Thursday, June 6, 1996

LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY OF MANITOBA

Thursday, June 6, 1996

The House met at 1:30 p.m.

PRAYERS

MATTER OF PRIVILEGE

Document Tabling

Hon. Brian Pallister (Minister of Government Services): Madam Speaker, I rise on a question of privilege which I will follow with a substantive motion.

Madam Speaker: The honourable member for Portage la Prairie, on a point of privilege.

Mr. Pallister: Madam Speaker, Beauchesne's 6th Edition, Citation 27, states in part that questions of privilege ought to rarely come up in our House and that when they do, they are serious matters. The matter I raise today, I consider to be a very serious matter.

My question of privilege deals with the question asked by the honourable member for Elmwood (Mr. Maloway) in yesterday's Question Period and the document which he tabled at that time. I am raising this matter at the earliest opportunity, as I had to await Hansard in order to ascertain the accuracy of the statements made by the honourable member.

In this question of privilege, I will attempt to show that the honourable member for Elmwood deliberately misled the House yesterday. The honourable member for Elmwood posed the following supplementary question yesterday: “I would like to table copies of the annual report of Fleet Vehicles Agency Advisory Board, 1994-95, and I would like to ask the minister to explain to us why the original copy of the annual report given to us had both of these people listed as members. Could he explain that, and why the report was changed?”

Following this question, the honourable member tabled a document. The document tabled by the honourable member is indeed not from the 1994-1995 annual report of the Fleet Vehicles Agency. Madam Speaker, I submit for your consideration, the said annual report in its entirety. As you and honourable members will be able to see, this document tabled by the honourable member does not exist. Further, a Special Operating Agency Fleet Vehicles Advisory Board has two and only two private sector representatives, and I will also table ministerial letters which are public documents relating to the appointments of those members of the advisory board.

Some Honourable Members: Oh, oh.

Madam Speaker: Order, please. The honourable member for Portage la Prairie and the honourable Minister of Government Services has not completed his statement.

Mr. Pallister: As you, Madam Speaker, and honourable members will see, the people which the honourable member is so concerned about do not now nor have they ever been appointed to the Special Operating Agency Advisory Board.

Madam Speaker, Beauchesne's Fifth Edition, Citation 362, states: “It is the Member's duty to ascertain the truth of any statement before he brings it to the attention of Parliament.” The documents which I have just tabled are all public documents. They are available to the honourable member and to his staff. By not availing himself and reviewing these documents, by not comparing the piece of paper he tabled yesterday with the documents readily available to the public, he clearly shows that he did not attempt to ascertain the truth about this matter before raising it in this House. That is his responsibility. That is his duty.

The document tabled by the honourable member for Elmwood (Mr. Maloway) has no clear identifying marks as to its origin. Therefore, the admissibility and legality of this document is in question. In fact, it differs obviously and significantly in format and in font from the documents which comprise the annual reports tabled by my department.

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I would refer you, Madam Speaker, to a ruling by Mr. Speaker Graham given on April 10, 1981, and by Mr. Speaker Rocan on November 14, 1988, in which both Speakers have ruled that documents, quote, that are unsigned and unidentified are incomplete documents and cannot be considered to be properly before the House.

Given the information I tabled earlier, clearly the document tabled by the honourable member for Elmwood is a fabrication. Erskine May in the 21st Edition states on page 118, It is a contempt to present, or cause to be presented, in either House or to a committee, forged, falsified or fabricated documents with the intent to deceive, Madam Speaker, in keeping with Madam Speaker Phillips's ruling of June 3, 1987, wherein she stated, a member raising a Matter of Privilege which charges that another member has deliberately misled the House must support his or her charge with proof of intent. The documentation presented, I believe, proves this. Further, I would draw your attention to the last statement made by the honourable member wherein he states, quote: Could he explain that, and why the report was changed.

The aspersion made by the honourable member for Elmwood is that I, as an elected official, as a member of the Legislature, caused, or had influenced, another unnamed source to alter or misrepresent information being tabled in this House. Madam Speaker, I would refer you to the appendix of our rules headed Matter of Privilege, where it states: “Libels upon members and aspersions upon them in relation to Parliament and interference of any kind with their official duties are breaches of the privileges of the members.”

The thought that I, or any of my colleagues, would alter documents and then table these altered documents in the Legislature, clearly casts aspersions about the integrity of every single member of this House. In light of the evidence presented, I feel that my rights and privileges as a private member have been violated.

I would offer the member the opportunity to rise and admit his misstatements today in the House. Failing that, I challenge him to produce the nonexistent annual report to which he referred yesterday and which yesterday he claimed was in his possession, and failing that, I move, seconded by the member for Turtle Mountain (Mr. Tweed), that this matter be referred to the Standing Committee on Privileges and Elections.

Mr. Steve Ashton (Opposition House Leader): Madam Speaker, I am really looking forward to the comments from the government House leader (Mr. Ernst) on this particular document because one of the issues that arose in regard to this particular matter and one of the sources of our concerns and our questions was the quote from the government House leader in his capacity as the Minister responsible for Consumer and Corporate Affairs, who said: “I can more easily demonstrate it, I guess, with respect to the Fleet Vehicles Operating Agency which has people from the automotive industry sitting on that as members of the board.”

Madam Speaker, I believe it is going to be very interesting because the

Government Services minister--not the government House leader, I want to clear up that confusion--the Government Services minister I think may have to get involved with some discussions about that particular matter because our member raised a question in the House based on the comments in Hansard, June 7, 1995, and also in regard to the obvious discrepancy from the minister who, by the way, took five questions before he even answered the question, who was admonished by you on a number of occasions before he denied that there ever was any representation from the auto industry on this particular board.

Now, Madam Speaker, I want to indicate, too, that I am somewhat concerned with the Government Services minister who took the opportunity to do what he cannot do in any other way--to make a number of comments about the member for Elmwood (Mr. Maloway) which are unparliamentary, talking about deliberately misleading, forging, fraudulent documents, et cetera, and I find it unfortunate that the minister would use the matter of privilege to do that. He could have stated his case without using terms, all of which are unparliamentary.

But, you know, Madam Speaker, I think the Minister of Government Services (Mr. Pallister) fundamentally misunderstands the role of this Legislature. It is for members to bring to this Legislature questions, and in this case, questions based on comments by a minister of the government whom we have a lot of respect for and whose credibility I think is unquestioned, the government House leader (Mr. Ernst). When we asked the question, we know the government House leader was not misleading the House on June 7, 1995, and we were faced with an obvious discrepancy.

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Madam Speaker, I find it interesting that in his comments, the Minister of Government Services talked about finalized documents. It is interesting because we have raised concerns about the Treasury Board document in regard to home care, which for some period of time the government again tried to deny the existence of. We have seen numerous cases where we have seen documents such as Treasury Board documents or draft documents that have later been altered. That is obviously something that is a standard, or denied in the case of the Minister of Health (Mr. McCrae).

Madam Speaker, I do not understand what the Government Services minister is saying, that the final document does not have any reference to Mr. Bob Kozminski--pardon me, Robert Kozminski, the CEO of Keystone Ford Sales and Jack MacIver, president of Midway Chrysler Plymouth. If the minister would have listened in Question Period, he was asked at what point in time were these two members on the board or any other members of the auto industry--we are relying again on the government House leader's comments as well as the information that was brought forward--what time were they taken off.

Madam Speaker, simply because, in a final document issued by this minister, those names no longer appear, it does not mean that they were not part of this process before. The government House leader admitted again, and I will read it again for the Government Services minister. I do not know how he could misunderstand the statement that there are automotive industry people sitting on the Fleet Vehicles Operating Agency--Hansard, June 7, 1995.

Now, our member raised the question for a very good reason, and that is to determine whether there was any potential influence from those individuals being on either as members of the industry generally or individuals. In fact, we will be very interested, I am sure, in Question Period to hear from the Minister of Government Services if any of these individuals and particularly Mr. Robert Kozminski, who is well known to the Conservative Party as a major fundraiser for that party, whether indeed Mr. Kozminski has had any further involvement in the Fleet Vehicles situation. In fact, I can guarantee the Minister of Government Services, we will be asking that question. Perhaps he would like to get that information to help clear up that particular matter as well.

What we clearly have here is not a matter of privilege. The member knows that. What we have in this particular case is a minister who five times refused to answer questions, who has been asked questions based on Hansard and based on a document that was given to our caucus which we indicated very clearly was different from the final document. Madam Speaker, there are documents that are changed all the time.

The minister protests too much. We were only asking questions to find out what is happening. This is not a matter of privilege; it is an attempt by the minister who has refused repeatedly to answer questions on this issue. It is an attempt by this minister to cast aspersions on a member of the opposition who was doing nothing more than doing his job.

I would suggest to the Minister of Government Services (Mr. Pallister), whom I believe has shown in many ways a real contempt for this House, who refuses on a repeated basis to answer our questions, who makes condescending statements such as he talked about yesterday, talking about bottom feeders, I would suggest that he talk to many of the members of this House including members on his side who have some experience with the legislative process and understand that there are 57 members of the Legislature. The other 56 have a job to do, and that includes asking questions of government ministers, including the Minister of Government Services. If he has a hard time answering those questions or giving straight answers, he should perhaps resolve that with himself and understand that in this Legislature we are all honourable members. The member for Elmwood (Mr. Maloway) is an honourable member. He is doing his job as a member of the Legislature and let us get on with the business of the House.

Mr. Kevin Lamoureux (Inkster): Madam Speaker, we take this issue quite seriously. We look at it from a perspective that we have information that is provided one day, other information is provided another day, and what is important here is that we have--some might classify it as a dispute over the facts. I think that it is likely raised a little bit higher than that in the sense that we have documents that have been tabled from the government minister, from the opposition critic, and what is important is in terms of the integrity of all the MLAs that sit inside this Chamber. What I see is the questioning of the integrity of members.

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From our perspective, we listened to yesterday's Question Period as the member for Elmwood (Mr. Maloway) posed the question and provided a tabled document, which definitely left the impression that the government was being less than truthful, that there were in fact car dealers who were sitting on this particular agency. Madam Speaker, then we find out from the minister who says, no, that is not in fact the case, that the annual report does not say that there were dealers who were on it.

The question that I have--and I think that many Manitobans would have--is that someone is clearly wrong, and what makes it maybe a matter of privilege is the fact that there is a questioning of integrity of MLAs that is being put forward. For example, the document that was tabled and which I received a copy of, I took it as a direct copy of an annual report. Was it or was it not? People who were watching Videon would have had the same impression that I would have had. We have the minister who is saying, this is the annual report as I tabled. Was it or was it not?

Again, what makes it more than a dispute over the facts is that we are talking about documents that are being tabled and information is valuable to all sides of this House. We have to rely that that information that is being provided is in fact accurate. Sitting back watching the New Democrats and the government fight over this particular issue, we want to know in terms of, well, which information is in fact accurate. I think that is something which we hope ultimately will be resolved, and ultimately we will get an apology from the Minister of Government Services (Mr. Pallister) or the member for Elmwood (Mr. Maloway), but someone is definitely intentionally calling into question the integrity of MLAs and is in fact misleading this House.

Hon. Jim Ernst (Government House Leader): Madam Speaker, the issue today here is a question, as raised by the Minister of Government Services, that relates to a document that was tabled yesterday and certain words surrounding that document.

Two days ago, I believe, the question was asked of the Minister of Government Services, how many automobile dealers sit on the board of the Fleet Vehicles Agency and how many, I believe, are from your constituency. The minister stood up and answered that question. The question was no, there were no automotive dealers sitting on the Fleet Vehicles Agency. Subsequent to that, the member for Elmwood (Mr. Maloway) tabled a document here yesterday in the House indicating that in fact two people were purported to be members of the Fleet Vehicles Agency, and that document, as the member for Inkster (Mr. Lamoureux) has indicated, would tend to lead one to believe that in fact this was an excerpt from a report.

The question of privilege now is, is it or is it not an excerpt of that report? The Minister of Government Services has indicated it is not and has tabled certain other documents. The member for Elmwood claimed to have that report, so it is fairly now up to you to rule. If the member for Elmwood has the report, let him table it now, let him prove his case. If it is not, let him stand up, withdraw and apologize, and if not, then the matter of privilege should proceed forward, but clearly aspersions have been left on the integrity of members of the House that are clearly a matter of privilege and ought to be addressed in a very immediate and clear way.

Madam Speaker: Order, please. I will put the motion on the record if I have the co-operation of all honourable members.

It has been moved by the honourable member for Portage la Prairie (Mr. Pallister), seconded by the honourable member for Turtle Mountain (Mr. Tweed), that this matter be referred to the Standing Committee on Privileges and Elections.

I thank all honourable members for their advice. As everyone knows, a matter of privilege is a very serious matter, and I will take the matter under advisement so that I can carefully research the documents that have been tabled today and bring a ruling back to the Chamber at a later point.