OTTAWA -- A Conservative MP says he wants to question officials from the Prime Minister's Office about an alleged leak about the government's assisted dying legislation.
Blake Richards, the Conservatives' deputy critic for democratic institutions, says he wants to hear from those officials regarding an April 14 report in the Globe and Mail about the Liberals' Bill C-14. The story contained details of the legislation before it was tabled in the House of Commons, which Speaker Geoff Regan found could be a breach of parliamentary privilege. MPs voted a few days later to refer the case to the procedure and House affairs committee.
On Thursday, Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould spent an hour answering questions about who could have provided the information to the Globe and Mail. Wilson-Raybould said she was not the source of the leak and was confident it hadn't come from her political staff or departmental staff. There was no investigation, she said, because her deputy minister assured her there was no evidence of a breach from the department.
A number of departments and central agencies would have seen the legislation, which is secret until it's tabled in the House, Wilson-Raybould said. That includes the Prime Minister's Office and Health Canada. Central agencies refers to the ones that control the federal purse strings, like Treasury Board and Finance, or the Privy Council Office, the administrative wing that supports the work of the PMO.
"This piece of legislation wasn't drafted by the department of justice alone. My department, and I'll be very clear on this, worked closely and collaboratively with other departments," she said.
"There's a substantive number of people that were involved and, given the magnitude and the transformative nature of this legislation, of course the Prime Minister's Office saw the legislation."
Richards said the committee should invite PMO officials and Health Minister Jane Philpott to answer questions about whether they looked into the leak the way Wilson-Raybould did.
"That would seem our next logical steps," Richards said. "It would seem the most likely source obviously would be communications staff in the Prime Minister's office, maybe communications staff in the minister of health's office as well."
New Democrat MP David Christopherson said he's concerned somebody breached their secret clearance, but the meeting time was up so the chair advised him to raise his point of order at the next meeting. The committee usually meets on Tuesdays and Thursdays but doesn't yet have a notice posted for its next session.
