44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 8, 2023 11:00AM
- May/8/23 12:02:07 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am rising to contribute to the question of privilege that was raised by my colleague, the member for Wellington—Halton Hills, last week.
To put it bluntly, I was flabbergasted. I am responding in particular to the government House leader's intervention on this point. I was completely flabbergasted when I heard the arguments he advanced, Madam Speaker, appealing to you to reject standing up for a colleague who had been threatened.
The government House leader had two main themes, which I will take in turn. First, he asserted that the Globe and Mail report last Monday constituted “uncorroborated statements”. That is just not so.
On Tuesday, the Prime Minister convened a briefing for the member for Wellington—Halton Hills with the national security and intelligence adviser and the director of the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service, or CSIS. As we heard from my colleague that afternoon, he was able to confirm, at that briefing, the details of the Globe's reporting. That very confirmation came from those senior national security officials and was relayed to the House by the hon. member. The Globe's reporting was, therefore, corroborated before the question of privilege was raised.
Many questions were asked, last week, about when the Prime Minister and the public safety minister, among others, received that CSIS report. However, we might have reason to be skeptical, as the House was told it was last week. To be clear, no one in the government, other than the government House leader, has denied the existence of this report. To my knowledge, Beijing's embassy and the government House leader are the only ones denying Robert Fife and Steven Chase's reporting from last Monday. That fact alone is astonishing.
That also contrasts markedly with the outrageous claims the government House leader's own parliamentary secretaries tried to make on Thursday morning. They claimed that the hon. member for Wellington—Halton Hills had actually been briefed about these threats two years ago.
The level of gaslighting from this government and from the government House leader's own team is, quite frankly, disgusting. Nonetheless, if my counterpart insists that it would be impossible to establish the existence of the CSIS report, despite his government's statements, I would refer him to the words of Speaker Milliken on October 15, 2001, at page 6085 of the Debates:
The hon. member for Winnipeg—Transcona in his remarks tried to assist the Chair by suggesting that it was for the Chair to investigate the matter and come up with the name of the culprit and so on. I respect his opinion of course in all matters, but in this matter I think his view is perhaps wrong. There is a body that is well equipped to commit acts of inquisition, and that is the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, which has a fearsome chairman, quite able to extract information from witnesses who appear before the committee, with the aid of the capable members who form that committee of the House.
The motion that the hon. member for Wellington—Halton Hills set out in his notice to you, Madam Speaker, proposes to refer the matter to that very committee for investigation. Of course, as we know, it is not up to the Chair to make a final ruling on the actual question itself but only to say whether there is enough evidence put before the House.
Ultimately, it will be the House making that decision. If the House decides to proceed with it, then, of course, the standing committee would do all the investigation work. In other words, it is not up to the Speaker to do all that but just to choose to give this question the priority that we believe it deserves. Perhaps the government House leader is afraid of what answers might come tumbling out when officials and others start getting cross-examined at committee.
Let us not lose sight of the burden that my colleague has to establish here, that is, a prima facie case. House of Commons Procedure and Practice, at page 142, refers to such a case as being “on the first impression or at first glance”.
Parliamentary Privilege in Canada, second edition, at page 221, says:
A prima facie case of privilege in the parliamentary sense is one where the evidence on its face as outlined by the Member is sufficiently strong for the House to be asked to debate the matter and to send it to a committee to investigate whether the privileges of the House have been breached or a contempt has occurred and report to the House
On November 9, 1990, Speaker Fraser, at page 15177 of the Debates, favourably cited the definition of prima facie as “evidence which suffices for the proof of a particular fact until contradicted and overcome by other evidence”. This is found at page 1071 of Black's Law Dictionary, fifth edition. The Globe and Mail report has neither been contradicted nor overcome. It has, in fact, been established by the subsequent and widespread acknowledgement of the CSIS report's existence, including by members of the government.
Next, I want to answer the other argument advanced by my counterpart that the hon. member for Wellington—Halton Hills failed to raise the matter at the earliest opportunity. First, we take members at their word. That is an age-old principle in this House, so if the member says that Tuesday afternoon was the first opportunity he had to raise the matter, then we must accept that fact. I can say from experience, Madam Speaker, that a submission for a question of privilege does not just pop into one's brain. Researching precedents, establishing the facts of the case and putting it together to submit it all take time.
The fact that my colleague was able to do all that within 24 hours, from the time he first learned of the existence of the CSIS report to the time he rose to raise this question, is remarkable. Rather than being used as a flimsy justification to dismiss the question of privilege on a technicality, the timeline is in fact evidence of the seriousness of the situation and the haste with which my colleague brought it to the attention of the Chair.
Second, the fact that the matter was raised the following day is, I would argue, perfectly reasonable in any event, and especially so when we think about the context. For starters, over the course of that 24 hours, the hon. member was able to secure a briefing from senior national security officials. Had he made his intervention on Monday, as the government House leader seems to prefer, it would have been on the basis of uncorroborated allegations, the very other thing that the government House leader claimed distress about. In other words, my colleague did not receive official confirmation that the report existed until he was briefed by the Prime Minister and his security officials on Tuesday; he raised the question of privilege the very same day.
However, speaking of distress, put yourself in the shoes of our colleague, Madam Speaker. You get a phone call from a reporter asking you to provide comment on an article that is about to run concerning a two-year-old intelligence report on the targeting of you and your family by a brutal Communist dictatorship. You go on to read about the details on the front page of a national newspaper. I do not know about you, Madam Speaker, but my mind would be reeling. The dignity and composure with which our colleague reacted to this news through a measured and thoughtful approach should be commended, not disparaged as the government House leader sought to do.
Last fall, the government House leader urged the procedure and House affairs committee to consider making Parliament a more humane place, where we show compassion for one another. There was, sadly, nothing humane or compassionate about the comments he or his parliamentary secretaries put forward last week about a dictatorship's targeted threats of a colleague.
Third, the interpretation of raising a matter at the earliest opportunity should be, and has been, viewed contextually. It has never been held to require a same-day complaint. There are lots of examples, so let me offer two precedents to bear in mind.
On February 6, 2004, Speaker Milliken, at page 244 of the Debates, made a prima facie finding in an immediate response to a question of privilege raised that morning, the fourth sitting day following the opening of the session. It sought to revive a privilege reference to the procedure and House affairs committee, which prorogation had extinguished. Despite plenty of forewarning and a week to raise it, the delay was not held against the member.
On March 12, 1996, Speaker Parent was asked to rule on a question of privilege regarding a member's October 26, 1995, press release appealing to members of the Canadian Armed Forces to desert in the event of Quebec voting to secede from Canada. In ruling on the matter, which was raised over four months after the press release was issued, the Chair held, at page 562 of the Debates, “The House today is being faced with one of the more serious matters we have been faced with in this 35th Parliament. As a matter of fact, in my view it is so serious that the matter’s being raised at the first opportunity, which I have brought up in passing, is moot.”
I dare say that the matter of Beijing's meddling in the Canadian state and democracy, now including votes in the House of Commons, is also one of the most serious matters, if not the most serious matter, discussed in the current Parliament. Indeed, the conversation has stretched across Parliaments when one considers the landmark ruling that the current Speaker made in the last days of the previous Parliament relating to the Winnipeg lab documents concerning fired scientists with links to the Communist regime.
The government's argument about delay is equally specious and infuriating, but should it constitute grounds for you, Madam Speaker, to dismiss my colleague's question of privilege, it will surely give the House a lot to think about. Those arguments are almost demeaning to your intelligence, frankly, and it is disturbing to think that ministers even believe they could try to convince you to provide cover for them over one of the most serious threats to come before this House on the flimsiest of technical grounds.
Although I have confidence in you, Madam Speaker, being able to see through the government House leader's representations, I simply could not allow them to go unanswered.
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