Loading ...CANADA – House Speaker Greg Fergus ruled that the government appears to have violated the vast powers of the Commons when it failed to surrender records on the so-called “green slush fund”
The Speaker’s ruling is the latest in the “unusual, novel and unprecedented” battle between MPs and the Liberal government over the extent of parliamentary privilege over thousands of unredacted records regarding Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC), the government green fund that was plagued by scandal before being ordered shut down earlier this year.
At issue is whether Parliament use its vast constitutional powers to compel the production of documents simply to pass them on to the RCMP, particularly when the RCMP told MPs this summer that it is “highly unlikely” that it could use any of the documents for an eventual criminal investigation.