Mr. Speaker, today I am rising to ask that you find that a prima facie case of privilege exists with respect to the government's contempt for the House of Commons and its members.

Last Wednesday the Minister of Finance delivered the government's official update on economic and fiscal projections not to the House, as he should have done and as is custom, but to a private audience of bankers and finance professionals who paid $800 a table to hear this important information.

As legislators, members must have access to this critical information in order to do their jobs. We must be able to analyze the state of the country's finances.

The fact that the minister obstructed our access to this information and disregarded the democratic principle whereby elected members should have access to this information before representatives from banks and investment firms do illustrates his contempt for the House.

This is crucial information for legislators and is a core piece of our ability to do our jobs. We need to understand the state of our country's finances. This obstruction of our access to that information, and the minister's affront to the democratic principle that elected officials should have that information before representatives from banks and investment firms, clearly illustrates contempt of this House.

Page 63 of Erskine May's 22nd edition states:

...ministers have a duty to Parliament to account, and to be held to account, for the policies, decisions and actions of their departments...; it is of paramount importance that Ministers give accurate and truthful information to Parliament

I must reiterate that in front of an $800-a-table group of Bay Street elites, the Minister of Finance is not held to the same standards of truthfulness as he is in this place. For him to choose to deliver such an important economic update when we as parliamentarians cannot ask questions on behalf of those we represent, cannot examine the information in the presence of the minister and finance officials, and are forced to rely on a press release and media coverage is simply outrageous.

In previous cases of privilege similar to this one, the importance of the information a minister is presenting has come into question. A similar complaint raised to Speaker Jerome on March 18, 1977, found the Speaker unsure of how to decide if the documents publicly released, not in the House, were “major policy statement[s]”. I would submit that a budget update containing a $4.5 billion swing in projected versus actual government surpluses is major and that other taxation measures he announced were clearly also major policy announcements.

However, we do not have to look as far back as 1977. On December 3, 1998, an unhappy member of Parliament raised a question very similar to the one I am raising today, stating:

Ministers seem to take great pride in avoiding interaction with this House.... The House of Commons is the place where the government is most answerable to the people who elected the members of this Chamber.

The member then went on to say:

“[the House's] right to be informed of government action and policy decisions has been superseded by default by government to the news releases....

It is time for the House to draw a line in this regard. I think that everyone in this place would agree.

If members would like to know if the member in question still believes this, they can ask the Minister of Justice, who said these very words in this place when it was a Liberal government making very similar announcements outside Parliament, not here in Parliament.

There is no doubt that this is a case of contempt. On page 82 of the second edition of House of Commons Procedure and Practice by O'Brien and Bosc, it is established that contempt is an affront against the dignity and authority of Parliament which may not fall within one of the specifically defined privileges and that the House claims the right to punish, as a contempt, any action which obstructs or impedes the House in the performance of its functions.

That this $800-a-table event to table crucially important annual fiscal documents the Minister of Finance is charged with was first announced by a press secretary in a tweet to Canadians is simply adding insult to injury.

Therefore, I submit that the actions of the minister are clearly an example of contempt of Parliament, if not a direct breach of all our privileges in this place.

A look at the critical nature of the finance minister's update is important to this very question of privilege. The fall economic update acknowledges a couple of important things. One is falling world oil prices. As a result, the finance department has cut its GDP estimation for 2014 by $3 billion, with a further $16-billion-a-year downgrade from the year 2015 onward. The department also acknowledges that the drop will translate into a $500-million loss in royalties for 2014-15 alone and will amount to a $2.5 billion loss per year over the 2015-19 period.

The minister also announced that the personal income tax as a percentage of GDP is expected to rise to 7.1% next year, up from 6.9% this year, and to further increase to 7.3% in 2019-20. Therefore, the percentage Canadians will be paying into the GDP will rise over these years, and the minister saw fit to make this announcement on Bay Street, not in Canada's Parliament.

These are important realities facing the Canadian people and the Canadian economy. It is Canadians and the members of Parliament they elect to this place who are entitled to this information, not those paying $800 for an exclusive lunch on Bay Street. By contrast, just today, the Ontario finance minister will update Queen's Park on the state of Ontario's finances. It is a wonder that our finance minister here could not extend the same courtesy to members of Parliament.

I would like to end with one final quote from Speaker Parent on a similar question raised in the House. He stated:

This dismissive view of the legislative process, repeated often enough, makes a mockery of our parliamentary conventions and practices. That it is the Department of Finance that is complained of once again has not gone unnoticed.

That was said November 6, 1997.

The finances of our country are of the utmost importance to our ability to understand and perform our function as members of Parliament. That is why I present this clear case of contempt to you today, Mr. Speaker. Of course, should you rule that a prima facie case of privilege exists, I am prepared to move the appropriate motion.

Nathan Cullen

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