Finance Committee on Nov. 27th, 2013

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

(Clause 283 to 287 inclusive agreed to on division)

(On clause 288)

We have amendment L-5.

Mr. McGuinty will speak to this.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Mr. Chair, I welcome this opportunity to comment on division 15, part 3, of Bill C-4. These provisions would amend the Conflict of Interest Act. Why they're in a budget bill is beyond me, but they are.

Mr. Chair, as members know, the act already applies to some 3,000 federal public office holders. Approximately 1,100 of these public office holders are reporting public office holders.

These amendments are inspired chiefly by the excellent work of a senior partner at Fasken Martineau DuMoulin, who heads up the firm's government ethics, transparency, and political law practice, one Guy Giorno, former chief of staff to the Prime Minister of Canada and former chief of staff to the Premier of Ontario. He has presented to the committee an extremely well-reasoned brief with respect to these changes.

We know that the current exceptions under the act are narrow. They apply to full-time ministerial appointees. However, clauses 288 and 289 of the bill are going to add an additional open-ended category of membership in the public office holder and the reporting public office holder groups, specifically any person or class of persons designated by cabinet.

This pretty much means, Mr. Chair and colleagues, that cabinet's power to designate new public office holders and reporting public office holders would be unlimited and could be based on virtually anything. The minister may think that someone with blue eyes should be designated as opposed to someone with green eyes, somebody who wears black suits as opposed to blue suits. There's no criteria. It's unlimited and far-reaching. It places no restrictions whatsoever on cabinet's power to designate individuals and classes of individuals as being subject to the act.

The government has not indicated who, if anyone, might be designated if these provisions are in fact passed and come into force. The budget is silent on this point. In fact, Mr. Chair, the budget plan never suggested that the Conflict of Interest Act should or would be amended. On the contrary, the budget plan said—and here I think the budget plan was right—that other financial sector statutes should be amended to bring them in line with the Conflict of Interest Act as it presently is constituted.

The Canadian Bar Association is opposed to these changes. It wants to see other changes that would catch important offices, such as the Governor of the Bank of Canada, who is presently excluded from the act.

These amendments seek to circumscribe the power of cabinet to designate anybody it feels it should designate. All colleagues should be extremely worried by this kind of wording, in terms of our present and future lives.

I wanted to open up with those comments, Mr. Chair, and I welcome comments from colleagues.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you very much, Mr. McGuinty.

Ms. Nash, please.

[Peggy Nash, NDP, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I won't repeat the points that were just made by my colleague. I support them and I support this amendment.

Let me just add that the parliamentary committee tasked with undertaking a statutory review of this act has yet to report its recommendations. It's being pre-empted by the change in this clause in Bill C-4. It's unclear where the government is getting its advice, and why it's making this change and why the rush. There is a parliamentary committee looking into the Conflict of Interest Act, and we await the conclusion of its review and its report.

There have been some recommendations made by the conflict of interest commissioner, but they do not seem to reflect the recommendations she has made. As was said, it gives the Governor in Council sweeping powers to designate anyone, or whole groups of people, as public office holders, therefore making them subject to the act.

We believe the government would be far better to wait for the conclusion of the statutory review and then act accordingly.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

If there's no further debate, I will call the vote on amendment L-5.

(Amendment negatived [See Minutes of Proceedings])

(Clause 288 agreed to)

On clause 289, we have amendment L-6.

If there is no debate on this, we'll vote on L-6.

(Amendment negatived [See Minutes of Proceedings])

(Clause 289 agreed to)

(On clause 290)

Colleagues, we have a whole series of amendments. The first amendment is PV-20.

Ms. May, you have about five minutes. Do you want to address all of your amendments in this clause?

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

If that's your wish, Mr. Chair. I don't mind.

They're a bit less coherent than some of the other blocks I've addressed because they address different parts moving into division 16, the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.

I can work through them in one go, if that's—

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

You can take two slots.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

I'll do what I've been doing and try to get through all of them, but they don't flow quite as well, so just bear with me.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

That's fine.

We'll have you address your amendments first.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

The first one, PV-20, is speaking to a section on page 226. We're now dealing with, of course, a new scheme under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act premised on a two-step process based on an “expression of interest” to bring prospective new Canadians to Canada.

The expression of interest scheme also, of course, involves confidential information, so the first of my amendments deals with the fact that the amendment, as drafted in proposed paragraph 10.3(1)(g) is overly broad as drafted in referring to entities, so the personal information the minister may disclose under the subsequent proposed section 10.4 is based on it being able to be disclosed to “entities”.

Now, all the evidence before the committee suggested that the only entities we know of are provinces and territories that are part of the overall placement of skilled workers coming to Canada, so there's no reason, based on the evidence before this committee at any rate, to leave this overly broad term, because personal information is personal, and protection of the privacy information of prospective Canadians and new Canadians is important. The suggestion in PV-20 is quite straightforward: rather than use the word “entities”, we would use the term “provinces and territories to which that information may be disclosed”.

The next one, PV-21, is on the next page. Actually, all of my next amendments cluster in this area, which is dealing with instructions that are given in relation to new information for personal information that can be disclosed. Certainly, the immigration law section of the Canadian Bar Association is the source of most of my amendments. I looked at their evidence and tried to craft some amendments to deal with their concerns. As Mario Bellissimo, the chair of that immigration law section, noted before you, “If the department is aware of who they are identifying, it would be best in the spirit of transparency to identify those bodies...”.

Moving on to PV-21, again the CBA expressed significant concern. The amendment I'm proposing would delete proposed subsection 10.3(5) which states that the minister can, by instruction, “provide for criteria that are more stringent than” current “criteria or requirements” under any other division of the act. Again, this is overly broad language and could impact other sections of the act that have nothing to do with this particular scheme, the expression of interest scheme.

Moving on to my amendment PV-22, this is simply to clarify that no matter what we might infer from proposed subsection 10.3(3), we want to ensure in amendment PV-22 that nothing can be seen to have retroactive effect. That would be a change on page 227, adding proposed subsection 10.3(6) to ensure that ministerial instruction could not have “retroactive effect”.

Moving on to amendment PV-23, again we're still on page 227 at clause 290, and again we have further transparency directions around these instructions. This again is based on advice that was given to the committee from the Canadian Bar Association immigration law section, and it's the same about another approach to instructions, as found in my amendment number PV-24, which is that instructions that are given “under subsection (1) shall be treated as proposed regulations referred to in subsection 5(2)” and then “shall be laid before the House”. That's the key thing. It's to provide more transparency and a further opportunity to stay on top of this process.

Last, since this is a new scheme of legislation, amendment PV-26 would put forward a requirement that within two years after the provisions of this division coming into effect, once we're into an expression of interest process, that there be “a comprehensive review” on the impact of this new approach, and that the review be undertaken by a committee of the House of Commons, and there of course would be a public review.

I'm sorry for running through them rather quickly, but they all deal with the fundamental point that we want to make sure that this expression of interest is proper, and that the process surrounding it is drafted in such a way that we don't inadvertently open too much disclosure of private information, fail to direct where the information can go, and have overly broad permission for instructions from the minister, and that we also ensure transparency and accountability by having a review two years after the new system is in place.

I think that covers it, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you very much, Ms. May.

We also have amendment L-7.

Mr. Brison, do you want to address that amendment?

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

Yes.

Our concern is that ministerial instructions, unlike regulations, have no required public notice period. As such, a minister can change important aspects of the immigration system without any forewarning or advance notice to those who will actually be affected. We saw evidence of this with the recent changes to the Canadian experience class, as an example.

This amendment would create a notice period of 30 days when the minister would publish new ministerial instructions in the Canada Gazette. The only substantive change is providing 30 days of notification.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you very much for that.

We also have amendments NDP-17.1, NDP-18, and NDP-18.1.

Go ahead, please, Ms. Nash.

[Peggy Nash, NDP, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Mr. Chair, as my colleagues have said, this expression of interest system comes through the minister's new power to issue ministerial instructions that will bring this new system into effect, but without being able to access those instructions and provide a public opportunity to respond, we have no way of knowing if this is providing an adequate review of the system or not.

We have amendments that would provide a proper and public review of this system once the instructions were public. Specifically, it would require the minister to publish any proposed instructions for consultation for a period of 60 days, and to consider the feedback before making them final.

It adds a requirement to review the application of these changes every three years after they come into force, and each year thereafter, by a House of Commons committee. It's just a check and balance so that we can measure and evaluate the impact of this new system, the expression of interest system. As above, it details the broader role of the committee in that regard.

That's the essence of the three amendments the NDP is proposing.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Is there further debate?

Colleagues, do you want me to group these by party, or do you want to go successively with each one?

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

Each one, because they might want to support the Liberal moderate ones....

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

We will do a vote on PV-20, and that will apply to—

[An hon. member]

Mr. Chair—

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Is it on this, Mr. Jean?

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

Mr. Chair, I do have one question in relation to PV-20.

I wasn't sure from what I heard, but it seemed that Ms. May was actually restricting the persons who might be considered as interested entities to specifically territories and provinces.

I was wondering if that was what she suggested in her—

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

May I respond?

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Yes, I think we'll have Ms. May respond to that.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

No, it's not a question of who are the interested entities; it's a question of to whom private information may be disclosed.

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

Mr. Chair, why is she restricting it to just the provinces and territories, as it seems here?

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

The evidence before the committee is that right now they're the only entities that anyone could imagine were interested. If it were left as vague as “entities”, it could eventually be disclosed to, for instance, private sector corporations. It could be disclosed to others, such as private sector future employers. It's one place where, when you're dealing with privacy information, one would like precision in the language.

Since the only evidence before the committee that I could find in the transcripts of who the entities might be mentioned provinces and territories, why not say that rather than leave it overly broad?