Mr. Speaker, it is always a pleasure to rise on behalf of the people from Kamloops—Thompson—Nicola, though today I rise for the second time, in my time as a member, on a question of privilege. I do not know that members really relish rising on a question of privilege, because it means something has gone astray in the process.
I rise based on an event that occurred on July 28, 2025. I was with the member for Cloverdale—Langley City, and I visited Fraser Valley Institution, which is a women's facility in the Abbotsford area. The interference amounted, I believe, to obstruction and interference in our ability to fulfill our parliamentary responsibilities. Therefore, a breach of parliamentary privilege ensued.
On July 28 of this year, my colleague and I attended the jail, a correctional facility operated by Correctional Service Canada, in the exercise of our rights as parliamentarians under section 72 of the CCRA, Corrections and Conditional Release Act, which provides that:
Every member of the House of Commons, every Senator and every judge of a court in Canada has the right to (a) enter any penitentiary, (b) visit any part of a penitentiary, and (c) visit any inmate, with the consent of the inmate, subject to such reasonable limits as are prescribed for protecting the security of the penitentiary or the safety of persons.
This tour, or visit, had been arranged with uniformed correctional officers who were representatives of the Union of Canadian Correctional Officers. However, on arrival, we were informed that we would be accompanied throughout our visit by one of the institution's assistant wardens, Chris Szafron.
Mr. Szafron advised us that he was personally instructed by the institution's warden to accompany us throughout our visit. It is important to note here that Mr. Szafron actually told the member and I that he was not trained in security. He was not in uniform. In other words, he had no use-of-force interventions that could protect anybody, including a member of Parliament. He said he was there because he was told to be there. In fact, it came back that this was a security issue at one point, when we were speaking with the staff through my office. That was my understanding.
I have conducted dozens of penitentiary tours to date, and I have never been informed of a requirement to be escorted by a correctional service executive, and I will pause here to say this: As a member of Parliament, as a human being and as somebody whose job it is to supervise what is happening, which is why the power in section 72 is there, I have never been treated so disrespectfully by anybody in my time as a member of Parliament as I was by assistant warden Chris Szafron. I could not believe the level of disrespect he showed me and the member for Cloverdale—Langley City.
I could not believe the condescension. He was questioning why we were there, what we would possibly have to do there and how he could possibly be getting in the way of us doing our job. I will tell how he was getting in the way of us doing our job. When people see an assistant warden, they do not necessarily want to talk to members of Parliament. They fear talking to somebody. This includes inmates, and this also includes staff members.
We are there for the protection of those inmates. Some people may not believe it, but we actually are. We are there to watch first-hand, and somebody was claiming that they had to shadow us. Is this Wayne Gretzky in the playoffs in the 1990s, where somebody had to shadow him at all times? The reality is that the reason they wanted to do this, in my view, was so that they could get ahead of the next scandal that we would be breaking.
I asked to speak to the warden to discuss this sudden unexpected development. I was informed that she was unavailable. There was nothing going on in the jail that would have precluded this, and I have never heard of a warden unavailable to speak to two members of Parliament. I asked for a supervisor, and we were told he did not have their numbers. This is obviously untenable and just an inappropriate situation, and when I couple it with the disrespect, it does amount to an intimidating environment.
The assistant warden dismissed our concerns and interrogated us about the purpose of our visit and what we were looking for. It is not for anybody to get in the way of what a member of Parliament is looking for, not looking for or wishing to see. We need to be able to do our jobs without encumbrance, without somebody shadowing us who could intimidate staff and inmates alike. The fact that somebody did this, showing gross disrespect and unprofessionalism at such a high level, it was as if this person were being congratulated. I wrote a letter to the Correctional Service of Canada commissioner, which took a very long time to get a response, talking about Mr. Szafron's behaviour, and the commissioner did not even address it. It is as though this person did the right thing by being disrespectful to members.
Mr. Szafron admitted there were no safety concerns posed by our visit that were not adequately addressed by the scheduled presence of two uniformed officers. In other words, the assistant warden's presence was surplus to requirements. The discussion with staff and inmates that I had hoped to have, among other things, would have informed my work as the official opposition shadow minister for public safety, including preparing oral and written questions for here in the House of Commons, developing motions for studies at the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security, and researching lines of questioning of witnesses appearing at committee.
However, the assistant warden's unprofessional behaviour, aggressive tone, authoritarian demeanour and lack of co-operation seriously led me to believe there may well be something at the institution that Correctional Service Canada's senior leadership do not want us to see and did not want us to see on July 28, or they wanted to know what we might see so that they could get ahead of these things. Certainly, the presence of a senior institution executive during our time at the jail put a damper on the flow of conversations we had during that visit.
In short, the assistant warden was there to mind us, and to inhibit and to intimidate the free and candid views of staff and inmates being shared with parliamentarians from the official opposition. That conduct amounts to obstruction and interference with my ability to fulfill my parliamentary duties.
House of Commons Procedure and Practice, third edition, at page 111, explains that:
A Member may also be obstructed or interfered with in the performance of his or her parliamentary functions by non-physical means. In ruling on such matters, the Speaker examines the effect the incident or event had on the Member’s ability to fulfill his or her parliamentary responsibilities....
It is impossible to codify all incidents which might be interpreted as matters of obstruction, interference, molestation or intimidation and, as such, constitute prima facie cases of privilege.
On February 20, 1984, Mr. Speaker Francis found a prima facie case of privilege concerning allegations that an official in the office of the president of Canada Post informed an employee of Albert Cooper, the official opposition critic for Canada Post, that questions about Canada Post asked in the House of Commons had to be cleared through the president's office or else any future assistance or co-operation with Mr. Cooper would be withheld. At page 1560 of the Debates, the Chair stated:
A threat emanating from any government department or public corporation to withhold information or co-operation from a Member of Parliament would undoubtedly hinder that Member in the fulfilment of his or her parliamentary duties and therefore constitute a breach of privilege. By the same token, an offer of favourable treatment on condition that questions are first cleared with the office concerned would also violate privilege in an equally fundamental way.
I believe that the circumstances in my situation are sufficiently analogous. I would also address an earlier ruling on July 15, 1980, at page 2914 of the Debates, where Madam Speaker Sauvé ruled that a distinction must be drawn between the parliamentary work that members of Parliament conduct and the many political and constituency-related duties we undertake. To be sure, my visit and the interference I experienced fell squarely in relation to my parliamentary duties rather than other categories of an MP's work.
Parliamentary Privilege in Canada, second edition, explains at page 222:
For just as the Member is protected for what he does during a “proceeding in Parliament,” so must the Member's parliamentary work or work relating to a “proceeding in Parliament” be alleged to be improperly interfered with before the Speaker may find a prima facie case....
As I mentioned earlier, I had hoped to inform my work this autumn in the House of Commons as the official opposition's lead spokesperson on issues related to corrections, among other topics, and as a member of the public safety committee of the House, work which, indeed, would lead to a proceeding in Parliament. I stress this point because it is an important aspect in distinguishing it from the matter which was before Mr. Speaker Lamoureux when he ruled on April 29, 1971, at page 5338 of the Debates, concerning members' access to penitentiaries, a subject which, at the time, was addressed only through directives of the commissioner of penitentiaries, as the position was then known, rather than through an act of Parliament as it is today.
I had access to Fraser Valley Institution on July 28. That is not in dispute. My question of privilege, rather, concerns interference with my parliamentary work related to proceedings in Parliament. The concept of proceedings in Parliament lacks a clear-cut, black-and-white definition of its scope. Bosc and Gagnon, for their part, explain at page 90 that “there is no statutory definition in Canada.”
In turn, the authors refer to how the concept has been fleshed out in our sister Parliaments.
The United Kingdom's leading authority, Erskine May, explains at paragraph 13.12 of the 25th edition:
The term ‘proceedings in Parliament’ has received judicial attention (not all of it in the United Kingdom) but comprehensive lines of decision have not emerged and indeed it has been concluded that an exhaustive definition could not be achieved. The primary meaning of proceedings, as a technical parliamentary term, which it had at least as early as the seventeenth century, is some formal action, usually a decision, taken by the House in its collective capacity. While business which involves actions and decisions of the House are clearly proceedings, debate is an intrinsic part of that process which is recognised by its inclusion in the formulation of Article IX [of the Bill of Rights, 1689]. Not all proceedings require debate: a motion for an unopposed return, on which there is no debate, is held to be a proceeding (see para 7.32). An individual Member takes part in a proceeding usually by speech, but also by various recognised forms of formal action, such as voting, giving notice of a motion, or presenting a petition or report from a committee.
Farther down in that paragraph, we continue to read that:
On a number of occasions, the House of Commons or a committee has endeavoured to elucidate this very broad understanding. The Select Committee on the Official Secrets Act in 1938–39 argued that ‘proceedings' covered both the asking of a question and the giving of written notice of the question.... After considering the scope of the protection, the committee concluded:
‘cases may be easily imagined of communications between one Member and another or between a Member and a minister so closely related to some matter pending in or expected to be brought before the House that, although they do not take place in the Chamber or a committee room, they form part of the business of the House, as for example where a Member sends to a minister the draft of a question he is thinking of putting down, or shows it to another Member with a view to obtaining advice as to the propriety of putting it down or as to the manner in which it should be framed.’
The conclusions of the committee were later agreed to by the House.
More recently, the UK Parliament's 1999 Joint Committee on Parliamentary Privilege wrote, at paragraph 12 of its first report, “Proceedings are broadly interpreted to mean what is said or done in the formal proceedings of either House or the committees of either House, together with conversations, letters and other documentation directly connected with those proceedings.” At paragraph 113 of the same report, the Joint Committee assessed that:
Drafts and notes frequently precede speeches and questions, and members often need assistance and advice in preparing them. By necessary extension, immunity accorded to a speech or question must also be available for preparatory drafts and notes...for instance from a research assistant. It would be absurd to protect a speech but not the necessary preparatory material.... This principle must also apply to drafts of speeches, questions and the like which in the event are not used. A member cannot always catch the Speaker's eye, or he may change his mind.
Many of the conversations I had hoped to have at Fraser Valley Institution on July 28 were or would have been directly connected to my potential parliamentary proceedings this autumn. The individuals I interviewed during my visit were providing me with assistance and advice in relation to matters I had under consideration at that time.
I would pause here to note that even previously when I have gone to penitentiaries, when the management did not know I was there, through ATIP I found out that they literally followed me with their cameras to see whom I spoke with. What are they hiding? What are they so afraid of? What are they trying to get in front of or deal with?
Elsewhere, Australia has legislated its parliamentary privileges and assigned the following definition to proceedings in Parliament, in subsection 16.2 of the Parliamentary Privileges Act, 1987:
...all words spoken and acts done in the course of, or for purposes of or incidental to, the transacting of the business of a House or of a committee, and, without limiting the generality of the foregoing, includes:...
(b) the presentation or submission of a document to a House or a committee;
(c) the preparation of a document for purposes of or incidental to the transacting of any such business;
More recently, New Zealand also legislated on parliamentary privileges, following a court decision that related to the extent of parliamentary privilege available to public servants supporting ministers with question period preparation. New Zealand mirrored Australia's statutory definition at subsections 10(1) and 10(2) of its Parliamentary Privilege Act 2014.
The reality is that we, as members of Parliament, have to know what is going on, and the presence of management, especially when there is an acrimonious relationship that is well documented between guards or correctional officers and their managers, or with inmates who may not want to be anywhere near a manager, inhibits my ability to speak with that person. We need to be able to do that completely in private and to completely respect it. The uniformed correctional officers have always been completely respectful in that regard, giving us the ability to do our job.
It is no surprise that Mr. Szafron acted the way he did. I have watched the work of Commissioner Anne Kelly, who did not even respond fulsomely to the letter, and we have seen that we have been stymied, that I have been stymied in doing my job as a critic and, more concretely, as a member of Parliament, just as anybody on the government bench would be permitted to do. At the end of the day, we need to do our job without harassment and without anybody following us and watching what they can see so that the government, be it the Minister, be it Commissioner Kelly or be it Mr. Szafron, can know what we are up to.
In summary, the assistant warden of the Fraser Valley Institution, at the instruction of the warden, who would not talk to us, if not more senior management in Correctional Service Canada, obstructed and interfered with my ability to prepare fully for proceedings in Parliament this autumn. That amounts, in my view, to a breach of the established privilege to be free from obstruction, interference, intimidation and molestation.
Should you agree, Mr. Speaker, I would propose a motion to refer the matter to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs.