Mr. Speaker, I rise this afternoon on a question of privilege related to written Question No. 393, which I submitted to the order paper on March 27, 2014; the government's response to the question on May 14, 2014; and a document containing correspondence among officials at Citizenship and Immigration Canada on the preparation of the response to my question, a document that I obtained through the Access to Information Act.

I believe that the government's interference in the preparation of the answer to my written question has impeded me in the performance of my parliamentary functions and is, therefore, a breach of my parliamentary privilege.

Mr. Speaker, I would ask you to review three pieces of evidence as you consider my request: first, the question that I submitted to the government; second, the government's answer to my question; and third, the documents that I obtained through the Access to Information Act. These documents contain correspondence among officials at Citizenship and Immigration Canada concerning my written Question No. 393.

I will not read my written question, but I will say that it was about average wait times and the budget and human resources that the department allocated from 2005 to 2014 to processing visa, immigration and private sponsorship of refugee applications. It was broken down into several sub-questions, as is typically the case with written questions.

In response to my sub-questions about average wait times for visa, immigration and private sponsorship of refugee applications, I received the following non-answer for all three:

Adequately responding to this question would require extensive, detailed research of CIC records, and this work is not feasible within the prescribed timeline. Although some of the above data are available, many other data points would take longer to extract because of the structure of the department's information systems. After the data extraction process, the report would then have to be reviewed in its entirety to ensure the quality of the data. Given that the question also deals with data covering a period of nine years, a complete and accurate response to this question is not feasible within the prescribed timeline for the reasons outlined above.

After submitting an access to information request, I learned that this was not the response that officials from the department planned to submit to my question. Indeed, the exchange of emails I obtained shows that departmental officials were working on answering my written question.

In an email dated May 1, 2014, an official from the department explained that, given the quantity of information requested, it would take about two weeks to prepare the response. She said that it would take a little longer, but it was entirely doable.

An email dated the next day, May 2, 2014, ordered the officials who were working on the question to stop their work because:

“[the office of the minister] has come back to advise the [office of the assistant deputy minister for operations] that we will use the same response we provided to Q-359.”

The government's response to Question No. 359 was a non-answer.

Questions of privilege concerning written questions have been raised repeatedly in the House. Every time, the Speaker has ruled that it is not the role of the Chair to determine whether the contents of documents tabled in the House are accurate.

I understand the principle. However, it is not the nature of the response here that is problematic, but rather the fact that the minister's office obstructed the work of officials in his own department. The minister's office interfered in the work of government officials in order to prevent them from producing a satisfactory response to my written question.

I believe that such an obstruction constitutes a prima facie breach of privilege.

House of Commons Procedure and Practice, second edition, states on page 517, the purpose of written questions as follows:

...written questions are placed after notice on the Order Paper with the intent of seeking from the Ministry detailed, lengthy or technical information relating to “public affairs”.

In chapter 7 of her November 2004 report, entitled “Process for Responding to Parliamentary Order Paper Questions”, the Auditor General wrote:

The right to seek information from the Ministry of the day and the right to hold that Ministry accountable are recognized as two of the fundamental principles of parliamentary government.

Written questions are one of the tools that elected representatives can use on behalf of Canadians to fulfill their fundamental duty of holding the government to account. The government cannot interfere in the preparation of the responses. It must allow its public officials to do their job.

House of Commons Procedure and Practice, second edition, at page 109, states that:

In order to find a prima facie breach of privilege, the Speaker must be satisfied that there is evidence to support the Member's claim that he or she has been impeded in the performance of his or her parliamentary functions and that the matter is directly related to a proceeding in Parliament.

The Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs also stated the following in its 2005 report:

The bar to establish a breach of privilege is necessarily a high one, and, in the case of an individual member, it must be closely related to his or her parliamentary activities.

Therefore, Mr. Speaker, I would like to show how the minister's interference in the preparation of the answer to my written question impeded my ability to carry out my parliamentary duties.

Last February and May, the House studied Bill C-24, An Act to amend the Citizenship Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts, at second reading stage. In June, the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, of which I am a member, also carried out a study of the same subject. We can see that there is a direct link between the minister's obstruction and parliamentary proceedings.

In fact, during the study of Bill C-24, the government said several times that it wanted to eliminate the backlog of applications and shorten processing times for immigration applications to less than one year by 2015-16. To that end, the government intended to eliminate certain intermediaries in the citizenship process.

Nevertheless, we know that backlogs of these types of applications have doubled in seven years, while processing times have doubled in four years, going from 15 months in 2009 to 31 months at the end of the 2013-14 fiscal year. It was very important for me, as a member of Parliament, to gain a better understanding of the delays these applicants are facing, and this includes getting a clear picture of the number of applications as well as the budget allocated to processing these applications, in order to thoroughly study Bill C-24 and to better understand it.

It is becoming increasingly clear that the processing delays impose financial and psychological burdens on the families that are waiting for an answer. Bill C-24 imposed additional waiting periods on thousands of permanent residents who wanted to join the Canadian family and who were preparing to submit their application. If I had gotten a proper response to my written question, I would have had a much more accurate picture of the scope of the problem, and I would have been in a better position to make alternative suggestions to cut processing delays and backlogs.

The 21st edition of Erskine May describes contempt as:

...any act or omission which obstructs or impedes either House of Parliament in the performance of its functions, or which obstructs or impedes any member or officer of such House in the discharge of his duty, or which has a tendency, directly or indirectly, to produce such results may be treated as a contempt even though there is no precedent of the offence.

In light of the points I just made, I think it is clear that the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration's obstruction in the preparation of the response to my written question, Question No. 393, constitutes contempt and a breach of my privileges as a member of Parliament, which impeded by ability to discharge my parliamentary duties.

To make it easier for you, Mr. Speaker, I am submitting copies of written Question No. 393, the government's response and the document I obtained through the Access to Information Act. Mr. Speaker, if you find that there was a prima facie breach of my privileges as a member of Parliament, I will be prepared to move an appropriate motion at that time.

Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe

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