QUESTION PERIOD — Public Safety
Emergencies Act
May 5, 2022
Senator Gold, I’ll turn back to you again today. I have a question for you.
Senator Gold, even before the NDP-Liberal government began congratulating itself for calling a public inquiry into the use of the Emergencies Act, a public inquiry it was bound by law to establish, there were signs this government had no intention of providing transparency regarding its decision to invoke this act.
Last month, the NDP-Liberal government refused to provide all relevant information surrounding the use of the Emergencies Act in relation to a case launched in the Federal Court by several groups, including the Canadian Civil Liberties Association.
Leader, how does hiding cabinet documents from both the court and the public inquiry demonstrate openness and transparency on the part of your NDP-Liberal government?
Thank you for the question. As anyone in this chamber with legal background knows — and certainly experienced parliamentarians who have worked in committees would know — the law of Canada and the Canada Evidence Act explicitly recognize, as all democratic countries do, the balance that needs to be struck between the disclosure of documents relevant to litigation and those rules protected by privilege that protect the disclosure of documents that would be injurious, in this case to national security or potentially other interests, such as privacy concerns, confidential information and the like.
Honourable senators, it is the role of the courts to determine whether or not those rules are properly invoked. The Government of Canada has every confidence in the courts to do their job appropriately to make sure that all relevant information is disclosed, but that information that is otherwise properly protected by privilege remains so.
Thank you for that lesson in law. I also know that the government sues the Speaker when he rules against them.
In August 2019, after the Ethics Commissioner, Mario Dion, reported that the Prime Minister broke the law — how about that — in relation to the SNC Lavalin scandal, the Prime Minister told Canadians, “We fully cooperated with the Commissioner on this matter.” In fact, Ethics Commissioner Mario Dion said in his report that nine witnesses informed his office that they had information they believed to be relevant but could not be disclosed because it would reveal cabinet confidence. The Ethics Commissioner raised this directly with the Prime Minister. He still refused access to all cabinet confidence.
Leader, isn’t this a case of history repeating itself? Next year, when Justice Rouleau’s commission reports on the use of the Emergencies Act, won’t we hear the exact same thing about lack of access to witnesses and cabinet confidences, and won’t we hear the Prime Minister, once again, claiming he is being fully cooperative when he has done no such thing?
Thank you for the question. You know, sometimes one lives in the past. Sometimes one lives in the future. Sometimes one must deal with the present.
I cannot predict the future, honourable senators. My constitutional law professor Laurence Tribe once quipped that if you lived by the crystal ball, you would be condemned to eat glass. My stomach is not strong enough to do that.
The Government of Canada has confidence in the justice who will be administering the public inquiry and confidence in the joint parliamentary committee looking into this. Most importantly, it has confidence in the laws of Canada that recognize the necessity for certain kinds of interactions within cabinet to remain confidential. This Government of Canada, previous governments of Canada — and here I will predict — future governments of Canada will insist on the maintenance and integrity of this principle, and will stand in defence of this principle, regardless of, in this case, a dredging up of matters from the past.
