Federal public servants worked to avoid giving direct answers to a Conservative MP’s written questions posed in order papers, according to internal emails, prompting outrage from opposition MPs.
In the question, Rempel Garner asked Natural Resources Canada (NRC) for details about the U.S. military funding Canadian mining projects, to which Wilkinson gave an oral response in the House on Jan. 30.
An NRC official who was responsible for approving the government’s response to Rempel Garner’s order paper question also said in an email that the “response does not answer questions directly, but provides a response to the spirit of the questions.”
Kyle Harrietha, the deputy chief of staff to Wilkinson, also addressed the prospect of House Speaker Anthony Rota ruling that NRC provided an incomplete response to Rempel Garner.
However, Harrietha said in an email that he expected Rota to “tut tut and then say it is not for him to judge the quality of a response.”
The Epoch Times has not independently verified the internal emails.
‘Very Troubling’
Rota ruled on Rempel Garner’s question of privilege on June 20, saying that ministers and their staff are “expected to provide members with the most accurate answers possible to written questions.”“Written questions and the responses to them are essential parts of the process of accountability,” he said. “Consequently, they are central to our parliamentary system.”
However, the speaker said that since he was asked to rule on “departments’ internal processes for preparing responses to written questions” rather than the quality of their answers, he said there was “prima facie question of privilege” in Rempel Garner’s case.
But he also noted that certain remarks by public servants in the internal emails were “very troubling.”
“I am especially troubled by the comments from the public servants to the effect that the Chair could not intervene in case of a point of order and that this could justify an incomplete response,” he said.
Assistant Deputy Speaker Alexandra Mendes said both of their questions of privilege would be taken into account.