NDP House Leader Nathan Cullen had raised a point of privilege motion against Finley last month after she said Service Canada investigators do not have individual quotas to find EI fraud.
Media reports later showed EI investigators are tasked with finding $485,000 in fraudulent claims each year.
Finley argued this number is a performance target rather than a quota because employees are not docked pay if they fail to meet the target.
“There is a clear difference between a quota and a target, and that is simply that there are no negative consequences for staff who fail to meet targets,” Finley said in the House of Commons on Feb. 26, one day after Cullen raised the point of privilege.
Cullen argued that performance targets and quotas are the same thing, and the minister was being deliberately misleading when she denied the existence of quotas.
Speaker Andrew Scheer ultimately decided the disagreement was a matter of debate and thus did not contravene the rules.
“I am limited to the role that the House allows the Speaker to play,” Scheer said.
“To cast the chair as the interpreter of the meaning of what was said is to go beyond that role.”
Scheer has consistently rejected opposition appeals that the government is breaching its privileges as members of Parliament.
Last June, Liberal MP Irwin Cotler submitted a written question asking how many organizations led by women the government consulted as it planned the 2012 budget.
The government responded that it sought “the input of countless individuals and groups of both genders.”
Cotler appealed to Scheer that this was “not only insufficient and incomplete, it was effectively a non-answer.”
But Scheer dismissed his complaint, saying it is not the role of the Speaker to rule on the quality of a government response.
Original Article
Source: thechronicleherald.ca
Author: PAUL McLEOD
No comments:
Post a Comment