Rules of Debate - Order and Decorum / Tabling of Documents

June 6-7, 1985

Debates pp. 5502-3, 5528-9

On June 6, 1985, during Question Period, the Prime Minister (Mr. Mulroney) quoted from a letter on conflict-of-interest guidelines sent by the former Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) to a Minister in 1980. Following Oral Questions, Mr. Kaplan (York Centre) requested that the letter be tabled in accordance with the usual practice. Discussion a rose over whether the Prime Minister had quoted from the letter itself or from a document containing an extract of the letter, and which of the two must be tabled. Later in the day the Speaker heard further comments on the matter, at which time Mr. Hnatyshyn (President of the Privy Council) stated that the letter referred to had in fact been tabled during the previous parliament. The Speaker ruled on this aspect of the question.

The next day Mr. Kaplan revived the question whether the Prime Minister was required to table the letter quoted from or the document containing the extract from the letter. The Speaker ruled immediately.

Issue

(1)          Should a Minister table a document quote d from if that document has previously been tabled?

(2)          If a Minister quotes from a document by reading from a paper containing the passage quo ted, which of the two documents must be tabled?

Decision

(1)          Yes. It is appropriate that the document which was quoted from be tabled.

(2)          The Minister is obliged to table the document which was quoted from, not the paper containing the passage quo ted.

Reasons given by the Speaker

(1)           A clear precedent was established in a 1977 ruling by Speaker Jerome with respect to tabling a document already in the public domain. There is nothing which prevents a document from being tabled more than once.

(2)          Only the document cited need be tabled by a Minister. In this instance, that would be the letter concerning the conflict-of-interest guidelines.