On December 11, 2010, a spokesperson for the Prime Minister’s Office confirmed that the Government did not intend to turn over the documents that it had been ordered to turn over by the House.

Ignoring a Motion of Parliament; Flouting the Supremacy of Parliament

On December 10, 2009, the House of Commons of Canada passed the following motion requiring the government to hand over uncensored documents related to the treatment of Afghan detainees:

Pursuant to Standing Order 81(17), the House proceeded to the putting of the question on the main motion, as amended, of Mr. Dosanjh (Vancouver South), seconded by Mr. Cotler (Mount Royal), — That, given the undisputed privileges of Parliament under Canada’s constitution, including the absolute power to require the government to produce uncensored documents when requested, and given the reality that the government has violated the rights of Parliament by invoking the Canada Evidence Act to censor documents before producing them, the House urgently requires access to the following documents in their original and uncensored form:	Conformément à l'article 81(17) du Règlement, la Chambre procède à la mise aux voix de la motion principale, telle que modifiée, de M. Dosanjh (Vancouver-Sud), appuyé par M. Cotler (Mont-Royal), — Que, vu les privilèges incontestés que la constitution du Canada confère au Parlement, y compris le pouvoir absolu d’obliger le gouvernement à produire sur demande des documents non censurés, et vu que le gouvernement a violé les droits du Parlement en invoquant la Loi sur la preuve au Canada pour censurer des documents avant de les produire, la Chambre demande instamment accès aux documents suivants dans leur forme originale et non censurée :
all documents referred to in the affidavit of Richard Colvin, dated October 5, 2009;	tous les documents mentionnés dans la déclaration assermentée de Richard Colvin du 5 octobre 2009;
all documents within the Department of Foreign Affairs written in response to the documents referred to in the affidavit of Richard Colvin, dated October 5, 2009;	tous les documents rédigés au ministère des Affaires étrangères en réponse aux documents mentionnés dans la déclaration assermentée de Richard Colvin du 5 octobre 2009;
all memoranda for information or memoranda for decision sent to the Minister of Foreign Affairs concerning detainees from December 18, 2005 to the present;	toutes les notes d’information ou de décision envoyées au ministre des Affaires étrangères au sujet des détenus depuis le 18 décembre 2005;
all documents produced pursuant to all orders of the Federal Court in Amnesty International Canada and British Columbia Civil Liberties Association v. Chief of the Defence Staff for the Canadian Forces, Minister of National Defence and Attorney General of Canada;	tous les documents produits conformément aux ordonnances rendues par la Cour fédérale dans l’affaire Amnistie internationale Canada et l’Association des libertés civiles de la Colombie-Britannique c. le Chef d’état-major de la Défense des Forces canadiennes, le ministre de la Défense nationale et le procureur général du Canada;
all documents produced to the Military Police Complaints Commission in the Afghanistan Public Interest Hearings;	tous les documents remis à la Commission d'examen des plaintes concernant la police militaire lors de l’audience d’intérêt public sur l’Afghanistan;
all annual human rights reports by the Department of Foreign Affairs on Afghanistan;	tous les rapports du ministère des Affaires étrangères sur les droits de la personne en Afghanistan;
all documents referred to by the Chief of the Defence Staff in his December 9, 2009 press conference, and all other relevant documents; and	tous les documents cités par le Chef d’état-major de la Défense à sa conférence de presse du 9 décembre 2009, et tous les autres documents pertinents;
accordingly the House hereby orders that these documents be produced in their original and uncensored form forthwith.	par conséquent la Chambre ordonne par la présente que tous ces documents soient produits immédiatement dans leur forme originale et non censurée.
The question was put on the main motion, as amended, and it was agreed to on the following division:	La motion principale, telle que modifiée, est mise aux voix et agréée par le vote suivant :
*(Division No. 155 -- Vote no 155)*
YEAS: 146, NAYS: 143	POUR : 146, CONTRE : 143

On December 11, 2010, Stockwell Day, then Trade Minister, said that the opposition parties would have to go to court to get the information that the House of Commons motion ordered the Government to turn over. Later, a spokesperson for the Prime Minister’s Office confirmed that the Government did not intend to turn over the documents.

The problem with telling the opposition that it had to go to court to get access to the documents that the House of Commons ordered the Government to turn over is that the right to institute inquiries and to call witnesses and demand papers is an exclusive right of the House of Commons that is not subject to appeal to an outside court. What’s more, according to Errol Mendes, Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Ottawa, the Supreme Court of Canada had already ruled that parliamentary privilege grants the MPs the right to the documents.

Not only does the House of Commons have the right to demand that documents be turned over to it, but it also has the right to discipline its own Members for interfering with the conduct of parliamentary business, which can be considered to be an act of contempt of Parliament.

Because Parliament rose for its Christmas break on December 10, 2009 and did not sit again before beingprorogued by the Governor General at the request of Prime Minister Harper, the opposition was not able to introduce a motion censuring any members of the Harper Government for ignoring the order of Parliament until the prorogation ended.

When the House of Commons finally returned to work after Mr. Harper brought it to a screeching halt through prorogation, the battle resumed. In April 2010, the Speaker of the House gave the government and opposition parties a two-week deadline to come to a mutually agreeable arrangement that would both protect that information that legitimately should be kept secret and at the same time give our elected parliamentarians access to the information they needed to do the job we elected them to do.

In May 2010, the parties reached an agreement under which a committee comprised of members from all four parties represented in the House of Commons was formed to review all of the uncensored documents. The panel would then decide which documents were relevant to the parliamentary investigation into the treatment of Afghan detainees.

Where does the issue stand today? As of March 6, 2011, the committee vetting the documents has still not released them. According to an article published in the National Post on March 3, 2011, “New Democrats, who backed out of the all-party committee due to loopholes they felt would undermine the process, argue the committee has clearly failed in its task and that it’s now time for a full public inquiry.” The Bloc Québécois has also threatened to pull out of the committee if the uncensored documents aren’t released by April 15, 2011.

Consequently, the question of whether the Harper Government acted in a manner that was in contempt of Parliament is still open. If Parliament does decide to discipline any of its Members for ignoring the duly passed motion to turn over documents, the punishment can range anywhere from a simple reprimand to incarceration, although the latter option has not been used since 1913.

In the Canadian parliamentary system, the House of Commons provides oversight over the executive branch (the Prime Minister and the Cabinet), not the other way around. This is known as the Supremacy of Parliament, and it ensures that the representatives of the people have the ultimate authority to obtain information. We allege that in ignoring an order of the House of Commons, Mr. Harper violated this very important parliamentary oversight.

This cbc backgrounder says that nobody has ever been incarcerated for contempt in Canada: http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/cdngovernment/contempt.html
But it looks like CBC is wrong. “In 1891, Quebec MP Thomas McGreevy was expelled from the Commons for failing to answer questions about a government contracting scandal. And in 1913, Montreal businessman R.C. Miller was found in contempt for refusing to answer questions from the public accounts committee about whether bribes had been offered to government officials. He spent 3 1/2 months in jail.” (See: Why lying to Parliament still matters, Andrew Duffy, PostMedia News, February 20, 2011).

A blog post by James C, MORTON, Lawyer, law professor and media commentator, tells the Miller 1913 story.

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