Public Servants Worked to Avoid Directly Answering MP’s Order Paper Questions: Internal Emails

Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner rises during question period in the House of Commons in Ottawa on Oct. 22, 2020. (Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press)

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.

Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner raised the issue in the House of Commons on June 15, saying she had obtained evidence through an Access to Information request showing that public servants “deliberately withheld information” she had sought from Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson in an order paper question filed in November 2022.

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.

However, internal emails distributed within NRC showed that, in preparing an answer to the question, public servants recommended using “limitation language” to answer written questions by Conservative and NDP MPs, according to the Globe and Mail.

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.

Rempel Garner said the emails display a “deliberate attempt to deny me an answer.”

“Instead of providing the House with accurate information ... the information was based on the communication needs of the minister,” she said, claiming that NRC’s response violated her parliamentary privilege.

‘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.

Conservative MPs Shannon Stubbs and Brad Redekopp also rose in the House on June 20 to deliver complaints about government departments trying to avoid answering their previous written questions.

“Unfortunately, it is a pattern, really, of blocking the legitimate right of MPs to ask questions of the government on behalf of the Canadians we represent and to whom we must be accountable,” Stubbs said.

Assistant Deputy Speaker Alexandra Mendes said both of their questions of privilege would be taken into account.