Evidence of meeting #36 for Public Accounts in the 39th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was reports.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4:20 p.m.
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
That is possible. Sharing draft reports is an essential part of the audit process.
4:20 p.m.
Liberal
4:20 p.m.
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
We make the copies. We ask that departments and agencies not photocopy the documents. We have the documents delivered to the departments along with a letter.
4:20 p.m.
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
Yes. In most cases, someone at the department is designated to receive the documents.
4:20 p.m.
Liberal
Pablo Rodriguez Liberal Honoré-Mercier, QC
Has anyone ever been caught leaking information? Have people already been caught doing that?
4:20 p.m.
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
Not as far as I know.
4:20 p.m.
Liberal
Pablo Rodriguez Liberal Honoré-Mercier, QC
What would be the consequences for someone within a department or government agency?
4:20 p.m.
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
If we found out that someone in our office breached confidentiality, that would be considered as a very serious matter.
4:20 p.m.
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
If ever we found out that an employee in the Office of the Auditor General did not respect confidentiality provisions, that would—
4:20 p.m.
Liberal
4:20 p.m.
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
Yes, that could eventually lead to the dismissal of an employee.
4:20 p.m.
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
I could find out, but because of the classification given to the document and the information it contains, that would obviously be considered quite serious.
4:20 p.m.
Liberal
Pablo Rodriguez Liberal Honoré-Mercier, QC
In your view, have things changed since you implemented the new safeguards that you referred to?
4:20 p.m.
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
We will have to see with the next reports. Needless to say, a lot depends on the nature of the audit. If there is an interest for certain audits that we conduct, then those audits are more at risk than others. So we will have to be more vigilant in the future, depending on the nature and the subject matter of the audit.
4:20 p.m.
Liberal
Borys Wrzesnewskyj Liberal Etobicoke Centre, ON
What we have right now is an internal investigation that you've done in your offices. It has come up and said that it appears it did not take place. In previous testimony here, it has been stated that there is no chance that it occurred with the printers who would have provided the reports. That was a suggestion made by our Conservative colleagues.
In a Globe and Mail article going back to May 13 of last year, Mr. Kenney, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister, stated “that the government is investigating the matter and will hold accountable anybody who may be responsible”. So what we have, I guess, is the government investigating itself. We don't have an outside, arm's-length body that actually can find who's culpable here.
What we have is, with all due respect, the Auditor General's offices investigating to see if it happened internally. We have Treasury Board investigating themselves to see if it happened internally. We don't get to the bottom of it, yet then we hear that new procedures are put in place. One set of investigations took place in June of last year, yet we once again had leaks of the report in the fall.
Do you believe it's necessary just to clear the air so that there's confidence in the integrity of your reports and our ability to function in this committee? Do you believe an outside, arm's-length body should investigate these last two leaks? You had two reports last year, and in both cases they were leaked.
4:20 p.m.
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
Mr. Chair, the processes and the reviews that we do are really around the physical copies of the reports and the questions even about printers and all that. I honestly believe the processes that we have in place are sufficient to protect the physical copies and that they are not going to go astray.
The issue is that if someone is aware of the information contained in those reports and wants to be interesting to a journalist, how do you stop them from talking? Quite frankly, I don't know how we do that, except to remind people of the confidentiality, to remind people that this is serious, to tell them that there will be consequences if it is found out. But even to conduct an investigation, unless somebody says, “Yes, I told them”, which I don't think is going to happen, I quite honestly don't know how you get there.
We can go through and look at our procedures. We've done that, as have the government departments. There are improvements that we can make to inform people and to remind people of this, but over the physical copies of the report, I really don't know what much more we can do.
4:25 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Shawn Murphy
Thank you very much, Mr. Wrzesnewskyj.
Mr. Laforest, you have five minutes.
4:25 p.m.
Bloc
Jean-Yves Laforest Bloc Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC
Welcome to you all.
Good afternoon, Ms. Fraser.
You have just indicated that you take all the precautions necessary to protect the physical copies. Does that mean that there are also electronic copies? Do you send out electronic files? I suppose you don't, but—
4:25 p.m.
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
No. When I spoke about physical copies, I meant that copies were always sent out in print form. Within the office, we have a series of safeguards, such as knowing which documents can be in our system. That also includes electronic versions that are solely used within the office.