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Elizabeth May

Member of Parliament
Member of Parliament
Green Party

Saanich—Gulf Islands
British Columbia
Voting Attendance: 61%
Expenses Last Quarter: $112,862.18

Government Page

Context: House Hansard - 334 - Jun/18/24

Ms. Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands, GP)

Jun/18/24 4:15:22 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I also want to add a few comments and thank our colleague from Vancouver East. The matters raised, as we all know, are of critical importance. I have listened carefully to the member for Vancouver East. I want to read her question of privilege. It is clearly pressing and urgent that Parliament come together. At this point, I would like to reserve further comments, as other representatives of parties in this place have done. I hope to pursue conversations, as I have indicated in a letter to all party leaders and to all members of the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians. However, I think the member for Vancouver East has raised a critical issue. Once I have read her question of privilege carefully and considered whether it is consistent with respecting the top secret nature of the full, unredacted report, I would like to add my thoughts.

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Context: House Hansard - 298 - Apr/11/24

Ms. Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands, GP)

Apr/11/24 4:59:36 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I have been looking for my moment to also comment on the question of privilege raised by the hon. member for La Prairie. I think the Bloc Québécois member's argument was very strong. When he presented his question of privilege, I thought it was solid and clear. I thought it was a violation of privilege to start seeing budgetary information shared in advance. In the last while, in digging into my own research, I have come to the view that it is less clear than that. The hon. member for New Westminster—Burnaby has also pointed this out, and we have heard this from a number of other presenters in this place, including the hon. Liberal House leader. I agree with the hon. member for New Westminster—Burnaby that it is troubling to see that there is not a clear set of rules around protecting budgetary information from early leak. It appears to me now that, as much as I was convinced by the argument from the hon. member for La Prairie, we probably do not have a convincing argument for a point of privilege here. We do have a clear need for more work to be done, perhaps at PROC or elsewhere. We have a very clear tradition. Over the years, people have faced criminal sanction for leaking budgetary information. However, now it appears we can differentiate between the kind of information that could be used in the sense of insider trading, to create a financial benefit for someone who leaked the information, and public policy, which the government can of course discuss in advance. We have seen, more than one time, information released in an attempt to create some razzle-dazzle effect in advance of the budget. We are seeing more public relations material than we are seeing a budget. In the Harper years, I started calling it the “big, thick spring brochure” as opposed to a budget, because it very rarely actually had a budget in it. We could not compare this year's spending to last year's spending. We could not work through the work tables at the back of the budget department by department and compare what was happening. That tradition of big fat brochures has been continuing without access to an actual budget. Canadians need to know that, and they need clarity around how much of this is now promotional materials, with governments explaining what they want to do. There is less and less rigour around whether the money has been spent, whether it can be tracked, whether it can be compared to previous years, and whether we are comparing apples to apples or apples to oranges. In other words, my advice to the Speaker, for what it is worth, would be that this is not a point of privilege. However, there is an issue here of substance for which greater clarity would be helpful and to which I would urge the Minister of Finance to actually bring some rigour to the budgetary process and make sure that Canadians who pick up the budget can actually find, in the big fat spring brochure, an actual budget.

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Context: House Hansard - 193 - May/9/23

Ms. Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands, GP)

May/9/23 11:31:47 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, my hon. friend from Cariboo—Prince George would know that my colleague from Kitchener Centre and I, the Green Party, supported the motion to ensure that the prima facie case of privilege that the hon. member for Wellington—Halton Hills advanced goes to committee for study, but there is one factual matter I want to probe a bit with him. We know a lot of things about the circumstances here, and I have an open mind on whether the Prime Minister or the people near him in the PMO knew for two years. We do not know that. We know that CSIS wrote a report, we know that the national security advisers knew, but we do not know whether that information was communicated to the Prime Minister's Office and I am not prepared to make that assumption. With respect to the information going forward from CSIS or the national security adviser to the Prime Minister's Office, I find it entirely plausible that it did not pass it on. I would like to ask him if he does not think there is even a possibility that is the case.

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Member of Parliament

Elizabeth May