The House and Its Members / Miscellaneous

Parliamentary Publications: correction of the Debates

October 29, 2009

Debates, pp. 6356-7

On October 28, 2009, Irwin Cotler (Mount Royal) rose on a point of order to report that the word “finally” had been edited out of the text in the published Debates of the reply by Lawrence Cannon (Minister of Foreign Affairs) to a question Mr. Cotler had posed during Oral Questions on Tuesday, October 27, 2009.^[1] He asked that the Chair ensure that the text faithfully reflected what the Minister had actually said. The Speaker stated that he would look at both the tape of the proceedings and at Hansard to determine whether a correction was necessary.^[2]

On October 29, 2009, the Speaker delivered his ruling. He explained that the Debates are not a literal transcription of what is said in the House and that they are routinely edited. In the case in question, all editorial changes were initiated solely by the editors. The Speaker agreed with Mr. Cotler that the omission of the word “finally” from the edited version of the Minister’s answer was significant, and confirmed that he had instructed the editorial staff to restore that word to the final transcript.

Decision of the Chair

The Speaker: Yesterday, the hon. Member for Mount Royal called the attention of the House to what he considered to be inaccuracies in the Debates of Tuesday, October 27.

As all Members know, the Debates are not a verbatim ad literatum transcription of what is said in this House. When producing the Debates, House of Commons editors routinely edit interventions for clarity and clean up our grammatical and syntactical lapses. They also of course consider corrections and minor alterations to the blues submitted by the Member to which words are attributed.

Upon verification, I want to first indicate to the House that in the situation before me all editorial changes were initiated solely by the editors. I should add that both the question of the Member for Mount Royal and the answer of the Minister of Foreign Affairs were edited in this case.

For greater certainty, I have also reviewed the audio of the proceedings in question and I agree with the Member for Mount Royal that the omission of the word “finally” from the edited version of the answer of the Minister of Foreign Affairs is significant. Accordingly, I have instructed our editorial staff to restore that word to the final transcript so that it may be a more faithful rendering of what was said last Tuesday.

I thank the hon. Member for Mount Royal for bringing this matter to the attention of the House.