Government Operations Committee on March 13th, 2008

[John H. Gomery]

I will leave it up to the Canadian people to answer that question.

[Diane Bourgeois, Bloc, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

But, you did answer that...

[John H. Gomery]

I understood you full well and have chosen not to answer.

[Diane Bourgeois, Bloc, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

Very well, Mr. Gomery.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Thank you, madam Bourgeois.

Mr. Angus.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Gomery.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Sorry, I've missed the Conservatives. I wouldn't want to do that.

Mr. Kramp.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

I thought they had given up their spot.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

I don't think so.

I'm very sorry about that.

Mr. Kramp indicated that he was going to speak first.

[Daryl Kramp, Conservative, Prince Edward—Hastings, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Justice Gomery, welcome.

[John H. Gomery]

Good morning, sir.

[Daryl Kramp, Conservative, Prince Edward—Hastings, ON]

I speak personally, and I believe I speak on behalf of the Government of Canada and a broad section of parliamentarians, when I say we certainly appreciate the fine work that you, the entire committee, and your counsel completed in uncovering the enormous Liberal scandal. Without being partisan, this obviously served an important role in not only seeing what the problem was, but in your recommendations. I and many people have been exposed to your recommendations, and Canadians have been well served by them.

You made reference to the Federal Accountability Act as if it had been done in advance of your recommendations, but I can assure you, from a number of opposition members and government members sitting here who worked on the accountability campaign and the accountability issue--Bill C-2--that your recommendations and thoughts were totally well received with a great deal of diligence and concern. Either by word or in principle, eight of your 19 recommendations have been readily accepted, for the most part. That's a recognition of the fine work you did along with your group.

I served on the public accounts committee prior to this committee, and I notice you made a number of recommendations directly with reference to the work, capacity, and responsibility of the public accounts committee. But I might suggest that four of the recommendations you made regarding the public accounts responsibilities and course of action cannot be implemented by government. They have to be implemented through the parliamentary process, and not by unilateral action of the government--by the public accounts committee and the recommendations they make to Parliament. So we're working our way through your 19, but that committee will have to deal with those four recommendations. We've seen some advancement in that case as well.

On the other six recommendations that have remained admittedly unaddressed, some concerns and reservations have been expressed by a broad section of eminent Canadians. You would be familiar with the Ehrenworth letter. It was a letter that was sent to the Prime Minister, and made public to Parliament, from a large group of eminent Canadians. It was distributed to the chairs of all the committees with the suggestion that these eminent Canadians had some differences of opinion about your interpretation of Parliament versus government responsibilities.

I would like to mention a few of these people, because I think their credibility speaks for itself. Though they're certainly not questioning your assessment of these issues, they also bring a broad scope and range of experience that we as a government, and most importantly Parliament, have to recognize. You weigh your decisions as a justice based not on one testimony or one witness; you want to get the whole broad text of any issue. So it's incumbent upon you to gain as much input as you can, and we as a Parliament--whether in government or opposition--have that same responsibility.

A number of recommendations were forwarded from that group of eminent Canadians. I'll give three or four that you may wish to comment on. They talk about the proposal that the public service should assert a constitutional identity independent of elected governments; a new system for the appointment of deputy ministers; and a change in the role of the Clerk of the Privy Council. These are pretty heady, major changes. But they state:

We are opposed to increasing the powers of unelected officials at the expense of Ministers. In addition, for this proposal to be workable, it would be necessary to effect a clear separation between the roles of Ministers and officials.

In the public accounts committee we went through a lengthy study regarding the responsibilities of ministers and deputy ministers. So this has been a long evolutionary process, not only for this government, but for many governments in the past.

[John H. Gomery]

Allow me to interrupt you, because I've been waiting for a chance to jump in.

Since you mentioned that issue, and you talked about a long evolution, permit me to point out that the recommendation I made about the accountability of deputy ministers echoed almost word for word a recommendation made in 1978 by the Lambert commission. It has been repeatedly recommended to the government that this system change. It is almost unique in the western world that the deputy ministers never have to answer a question. They speak only for their minister. They never speak for themselves.

I thought that since this issue had been cooking since 1978, maybe it was time for it to be addressed, and I recommended that a certain accountability be required of deputy ministers. The people who wrote to the government and protested against this recommendation all came from the same constituency. So it wasn't unexpected that the recommendation wouldn't be acted upon. It has been consistently recommended to Canadian governments for 30 years. I guess it was too much to hope that they would now get around to dealing with it. I wasn't disappointed, except that once again the issue was dismissed without debate.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Thank you, Mr. Kramp.

Mr. Angus.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Gomery, I'm pleased that you're here this morning. I think Canadians were led to believe that the recommendations brought forth by your commission would actually result in a new way of doing business in Parliament, a way of doing business that the Canadian people could understand and hold to account.

In your recommendations, you had nothing to say about the issue of financing.

[John H. Gomery]

I'm sorry, I didn't hear that.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

I'm referring to the issue of campaign financing and electioneering, and how that's done. Certainly one of the big issues in getting to the bottom of the sponsorship scandal was to be able to follow the money. In light of the new inquiry into the Mulroney-Schreiber affair, do you feel that you were constrained in your ability to follow the money? Would you have any recommendations for the present inquiry that's getting under way?

[John H. Gomery]

Let me explain why I didn't make a recommendation about election financing. It certainly was an issue that had been brought up before the commission, and there was no doubt in my mind that the the corruption that was uncovered came about because of a long-standing problem connected with election financing. But before the commission started, I think as part of his legacy, the government of Mr. Jean Chrétien adopted an extensive reform of election expenses and how money could be raised. I thought that the issue had been dealt with by Parliament, and that it was not appropriate for me to make recommendations about an issue Parliament had already dealt with. That's the reason we left it out.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

When I look at the recommendations, it seems to me there are three key missing elements: movement on the lobbyist registry; the public appointments commission; and access to information.

With respect to reform, it seems that lethargy has progressed to defiance. The government is not interested and will not move down the road, particularly in respect of the issue of the public appointments commission.

Since the public appointments commission was axed, we've had over 1,000 appointments, many of them questionable and partisan. We had a failed Conservative candidate at the CRTC. We had someone get a job at the Mint who gave money to the finance minister. How important is the public appointments commission in establishing a credible way for a government to do business?

[John H. Gomery]

Well, this recommendation we made--that there be some objectivity in the appointment of public officials by the Prime Minister--was clearly a very important one.

We didn't recommend that the right of the Prime Minister to make these appointments should be touched, but we thought there should be some sort of screening of candidates and some sort of a public opening-up to these appointments. So when I read the Federal Accountability Act, I was very pleased to see that they'd created an office that dealt with this recommendation in, I thought, a pretty successful way, except that they've never filled the office.

It's great to enact a piece of legislation, but if you don't implement it, you might as well have saved yourself the trouble.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

The argument that's been put forward is that there was only one candidate in the country who should have gotten that job, and since there rest of Parliament didn't see fit to hire that candidate, there's no need for a public appointments commission. Is that a credible argument?

[John H. Gomery]

That's too political a question for me to answer. I just deplore the fact that nobody has been appointed.

In the United States, which we look at and which we sometimes admire and sometimes criticize, if the President of the United States, who is generally reputed to be the most powerful person in the world, proposes a candidate for appointment to the Supreme Court of the United States and the Senate decides not to ratify that appointment, the President doesn't go off into a corner and sulk; he makes a second appointment. It seems to me that sometimes the voice of the parliamentarians needs to be listened to.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Thank you.

I was very interested in what you were saying about your concerns about the growing power of the PMO, because we've certainly seen the consolidation of power into the office. You spoke of the role that political staff have. I don't want to involve you in the minutiae of what happens at our committee, but we had a situation in which Dimitri Soudas, who is staff for the Prime Minister, set up a meeting with public servants over a real estate deal. When the public servants were here at the committee, they felt that this real estate deal was strictly a commercial issue, but the PM's office had said it was a political issue, and that's why they had asked a staffer, apparently, to intervene in this case. We never did get an answer from Mr. Soudas as to whether he was flying solo or whether he had the authority of the Prime Minister to call civil servants.

What recommendations would you bring forward to us in order to ensure that political staff are not interfering in areas they have no business interfering in, and that public servants are not feeling unduly intimidated by the staff who work for the Prime Minister?

[John H. Gomery]

One of the recommendations, as you know, is to establish a code of conduct for political staffers, which I don't think exists at the present time. It would be up to the government--and Parliament, I suppose--to decide what provisions that code of conduct would contain, but the objective, I think, would be to eliminate inappropriate political interference in public administration.

I don't think that is the role of the political staffers in the Prime Minister's office, or in any ministerial office. I think the role should be to deal with political questions, not administrative questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Thank you very much, Mr. Angus; your seven minutes are up.

As a former minister, I want to believe that the public service can give fearless advice, and that whether or not the minister or the Prime Minister likes that advice, it is based on real, concrete evidence. I think that's the best way for government to function. I'm not sure it's always happened that way, but I want to believe it should be that way.

I'm going to go to Madame Folco.