Bill C-2 (Historical)

Federal Accountability Act

An Act providing for conflict of interest rules, restrictions on election financing and measures respecting administrative transparency, oversight and accountability

Part 1 enacts the Conflict of Interest Act and makes consequential amendments in furtherance of that Act. That Act sets out substantive prohibitions governing public office holders. Compliance with the Act is a deemed term and condition of a public office holder’s appointment or employment. The Act also sets out a detailed regime of compliance measures to ensure conformity with the substantive prohibitions, certain of which apply to all public office holders and others of which apply to reporting public office holders. The Act also provides for a regime of detailed post-employment rules. Finally, the Act establishes a complaints regime, sets out the powers of investigation of the Commissioner and provides for public reporting as well as a regime of administrative monetary penalties.
Amongst other matters, the consequential amendments to the Parliament of Canada Act provide for the appointment and office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner along with his or her tenure, expenses, duties and other administrative matters.
Part 1 also amends the Canada Elections Act to
(a) reduce to $1,000 the amount that an individual may contribute annually to a registered party, and create a distinct $1,000 annual limit on contributions to the registered associations, the nomination contestants and the candidates of a registered party;
(b) reduce to $1,000 the amount that an individual may contribute to an independent candidate or to a leadership contestant;
(c) reduce to $1,000 the amount that a nomination contestant, a candidate or a leadership contestant may contribute to his or her own campaign in addition to the $1,000 limit on individual contributions;
(d) totally ban contributions by corporations, trade unions and associations by repealing the exception that allows them to make an annual contribution of $1,000 to the registered associations, the candidates and the nomination contestants of a registered party and a contribution of $1,000 to an independent candidate during an election period;
(e) ban cash donations of more than $20, and reduce to $20 the amount that may be contributed before a receipt must be issued or, in the case of anonymous contributions following a general solicitation at a meeting, before certain record-keeping requirements must be met; and
(f) increase to 5 years after the day on which the Commissioner of Canada Elections became aware of the facts giving rise to a prosecution, and to 10 years following the commission of an offence, the period within which a prosecution may be instituted.
Other amendments to the Canada Elections Act prohibit candidates from accepting gifts that could reasonably be seen to have been given to influence the candidate in the performance of his or her duties and functions as a member, if elected. The wilful contravention of this prohibition is considered to be a corrupt practice. A new disclosure requirement is introduced to require candidates to report to the Chief Electoral Officer any gifts received with a total value exceeding $500. Exceptions are provided for gifts received from relatives, as well as gifts of courtesy or of protocol. The amendments also prohibit registered parties and registered associations from transferring money to candidates directly from a trust fund.
The amendments to the Lobbyists Registration Act rename the Act and provide for the appointment by the Governor in Council of a Commissioner of Lobbying after approval by resolution of both Houses of Parliament. They broaden the scope for investigations by the Commissioner, extend to 10 years the period in respect of which contraventions may be investigated and prosecuted, and increase the penalties for an offence under the Act. In addition, they empower the Commissioner to prohibit someone who has committed an offence from lobbying for a period of up to two years, prohibit the acceptance and payment of contingency fees and prohibit certain public office holders from lobbying for a period of five years after leaving office. They require lobbyists to report their lobbying activities involving certain public office holders and permit the Commissioner to request those office holders to confirm or correct the information reported by lobbyists.
Amendments to the Parliament of Canada Act prohibit members of the House of Commons from accepting benefits or income from certain trusts and require them to disclose all trusts to the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner. The amendments also authorize the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner to issue orders requiring members to terminate most trusts and prohibiting them from using the proceeds from their termination for political purposes. In cases where the trusts are not required to be terminated, the amendments authorize the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner to make orders prohibiting members from using the trusts for political purposes. An offence is created for members who do not comply with such orders. The amendments also provide that, in the event of a prosecution, a committee of the House of Commons may issue an opinion that is to be provided to the judge before whom the proceedings are held.
Finally, Part 1 amends the Public Service Employment Act to remove the right of employees in ministers’ offices to be appointed without competition to positions in the public service for which the Public Service Commission considers them qualified.
Part 2 harmonizes the appointment and removal provisions relating to certain officers.
Amendments to the Parliament of Canada Act establish within the Library of Parliament a position to be known as the Parliamentary Budget Officer, whose mandate is to provide objective analysis to the Senate and House of Commons about the estimates of the government, the state of the nation’s finances and trends in the national economy, to undertake research into those things when requested to do so by certain Parliamentary committees, and to provide estimates of the costs of proposals contained in Bills introduced by members of Parliament other than in their capacity as ministers of the Crown. The amendments also provide the Parliamentary Budget Officer with a right of access to data that are necessary for the performance of his or her mandate.
Part 3 enacts the Director of Public Prosecutions Act which provides for the appointment of the Director of Public Prosecutions and one or more Deputy Directors. That Act gives the Director the authority to initiate and conduct criminal prosecutions on behalf of the Crown that are under the jurisdiction of the Attorney General of Canada. That Act also provides that the Director has the power to make binding and final decisions as to whether to prosecute, unless the Attorney General of Canada directs otherwise, and that such directives must be in writing and published in the Canada Gazette. The Director holds office for a non-renewable term of seven years during good behaviour and is the Deputy Attorney General of Canada for the purposes of carrying out the work of the office. The Director is given responsibility, in place of the Commissioner of Canada Elections, for prosecutions of offences under the Canada Elections Act.
Part 3 also amends the Access to Information Act to ensure that all parent Crown corporations, and their wholly-owned subsidiaries, within the meaning of section 83 of the Financial Administration Act are encompassed by the definition “government institution” in section 3 of the Access to Information Act and to add five officers, five foundations and the Canadian Wheat Board to Schedule I of that Act. It adjusts some of the exemption provisions accordingly and includes new exemptions or exclusions relating to the added officers and the Crown corporations. It empowers the Governor in Council to prescribe criteria for adding a body or an office to Schedule I and requires Ministers to publish annual reports of all expenses incurred by their offices and paid out of the Consolidated Revenue Fund. It adds any of those same officers and foundations that are not already included in the schedule to the Privacy Act to that schedule, ensures that all of those parent Crown corporations and subsidiaries are encompassed by the definition “government institution” in section 3 of that Act, and makes other consequential amendments to that Act. It amends the Export Development Act to include a provision for the confidentiality of information. It revises certain procedures relating to the processing of requests and handling of complaints and allows for increases to the number of investigators the Information Commissioner may designate to examine records related to defence and national security.
Amendments to the Library and Archives of Canada Act provide for an obligation to send final reports on government public opinion research to the Library and Archives of Canada.
Finally, Part 3 amends the Public Servants Disclosure Protection Act to
(a) establish the Public Servants Disclosure Protection Tribunal and empower it to make remedial orders in favour of victims of reprisal and to order disciplinary action against the person or persons who took the reprisal;
(b) provide for the protection of all Canadians, not only public servants, who report government wrongdoings to the Public Sector Integrity Commissioner;
(c) remove the Governor in Council’s ability to delete the name of Crown corporations and other public bodies from the schedule to the Act;
(d) require the prompt public reporting by chief executives and the Public Sector Integrity Commissioner of cases of wrongdoing; and
(e) permit the Public Sector Integrity Commissioner to provide access to legal advice relating to the Act.
Part 4 amends the Financial Administration Act to create a new schedule that identifies and designates certain officials as accounting officers and, within the framework of their appropriate minister’s responsibilities and accountability to Parliament, sets out the matters for which they are accountable before the appropriate committees of Parliament. A regime for the resolution of issues related to the interpretation or application of a policy, directive or standard issued by the Treasury Board is established along with a requirement that the Treasury Board provide a copy of its decision to the Auditor General of Canada.
Part 4 also amends the Financial Administration Act and the Criminal Code to create indictable offences for fraud with respect to public money or money of a Crown corporation, and makes persons convicted of those offences ineligible to be employed by the Crown or the corporation or to otherwise contract with the Crown.
Other amendments to the Financial Administration Act clarify the authority of the Treasury Board to act on behalf of the Queen’s Privy Council for Canada on matters related to internal audit in the federal public administration. They also set out the deputy head’s responsibility for ensuring that there is an internal audit capacity appropriate to the needs of the department and requires them, subject to directives of the Treasury Board, to establish an audit committee. The Financial Administration Act, the Farm Credit Canada Act and the Public Sector Pension Investment Board Act are amended to require Crown corporations to establish audit committees composed of members who are not officers or employees of the corporation. Other amendments to the Financial Administration Act require, subject to directions of the Treasury Board, that all grant and contribution programs be reviewed at least every five years to ensure their relevance and effectiveness.
Amendments made to the Financial Administration Act and to the constituent legislation of a number of Crown corporations provide for appointments of directors for up to four years from a current maximum of three years.
Part 4 also amends the Canadian Dairy Commission Act, the Enterprise Cape Breton Corporation Act and the National Capital Act to require different individuals to perform the duties of chair of the Board of Directors and chief executive officer of the corporation.
Part 5 amends the Auditor General Act by expanding the class of recipients of grants, contributions and loans into which the Auditor General of Canada may inquire as to the use of funds, whether received from Her Majesty in right of Canada or a Crown corporation. Other amendments provide certain immunities to the Auditor General.
Amendments to the Department of Public Works and Government Services Act provide for the appointment and mandate of a Procurement Auditor.
Part 5 also amends the Financial Administration Act to provide for a government commitment to fairness, openness and transparency in government contract bidding, and a regulation-making power to deem certain clauses to be set out in government contracts in relation to prohibiting the payment of contingency fees and respecting corruption and collusion in the bidding process for procurement contracts, declarations by bidders in respect of specific criminal offences, and the provision of information to the Auditor General of Canada by recipients under funding agreements.

[Judy Wasylycia-Leis, NDP, Winnipeg North, MB]

That the Standing Committee on Finance reconstitute its program of quarterly independent fiscal forecasts employing the services of the Conference Board of Canada, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, Global Insight and Dr. Vaillancourt or other independent forecasters, as determined by the Finance Committee, with an initial appearance before the Finance Committee in November.

To speak to it very briefly, in terms of the program I'm referring to in the motion, I would refer committee members to the motion that was put before the committee on December 1, 2004, by Monte Solberg, which was adopted and began a process for the committee. It outlines the purpose and the format that we used in the whole program, so I won't go into detail on that front.

The second point I would make is that the four organizations that are named, including one individual, are only there because that's basically the list we used the last time; however, it is open for other suggestions. It's not a fixed list. In fact, the last report of the fiscal forecasting program included Ellen Russell of CCPA; Dale Orr of Global Insight; Don Drummond of TD Bank; and François Vaillancourt from the University of Montreal.

That's basically the motion. And I'm suggesting we have some initial appearance in November just because with this period of time where we're expecting the report from the minister, where we have concerns about the accuracy of fiscal forecasting and the surplus dollars that are presumably rolling up, we need to have all the facts before us.

Finally, let me say that this is an interim program that always was intended to be a temporary initiative until such time as we have a more independent bureau in place to provide us with the budget advice we need. That idea is ensconced in Bill C-2, which, once through, will hopefully be the permanent way we deal with this. This is, therefore, only a temporary and interim measure.

Budget Implementation Act, 2006, No. 2

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, It is an honour to stand in the House and speak to this important issue. One could suggest that there is no more important issue that a government brings to the House than the budget.

When I talk to constituents about the proposals that have been put forward by the government they see this budget as an opportunity missed. Quite frankly, it is an opportunity missed because when we look at the fiscal accounting presently, we see that most recently there was a surplus of $13 billion of Canadians' money that we all contributed to in the general pot.

When the government was in opposition it was very clear on its concern, which we agreed with, that before the money that is in the surplus side of the equation goes to deal with the accumulated debt, we should have a debate and Canadians should have an opportunity to suggest where those moneys would go.

We saw most recently that the government, instead of taking its own advice when it was in opposition, and instead of having a debate and talking about where the $13 billion of surplus should go, it decided, with the stroke of a pen, to make the decision for Canadians on where the money should go.

Strangely enough, the government also decided to cut a billion dollars worth of programs, programs that affect everyday people. For example, the billion dollars in cuts affected people who are working in communities, be it here in Ottawa or across the country, who volunteer their time and sweat to help out local museums. This is one of the strangest cuts I have seen in a long time.

The government cut summer employment programs. The rationale was that these were subsidies for the private sector. I am not sure if it looked at the list that most of us look at each year to look at the summer employment opportunities, but I know in my riding none of them were subsidies to private sector ventures. In fact, all of them were helping out community based, not for profit enterprises.

For example, the Vietnamese Community Association cobbled together moneys for a summer employment program and, with the help of a meagre amount of money from the federal government, it put together a summer work employment program that gave an opportunity for youth to help it with the work that it does, helping people every day.

These kinds of opportunities for students in summer employment programs not only help these community based groups, but they also give opportunities for youth to be apprentices in certain areas, to gain very valuable experience in administration and be able to contribute to their community.

At the same time as the government had the $13 billion surplus, other cuts had to do with people who are working in areas to help people who are most disadvantaged and people who are working in the area of literacy. We have heard a lot about that. Giving people an opportunity to climb out of the darkness of illiteracy is something I believe is not only something government should do, it is something the government must do.

To see people who recently were in the news who were well into their eighties speaking publicly about coming out of the darkness of illiteracy and being able to finally contribute and be a full-fledged citizen is something that not only tugs one's heart strings but, more important, it allows us to understand the importance of these programs.

We had the government with this proposition in opposition, which said that when we have a surplus of Canadians' money, not the Liberal Party's money, not the Conservative Party's money, not the Bloc's money and not the NDP's money, we should be able to debate this. The Conservatives were very vigorous in opposition on this and we agreed with that.

One of the reasons we support and we propose to have someone oversee the budget spending, which we see in Bill C-2, is for this very reason. We do not just have the money holus-bolus written off because the Liberal Party, or the Conservative Party in this case, decides it should go wherever it likes. It should be opened up and there should be evaluation. We are hoping to see that when Bill C-2 comes into effect.

It did not happen with the Conservatives because it was just $13 billion and away it went with no debate. They went against what they said in opposition.

We need to look at how the process works. The billion dollar cuts, to which I referred, and the $13 billion surplus were outside of the budgetary framework and did not allow us as parliamentarians to debate it. We are bringing it up with regard to the billion dollars and will have motions brought to the House.

One with which I am sure the government will have a problem is the rebate to tourists. It obviously did not do its homework on that. It suggested only 3% of tourists take advantage of it but the government forgot that when people are in countries of origin that is when they take advantage of the GST rebate. Obviously it forgot to ask people how the program works and did not get the right statistics on it. We will probably see the government flip-flop on that. With that program the government showed the haste with which it made the cuts and it did not build it into the budget. It was in-between the budget of last year and the budget that will be coming up in the spring.

What is happening here is that the government is changing the mechanisms of how we debate as parliamentarians with regard to how citizens' money should be spent or, in this case, how their money is taken away. That is of concern because every citizen expects us to represent them and they expect that we will follow the rules and procedures of the House. To have a billion dollars worth of cuts without allowing us to have a debate on it is very problematic. Proposed cuts should come before the House for debate to ensure that everyone is fully aware of how it will affect our communities and the bottom line of the government.

This process and procedure of fiscal management should be done within the budgetary process and not the surprises that we have seen from the government, both on the surplus and the billion dollar cuts.

The final thing I will say about the billion dollar cuts is that they were clearly ideological cuts. We know the previous government booked more than the government cut when the previous prime minister came into power. In fact, he was going to cut five times as much. We know that was booked and that the government had to exact those savings. We see that now with the $2.5 billion it will try to get out of procurement.

I will take a minute to focus on procurement. The previous government went to Chicago and hired a consulting group. It was supposed to cost $1.5 million for the Chicago consulting group, A.T. Kearney, to come up with a plan on how the government could save money through reverse bid auctioning, which has been thrown out at this point. However, the price of the contract escalated all the way to $24 million.

My constituents became aware of this contract and when I became aware of it I mentioned it in the House. We had a contract, to be clear, that started off at $1.5 million and ballooned to $24 million. The icing on the cake was that the information the government got from A.T. Kearney was useless. That was what everyone in this town told the government before, that it was on the wrong track. We had to get the attention of the government to tell the government it was on the wrong track. Finally, it canned the project after we had sent $24 million to the consulting company out of Chicago. In my opinion, that is fiscal mismanagement. We thought we were done with that kind of mismanagement with the previous government.

I could go on about all the other programs that were affected and the missed opportunities here for young people, for post-secondary education, the no help for seniors and the child care plan that is a child care scam, but I will save that for another day. For reasons aforementioned, I cannot support the budget.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Yes, it is accountability. Every day the same minister gets up in the House and pounds on the Liberals about Bill C-2, which is being stalled in the unelected other House. At the same time, the Conservatives have a minister sitting in the other House who is not elected, is not accountable and does not answer to Canadians. This is wrong. Conservative members should be in the House, accountable to Canadians, accountable to the House of Commons, the people who have been elected by Canadians. This is completely anti-democratic.

Canada is supposedly the best country in the world, yet we have 1.4 million children going hungry. There are more homeless on the streets of Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver, than we have ever had. How could the Liberals be happy or proud about that? They said they had to pay down the debt, but they did on the backs of Canadians.

This is entirely unacceptable. The Liberals have absolutely nothing to be proud of from their 13 years in power. They made cuts to health care in 1994 and now more cuts are being made today. Our grandparents and our children are in hallways in hospitals across the country: in Montreal, Moncton, Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver. It is unacceptable to take money to pay down the debt at the expense of people who are sick. The Conservatives are doing no more than the Liberals did.

[Jean-Pierre Kingsley, Chief Electoral Officer, Office of the Chief Electoral Officer]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I am pleased to respond to the Committee’s request to discuss its June 2006 report, Improving the Integrity of the Electoral Process: Recommendations for Legislative Change—the name you have given it—and the government’s recent response to that report.

I am accompanied today by Ms. Diane Davidson, Deputy Chief Electoral Officer and Chief Legal Counsel, and Mr. Rennie Molnar, Senior Director of Operations, Register and Geography.

The first half of my presentation will be in French, and the second half in English, obviously.

In preparing its report, the Committee considered the recommendations for amendments to the Canada Elections Act set out in my 2005 report to the Speaker of the House, Completing the Cycle of Electoral Reforms.

Several of these recommendations were endorsed by the Committee and included in its report, some with enhancements. In turn, in its response the Government agreed with many of the Committee’s recommendations and has introduced legislation—Bill C-31 as you just mentioned, Mr. Chairman—to implement them.

A number of areas have been agreed by Committee or by the Government in its response as warranting further consideration. These include a simpler and fairer broadcasting regime; a general review of the Special Voting Rules; a more precise recommendation for an expanded authority for the Chief Electoral Officer to create mobile polls; the distribution of the annual and final lists of electors to all registered and eligible partiers; the development of a simpler administrative process for securing time extensions for the filing of financial returns, and the right to strike by employees of Elections Canada.

I continue to think that these are issues worth pursuing by us all and I would be pleased to make available to the Committee such resources of my Office as it may require, respecting any work upon which it may embark in these areas, and to participate in your deliberations.

There are a number of matters raised in the Committee report or in the Government response that I would like to comment on further.

The 2002 decision of the Supreme Court of Canada in Sauvé restored the right of prisoners in federal institutions, penitentiaries, to vote, but the Canada Elections Act does not have a mechanism for them to exercise this right. The Government has rejected the recommendations for the expansion to federal institutions of the existing statutory process for voting in provincial correctional institutions. In the absence of the required amendment of the Canada Elections Act, I propose to continue to adapt the Act with each election—to the extent permitted by law—to provide the needed mechanism.

I would like to add a comment that is not found in the text that was tabled: I would like to know if this Committee has any objections to my actions.

I also urge Parliament to continue to consider this issue.

I will now continue in English.

In its report, the committee rejected the wording of my 2005 recommendation respecting a civil examination and inquiry authority for the financial returns required from political entities, particularly political parties, under the Canada Elections Act. I remain convinced of the need for such an authority in light of the importance of the public disclosure requirements of the act and the significant amount of the public reimbursements paid out to registered parties on the basis of those returns. I am willing, obviously, to look at the wording with you to see what wording you would find acceptable.

Following recommendations initiated by the committee, the government's response has proposed a requirement for electors to produce identification in order to vote.

Provision of ID constitutes a major change in the functioning of the polls. Should Parliament wish to proceed with this initiative, it must be very clear as to what is required. This requirement will be implemented by some 65,000 individual deputy returning officers across the land, whose judgment must be consistent: in Canada there's only one definition of a Canadian.

Before implementing this recommendation, it is important to know exactly which entities would be considered government or agencies of government and how many types of government identification have a person's name, residential address, and photograph, and to know what part of the elector universe has such identification. Furthermore, I would want to hear the views of Parliament before authorizing alternative types of identification. This is particularly important as deputy returning officers at the polls will have no flexibility respecting this identification once it is authorized for an election.

At the conclusion of its recommendations, the committee noted that it was awaiting a report from my office respecting the financing provisions of the Canada Elections Act. The committee indicated that upon its receipt it would address seven specific topics noted in the report in the context of a review of overall finance issues. These topics will include such things as membership fees, tax credits, and tax receipts for pre-election contributions.

In response to that request, I am preparing a report for the assistance of the committee that should be available within the next 30 days. That report will deal expressly with those seven issues. It will not go further into other financing provisions of the Canada Elections Act.

Elections Canada has data respecting the operation of the 2004 political financing regime, which it has provided to the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs in its study of Bill C-2—that relates to the 2005 financial year. If the committee wishes, I will be pleased to make that data available to it.

The data that is available now to Elections Canada does not reflect a normal electoral cycle because of the effect of general elections in each of the three years since the implementation of those initiatives. In other words, that's why I cannot provide you with a report on the full implications and full ramifications of Bill C-24, as it was then known.

I have already provided the committee, under separate cover dated October 5, in a letter that reached you during your committee deliberations on that day, with information respecting the implementation of different systems to assist candidates on polling day to identify electors who have voted. I would be pleased to answer any question the committee may have respecting that information.

I would also like to note that the government response has two recommendations to which it is asking the Chief Electoral Officer to respond. One of them concerns the warning that would be posted in the polls, which would add to the fact that we already post a notice to the effect that one must be a Canadian and one must be 18 years of age before voting. I'm asked to also add that it is against the law—that it is committing a crime—to do otherwise. I intend to start doing that as soon as possible.

The other one concerns providing instructions to electoral officials who are responsible for registration on polling day. We already do that, Mr. Chairman, so if there is anything I'm not understanding about this, I would appreciate further guidance.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. That concludes my presentation.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

I think most people would agree with the idea mentioned before of the importance of having independence from government but not from Parliament. I guess the question is, how do we do that? The panel is struck and away we go.

It seems to me that as with any pilot, you evaluate and ask whether this is the permanent way to go. It seems to me there's a little bit of consensus that, save for the need for a little more evaluation and probing, perhaps, this might be the permanent solution, if I can use that term.

Then Mr. Tilson mentioned concerns about having teeth. I guess that's an awkward question for you, because if you're simply following the procedures in place—you mentioned the FAA—there would be a need to amend them to give the panel real teeth.

I guess we can take from that description, as a committee, that this really is something we can recommend, and it wouldn't be for you to suggest that we shouldn't unless there were something egregious about which you'd say, “Well, if you had real teeth, there are a number of problems, and here they are.” And if there are, I'd like to hear them.

It seems to me the rationale—and we heard this, and I looked through the Information Commissioner's case—is that you don't want to have an officer of Parliament, or for that matter the government, put into the awkward position when they bring bad news to government that there's a political playoff there and we wanted you to steer away from that.

We need to address that. If this is a pilot, and certainly if we look at ways of improving it, I would suggest we take a look and probe, if the panel is the way to go—and we're hearing that it is—how to give it real teeth, and probe that a bit more. In so doing, we would need to know what mechanisms are required.

I go back to Bill C-2, and Mr. Tilson was chair of the committee on that bill. A number of witnesses pointed to the fact that we're creating more offices of Parliament. There's some peril in that, or the perception was that there might be peril in it, in that you're potentially delegating authority outside Parliament. It seems to me we need to look at the fine balance here between creating new offices of Parliament on one hand, and on the other hand wanting to make sure Parliament has the proper oversight. If we're just talking about this being a suggestion box, then we should take a look at that.

My question, I guess, is what are the tools? One of the tools, I noticed, was this blue ribbon panel of experts. Obviously we aren't experts in the field; we need more time, obviously, to understand the estimates, for instance, and people who have that expertise would be available. Certainly that was one of the recommendations.

Can you describe the concept and whether the blue ribbon panel has been used before, and if it hasn't, conceptually how it would work?

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

You mentioned that there had been success with the pilot. Could you elaborate a bit more, again for someone who's new, on how that was measured and why you suggest that it was successful? Once Bill C-2 is through the Senate, we'll have new officers. So certainly it would be important to know how the evaluation was done of the pilot. When we're looking ahead and looking at new officers and how they're going to be set up, we can maybe forecast challenges and recommendations in terms of how they set things up.

Procedure and House Affairs

[Keith Martin, Liberal, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for allowing me to speak today to this extremely important issue.

For those who are watching this, it may seem a rather arcane issue dealing with the provisional Standing Orders but these are the rules upon which we can function and serve our constituents and our country in the House. These are the rules that have been put together to enable us to serve our country and our communities.

None of this is new. These provisional Standing Orders were put forth and supported strongly by the Conservatives when they were in opposition and by us in an effort to open up this place and make it more democratic.

How extreme are the provisional Standing Orders? What are these rules that we are actually talking about? Why do we want them to continue and why does the government wish that they not continue?

One of the Standing Orders would allow individuals in this House to question the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition for 10 minutes after they make a speech on a government motion. What is so flawed and so bad about enabling members for the first time to ask questions of the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition in response to words they have uttered in this House?

This is the type of questioning that is the pillar of our Westminster system. It allows members to represent their constituents and ask the person who holds the highest office in the land the questions that their constituents are concerned about. This was never allowed before under the provisional Standing Orders.

It is logical that the Conservative Party would have supported this in opposition and why my party supported these particular changes. It was a very important move to open this House up and become more democratic.

These rules also allow members to split their time with other members. One of the frustrations I think we all have, because there are limited times and limited slots in which to speak, is that we all wish to have an opportunity to speak to particular motions that occur.

Historically, a member only had 10 minutes to speak and therefore only a few members of Parliament had the opportunity to articulate their views and those of their constituents in this House on a motion. The changes we are talking about today allow members to split their time. It allows more members to voice their views in this hallowed chamber. Is that so bad? Is that so undemocratic? Is that such a violation that the government cannot live with this?

These provisional Standing Orders also allow us to debate concurrence motions. Another frustration I think we all have is that all of us have passed motions in committees. A lot of good work occurs in committee and, in many ways, a lot of the more constructive work on issues actually occurs in committees. The environment in committee tends to be a little more collegial and a little less confrontational than what we have in the House. It is perhaps because we are less than two sword lengths away from each other.

However, the reality is that motions passed in committee are oftentimes constructive motions, policy driven motions and motions in the public interest. Those motions, historically, have disappeared into the aether because we never had a mechanism upon which those motions could come to the House for a more fulsome debate and where the public could be made aware of those issues through the substantive debate that would take place on those issues.

In the foreign affairs committee, for example, we in the Liberal Party passed substantive motions and supported motions dealing with Afghanistan, HIV-AIDS, Zimbabwe, Darfur, the Congo and a number of other crises occurring in the world, and we passed those motions. Sometimes, with the use of these Standing Order changes, those motions and motions like them have been allowed to come to the House so the public can listen to the debates and hear the constructive solutions being offered by members from all sides.

Why on earth would government members not want these orders, which allow members from all sides, including their own, to represent their constituents and articulate their solutions, to continue?

Why on earth would the government desire to quell, quash and stop these democratic interventions that allow a more fulsome and constructive debate and a more solution oriented, policy and factually driven debate where we ultimately get action on the issues Canadians care about?

The Conservatives would block it because we have a government that is unlike any other that we have seen before. We have a government not by the people and for the people. We have a government by one person, for one party. The new Prime Minister is not one who is necessarily cut from the cloth of others. His viewpoint is one that is rooted in ideology, where ideology trumps science, fact and everything but the pursuit of power.

It stems from a type of thinking that comes from an obscure professor in the U.S. named Professor Strauss. This is the Straussian view of the world that is held by a few but important individuals. The intellectual bedmates of the Prime Minister are people like Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney and Mr. Rumsfeld. They are all acolytes of this professor who lived earlier on in the 20th century.

Professor Strauss' view of the world was not one rooted in democracy. He believed that effective government came from the top, from a small number of people driven by ideology, who would force their will through a government structure and implement those solutions for a country. However, the inherent danger in that is that it violates the very roots of democracy and of this institution. That is what we have now. We have a Prime Minister driven by ideology, not driven by science and not driven by facts.

I will give some examples, the most egregious example of which is the issue of drug policy. That was manifested this summer in the almost willingness of the government to not allow the safe injection sites to continue in Vancouver. The government maintained that it needed more studies. These studies were done by some of the top researchers in the world and they were published in The Lancet. The studies showed very clearly that the safe injection site in Vancouver saved lives, saved money and was humane. These studies, which were done by independent assessors, some of the top scientific minds and researchers in Canada, showed that the safe injection site in Vancouver worked.

When I spoke to the Minister of Health he said that more studies were needed and he only extended this safe injection site for one year, not the three and a half years that were required. Why? It is because the government thinks it can hold an election and get a majority and, I believe, stop that safe injection site. The Conservatives will also not allow any other similar sites to occur in any other part of the country. Why? It is because ideologically they believe that safe injection sites are immoral and not in the interests of the public, but that completely ignores the facts.

We have, it is sad to say, a government run by one Prime Minister who believes that he is an omnibus cabinet minister. That is why we are seeing cabinet ministers, some of whom are very bright people and have very good ideas, being asked to shut up and to not offer any constructive solutions on how they can build public policy. All public policy comes from one person, the Prime Minister and a small number of people around him. The cabinet members are simply asked to trot out these solutions that the Prime Minister offers. That is not democracy.

The public who voted for the Conservative Party, particularly those people who are rooted in the Reform angle and who strongly believe in democracy and democratizing this House, would find it anathema to them that their government would not support these Standing Orders that allow members from all sides, including their own, to offer solutions in a constructive way.

It is sad to say that when the Prime Minister calls on his cabinet ministers, it is really to ask them to play the fall person to deal with mistakes that he has made.

The most recent example is the so-called environment bill, which has nothing to do with environmental protection. It has nothing to do with greenhouse gas emissions, the reason being that the Prime Minister at heart has chosen to ignore the signs, to ignore the facts and to believe that global warming is not really occurring. He is trusting his ideological belief over the actual scientific evidence, which demonstrates very clearly that global warming is occurring and is due to greenhouse gas emissions and that we have to act to make the changes necessary to ensure that we will be able to reverse this trend. It is very important for us, given our location in the world and the implications for the heating of our glaciers and our arctic areas, which is having a profound impact not only upon our country, but upon the world.

The other area is the so-called accountability bill. The accountability bill has nothing to do with accountability. It is but another example of many of the Prime Minister couching something in a certain way to lead people to believe that it is something it is not. The accountability bill is going to destroy the ability of the public service to innovate and to do the job it has done so honourably for so many decades. It also is going to prevent good people from joining the public service. We are having now and will have in the future a major problem with respect to attrition taking place in the public service and our need to attract to the public service the smart, dynamic, hard-working individuals we have always had.

Why should people join the public service if Bill C-2, the accountability bill, comes to pass, when they will have to be continually watching over their backs and continually having a hammer over their heads, and when their ability to influence and innovate is dramatically affected in a negative way? There are already checks and balances over the behaviour of the public servants, like there are over the behaviour of the House. We do not need any more of those.

Furthermore, the accountability bill has nothing to do with accountability, because accountability is the obligation of us as elected officials and of senior government officials to tell the public what we are doing before we do it and to respond to what has been done in the public interest. That is not what the accountability bill is about at all. In fact, when asked in the House to define simple public accountability, not one of those members could do that.

Furthermore, there is not even a definition of accountability in the bill. I hope the public recognizes that it is not what it seems and that the government is engaging in a number of behaviours and interventions that are diametrically opposed to the public good.

Not supporting these Standing Orders, not making these Standing Orders a matter of the rules on which the House continues, will be a complete violation of what the Conservatives have always supported and what we have commonly come to know as our basic democratic rights as members of Parliament.

We can also see that the government has been engaging in another pattern of behaviour, one that I have not seen in 13 years. It is quelling and quashing the ability of the public service to deal with members of Parliament, particularly those in opposition. It is very difficult for us to get information about what is occurring in the public service and to have meetings with public servants, who have always been very forthcoming in providing us with briefings in areas of our responsibility.

Since the new government has come along, I think the message has come down from on high, from the Prime Minister's Office, that members of the public service and the bureaucracy are not allowed to speak to members of the opposition. Roadblocks have been put in place to prevent us from being able to attend meetings and from dealing with and addressing members of the public service in a forthright and transparent fashion. That is a complete violation of our ability to do our jobs as members of Parliament in the service of the public.

The government also clearly is engaging in the behaviour of putting forth policies and using issues in a way that can harm Canadians. I will give but one example.

In the extension of the mission to Afghanistan, the Prime Minister framed the argument as being that if we do not support the extension of the mission then we do not support our troops. What an absolute pile of nonsense. That is an absolute use of our troops for the Prime Minister's own political gain. All of us, I think, at least those of us in the opposition, were extremely angry that the Prime Minister would have used our troops, who are giving their lives abroad for us, in such a naked political way.

We asked the Prime Minister's government to have the briefings and the information so we could respond and vote on this particular issue in a way that is responsible. There is no other duty that we have in this House, no other issue that is more difficult and no other issue that deserves more attention than when we put the lives of our troops on the line for the interests of our country.

Yet the government and Prime Minister gave the people of our House, members of Parliament, a mere 48 hours in order to respond. There was not enough time to get the information on issues such as the following. What is the government going to do in terms of the development framework in Afghanistan? What are the government's plans for training the Afghan security forces? What are the government's plans for dealing with the insurgency coming from outside Afghanistan? What is the government's plan to deal with the poppy crop? As Hamid Karzai, president of Afghanistan, said very clearly, “If we do not destroy poppies in Afghanistan, then poppies will destroy us”.

Why, in those four areas, could we not simply get the answers that would enable us to ensure that the conditions for the success of the mission were going to be there? The reason the Prime Minister did not allow it is that the Prime Minister knew his government was not putting out the interest, the attention and the resources to deal with those four issues that are conditional to the success of the mission in Afghanistan. He would rather use the issue as a political ploy to try to divide the opposition and to be able to erroneously show the public that those who do not support an extension at this time are somehow against our troops, which is absolute rubbish.

Behind that is a more evil intention. That evil intention is the desire on the part of the Prime Minister to use our troops for political gain. They should never be used for political gain. I hope the public sees that. I hope public understands that what we are trying to do is make sure that the conditions for the success of our mission in Afghanistan are there.

We also have been very clear in trying to articulate and demonstrate to the public that the policies the government has pursued in some areas are not what they seem. The government has trotted out policies on taxes. What it has done is raise the taxes on the poor. How on earth could any government in good conscience raise taxes on those who are the most vulnerable in our society? That is what the government has done.

The government talks about a child care program. Is the child care program a child care program? No, it is not. It is $1,200 before taxes for Canadians for their children under the age of six. That amounts to less than the cost of the cup of latte a day. That is not child care.

I hope the public understands that what we are trying to do here in this House with respect to these particular Standing Orders is enable and codify these orders in the House, which would enable us to have debates the public can see, give all members the ability to put forth solutions that would enable us to be constructive in the interests of our constituents, and enable us to work in the interests of the public.

We do not have enough opportunities to do that. These Standing Orders will enable us to do that. I think it is quite remarkable that the Conservative government that is now in power is now trying to block the very tools that will enable all MPs to be able to do their job.

I particularly ask members of Parliament who are in the backbenches of the Conservative Party to reflect on why their Prime Minister has muzzled them, has tried to muzzle the press and has muzzled his cabinet. The Prime Minister believes that he is the omnibus prime minister and that he is the font of all good ideas, but there is a dramatic danger there, in that no one person can be the government. It requires the best efforts of all people.

I hope the Canadian public understands that. I hope the government comes to its senses and supports these Standing Orders becoming permanent.

[Daniel Petit, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

I would like to add something. When I worked with Mr. Murphy, on the legislative committee on charge of Bill C-2, we sometimes worked, he and I, until 11:30. at night or midnight for almost three months in order to study Bill C-2. We had time to read the documents, to prepare ourselves and to ask questions of the various witnesses.

Today, we are trying to organize a mere three extra hours, on top of the six we already have, in order to work. I have seen Mr. Murphy work as hard as me. I can tell you he is a hard worker, like myself and like Mr. Moore. I think we have to recognize that our committee is not an easy one. I sit on two or even three committees, in some cases. I sit on the committee full time. I am able to take my time, to work and to read, but I understand Mr. Lemay's difficulties.

On the other hand, I would like to draw your attention to the fact that the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights deals with justice, and so of course there are several bills. People can criticize us much as they want for not combining them all in one bill. However, it is extremely important for the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights, given what we now know, to be able to meet three times a week. As I was saying a little earlier, if some of you cannot always be present for personal reasons—and I understand that—they can be replaced by someone else on occasion. Furthermore, that is useful to us because we hear other points of view. That is all I have to say.

That is why Mr. Ménard's amendment bothers me. Contrary to what I had hoped, this would create a slowdown. This tendency to always reduce the amount of work I find worrisome. Benoît Sauvageau had tabled the same kind of motion; Mr. Murphy was present and he remembers it. I am not aware of the story involving the whips. Perhaps they had their reasons, but I would like to emphasize that six hours is not very much.

[Ken Rubin]

Sure.

Number one is to make access a constitutional right, and not just a statutory privilege to be tampered with.

Two is to make access a fully documented proactive disclosure service, with a designated public authority and a responsible minister. The Bill C-2 clause on access services is just too weak and double-faced.

Three is to outlaw practices such as systemic amber lighting in systems and profiling, and spell out obligations of access integrity officers; do away with access officials having dual roles, such as contributing to amber tracking and working on security-classified department records; and ensure that those processing, reviewing, and deciding on access requests are identifiable.

Four, add as a ground for appeal the secrecy practices of tracking and profiling access users.

Five, give the Information Commissioner binding order powers, including the power to review agencies engaged in tracking and profiling access users.

Six, make tracking and profiling access users an offence subject to penalties and jail terms, and substantially reduce existing exemptions and any catch-all blanket exemptions, and prevent delays that go hand-in-hand with watching and tracking access users.

Finally, amend the Privacy Act to tighten up which third parties have access to personal information, and provide better privacy protection and make use and disclosure codes subject to independent review.

Criminal Code

[Brian Murphy, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I am acquainted with the hon. member. We worked very hard and diligently on Bill C-2, the accountability act. I am very familiar with his absolute ability to have a drive-by political bombast, as we just witnessed.

If there was a question there, the question should have been on Bill C-23, but I will underline that this party is about keeping communities safe. This party, on this side, does care about victims' rights, which is precisely why, and it is so evident in the member's question and comment, we like to take a fact-based approach.

We would have appreciated the Minister of Justice and the parliamentary secretary coming to the justice committee with some studies or some facts to back up their storefront democracy version of events. This suggests that these laws that they are proposing, mostly written on the backs of napkins and usually three pages in length, are the panacea, and that they do not give people out there a false sense of security.

We believe in keeping communities safe and spending some of that $13.2 billion in surplus on resources in the community. I would love to discuss this with the hon. member and have him say that we are not giving enough to the police forces in our communities, that we have cut $4.6 million from a trial project administered by the RCMP, who they so steadfastly support and so do we, for drug-impaired reactions.

I know it is very difficult for members opposite to focus on what is before them, but this bill is the fruit of the good work of people at the Law Commission, and people in the Department of Justice. It is a good bill, having nothing to do with the Minister of Justice and his parliamentary secretary and the members opposite.

[Maria Barrados]

Yes. In regard to some of your preamble, I can quickly make a couple of comments.

Under the new legislation the Public Service Commission is the only part of government that can give permission for people to be candidates for federal, provincial, and now municipal elections. And with all the municipal elections coming up, we've been very busy with that process. We've already had one court case that has reminded us of what kinds of processes we have to follow. So it's actually a big area--giving permission to be a candidate.

We're very much driven by the Osborne decision in the early nineties that said public servants have some rights to be politically active. It's an issue of balancing those rights either to be a candidate in an election or to be active in an election campaign. It has a lot to do with the kind of job you're doing and the profile of that job.

Your question on the phantom positions issue relates much more to the conduct of public servants, and a cornerstone for the Public Service Commission is that there should not be any political interference in staffing. The reason the Public Service Commission was created the way it was, without the direction of a minister--so out from underneath a minister--yet holding executive authority, was so that you would not have ministerial direction on appointments.

In this case, we saw two individuals who had come to the commission and made the inquiry of whether they had priority access to jobs in the public service under the ministerial priority, because they were public servants who had gone to work in a minister's office. Now, the way you can come back into the public service under the existing legislation, until Bill C-2 comes in, is that you can say, “I am working for a minister's office in an exempt staff position. I can come in through the priority system.” And I do have reports on the priority system.

The priority system means you are in a queue. If you are ministerial priority, you're behind people who've been declared surplus. You have to have a job that meets your skills, and you have to be qualified. If you want to go to an executive position, you would have to come to the Public Service Commission...because I think this is sort of risky, and I have a pretty clear standard on how that's to apply.

These two individuals could have gone through that priority system. But what was done instead was that from their positions in the minister's office, they had department officials create for them what we call “special assignment positions”. These positions can be created by a deputy minister. They're there for people who are end-of-career or in transition. The idea is that you have some flexibility in the system, both in terms of classification and pay.

These positions were created for these individuals sitting in exempt staff to allow them to not have to go through the priority system but directly into a public service job. The positions were created. They never occupied those positions. They never carried out any of the tasks of those positions.

Our conclusion was that these weren't real positions for these people, because there was no work done; hence, the term “phantom positions”. We felt this was not correct use of the staffing system. It certainly had all the appearance of political interference, if not absolute perception of political involvement. Hence, we revoked those positions.

[Maria Barrados]

Thank you. I'm happy to come back to the committee at any time, and I'm prepared to come on short notice, to talk about any of these issues, so just keep me on your list if you want to follow up with something. If I'm not available, my staff would certainly be available to you.

Concerning phantom positions, we are very concerned too. What we have in Bill C-2 is a tightening up of the kind of flow you see between ministerial exempt staff and the public service. But what you did in Bill C-2 was reduce the ability of exempt staff to go into the public service on a priority basis. In other words, they have to compete, and they can compete in internal competitions. I was comfortable with that proposition.

What we didn't look at was the flow the other way. Over the last eleven years we've had about 250 people come from the exempt staff on a priority basis into the public service, but we've also had 100 public servants work in exempt staff status; we've had that kind of movement as well.

So I believe we've dealt with part of it. We haven't dealt with the other part.

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister for Democratic Reform]

Mr. Speaker, let me first say I find it incredibly amusing that the Liberal member for Mississauga South would stand and try to give this government a lecture on ethics and fundraising when all Canadians know that the Liberal Party of Canada perpetrated the largest money fraud and money laundering scheme in the history of the Canadian Parliament.

The sponsorship scandal is what I am referring to, in which millions of dollars were illegally diverted back to the Liberal Party of Canada, and because of it, we have the genesis of the accountability act. It was the result of the sponsorship scandal. That is why we now have the toughest anti-corruption law in Canada being considered before the Senate. It is to put an end to those practices that the Liberal Party purported to put onto Canadian citizens and taxpayers for many years.

For that member to stand and suggest that our Prime Minister was going to a fundraising event that really flew in the face of fundraising laws of this country is absolutely incorrect. I find it passing strange that any member of the Liberal Party could actually suggest that.

Let me also say that I find it particularly peculiar that the member for Mississauga South, who I thought would have more than a passing knowledge of electoral law in Canada and in the various provinces, would make such a ludicrous statement. I am sure the member understands that there are different election financing laws in Canada and in various provinces. In fact, in Ontario, the law states that contribution limits are $8,400 for corporations or individuals or unions. Plus, another $8,400 can be contributed during an election campaign.

Even more fundamental than that, if the member for Mississauga South were actually doing his homework or chose to investigate, he would understand, because he would have found out, that the recipient of the fundraising event that the Prime Minister attended was the PC Party of Ontario, not the Conservative Party of Canada. There is a huge difference. One is a provincial party and one is a federal party.

The Prime Minister did not receive any financial benefits, nor did the Conservative Party of Canada, yet the member has the audacity to stand in the House and try to accuse this government of breaking some sort of fundraising law when nothing of the sort occurred. In fact, when Bill C-2 is finally passed, and I desperately hope that happens within the next few weeks, it will be the one piece of legislation that I think will define this government, because it is the strongest anti-corruption law that this Parliament has ever considered.

The problem right now is that the Liberal Senate does not want to pass this law. The Liberals are purposely slow-walking this legislation in the Senate. Why? Not for due diligence, but to try to thwart our government for bringing in this law prior to the Liberal leadership convention.

This is unconscionable. It is shameful that unelected Liberal senators, for their own political benefit, would try to slow-walk the most important piece of anti-corruption legislation this country has ever seen. That is exactly what is happening. It is shameful. It is unconscionable. The member should be ashamed of himself. In fact, on behalf of his Liberal senators, he should apologize.

[Rosalind Prober, President, Beyond Borders Inc.]

Good afternoon.

My name is Rosalind Prober. I'm the president of Beyond Borders, which is a volunteer, non-profit organization dealing with global child sexual exploitation.

Beyond Borders is part of a multinational NGO, a non-governmental organization, called ECPAT, End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes. ECPAT is based in Bangkok, Thailand, and I'm on the board of directors.

To be transparent, a criminal lawyer with the same last name as mine has been ultra-vocal in the media, ranting against a fellow Manitoban, Vic Toews, and this legislation. That would be my husband. We disagree when it comes to “home sweet home” jail sentences. Incidentally, I'm not a lawyer, but I'm not apologizing for that.

I'm here today to speak on behalf of children who are sexually victimized by adults. Holding perpetrators accountable is certainly not easy for children. Many abused children do not live in Canada. Many are victims of Canadian child sex tourists. Many are totally incapable of withstanding punishing cross-examination on the intimate details of their sexual victimization in our “win at all costs” adversarial system. Many are found to be not credible.

As we all know, sex crimes can be life altering, and they have a heavy impact, especially on the most vulnerable in society, who are the easiest to abuse, in many cases. The disconnect between victimization statistics and criminal justice statistics shows all too clearly that most sex crimes are not reported.

On behalf of these children and children who do manage to successfully prosecute abusers, Beyond Borders supports Bill C-9. We support the removal of conditional sentencing for sexual assaults or other sexual offences against anyone under eighteen when the state has prosecuted by indictment for a crime that carries a maximum sentence of ten years or more.

Tough laws on paper are nothing more than lip service when they are constantly ignored. This is an egregious violation of children's rights to justice.

Should Canadians be reluctant or hesitant to use the justice system to denounce sex crimes against children? In Beyond Borders' view, the answer is a clear no. Society has a right and a duty to children, as documented in all the international conventions and protocols we sign, to condemn conduct that it finds intolerable. Surely sexual activity with children is such conduct. Surely the message from the justice system to the public should be that these crimes are abhorrent and very serious.

Has the judicial branch failed in its duty to protect the most vulnerable in society by giving slap-on-the-wrist sentences for serious sex crimes against children? Yes, it has. Conditional sentencing has been abused and overused. The fundamental principle that a sentence must be proportionate to the gravity of the offence has gone out the window.

Aside from leaving the age of consent at fourteen, Beyond Borders supported Bill C-2, which was brought in by the previous government. That bill imposed on the judiciary mandatory minimums for those convicted of sex crimes specifically against children. Bill C-9 will ensure that those who sexually assault children, commit incest, and so on, will not escape incarceration. It should be pointed out, however, that unlike Bill C-2, which imposed specific minimum sentences, this bill still leaves the door open to judges to impose suspended sentences and probation for sex crimes against children.

Is jail in the community, or house arrest, equivalent to incarceration in prison? Clearly not. Crime victims have the right, especially children, to be treated respectfully in the court and told the truth about sentencing perpetrators. A person's home should never be equated to jail; that is preposterous. Sex offenders against children who get house arrest are going home to their own beds. Because there are so many sex offenders against children from upper-income brackets, many return to luxury. It is not credible to refer to homes as jails. It is disrespectful of everyone to pretend that going home after being sentenced is the equivalent of real jail. House arrest is an undeserved soft touch; if it weren't, it would not be so sought after by criminals.

In 2001, a young 12-year-old first nations child in Saskatchewan had the enormous misfortune of being spotted by three adult men. When any 12-year-old ends up hysterical, dead drunk, and has to be hospitalized due to clear evidence that she was sexually assaulted, one would think that a sentence of house arrest for a perpetrator of this crime would be impossible. However, not only did Dean Edmondson get house arrest, he also became the victim in this case as the 12-year-old was portrayed as not just a consenting and willing participant but as a sexual aggressor as well. As precedents go, this is one Canadians should not look to with pride.

Sex crimes against children are often premeditated, with some involving elaborate planning and manipulation of not just the kids but their parents as well. Sex crimes can leave long-term scars and, as we all well know, can lead to destructive lifestyle choices and suicide.

There are strong societal sanctions against sex with children. Millions of tax dollars are sadly going into teaching kids how to protect themselves. So when an adult chooses to cross that barrier into behaviour that harms society's most vulnerable and cherished members, he or she should have no possibility of what is in reality just an inconvenient curfew. House arrest should not be an option in sentencing child sexual exploiters.

Bill C-9 closes that option, is in the best interest of children, and should be supported by this committee.

Thank you.

[J. Alan Leadbeater, Deputy Information Commissioner, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I apologize for not having my remarks to distribute. I was notified on Friday of the session. I wrote diligently over the weekend, but I didn't have a chance to have it translated.

I thank you for your patience in letting me read my statement into the record.

I'm not able to offer evidence about the specific disclosure of Mr. Jim Bronskill's identity to operational officials, and a number of government organizations, or to exempt staff in the Prime Minister's Office. Apart from seeing a copy of the e-mail minutes of a meeting in which the disclosure of Mr. Bronskill's identity was made, a copy sent to me by a journalist--not by Mr. Bronskill, who had received a copy of the e-mail in response to an access request--I know no more about this particular incident than do the members of this committee. My office has not received a complaint about the matter, and the matter, as I understand, is under investigation by Mrs. Stoddart, the Privacy Commissioner. The Office of the Information Commissioner welcomes that investigation and looks forward to having the benefit of her findings and recommendations in due course.

On the more general issue of the importance of protecting the identities of access requesters from dissemination within government, I will make a few observations. My starting point must be the unanimous decision of the Supreme Court of Canada, written by Justice Gonthier in 2003 in the case of the Information Commissioner versus the Commissioner of the RCMP and the Privacy Commissioner.

Justice Gonthier, for the court, said this:

s. 4(1) of the Access Act provides that every Canadian citizen and permanent resident “has a right to and shall, on request, be given access to any record under the control of a government institution.” This right is not qualified; the Access Act does not confer on the heads of government institutions the power to take into account the identity of the applicant or the purposes underlying a request. In short, it is not open to the RCMP Commissioner

--and, may I add, to any head of institution--

to refuse disclosure on grounds that disclosing the information...will not promote accountability; the Access Act makes this information equally available to each member of the public because it is thought that the availability of such information as a general matter is necessary to ensure the accountability of the state and to promote the capacity of the citizenry to participate in decision-making processes.

At tab 1 of the information I've handed out to you, I've included a copy of that decision of Justice Gonthier. If you're interested in looking up what I've just quoted, that paragraph is on pages 24 and 25 of the English and pages 26 and 27 of the French version.

Those strong words from the Supreme Court of Canada give us these unambiguous messages.

One, in order to make decisions about whether or not to disclose information requested under the Access to Information Act, it is neither necessary nor appropriate to take into account the identity of the access requester or the motivations of the requester.

The second unambiguous lesson is that the reason identities and motivations ought not be put into the decision-making mix is that the right of access must be afforded without discrimination to all if the purposes of the act are to be realized.

The third message is that the purposes that are at stake go to the very heart of a healthy democracy. They are to ensure the accountability of the government and to promote the capacity of the population to be informed and knowledgeable participants in our democratic institutions.

The current law of Canada restricts the disclosure of requests for identities to the use for which the identity was provided or uses consistent with that purpose.

If you look at tab 2 of the materials, you'll see sections 7 and 8 of the Privacy Act. I'll take you to section 7:

Personal information under the control of a government institution shall not, without the consent of the individual to whom it relates, be used by the institution except

(a) for the purpose for which the information was obtained or compiled by the institution or for use consistent with that purpose;

Section 8 has a similar limit on disclosures of personal information. The name of an individual access requester is personal information. This is enshrined, the need-to-know principle, with respect to the identity of access requesters. The identity of an individual access requester may be used or disclosed without the consent of the individual only for the purpose of processing and answering the request.

For example, the $5 cheque that comes with an access request will be sent to the institution's finance department. In so doing, the finance department will learn the identity of the access requester. That disclosure is permitted. And the request will be assigned to an ATIP analyst, who will send the acknowledgement in reply and who may communicate with the requester to clarify the request, or transmit a fee estimate, or collect a deposit, or to notify of an extension of time and so forth. Disclosure of the requester's identity to the ATIP analyst is necessary to process the request and hence is permitted.

Beyond the ATIP and finance units and perhaps to legal services if there is a need to verify the eligibility of the requester to make a request, generally speaking there is no need for any other government official to be given the requester's identity without the consent of the requester. There is no need, for example, for those searching for the records to know the requester's identity; there is no need for those assessing the likelihood of harm from disclosure to know the requester's identity--that was made clear in the passage I read from the Supreme Court of Canada--there is no need for the public affairs group to know the identity in order to prepare the minister and department for any questions that may arise from the disclosure of the requested records; there is no need for any senior officials in the approval chain, including the minister, the Prime Minister and exempt staffers, to know the identity of access requesters.

What I have described is the legal protection that now exists in the Privacy Act for the identities of individual access requesters. However, there is in statute law no protection for the identities of access requesters who are legal persons rather than individuals. Corporations, NGOs, partnerships, and associations are also frequent users of the Access to Information Act. Businesses make up the largest user group--far more frequent users than individuals such as journalists, MPs, or academics.

That is why in the open government act that was tabled with this committee last fall, it is proposed that the Access to Information Act be amended to include specific protection for the identity of all access requesters. And if you look at tab 3 in the materials I've circulated, and if you look to subsection 4(5) on the second page, the proposal is that:

The identity of a person making a request under subsection (1) may not be disclosed without the consent of the person unless

(a) the disclosure is solely within the government institution to which the request is made; and

(b) the person's identity is only disclosed to the extent that is reasonably necessary to process and answer the request

This provision did not make its way into Bill C-2, the Federal Accountability Act. However, Bill C-2 establishes a duty to assist access requesters without regard to their identity. While this new obligation is positive, it does not restrict the dissemination of requester identities. The Office of the Information Commissioner encourages the government to include the above-quoted open government act provision in any Access to Information Act reform bill it may bring forward.

Improper disclosures of requester identities can no longer be convincingly blamed on ignorance. The Treasury Board has issued guidance on this matter to all departments. And if you look at tab 4 of the materials I've issued to you, at the second page you'll see guidelines on treating the identity of a requester as personal information.

Reports have been made by information commissioners, government training programs remind officials not to disseminate requester identities, and the government's task force on access reform of 2002 reminded public officials of the need to protect the identities of access requesters. The reason for all of this is intuitively known to every public servant, elected official, and exempt staffer. Requester anonymity is necessary to ensure impartiality in the processing of access requests.

We have seen the effects of unnecessary disclosure of requester identity. One is retribution, such as loss of contracts by businesses, loss of access to the Prime Minister's aircraft by journalists, or career retaliation against employees. We have seen threats and bullying--for example, senior officials communicating directly to the access requesters their displeasure at being the targets of access requests. We have seen discriminatory treatment of the access request itself by it being improperly delayed, subjected to inflated fee estimates and 100% deposit demands, refusals of fee waivers, and overly broad application of exemptions to deny access.

In the hand-out, I have included materials that describe a case where disclosure of a requester's identity had some of these adverse effects. If you look at tab 5, that abstract from an annual report of the Information Commissioner had to do with a deputy minister-level official in the Government of Canada who was on secondment to the Tobin government of Newfoundland to help negotiate the Voisey's Bay nickel project. His former department, Fisheries and Oceans, had received access requests about him. You'll see on page 23 that the deputy minister, Mr. Rowat, wrote a letter to the access requester, and the letter said:

It has come to my attention that you and/or your organization are collecting a comprehensive file on my personal and professional activities. Will you please: - notify me in writing if, in fact, you are preparing a file, which in any way concerns me. - If so, advise me of your intended purpose and use of that information. - Provide me with a copy of all current information you have in your files that pertains to me. - All requests or approaches you have in train to collect information on me and my activities, and provide me such information when it is received by you. I am providing a copy of this letter to the Canada Privacy Commissioner.

As you can imagine, the access requester found that to be rather intimidating. The full report, which involved litigation when the official refused to answer the question of who gave him the identity, is set out at that tab.

It has been our experience that this is a very difficult wrongdoing to satisfactorily investigate. It usually happens in oral communications, or by means of easily disposed of post-it notes on ATIP files. It usually happens among officials who are fully aware that their curiosity about identities is improper, hence there is little tendency to come clean under questioning.

ATIP coordinators are in a no-win position. The senior officials who want to know requester identities are those who decide the coordinators' career futures. Yes, there are some individuals with the strength of character to say no to superiors. But let's be realistic, that kind of courage is bound to be the exception, not the rule.

On our prescription, first pass the provisions previously quoted and proposed in the open government act. I refer to tab 3.

Second, pass the provisions proposed in the open government act requiring that decision-making under the Access to Information Act be delegated to the ATIP coordinators. Get it off the tables of the senior officials.

You may be interested to know, for example, that in the Privy Council Office the delegation to answer access requests resides at the assistant secretary level or above. The deputy minister and the minister, along with the ATIP coordinator, should by statute be made legally accountable for respecting the act's rights and obligations. Those suggested provisions are also at tab 3.

Third, when transgressions occur, ensure that there is appropriate discipline and that other public officials are made aware of the discipline.

I know there are two theories about discipline in the public service. The most prevalent is to keep it quiet so it's only known to the individual and the manager. We heard some of that in the testimony of Commissioner Zaccardelli earlier this week, but that has no pedagogical effect within the public service.

Fourth, establish a code of professional ethics for access to information and privacy coordinators, an important element of which is the obligation to protect requester identities.

To assist you in your deliberations, at tab 6 I have included an excerpt from the commissioner's annual report of 1997-98, where we have suggested what the elements of a code of ethics for access coordinators should be, including the requirement of a strict duty to keep confidential the identity of access applicants.

Finally, provide a greater measure of independence from institutional pressure for access to information and privacy coordinators in the same manner as crown counsel are given institutional independence from their departmental clients.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to make these remarks.