Government House Leader John Baird says the Public Works department will not give an opposition-dominated Commons committee the e-mails it had demanded of a former ministerial staffer who stopped the release of an access request.
In a letter this week to Jacques Maziade, the clerk of the Commons committee on access to information, privacy and ethics, Mr. Baird said the government would not be acceding to the request.
“The fundamental constitutional principle of responsible government, which is integral to the supremacy of Parliament, provides that ministers are the ones accountable to Parliament, not members of their staff are responsible to Parliament,” Mr. Baird wrote in the letter, which was obtained by The Globe.
The committee asked in June for all emails sent between July of 2008 and Jan. 19, 2010 by Sébastien Togneri, a former aide to then-Public Works minister Christian Paradis, to officials who worked within the access-to-information branch of the department.
The committee also wanted all correspondence sent during the same period between Mr. Togneri and the department’s director of access to information as well as any e-mails between Mr. Tognieri and Conservative staffers Jillian Andrews and Isabelle Bouchard.
Mr. Tognieri told the committee he made a mistake when he ordered that department staff “unrelease” documents that were about to be sent to a reporter who had requested them under Access to Information legislation. After his testimony, the government said it would no longer allow staffers to be hauled before Commons committees and would send ministers in their stead.
Now the government is equally unwilling to hand over staff-generated e-mails.
“By long-standing convention, such communications are protected from disclosure,” Mr. Baird wrote. “Ministers are responsible to Parliament for decisions and actions taken. Political communication that may or may not be related to those decision and actions does not affect the ministerial responsibility for them and, according to parliamentary and constitutional convention, is never disclosed.”
Finally, Mr. Baird wrote, Parliament’s “power to call for persons and papers has never been exercised to give a parliamentary majority access to such records and the internal communication of a parliamentary minority. Such interference would be unprecedented and abusive.”
The letter will be forwarded this week to opposition members of the committee, who will undoubtedly craft a response in time for Parliament’s return in September.
