Mr. Speaker, I appreciate having you here in the House today to follow up on the question of privilege raised yesterday by the member for Calgary Rocky Ridge regarding statements made in the House by the Minister of National Revenue.
As I said yesterday, I have a few comments to add for your consideration. I know you need to come to a decision fairly quickly, so I wanted to add these elements at the earliest opportunity.
One of the main purposes of parliamentary privilege in the House is to ensure that the important decisions we make are based on information that is reliable, comprehensive, honest, and accurate.
When a question of privilege is raised, we task you, the Speaker of the House, with determining whether the matter constitutes a prima facie breach of privilege worthy of Parliament's time and attention.
I submit that all members must be able to rely on the information provided to them by a minister. We need to know for certain that this information is correct. In fact, ministers are subject to specific rules in this regard.
Ministers have a number of special procedural powers to help advance the government's agenda, among other things. They must also table any document that they refer to, and they have the power to table any document without seeking the consent of the House.
In exchange for those special powers, ministers must provide MPs with honest, authoritative, and accurate information.
In the case raised by the member for Calgary Rocky Ridge, it is clear there is a real difference between the facts and the statements that have been made in the House by the minister.
What we know is that there are numerous reports in the media, including information received from the department and information released by the Diabetes Society, that indicate the Canada Revenue Agency had changed its 2017 policy regarding the disability tax credit, so Canadians on insulin therapy would no longer be considered eligible for that tax credit as the therapy was no longer considered to meet the 14 hours per week threshold, even though 14 hours has always been considered the amount of time insulin therapy takes and the therapy has always met the threshold.
The minister has been adamant and persistent that there has been no change in the policy or practice of her department in this matter. It is possible that the minister has been told there has been no change in the way the DTC is being administered and she is passing along this assertion to us. I submit that this also would be a breach of privilege.
We, as a House, and we as members of Parliament, need to have confidence in the facts presented to us. Be it a minister deliberately misleading us, or a minister being misled by officials, the delivery of false information is a breach of privilege that has a clear impact on our work, and we have a right to know how it happened.
On page 115 of House of Commons Procedure and Practice, Second Edition, it reads:
Misleading a Minister or a Member has also been considered a form of obstruction and thus a prima facie breach of privilege. For example, on December 6, 1978, in finding that a prima facie contempt of the House existed, Speaker Jerome ruled that a government official, by deliberately misleading a Minister, had impeded the Member in the performance of his duties and consequently obstructed the House itself.
We are dealing with a similar situation here. Many of our constituents across the country have contacted us to share their concerns about the changes to the eligibility criteria for the disability tax credit. The Minister of National Revenue has said many times that no changes have been made to the eligibility criteria, but we now realize that this is not the case. We think the House has the right to know the truth. Is the minister misleading us or has the minister herself been misled, as was the case in Speaker Jerome's ruling in 1978? Both cases involve a prima facie question of privilege. It is therefore essential that we get to the bottom of this matter so that we can understand what led to this breach of privilege.
Naturally, we ask that this question of privilege be dealt with in short order, as we believe this issue should be a priority in the House.
NDP Critic for Canadian Heritage Peter Julian issued the following statement:
"It has come to our attention that a consultant for a federally funded anti-racism project has a disturbing track record of spewing hate speech online against Jewish and francophone communities. This is completely unacceptable. We call on the Minister of Heritage to take drastic action and terminate his contract.
NDP Heritage Critic Peter Julian issued the following statement:
“Today’s announcement by Hockey Canada is another attempt to delay the important and urgent work to deal with the toxic culture in this organization. While a former Supreme Court Justice is a credible appointment to conduct the review into Hockey Canada, this won’t be the first time the organization undergoes this process.
NDP critic for Canadian Heritage, Peter Julian, made the following statement:
“Canadians are horrified by the incidents of sexual assault and by what they’re hearing from Hockey Canada. They are left with many questions about how this toxic culture is allowed to persist in our sports organizations and what the government is actually doing to ensure this doesn’t happen again.