Information & Ethics Committee on May 29th, 2007

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thanks to the panel for coming out here and answering some of the questions facing our reputation on the international level at this point in time.

My understanding is that the request came into your office for the information on human rights in Afghanistan, and your department had no paper trails.

[The Chair, Liberal, Tom Wappel]

Mr. Dhaliwal, I'm sorry, we have two people who made requests. Because these people are very careful about how they answer—and that's not a disrespectful comment—please refer specifically to the one you're talking about.

Mr. Esau and Mr. Attaran made requests.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Newton—North Delta, BC]

In fact, it's both.

[The Chair, Liberal, Tom Wappel]

Okay.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Newton—North Delta, BC]

When we look at this, we see that your department has no trails of the delays that happened. The way I read this, it was January 24, January 29, and then over 30 days, and nothing until March. Also your department, outside of updating a House card, had no other communication with the minister's office.

Do you not see something wrong with this picture?

[Jocelyne Sabourin]

You're speaking about Professor Attaran's request with regard to the specific human rights reports in Afghanistan.

This request was received in my office on January 29, although he dated it January 24, I believe. We did the processing of this file. I admitted to administrative errors and delays. Unfortunately, we could only provide him with the information on April 23. So finally we completed this file, and I apologized to Mr. Attaran about the lateness.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Newton—North Delta, BC]

But you still haven't answered my question on the whole thing.

Now you are saying that you apologized, but the way I see it is, did you not see that something was really going wrong when you had all those things that I mentioned? So yes or no? I would like to see....

[Jocelyne Sabourin]

We have thousands of files on the floor. We have tracking systems; we have systems of imaging to help us process. It's just a capacity issue, in my view. Unfortunately, Mr. Attaran's request was one of those to which we were not able to respond in time.

We're cognizant of the fact that certain files are late. Weekly reports are done to help us manage late files. So we try. With the team leaders, my team tries to address these to the best...but in this case, for the reason that I stated before, we were late.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Newton—North Delta, BC]

That was on Attaran's. But on Mr. Esau's request, did you not see something a little bit...[Inaudible--Editor]...about the department's response, when you knew you had the country-by-country information he needed? If we weren't going through the ATIP challenge, he would never have received anything on Afghanistan--when your department knew; you had been compiling this information for years. Isn't that the situation?

[Jocelyne Sabourin]

Mr. Esau made two requests simultaneously. One was for a global report and the other was for the Afghanistan report. On the global report, the department did answer that these records did not exist. As for the specific Afghanistan reports, we did provide Mr. Esau with a response.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Newton—North Delta, BC]

I was also listening to the other speakers that you had.... I came to this committee and listened to you, and Jocelyne Sabourin, you were right there. I think there was only one minister who had the chance to.... When these ATIP requests come in, they go directly to the minister's attention. The way I see it is that you did not inform the minister about this request. Is that true?

[Jocelyne Sabourin]

This is correct.

Mr. Peterson, have we ever met?

[The Chair, Liberal, Tom Wappel]

It may be an interesting question, but it's for us to ask you the questions. Nice try, though.

Thank you, Mr. Dhaliwal.

We'll go to Mr. Wallace.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Mr. Chairman, I'll be very quick and I'll have yes or no answers for most of my questions so I can get them all in.

First of all, congratulations. Contrary to what the opposition is saying, in one year increasing from a 40% rate in making the deadlines to 80% is pretty good. I congratulate you on that.

You were clear that Mr. Esau had two requests. One was no, because it didn't exist. It that an accurate statement, yes or no? That's yes, good.

There have been appeals to the Information Commissioner on the documents that have been provided. Is that correct?

[Jocelyne Sabourin]

That's correct. There is an ongoing investigation on one of the files.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

There is an ongoing investigation on one of the files. Based on that information, you're not entitled to tell everything. That investigation needs to go to fruition, and there'll be a decision by the Information Commissioner if there needs to be any change to that. Is that correct?

[Jocelyne Sabourin]

Correct.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Other documents of this report on Afghanistan have been mentioned previously. I did a line count, and about 30% of it is blacked out or redacted. The vast majority, 70% of it, is not. I haven't seen the previous documents.

Do you have any sense of whether that would be similar to what had been done to this report, in previously requested timeframes?

[Jocelyne Sabourin]

Are we talking about all the Afghanistan...?

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

No, just the ones of this particular “good government” report, or whatever it's entitled.

[Jocelyne Sabourin]

You're asking me if I received other human rights report requests in the past?

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Have you had that report requested before, in other years? 2002 is quoted and 2004 is quoted. I'm assuming parts of that were redacted, or do you know?

[Jocelyne Sabourin]

To my recollection, my office has not processed a request like that in previous years. I've been there since 2003.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

I want to be clear, you are in your 17th year of doing this type of work. Is that accurate?

[Jocelyne Sabourin]

Yes.