Committees / Witnesses

Evidence: alleged existence of an instruction manual for Chairs of committees on managing witnesses

May 28, 2007

Debates, p. 9784

On May 28, 2007, Libby Davies (Vancouver East) rose on a question of privilege with respect to alleged attempts by the Government to tamper with witnesses appearing before standing committees. Ms. Davies referred to an article published in the National Post, whose author claimed to have come into possession of a manual prepared by the Government for Conservative Chairs of committees instructing them on how to behave with witnesses. The article reported that the manual suggested that committee Chairs should meet with witnesses to review testimony and assist in question preparation. Citing several authorities, Ms. Davies argued that the manual, instructing Chairs of committees to behave in a way that would potentially alter the testimony of witnesses, constituted contempt of Parliament. Jay Hill (Secretary of State and Chief Government Whip) argued that the document in question had been produced by the Conservative Party and was an internal document, comparing it to similar manuals produced by other parties for the purposes of training their Members.^[1] Other Members also spoke to the question of privilege.

The Speaker ruled immediately. He stated that the existence of a document suggesting that Chairs of committees should meet with witnesses did not constitute tampering with witnesses and, in the absence of any evidence of such tampering, the Speaker ruled that no prima facie breach of privilege had occurred.

Decision of the Chair

The Speaker: The Chair has heard enough on this issue. We have had four presentations and I believe that should complete the matter. I am prepared to make a decision at once.

This matter was sent to me by the hon. Member for Vancouver East this morning and she forwarded with her letter a publication of an article by Don Martin in The Saskatoon StarPhoenix with a headline: “Secret book whips Tories into line”.

The only paragraph in the entire article that could give rise to a question of privilege, as the hon. Member for Vancouver East pointed out in her remarks although she did not state it quite this way, was that:

The chairmen should “meet with witnesses so as to review testimony and assist in question preparation”.

The Chair has some concern that it is possible there could be a breach of Members’ privileges, or at least the members of the committee, if there had been tampering with witnesses, but because somebody writes that there should be a meeting between witnesses and Chairs, to suggest that it somehow constitutes tampering, I believe is simply beyond reason.

I think this discussion here in the House is about the duties of committees. The Chief Government Whip and the Bloc Québécois Whip really made speeches about the work of the House committees in order to continue a debate that was started a few weeks ago. But this is not a question of privilege in this House.

The business of the committees is their own affair.

Had there been some evidence of tampering with a witness, I might have found there was a question of privilege. But there is no evidence whatsoever. What we have is a suggestion that some internal memo, manual or book, contains some suggestion that Chairs should meet with witnesses. That is the most we have.

If some hon. Member prepared a memo urging Members to come into the House and raise phony questions of privilege, are we to take that as some kind of breach of the privileges of Members of the House? I do not think so and I suspect such a thing might have happened before. I do not know but I suspect it might have.

I am not prepared to find a question of privilege on the basis of an article in a paper that suggests there may have been a phrase in a document or manual that says that Chairs should meet with witnesses to discuss their testimony.

Until there is evidence of tampering with witnesses, I do not believe that the Chair can find that there has been a breach of Members’ privileges. There is no such evidence before me and accordingly, I do not believe there is a question of privilege here.