PRHA Committee Meeting

STANDING COMMITTEE ON PROCEDURE AND HOUSE AFFAIRS

COMITÉ PERMANENT DE LA PROCÉDURE ET DES AFFAIRES DE LA CHAMBRE

EVIDENCE

Thursday, December 3, 1998

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

• 1233

[English]

The Chairman (Mr. Peter Adams (Peterborough, Lib.): We are now in public.

I believe everybody has a copy of the letter I received from four members of the committee. It says that “within ten sitting days” the committee shall be convened “for the purpose of examining the problem of leaked committee reports prior to tabling in the House”. You all have that before you.

The rules say that:

...the Chairman of the said committee shall convene such a meeting provided that forty-eight hours' notice is given of the meeting. For the purpose of this section, the reasons for convening such a meeting shall be stated in the request.

We have it; 48 hours' notice was given. Randy, this is 48 hours later. The subject matter is for the purpose of examining the problem of leaked committee reports prior to tabling in the House.

The deadline to convene a meeting on this request would be Thursday, December 10. We're having this meeting now. The meeting can only deal with consideration requests, not with the substance of the request. That means the committee has to decide if it wishes to undertake the study, not to commence the study. I would suggest to you as chair that we do initiate such a study at some point, whenever the committee sees fit, and that the officials of the committees branch testify on usual procedures, that kind of thing. Meanwhile, our vast research staff could look into the matter of leaks—numbers of leaks, that kind of thing, if that's statistically possible.

• 1235

Mr. Joe Fontana (London North Centre, Lib.): Are we making him the Ken Starr of this committee? Is that what we're doing?

The Chairman: No.

Randy, I'd welcome your comments—

Mr. Joe Fontana: No, Jamie Robertson—

The Chairman: You can see that members want to leave, so I'm not hurrying this issue.

Mr. Randy White (Langley—Abbotsford, Ref.): I'm one of them who wants to leave too.

I would suggest that the clerk also look at the points of privilege over the last year or so.

I can assure members opposite that this is not, under any circumstances, going to be, from our point of view, an attack on Liberal leaking, because I suspect any leaks may not even come from—some of them may not come from members of Parliament even. They could come from any party, I give you that. The trouble is that it's getting to the point, in our caucus at least, that if there are any more of these there is going to be an outright non-confidentiality of reports, and we don't need that. I know members in other parties are just as frustrated, as are members in the Liberal caucus, with this issue.

Hopefully, this committee, Mr. Chairman, will be able to at least give some guidelines or some strength...or some repercussions for those we find who are leaking reports. Perhaps we can get something positive, not negative, out of this.

The Chairman: Given the shortness of time, would you leave it to the chair? Along the lines I just outlined, I'll discuss it with you a bit and we'll design it.

Colleagues, it means that after the break we'll be returning to this matter.

Next Tuesday, December 8, 1998, at 11 a.m., our usual time, the order of the day is a briefing session on the recommendations contained in the 64th report of this committee from the 35th Parliament on the business of supply. Our colleagues, Marlene Catterall and John Williams, are involved in that. This is a commitment we made to them. That is what Tuesday's meeting is about.

[Translation]

Mr. Stéphane Bergeron (Verchères—Les-Patriotes, BQ): Don't forget to mention René Laurin.

The Chairman: Yes, I'm sorry.

[English]

Thank you. That concludes the meeting. I appreciate your cooperation.