Public Accounts Committee on March 23rd, 2023

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

In the second paragraph, it would be the same changes—“electronic or recording devices of any kind” in line number four, and it would end, after the word “copies”, with “and that no notes may be taken out of the room”.

Then, Mr. Chair—and I don't know how we would best amend that—I think there would also be an agreement that support staff at the meeting would not look at the documents. The documents would be handed only to the committee members, and the support staff, one of the member's team, could be in the room but not look at the document itself.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Are you talking about political support staff? That, I assume, would not cover the analysts or the clerk.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Right.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

All right. That's political support staff.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Well, my understanding from Nathalie was that she means support staff to be the one person that everybody gets to have in the room. I just want to clarify with the committee members—we may not actually have to amend the motion—that this one person would not actually look at the document itself.

I'll hand the amendment to the clerk.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Sure.

Just give me a second, Mr. Genuis. I'm going to make sure that the hand-off is complete here.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Mr. Chair, can I ask a question of you and the clerk?

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Yes.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Apparently Health Canada has redacted versions of them.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Yes.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Can we get access to those?

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

I'm going to ask them for them, yes.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Thanks.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Before I go to Mr. Genuis, I want to make sure the clerk is comfortable with his notes here.

[The Clerk]

Sure. I'll need to draft it, but if the committee is in agreement....

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

I think we are, but I do want to hear from a few more members. I also want to get the clerk's interpretation of the timing on this as well, but first I'll hear from Mr. Genuis.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

I'm curious about what other colleagues think. I do think it's a bit hokey to say that we can have staff in the room but they can't look at the documents.

If I come in with a research analyst from my team and have a document but I can't give it to them, and then I read certain sections of it to get their opinion of it, they're still getting the information. Presumably, the purpose of having the staff there is to have a conversation and research support, but if I have to verbally read them the section so we can discuss it, instead of their being able to look at it and read it at the same time that I read it, I don't know what's achieved by that.

If you can't bring notes out of the room, if you can't bring in any kind of recording devices.... Of course, you're not allowed to leak, and there are parliamentary sanctions associated with leaking, but beyond that I think there are significant measures to prevent individuals or the one staff they bring in from leaking information. It's pretty standard that in camera we have a staff member.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Could we have an NDA for the staff member?

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

I don't know.

I'm curious to know what others think, but it seems to me that it makes sense to have some minimal number of our support staff who are able to assist us in these things, as is the common practice. If they're in the room already, then having them able to look at the piece of paper instead of having it read to them just seems sensible.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Mr. Fragiskatos, go ahead.

[Peter Fragiskatos, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

To be frank, Mr. Chair, I think we have something in front of us that we should all agree on. I think this is something that we've collaborated on. I think we've come together in a very good way, in a very professional way, and have found a compromise.

On Mr. Genuis's point, I get where he's coming from; however, if we are to take the idea of parliamentary privilege to its logical conclusion, it is a privilege that extends to members of Parliament, with all due respect to staff members. It is a privilege that is held only by members of Parliament. For that reason, I don't think we can play around here in terms of having the documents viewed by staff members. It's either a sacrosanct principle or it's not, and these are documents that only MPs ought to be able to see, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Okay. I'll come back to you, but I have Mr. McCauley first.

Go ahead.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

I have a question for everyone. I don't recall if the motion said how long we'd have access. I'd rather have someone with me to help me through, but that being said, if we have added time to access these, whether it's over a one-week period by setting appointments with the clerk.... Several of us have days that are just.... It's not available to us to get away from our other committees. It's fine without staff as long as we have enough time to actually review them all properly.

I'm not putting out a suggestion; I just want to make sure that it's part of our discussion somewhere, or that somewhere we have the understanding that there will be a decent period of time that we can get in—not one month, but at least maybe over a week for a couple of hours here or there.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

I think that's reasonable.

Now, before I turn to....

I saw your hands go up at the same time, so you can decide who's first.

Ms. Shanahan, do you want to go first?

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

Yes, and it's along these same lines. I've gone through this exercise once before, in the ethics committee.

It was only the parliamentarians that were in the room, but it was over the course of a week. We would just go in and spend however much time we needed to review the material. We would leave and could come back and review again. It was quite a stack of documents, I remember, so it was not something that you could do in just one sitting.