traditional approach of focusing only on government bills and to take into consideration everybody's interests so that nobody is prejudiced by the fact that we had a new throne speech. That is what government business Motion No. 2 proposes, and that is why I hope it will be welcomed by all members of the House. It is designed to be fair to all members of the House.

[BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE AND ITS COMMITTEES, October 21st, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, as I said, the good news was that parliamentarians worked for more than a whole extra month's worth of debate time in the House in May and June. As a result, the House was able to get great things done, and it was not just the bills that we are seeking to have restored at the stage they were read: overall, in the first five months of this year, 37 pieces of legislation reached royal assent. In fact, that matches the most productive year of the Conservative government back in 2007, when we were in a minority, and we did that in just five months. That was done through the hard work of all parliamentarians, including sitting, on some occasions, as late as 2:00 a.m. to get work done here in May and June.

People did not take time off. People here worked very hard. They worked extra hard and put in extra time.

The question before us now is whether we shall throw away some of the product of that extra time, pretend it did not happen, and force everybody to go back to "go", or should we respect the hard work of parliamentarians, the debates that occurred, and the advancement of legislation, which in most cases all parties supported? Perhaps that was not so in some cases, but bills such as the not criminally responsible reform act and the tackling contraband tobacco act were apparently supported by the NDP.

We would encourage them to once again support their continued processing through the parliamentary process.

[BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE AND ITS COMMITTEES, October 21st, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, the very essence of this motion is to respect the work done by parliamentarians. It is to give effect to the work that parliamentarians did last spring. It is to allow that time not to be lost in vain.

This is to actually give effect to the committee mandates that were given by this House, the debates that took place on bills, and the advancement of those bills to different stages. That respects the work of Parliament. That respects the work of parliamentarians. To do otherwise would, I think, disrespect the work of parliamentarians.

The legislation the member mentioned is not the subject of this motion. However, an example of a bill that is the subject of this motion would be the not criminally responsible reform act. Again, it is a bill that was supported in a vote by all members of this House. As a result, it was able to advance well beyond second reading.

If I were to listen to the NDP members right now, although they voted to have the bill advance before, they now no longer want that to be the case. They want to go back, start from the beginning, and throw away the hard work of parliamentarians on a bill they themselves claim to support.

I think if we talk to any ordinary Canadian, they would regard that as a little nonsensical. They would regard it as actually disrespecting the work of Parliament.

Our objective with this motion is to show real respect for the work of parliamentarians, allow what we did this spring to continue, and allow the achievements of all of us together during the spring to stand.

[BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE AND ITS COMMITTEES, October 21st, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I prefer to take a more optimistic approach to characterizing the work of the people here in Parliament. In fact, our members of Parliament, through the months of May and June, actually sat on some occasions as late as 2 a.m. because we agreed to have extended hours in this House. As a result of that, we did not lose a month of debate; we actually gained more than a month of debate.

Good discussions took place here. People debated bills, and bills advanced as a result of the hard work put in by members of Parliament on all sides of the House, as should be acknowledged. As a result, a number of bills enjoyed support from all sides of this House and were able to go to committee. All we are asking is that those same bills be able to go to the same stage they were at thanks to all that hard work. It was the equivalent of well over a month of additional debate that took place in May and June.

An example would be Bill C-56, the combating counterfeit products act, which was there in May and June. As a result of the support of all parties in this House, that bill passed on a voice vote and went to committee. In fact, the NDP member for Scarborough Southwest said, “...we in the NDP do want to see this bill go back to committee...”.

This is the chance to do that, to acknowledge the work that was done by parliamentarians like him in June and to give effect to it by allowing it to be restored at committee as it was in June. It is a bill that would defend the interests of Canadians and it is supported by all parties. That is the kind of bill we are looking to see restored as a result of government business Motion No. 2.

[BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE AND ITS COMMITTEES, October 21st, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the House leader for the Liberal Party for his very constructive negotiations and engagement, in particular on government Motion No. 2, which we are considering right now. The Liberal Party was very forthcoming and agreed to the normal approach, which would be to deal with the matter dealt through a motion for unanimous consent to restore matters as they were back in June.

We appreciated that constructive approach from the Liberal House leader. We thought it was the appropriate fashion in which to operate. I was not surprised that was the response from the Liberal House leader, accustomed as I am to his business-like approach to dealing with these matters. We appreciated that opportunity to negotiate and discuss it with him and to arrive at that agreement.

I am disappointed that unfortunately the official opposition did not share the same approach. As a result, we are spending a little more House time than perhaps we would have liked to allow us to be where we were in June. To deal with that principle, on a principled basis, to allow everyone's interests to be reflected so there is no prejudice to any party or individual who had business before the House is what this motion seeks to do. It seeks to protect the interests of the opposition and the interests of the government. We are pleased to be putting that forward.