OTTAWA – After months of Conservative stonewalling, Liberal MP Scott Brison today rose on a question of privilege and asked the Speaker of the House to rule that the government must provide the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance with details concerning its multibillion-dollar corporate tax cuts and prison expansions.
“The government has obstructed the work of the Standing Committee on Finance by withholding this information,” Mr. Brison said. “Just as he did with the Afghan detainee documents, Stephen Harper is thumbing his nose at Parliament. He knows his numbers on corporate tax cuts and prison legislation costs don’t add up, and that’s why he doesn’t want Canadians to see the truth.
“Parliament has a clear obligation to hold the government to account and scrutinize their spending plans. Withholding this information impedes Parliament’s ability to fulfill its duty to scrutinize the estimates, and that is a breach of the House’s privilege. That’s why I am asking the Speaker to look into this matter.”
On November 17, 2010, the Finance Committee passed a motion ordering the Conservative government to provide the committee with five-year projections of total corporate profits before taxes and effective corporate tax rates. It also requested information regarding the projected costs of 18 justice bills before Parliament.
The government responded that the information was not available in both instances due to “Cabinet confidence.”
“In 2005, projections of corporate profits before taxes were not a Cabinet confidence,” Mr. Brison said. “When it comes to the cost of justice bills, this information would have been part of the Memorandum to Cabinet for each bill, but the Access to Information Act makes it clear that the background information for these bills are not a Cabinet confidence once the bills are introduced in Parliament.
“There are no grounds for the government to claim that these projections are now a Cabinet confidence where before they were not,” concluded Mr. Brison. “The government’s refusal to provide that information constitutes a breach of the House’s privilege and a contempt of Parliament.”
