Steven Chaplin has a really great explanation of whether the Canadian government can rely on national security and evidentiary laws to lawfully justify refusing to provide documents to the House of Commons, and to House committees. His analysis and explanation arose as a result of the Canadian government doing everything it could to, first, refuse to provide documents to the Parliamentary Committee which was studying Canadian-Chinese relations and, subsequently, refusing to provide the documents when compelled to do so by the House of Commons itself.
Rather than releasing the requested documents the government turned to the courts to adjudicate whether the documents in question–which were asserted to contain sensitive national security information–must, in fact, be released to the House or whether they could instead be sent to an executive committee, filled with Members of Parliament and Senators, to assess the contents instead. As Chaplin notes,
Having the courts intervene, as proposed by the government’s application in the Federal Court, is not an option. The application is clearly precluded by Article 9 of the Bill of Rights, 1689, which provides that a proceeding in Parliament ought not to be impeached or questioned in court. Article 9 not only allows for free speech; it is also a constitutional limit on the jurisdiction of the courts to preclude judicial interference in the business of the House.
The House ordered that the documents be tabled without redaction. Any decision of the court that found to the contrary would impeach or question the proceeding that led to the Order. And any attempt by the courts to balance the interests involved would constitute the courts becoming involved in ascertaining, and thereby questioning, the needs of the House and why the House wants the documents.
Beyond the Court’s involvement impeding into the territory of Parliament, there could be serious and long-term implications of letting the court become a space wherein the government and the House fight to obtain information that has been demanded. Specifically,
It may be that at the end of the day the government will continue to refuse to produce documents. In the same way that the government cannot use the courts to withhold documents, the House cannot go to court to compel the government to produce them, or to order witnesses to attend proceedings. It could also invite disobedience of witnesses, requiring the House to either drop inquiries or involve the courts to compel attendance or evidence. Allowing, or requiring, the government and the House to resolve their differences in the courts would not only be contrary to the constitutional principles of Article 9, but “would inevitably create delays, disruption, uncertainties and costs which would hold up the nation’s business and on that account would be unacceptable even if, in the end, the Speaker’s rulings were vindicated as entirely proper” (Canada (House of Commons) v. Vaid [2005]). In short, the courts have no business intervening one way or the other.
Throughout the discussions that have taken place about this issue in Canada, what has been most striking is that the national security commentators and elites have envisioned that the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP) could (and should) be tasked to resolve any and all particularly sensitive national security issues that might be of interest to Parliament. None, however, seems to have contemplated that Parliament, itself, might take issue with the government trying to exclude Parliament from engaging in assessments of the government’s national security decisions nor that issue would be taken when topics of interest to Parliamentarians were punted into an executive body, wherein their fellow Members of Parliament on the body were sworn to the strictest secrecy. Instead, elites have hand waved to the importance of preserving secrecy in order for Canada to receive intelligence from allies, as well as asserted that the government would never mislead Parliament on national security matters (about which, these same experts explain, Members of Parliament are not prepared to receive, process, or understand given the sophistication of the intelligence and the apparent simplicity of most Parliamentarians themselves).
This was the topic of a recent episode of the Intrepid Podcast, where Philippe Lagassé noted that the exclusion of parliamentary experts when creating NSICOP meant that these entirely predictable showdown situations were functionally baked into how the executive body was composed. As someone who raised the issue of adopting an executive, versus a standing House, committee and was rebuffed as being ignorant of the reality of national security it’s with more than a little satisfaction that the very concerns which were raised when NSICOP was being created are, in fact, arising on the political agenda.
With regard to the documents that the House Committee was seeking, I don’t know or particularly care what their contents include. From my own experience I’m all too well aware that ‘national security’ is often stamped on things that either governments want to keep from the public because they can be politically damaging, be kept from the public just generally because of a culture of non-transparency and refusal of accountability, as well as (less often) be kept from the public on the basis that there are bonafide national security interests at stake. I do, however, care that the Government of Canada has (again) acted counter to Parliament’s wishes and has deliberately worked to impede the House from doing its work.
Successive governments seem to genuinely believe that they get to ‘rule’ Canada absolutely and with little accountability. While this is, in function, largely true given how cowed Members of Parliament are to their party leaders it’s incredibly serious and depressing to see the government further erode Parliament’s powers and abilities to fulfil its duties. A healthy democracy is filled with bumps for the government as it is held to account but, sadly, the Government of Canada–regardless of the party in power–is incredibly active in keeping itself, and its behaviours, from the public eye and thus held to account.
If only a committee might be struck to solve this problem…
Excited Pixels 