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House Hansard - 337

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
September 17, 2024 10:00AM
Context: House Hansard - 337 - Sep/17/24
Mr. Michael Barrett (Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, CPC)
  • Sep/17/24 11:12:11 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am rising on a question of privilege concerning the 12th report of the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics following the notice that I gave you earlier today after the report was tabled. Here we go again. Because the time of the House is valuable, I have prepared concise remarks. We find ourselves dealing again, though, with another witness showing blatant disregard for another committee. Earlier this year, we dealt with the woes of the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates with Kristian Firth, the key contractor in the Liberals' arrive scam. Today, we have the ethics committee's challenges with the employment minister's sketchy business partner, Stephen Anderson. Recognizing there is significant overlap between the two cases and that you listened very carefully to my detailed submission on Mr. Firth less than six months ago, Madam Speaker, I am going to refer you to the authorities cited in my March 20 arguments on the failure of a witness to answer questions and adopt them for the present purpose. That said, there are some key points to emphasize and some differences between the two cases noted. While Mr. Firth dodged and weaved questions as a witness, Mr. Anderson also did that and defied document production orders. Since this has been a dizzying file, even for those of us who have followed it carefully, because there have been so many carefully scripted denials, which are then smashed to bits by yet more bombshell revelations, a brief chronology might be in order. I am sure that my hon. colleagues are going to be very interested in this chronology. This past spring, Global News broke an explosive story about questionable business dealings, ethics and lobbying centred around the Minister of Employment, Workforce Development and Official Languages and his recent business associates. Understandably, the ethics committee wanted to get to the bottom of the issue and, on May 7, agreed to invite the minister and the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner to appear as witnesses at that committee. On June 4, Global News reported on text messages that it had obtained, showing that Mr. Anderson had written, “Randy” told him to “be available in 15 for a partner call.” After the minister's appearance that day, when he denied being the Randy in question, the committee agreed on June 11 to extend the study by inviting the minister's business associates, including Mr. Anderson, as witnesses. The committee also adopted a document production order directed to the minister and Mr. Anderson for all “phone records, text messages, iMessages, and all instant messages and call logs from all applications from September 8, 2022”, to be produced within seven days. On June 18, the committee reinvited Mr. Anderson to appear during the week of July 15. On July 17, Mr. Anderson did appear as a witness and trifled with the committee in his answers. A central area of concern was the identity of the so-called “other Randy”. In the September 8 text messages and, as it would turn out, several others sent the same week, Mr. Anderson blamed autocorrect, which struck no less than nine times, and claimed that he could only provide the real name in camera, in secret. The committee disagreed. By the end of that meeting, the committee unanimously agreed to “order Stephen Anderson to produce all of the previously requested documents, in addition to the name referenced in today's testimony, and if those documents are not received by Friday, July 19 at 12:00 p.m., the Chair prepare a report to the House outlining the questions that Stephen Anderson refused to answer in writing and during testimony.” Mr. Anderson failed to provide that information, including the supposed identity of the infamous “other Randy”, though he did provide a bunch of other documents that were unresponsive to the ethics committee's orders, so here we are. While I think we have all lost track of the Ethics Commissioner's revolving door of an investigation into the minister, it is patently clear that Mr. Anderson failed to answer questions and failed to produce records required by the ethics committee. I will also add that there are concerns about the truthfulness of some of the testimony from Mr. Anderson, which may well be a matter for a future report from the committee. Indeed, he freely admitted to the committee that he had lied to Global News, so that much is certain. For today's purposes, we are, of course, concerned with Mr. Anderson's refusal to provide information. Your predecessor ruled on May 11, 2021, on page 7021 of the Debates, about the role of committees in questions of privilege concerning witnesses' evidence, and held that committees must first do the work of considering the issue and then inform the House of their conclusion. That part is now done. House of Commons Procedure and Practice, third edition, at page 82, borrowing from a list of established contempts laid out in the 1999 report from the Parliament of the United Kingdom's Joint Committee on Parliamentary Privilege, enumerates established areas of contempt, including “engaging in other misconduct in the presence of, the House or a committee”, “without reasonable excuse, refusing to answer a question or provide information or produce papers formally required by the House or a committee” and “without reasonable excuse, disobeying a lawful order of the House or a committee”. During his July 17 testimony, Mr. Anderson was asked but failed, or refused, to name the “other Randy”, or otherwise protested that he could only provide that information in camera, about 10 times. I asked him. The hon. member for Brantford—Brant asked him. The hon. member for Hamilton Centre did too. Even the hon. member for Ottawa Centre tried and got stonewalled. The hon. member for Steveston—Richmond East asked Mr. Anderson if he would provide the answer in writing, and Mr. Anderson agreed. Then he resiled from his agreement when the member for Ottawa Centre followed up with his own questions. The committee then deliberated on whether to yield to Mr. Anderson's demands and sit in camera. The committee decided not to, but instead adopted the order for him to furnish the written responses that he had once offered to provide. No answer from Mr. Anderson has been received to date, and certainly not before the committee's deadline of July 19. I will note that it is September 17. In fact, the Liberal employment minister's sketchy business partner did not provide responsive records concerning the balance of that document production order or the committee's original June 11 order. In adopting these orders, the committee was exercising its authority, which Bosc and Gagnon described at pages 983 and 984 as follows: The Standing Orders state that standing committees have the power to order the production of papers and records, another privilege that is rooted in the Constitution and which is delegated by the House. In carrying out their responsibility to conduct studies and inquiries, standing committees often have to rely on a wide array of papers to aid them in their work.... The Standing Orders do not delimit the power to order the production of papers and records. The result is a broad, absolute power that on the surface appears to be without restriction. There is no limit on the types of papers likely to be requested; the only prerequisite is that the papers exist in hard copy or electronic format, and that they are located in Canada. They can be papers originating from or in the possession of governments, or papers the authors or owners of which are from the private sector or civil society (individuals, associations, organizations, et cetera). Bosc and Gagnon, in the immediately following passage, get to the heart of the ethics committee's current predicament: In practice, standing committees may encounter situations where the authors of or officials responsible for papers refuse to provide them or are willing to provide them only after certain portions have been removed.... Companies may be reluctant to release papers which could jeopardize their industrial security or infringe upon their legal obligations, particularly with regard to the protection of personal information. These types of situations have absolutely no bearing on the power of committees to order the production of papers and records.... The House has never set a limit on its power to order the production of papers and records. However, it may not be appropriate to insist on the production of papers and records in all cases. In cases where the author of or the authority responsible for a record refuses to comply with an order issued by a committee to produce documents, the committee essentially has three options. The first is to accept the reasons and conditions put forward to justify the refusal; the committee members then concede that they will not have access to the record or accept the record with passages deleted. The second is to seek an acceptable compromise with the author or the authority responsible for access to the record. Normally, this entails putting measures in place to ensure that the record is kept confidential while it is being consulted. These include in camera review, limited and numbered copies, arrangements for disposing of or destroying the copies after the committee meeting, et cetera. The third option is to reject the reasons given for denying access to the record and uphold the order to produce the entire record. In Mr. Anderson's case, I believe it is fair to say that the ethics committee, in the end, attempted to reach a compromise, one that Mr. Anderson had, initially at least, agreed to, to get his answer about the identity of the “other Randy”. With respect to the balance of the documents, which had not been produced in response to the June 11 order, Mr. Anderson raised objections, which he vocalized during his July 17 appearance. In response, the committee renewed its order. As such, it is fair to say that the committee chose the third option, rejecting his reasons and insisting on full production, as is its right. That leaves us with the situation that Bosc and Gagnon describe at page 138: If a committee’s request that it be given certain documents is met with resistance or disregarded, the committee may adopt a motion ordering the production of the requested documents. If such an order is ignored, the committee has no means to enforce the order on its own. It may report the matter to the House and recommend that appropriate action be taken. The House is now fully up to speed on the matter, and appropriate action is being sought. That brings me, Madam Speaker, to the point where I say that if you agree there is a prima facie contempt, I am prepared to move an appropriate motion. I will not keep the House in suspense. As in the case of Mr. Firth, I intend to move a motion that would find Mr. Anderson in contempt and order his attendance at the bar for him to be admonished and to answer questions. This motion would also incorporate the unanimously negotiated and agreed upon procedures for questioning Mr. Firth. One addition would be to include a requirement for Mr. Anderson to deliver up the as yet unproduced records. As you said in your March 22, 2024, ruling at page 21,946 of the Debates: While it is perhaps true that the suggested remedy is not something we have seen for some time, I am of the view that it is procedurally in order. As with the case cited from June 2021, the motion provides for a call to the bar in order to be reprimanded, and a specific remedy to the offence. We must all recall that the House is possessed with truly awesome power and authority to vindicate its role as the grand inquest of the nation. Citations 123 to 125 of Beauchesne's Parliamentary Rules and Forms, sixth edition, elaborate: 123. Privilege grants considerable punitive powers to the House of Commons. The mildest form of punishment is a simple declaration that an act or an article is a breach of privilege. When an individual has been present at the Bar it has been customary to deliver this conclusion to the culprit in the presence of the House. On such occasions, censure of the individual is usually added to the conclusion that privilege has been offended. 124. Occasionally the individual at the Bar will be given an opportunity to purge the contempt and promise better conduct in the future.... 125. For more serious contempts the House may proceed further. In my March arguments, I quoted extensively from the 1993 to 2013 reports of the United Kingdom's Joint Committee on Parliamentary Privilege about the need for Parliament to find the institutional confidence necessary to vindicate its authority and impose sanctions in cases of breach, lest accountability to Parliament be reduced to a pious aspiration and institutional weakness cynically exposed. In the end, the House rose to the challenge and unanimously agreed to sanction Mr. Firth, despite some subsequent weak knees and queasy stomachs from some hon. members. I trust that the House will not start giving out free passes to those who think they can trifle at will with Parliament and parliamentary investigations. In conclusion, the 12th report of the ethics committee outlines, I respectfully submit, a contempt of Parliament committed by the Liberal employment minister's sketchy business partner, Stephen Anderson. Parliament deserves to know who the other Randy is. All Canadians, especially those in Edmonton Centre, deserve that answer. We must get that answer.
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