Public Accounts Committee on April 29th, 2010

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

I call the meeting back to order.

You have before you the minutes of the steering committee that took place yesterday. I'll just go over them and highlight the paragraphs.

Please hold on for just a minute. I'm going to ask the clerk to circulate the draft schedule, which really should also be in front of you.

[Derek Lee, Liberal, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Mr. Chairman, on a point of order.

While we're circulating these documents, I just want to indicate on the record that I am submitting a notice of motion to the clerk: that the committee re-adopt the 22nd report of this committee, presented to the House in the last session, so that the report might be re-adopted and presented to the House in this session.

I just want to record that, and I will pass this to the clerk.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

That's just for notice. That's not for debate.

[Derek Lee, Liberal, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

That's right.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

If Mr. Lee wants to move that motion after the 48 hours, he's entitled to do so.

Okay. Let's go back to the report of the steering committee. You have in front of you the draft agenda. Item one in the steering committee report, if you want to thumb over to June 8... Now, it's not necessarily going to happen on June 8, depending on the availability of witnesses, but what the steering committee is recommending is that we deal with the report by the Auditor General that was tabled last week, entitled Electronic Health Records in Canada—An Overview of Federal and Provincial Audit Reports, at the same time we deal with chapter 4, “Electronic Health Records”, of the report tabled by the Auditor General in the fall of 2009, which the committee did not have a hearing on. We would just have both of them before us at the same time and undertake them concurrently with our study that was just released last week.

The second item—and this has been before the steering committee for the last three or four months—is that the chair be instructed to write to all accounting officers, meaning all deputy ministers and all chief executive officers of all crown corporations. There are approximately 88 accounting officers in Ottawa. The letter would point out the contents of our report dealing with the production of documents and records. A copy of that draft letter, as approved by the steering committee, is circulated with the minutes.

On the third item, I want to point out that this is why we could not have a meeting on Tuesday. There's been a little bit of shift in the schedule. A week from Monday, on May 10, the Auditor General is going to table a special report in Parliament. It's a brief report, but I have absolutely no idea what it's about. The only thing she said was that she would rather table the report prior to coming before this committee and dealing with her departmental performance reports and estimates, and we acceded to her request. She is going to table that report in Parliament on Monday, May 10, and then we're going to devote a half an hour to that at our meeting on May 11. That's the date we're going to deal with the Auditor General's estimates and the departmental reports on plans and priorities. We'll devote an hour and a half to those, and a half an hour for a briefing on this special report, which she would have tabled in Parliament the previous day. The steering committee points out in paragraph 3, the final paragraph, that we might want to invite her to appear before the committee at a later date, if necessary, depending on what's in the report.

The last item is that the Office of the Auditor General is entertaining about six or seven members of Parliament from Mali. They're involved with two committees there that deal with similar issues as the public accounts committee, and we are attempting to have a lunch with those individuals on Wednesday, June 2. Of course, everyone here will be invited.

Is there any discussion?

Mr. Saxton.

[Andrew Saxton, Conservative, North Vancouver, BC]

I just have a suggestion.

We come to these meetings and are presented with the minutes of the steering committee and basically have about five minutes to read them. I think it would be appreciated by all members if we could perhaps have a copy the day before, so we could know what's in the report before it's put on top of our desk at this meeting.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

I agree with you, Mr. Saxton. It's a good point, but the problem is that the day before is the meeting of the steering committee. It did work a little better when the steering committee meetings were held on Mondays. The steering committee this year meets on Wednesdays at noon, and that's the problem now. The clerk sometimes gets them out on Thursday afternoon.

I'll let her speak to it.

[The Clerk of the Committee, Ms. Joann Garbig]

When the steering committee adjourns, I return to my office and I begin to draft the steering committee report, and I seek an approval from the chair. Once all the necessary approvals, translations, and whatnot are in, I can finalize the report. So far this session, I have not managed to beat the clock, but I will try to do better.

If it's any help to the committee, it could—worst case—perhaps be sent at eight in the morning in advance of a nine o'clock meeting. I don't know if members would find that helpful, but I will try to improve the process as much as it is within my control to do so.

[Andrew Saxton, Conservative, North Vancouver, BC]

I appreciate it. It's an extra burden. I think even getting it at eight o'clock is a benefit to the current situation.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Mr. Kramp.

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

Chair, I'll make the same objection now that I made at the steering committee to the draft report you want to send out. I have no difficulty with the report itself, as issued, but I would make the same argument I made at the steering committee. You are stating in here “The position was reaffirmed by Speaker Milliken...”, etc. That's fine, but there have been different interpretations of that, potentially, and the Speaker himself has suggested that he wanted to wait two weeks for Parliament to come to whatever particular sense of direction was going to come out of that before he would then submit his final ruling on the case.

I certainly would not support this going out before that, although I'm quite comfortable with the content of that. As written yesterday, as a matter of fact, and the day before, in an article by Ned Franks—we've had Ned Franks before this committee a number of times. I can recall the first time. As a matter of fact, the three sitting members were at the committee. He's obviously an esteemed and respected historian as well as a parliamentary expert. As he suggested even yesterday in a publication, there are obviously a couple of different positions on this. Ned Franks suggested that there's one particular side that believes it is their 100% right and due, and there's another position in statutory law, etc. He said he believed this would work itself out within a very short period of time.

I wouldn't want to jump ahead of that, although obviously I'm quite comfortable with the purpose and the intent of recognizing the primacy of Parliament. There's no difficulty with that. I think we all recognize that. But it's a question of under what terms, under what conditions, and under what rules and regulations and special priorities. If we go ahead and move with this now and set the precedent, prior to whatever precedent will be established at the resolution or non-resolution of this case, then so be it.

That's just my personal thought on that. It's not a question of delay. If the Speaker had made his ruling and it was in and done and over with and Parliament was faced with whatever action Parliament would take...but the Speaker left room for “movement”, whatever movement that would be. My interpretation of that was, fine, let's just see what happens on that.

We've had many people from all sides of the coin now who have actually made comment on the Speaker's ruling. I certainly don't take issue with the Speaker's ruling on this. But what I am suggesting is, if we jump that two weeks ahead of his final consideration, or the final deliberation or direction, and send this out to the departments, it could be exactly in tune, but there also might be a modification, a change. I don't know. I can't predict, and I have no ability to be able to do so. Personally, I guess we're closer to 10 days premature now, or whatever the timeline would be.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you, Mr. Kramp.

Mr. Saxton.

[Andrew Saxton, Conservative, North Vancouver, BC]

I'd just like to follow up on what Mr. Kramp said.

You know, we've waited quite a long time already, so I think an extra two weeks would not be out of line. I agree that we don't know what's going to happen in the next two weeks. Perhaps if we wait, maybe the letter will go with the same wording it has now, but maybe not. My recommendation is, since we've waited this long already, an extra two weeks should not be too onerous for us to wait to find out what happens after the Speaker rules in two weeks.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Mr. Young is on the list right now. I don't have you on the list.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

I've been on the list for some time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Not on our list. My apologies.

Mr. Young, then Mr. Christopherson, and then Mr. Lee.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

Could you clarify for me, Mr. Chair, if we are in camera now?

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

No, we're not.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

I'm really concerned about sending this letter. I think it's premature, to say the least. The position of the Speaker was to direct Parliament to come to an agreement on this. That's the position; it's an unresolved situation.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

You're wrong, Terence.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Order, please.

Mr. Young has the floor.

Mr. Young, you have the floor, and we will have one speaker at a time.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

The matter is not closed. The Prime Minister said he will not direct civil servants to break the law and that he will not release information that would put Canadian troops in the field at risk.

It's unresolved, so it's inappropriate to send this letter right now until the matter is resolved.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

I have Mr. Christopherson and then Mr. Lee on the list.

Before I turn it over to Mr. Christopherson, I do want to caution members not to draw too close a connection between this case and the case that was before the ruling of the Speaker—although we did mention it in the letter. We can take it out, by the way. I would be quite comfortable with taking that out.

The issue before the House involved the supremacy of Parliament to send for persons, papers, or records. Of course, there is the responsibility and expectation of Parliament that it will protect national security interests and negotiations between countries—there's a whole host of such issues—but the fundamental principle set out in our legal counsel's letter was that we had the right. Now, in the case before us, it had absolutely nothing to do with national security. It involved tapes that were actually of a public meeting. It is not a national security issue. So I caution members not to draw too close a connection between that case and the case that's before us, which is extremely simple and basically goes to the heart of whether or not Parliament has these powers.

Having said that, Mr. Christopherson, you have the floor.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

I so fundamentally disagree with my Conservative colleagues. The fact is that the ruling was very clear on the principle of whether or not Parliament is paramount in being able to demand papers, documents, and persons. He was very clear.

We already held off waiting for that. The suggestion that we need to wait to see if this changes--it's not going to change. He affirmed the fundamental principle. The reason there are two weeks is that we have an issue with the Prime Minister, who is not necessarily of the same mind at this point. The two weeks are to try to avoid a constitutional crisis on the instant case, but on the issue, if you were in the House or if you read the ruling, it's very clear. The fundamental, paramount right of the House of Commons and its committees to demand those papers and persons is affirmed, period, full stop.

The situation where we have a lawyer coming in from one of our departments and telling us we can't have a document because our rights are superseded by the privacy laws is not accurate. This letter is to tell those lawyers not to dare to come in here again and try to give us any reason why they're not tabling documents that we've ordered to be produced. If there are national security items, privacy concerns, in the instant case, we make accommodations, as we did. We met in camera and reviewed some of this. At no time did we suspend our right to have that document provided in its fullest form just because we decided to take a look at it and make a determination on what we wanted to allow to be made public, having concern for others' rights or whatever, in the instant case, in front of us in the House. It's national security.

All that is secondary to the issue. I don't need to wait. I'm concerned that if this committee votes to wait, then the majority of this committee didn't get what the Speaker said. The Speaker said clearly that Parliament's powers and rights are paramount. All this does is to let the departments and the deputies and the accounting officers know that if you roll in here with some lawyer, trying to tell us there's any reason why we can't have documents, there's going to be hell to pay.

I forgot we're in public. I apologize for the language.

If you remember when we had Mr. Walsh at the end of the table--my description is probably a little over the top--I thought he was going to come over the table at that lawyer. He was so upset that she would dare to say there was any legislation or any statute, anything, that was of a higher priority than Parliament's rights.

This letter, in my opinion, is dead accurate, and it goes now.

Waiting two weeks...you might as well wait two months. There's no more relevance to that two weeks than there is to two months. The fundamental principle was reaffirmed.

Mr. Chair, please don't take out the referral to April 27. That's a red letter day in the life of Parliament, and I'd like to see it pushed forward.

Anyway, there we go.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

It's the committee's decision, Mr. Christopherson.

Mr. Lee.