(Ottawa) Two elected officials who co-chair the committee of deputies and senators responsible for shedding light on the first recourse to the Emergency Measures Act in Canadian history feel that the scope of their review needs to be clarified.
Posted at 7:41 p.m.
Committee members, who met for the first time on Monday, will also receive a law clerk at their next meeting. This is indicated by one of the three co-presidents of the group of parliamentarians, the Bloc member Rhéal Fortin.
“We need the coroner to clarify how far we can go, what is in our sandbox and what is not,” he said in an interview with The Canadian Press.
Mr. Fortin underlined that, independently of the work of the committee, an investigation must also be carried out by the government, and that the text of the Emergency Measures Act makes distinctions between what belongs to this exercise and what will occupy the committee he co-chairs.
“I am convinced that there are plenty of gray areas. I am convinced that the coroner will tell us: “It depends”, summarizes the deputy.
The law specifies that the group of parliamentarians has the mandate to look into “the exercise of the powers resulting from a declaration of a crisis situation” while the investigation carried out by the government must bear “on the circumstances which gave rise to the declaration and the measures taken to deal with the crisis”.
NDP Co-Chair Matthew Green says the law is ambiguous in terms of parliamentary scrutiny. “I would suggest that it should be interpreted so that its scope is as broad as possible,” he says.
No details have been released publicly, for the time being, by the Trudeau government on how its investigation will be conducted, but Mr. Green understands that no senator or deputy will participate. Thus, he concludes that the parliamentary committee must be able to go in depth.
“This will probably be the only opportunity for members of Parliament […] to examine and investigate openly and very publicly the Emergency Measures Act “, he insists.
Another element to be clarified with the arrival of the law clerk, according to Mr. Fortin, is the scope of a clause in the law on meetings that must be held behind closed doors.
According to his understanding of the text of the law, some discussions could take place behind closed doors, but only if the conversations relate to decrees and regulations which could not be published.
“(Some of these documents) are not subject to the obligation to be published in the Official Gazette of Canada. They are not for reasons of national security, among others, ”explains the deputy.
While he agrees that these specific elements should not be brought out into the open by the work of the committee, the Bloc member would like all the rest of the work of the committee to be filmed and accessible to the public.
“All MNAs and all ministers are accountable to all citizens of Quebec and Canada and I don’t see why we would hide behind closed doors when it comes time to do accountability. »
Mr. Green also believes that discussions held in camera should be limited to those defined by law, which he interprets in the same way as Mr. Fortin.
During Monday’s committee meeting, one of the committee’s vice-chairs, Liberal Arif Virani, said Canadians aren’t necessarily interested in hearing parliamentarians discuss procedures. He noted that these types of discussions are often not public in the activities of other committees.
“I think transparency is important […] but it is a transparency as to the witnesses who come, their testimonies, the questions which are asked by the various members (of the committee) and the answers heard”, he affirmed.
Mr. Green believes that the context in which the Emergency Measures Act has been invoked justifies that anything that can be public should be.
“I feel there is already mistrust, a loss of trust in government (and) our institutions so I want to make sure we have this whole discussion in public, at every possible opportunity. »
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau used the Emergency Measures Act in an effort to end the anti-sanitary measures protests that have paralyzed downtown Ottawa for weeks. The application of the law was revoked about 10 days after it came into effect.
The committee of deputies and senators, also co-chaired by independent senator Gwen Boniface, will table its first progress report in the House next Tuesday. The latter will summarize the points of procedure on which the members agreed during their meeting on Monday. Other reports will be presented as the work of the committee progresses.