House lawyers are asking the Federal Court to stop Ferguson from releasing documents requested through access to information laws.
The NDP confirmed Tuesday they were behind the request. They asked for all emails involving Ferguson and his staff relating to his appearance before a parliamentary committee last spring.
Ferguson wanted to release all documents, but House lawyers objected. They claim certain email exchanges between auditor general staff and House clerks fall under parliamentary privilege and must be kept secret.
When Ferguson disagreed, House lawyers filed an application with the court to force him to keep the documents private.
Now Harper is weighing in to say the House has gone too far.
In response to a Chronicle Herald story Tuesday, the prime minister’s spokesman, Andrew MacDougall, said House lawyers were wrong to apply the privilege of secrecy to the correspondence.
“We don’t believe this is covered by privilege,” MacDougall said on Twitter.
“While we support a motion to waive parliamentary privilege, we don’t believe privilege should have been asserted in the first place.
Harper does not have authority over House legal staff. That job falls to Speaker Andrew Scheer, though Scheer doesn’t appear to have been in the loop for this decision.
The Speaker’s office was consulting its lawyers Tuesday and did not have a comment.
When Ferguson appeared before the public accounts committee in May, he chastised the Defence Department for lowballing the price of acquiring F-35 fighter jets by billions of dollars.
An NDP spokesman said the party wasn’t only looking for information regarding the F-35 committee appearance but was casting a wide net to see what came up.
The Liberals have now put a motion before the public accounts committee urging that parliamentary privilege be waived.
If the case goes all the way to court, it will be a clash between two core democratic principles.
On one hand is the Access to Information Act, the law that affirms the right of journalists and citizens to know what their government is doing.
On the other hand is parliamentary privilege, the concept that parliamentarians should be able to conduct their work without outside interference.
It is because of parliamentary privilege, for example, that MPs cannot be sued for anything they say on the floor of the House. (MPs daring their opponents to step into the lobby and repeat their insults has become a common occurrence).
“The whole idea of parliamentary privilege is that MPs will be free to debate and discuss and do their thing,” said Vincent Gogolek, executive director of the British Columbia Freedom of Information and Privacy Association.
“We want our legislators to be free to speak. But using a general power like that to get around provisions of a quasi-constitutional statute? Yeah, that’s not so good.”
Gogolek said the view that Parliament’s ability to do its job is infringed by the auditor general releasing emails is “a bit of a stretch.”
He said the House argument could mean that if any MP corresponds with any outside body, the records of that discussion would automatically be secret.
Gogolek said privilege cannot just be used to run roughshod over the Access to Information Act.
“That’s their argument: We are Parliament and if we say it’s subject to privilege, then that’s the end of it.
“Well, it’s not quite like that. The (Access to Information) Act is the act,” he said.
“It’s the law of the country.”
Original Article
Source: the chronicle herald
Author: PAUL McLEOD
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