The House Speaker’s office was meeting with officials on Wednesday over the fate of the unprecedented court action launched by House of Commons legal counsel last Friday as a 20-day deadline neared to take legal action to protect the documents, including letters about Mr. Ferguson’s committee testimony on the F-35 stealth fighter jet project.
The clock began ticking on the opportunity for House lawyers to go to court in an attempt to preserve the secret documents on Aug. 21, the day the House lawyers were informed the auditor general intended to disclose the letters, over the House of Commons’ earlier objections, in response to an Access to Information Act request by the NDP research bureau.
Coincidentally, Mr. Ferguson and his legal counsel have until Sept. 17, Parliament’s fall resumption date, to respond in order to officially inform either the Commons or its legal counsel whether he intends to oppose the Federal Court application.
Commons lawyers, determined to take steps to invoke the centuries-old constitutional convention of Parliamentary privilege, a doctrine that effectively protects House proceedings from any outside interference and also enshrines secrecy over confidential House or committee proceedings, filed the Federal Court application even though their client, the Commons, was adjourned.
House Speaker Andrew Scheer’s (Regina-Qu’Appelle, Sask.) office on Wednesday provided an explanation of why he took the dramatic step of approving a House of Commons Federal Court action against Parliament’s Auditor General.
Communications director Heather Bradley reiterated that the committee correspondence is “considered as part of the proceedings of the House of Commons and thus subject to parliamentary privilege.”
“The Speaker is a servant of the House and the guardian of the privileges of the House, and therefore, he is duty bound to protect the privileges of the House until such time as the House itself instructs him otherwise,” Ms. Bradley told The Hill Times in an email.
The Prime Minister’s Office, as well as the Liberal and NDP, have indicated that to avoid the unprecedented court confrontation between the Commons and arguably the most influential officer of Parliament, the auditor general, that all of their parties would support a motion waiving privilege protection for the documents.
Liberal MP John McKay (Scarborough Guildwood, Ont.) said Wednesday that Mr. Ferguson, to avoid even the beginning of involvement in a court action with Parliament, the institution he serves, could dispatch his legal counsel to Federal Court to ask for an adjournment in light of the possibility of a Commons motion that could end the affair.
“If I were the legal counsel (for Mr. Ferguson) I would just simply walk into the chambers and say ‘look, there is a potential motion before the House which would obviate the need of this, and I’m absolutely certain the judge would consent to it,” said Mr. McKay.
NDP MP Malcolm Allen (Welland, Ont.), meanwhile, revealed on Wednesday why the party sought the correspondence between Commons committee officials and the auditor general, explaining that the request included correspondence about the $25-billion F-35 acquisition but also covered other areas where the opposition has had difficulty prying information from the government.
“In this case, it was bigger than the F-35 file. We know this government isn’t forthcoming with information, they try to steamroll through committee, and so from our perspective, since we don’t have witnesses before us who we can examine, we can find out [that] we should be talking to someone else, or we should be looking for this document and getting this explained,” Mr. Allen said. “Because the Conservatives constantly limit the amount of opportunity, we have to take every opportunity to find out about different subject lines as we can and this becomes one of the ways to do that.”
Mr. Allen added: “We’re not really overly concerned about the conversation between Michael Ferguson’s email and somebody in DND for instance, but there may be documents that they talk about, that we can then request at the committee.”
Liberal MP Gerry Byrne (Humber-Ste. Barbe-Baie Verte, Nfld.), a member of the House Public Accounts Committee, has served notice of a motion in the committee that would waive the claim of privilege over the documents, which if passed would go to the Commons for a vote.
Mr. Ferguson made the decision to release copies of letters between the Auditor General’s office and the clerks of five House committees, including the Public Accounts Committee, between Jan. 17, 2012, and April 17, 2012. The letters dealt with agendas, appearances of witnesses, answers to questions posed by MPs on the committees and “related committee business,” according to the House of Commons Federal Court application.
Mr. Ferguson made his first appearance at the House Public Accounts Committee on April 17, and later returned for special hearings of the committee over his explosive April 3 report to Parliament on the government’s 2010 decision to acquire a fleet of F-35 stealth fighter jets that was estimated to cost up to $25-billion for acquisition and operation over 20 years.
Mr. Ferguson accused the National Defence Department of withholding $10-billion worth of those costs in a report to Parliament shortly before Prime Minister Stephen (Calgary Southwest, Alta.) called the May 2, 2011 federal election.
Opposition MPs have been frustrated, since the beginning of the Conservative majority Parliament following the 2011 election, over the government’s use of in-camera committee sessions to deal with such things as witness lists and proposals for committee hearings without public scrutiny. In-camera meetings are privileged, and MPs are bound by secrecy provisions that prevent them from disclosing vote results on motions or comments by government MPs.
Original Article
Source: hill times
Author: Tim Naumetz
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