Gail Alexan­der

A prac­tice has de­vel­oped "over the last cou­ple years" where some min­istries have "out­sourced" draft­ing of their leg­is­la­tion to pri­vate le­gal firms, be­fore it is re­draft­ed by the Chief Par­lia­men­tary Coun­sel, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie con­firmed yes­ter­day. UNC Sen­a­tor Wade Mark elicit­ed the in­for­ma­tion from Je­re­mie dur­ing Mark's ques­tion­ing of Je­re­mie on the is­sue dur­ing yes­ter­day's Sen­ate sit­ting.

Re­ply­ing to Mark's first ques­tion on the is­sue–which in­volved whether Je­re­mie's min­istry had hired pri­vate le­gal draft­ing over 2008 to May 2009, Je­re­mie said, "The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al has not hired any pri­vate law firm or in­di­vid­ual or con­sul­tant to per­form any le­gal draft­ing du­ties over Jan­u­ary 2008 to May 2009." Je­re­mie said all leg­isla­tive bills pre­sent­ed to Par­lia­ment were draft­ed by the of­fice of the Chief Par­lia­men­tary Coun­sel (CPC).

Je­re­mie added: "Some draft leg­is­la­tion may em­anate from oth­er min­istries, but would nec­es­sar­i­ly be re­draft­ed by the Chief Par­lia­men­tary Coun­sel." Je­re­mie list­ed 100 pieces of leg­is­la­tion which were draft­ed by the CPC over 2007 and 2009. Mark then asked Je­re­mie if he was aware of any pri­vate le­gal firms be­ing in­volved in the draft­ing process and if so, whether the CPC was called up­on to re­draft those pieces.

Je­re­mie then con­firmed: "Yes, a prac­tice has de­vel­oped by virtue of which sev­er­al min­istries out­source their pre­lim­i­nary draft­ing work. That is a rel­a­tive­ly re­cent prac­tice. The ex­tent to which the CPC has to re­draft the bills and the CPC's in­volve­ment is not clear. "In some in­stances it might be gram­mat­i­cal er­rors, it may be a ques­tion of style and in some cas­es it may be a ques­tion of sub­stance.