Bill C-2 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) Committee on May 30th, 2006

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Monsieur Patry, do you have any comments?

I want to give all the groups a chance. Ms. Bourque, do you have any comments?

[Deborah Bourque]

No.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you.

Mr. Owen, go ahead.

[Stephen Owen, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Do I have some time left?

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

You do, yes.

Ms. Jennings.

[Marlene Jennings, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

Thank you. How much time do I have, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

You have about seven minutes. No, you can't have seven minutes; that's not right. I'll give you the appropriate time.

[Marlene Jennings, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

There may be un conflict of interest between the Canadian Union of Postal Workers and myself because I was a member of this union in the past and also a union delegate. So I think very highly of this union.

Unfortunately, I only received your brief in English and I would like to quote some passages. Could you better explain the reason why you suggest that subsection 18.1(2) be struck in it entirety?

I think I understand it, but I want to make sure I do. You're asking that it be completely eliminated and that proposed subsection 18.1(1) be amended in order to remove the part that says “and has been consistently treated as confidential”.

If my understanding is correct, that pertains to Canada Post contracting out some of the services it normally provides, and you're worried that it could put Canada Post on a different footing with its competitors in the sector of parcel delivery, etc.

[Deborah Bourque]

I can explain. First of all, we've never argued that Canada Post should be required to release information that would undermine our public postal service. As you know, some of the multinational competitors in the courier industry are extremely aggressive and predatory. We think Canada Post should be protected from having to give commercially sensitive information like that.

In our comments on proposed subsection 18.1(2), our only point is that the “general administration” information is generally readily available in annual reports.

As for proposed paragraph 18.1(2)(b)'s activities that are “fully funded out of moneys appropriated by Parliament”, they refer to only two things: free government mailings and literature for the blind.

We think a better way to deal with the points in proposed section 18.1 is to rewrite proposed subsection18.1(1) so that it simply says that all information as requested under this act is required to be released. We've deleted the reference to information that has “consistently been treated as confidential”, because Canada Post hasn't been obligated to release information in the past, so they could argue that virtually everything is information that falls under that exemption.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you.

Madame Lavallée.

[Carole Lavallée, Bloc, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Hello. Thank you for coming here. I am particularly pleased to welcome you as the Bloc Québécois labour critic.

In passing, I met with Ms. Carbonneau of the CSN last Friday about the anti-scab bill. Furthermore, I will be meeting in the near future with representatives of the Public Service Alliance and the Postal workers Union on this subject.

I don't recall which one of you expressed concerns about the speed with which our committee was working. You would like us to take the time needed to do a good job. That said, we are in a real scramble. I see that three major unions are represented here and that they each have only a few minutes between their respective presentations. People come here and apologize for not having enough time to properly prepare. I don't believe that this is possible. We will no doubt be sitting for 45 hours over the next two weeks. I am not sure that the work will be of high quality.

That said, I get the feeling — and I don't know if you do also — that the current Conservative government is trying to have us pass Bill C-2 more for reasons related to perception. In a press release, there is talk about restoring Canadian's trust in government. We don't have enough time to do a proper analysis. We must not only consider the trust and perception of Canadians, but also attempt to prevent another sponsorship scandal.

Mr. Sanger said that, in his opinion, Bill C-2 would not prevent other scandals and abuses of power. He shared his opinion with us, but perhaps he would like to comment further. I would ask each of you, in light of your analysis and reading of the bill, wether in your opinion Bill C-2 contains elements that will allow us to avoid another sponsorship scandal. We must remember that this scandal is the reason for this bill.

[Pierre Patry]

We are the ones who expressed our concerns regarding the speed with which the bill was being studied. We are afraid that the bill will be passed in haste. We particularly regret this situation because on the whole, the fact that we would enact accountability legislation at the federal level could indeed prevent further sponsorship scandals. It would not prevent them all, but we could thus reduce the probabilities, which obviously would be sensible.

Furthermore, in this bill we are addressing extremely complex issues. We are discussing the financing of political parties; we are reviewing the role of the ethics commissioner and we are dealing with access to information, the contracting process, which I did not refer to earlier, as well as whistleblower protection. In short, each of these subjects deserves an exhaustive study on its own. We must make sure to pass the right provisions, in order to avoid any new sponsorship scandals. However, the main goal is to improve the democratic system within which we live. This is an important concern for the CSN.

On these grounds, we deplore the fact that things are being done so hastily. We believe it is important that such a bill be adopted, but we believe that this legislation deserves a much more in-depth study. We support the major principles of the bill, even though we have expressed certain reservations or asked certain questions, particularly on the subject of the transparency of the budgeting process.

We would have liked to debate each and everyone of these issues and to have carried out our own studies, in order to give the committee a better understanding of our position today. We received the invitation last Tuesday. In the space of one week, we did the analysis that we were able to do, but the fact remains that these subjects deserve a much more in-depth study. We are talking about giving our society the right tools, that will allow it to attain more transparency and democracy.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Do you have some thoughts, Mr. Sanger?

[Toby Sanger]

I won't disagree that there are a lot of positive elements in this legislation. Obviously, in three minutes we don't have a lot of time to talk about that. Our point was that you could close the major loopholes in it quite simply with a few amendments.

I think a lot of other people have some other amendments. Perhaps you can't solve everything with one piece of legislation, but I really do think there are major loopholes you can deal with in this.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Ms. Lavallée, you have two minutes.

[Carole Lavallée, Bloc, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Ms. Bourque, would you share your thoughts on this subject with us? Would this settle the sponsorship scandal problem? Would this ensure that such a scandal will not happen again?

[Deborah Bourque]

I'm not sure if this legislation would in fact have prevented the sponsorship scandal.

The problem is that successive federal governments have in fact imported private sector values into the public sector, things such as corporate sponsorships, lavish expense accounts, and exorbitant CEO salaries. We think that's fundamentally one of the problems related to issues around the sponsorship scandal at least as it relates to Canada Post.

But certainly I would echo my brother's comments about needing more time and having more attention paid to this really extensive legislation. It's absolutely important and crucial in terms of the democratization of our public institutions that this kind of legislation does meet the needs of the public.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Mr. Martin.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, witnesses, for being here and for all the helpful recommendations.

There are some very specific things that I think we can assure you we will be acting on and trying to implement into amendments to the bill.

Given the limited time, I'd like to speak to one specific item with CUPW, Ms. Bourque.

When we had Moya Greene here, she aggressively defended the exclusion that's contemplated in Bill C-2. Whereas even Bill C-2 contemplates putting Canada Post under the Access to Information Act by adding it to schedule I, it takes away with the other hand by saying there are automatic and permanent exclusions built in for anything time-sensitive. I put it to her at that time that she would enjoy a higher rate of secrecy than the Department of Finance, for instance, whose inner workings can have the effect of upsetting the whole national economy.

Where does this reasoning come from that they're clinging to this right to secrecy even beyond what anybody else enjoys?

[Deborah Bourque]

I don't presume to speak to what Canada Post management is thinking, but what I suspect is the problem here is that the leadership at Canada Post sees its commercial mandate as much more important than its public policy mandate at this point. If Canada Post management understood that, yes, they're a crown corporation with a commercial mandate but that crown corporations serve the public good and are frequently required to act in the public interest rather than just simply maximizing profits....

I think that's part of the problem. Canada Post sees itself as a commercial interest rather than a public institution.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

That was quite clear.

The second thing I'd like to address actually applies to all the witnesses.

I notice in the first part of your brief, which you didn't get a chance to address, you talk about contracting out, and so on. In a study done in 2003, you found that 355 of 599 cases of contracting out and procurement were done in violation of their own policies, and now you have no way of knowing and we the public have no way of knowing if this has changed in any way. It sounds as if they were in some kind of an ideological frenzy of contracting out, that rampant neo-conservative “all things public, bad, and all things private, good”, was the only rationale.

I'd ask all the public sector representatives here to comment on this. How can we tighten up Bill C-2 to at least oblige management to present a viable business case when they contemplate contracting out, to do a cost benefit analysis that would be made public if it's their intention to go with public-private partnerships or contracting out?

[Deborah Bourque]

I don't want to take up all the time, because I could go on at length about this, but I would just say quickly that we're not confident that anything has been fixed since the recommendations from the Deloitte audit.

I wrote to Gordon Feeney, the chair of the board of directors of Canada Post, and asked what steps had been put in place to ensure that there was compliance with the rules. He wrote back indicating that he was quite comfortable with what had been put in place. But I can't get any comfort from that because I don't know what has been put in place.

So we think it is a serious issue. The ideology has not changed at this point. We're still seeing a lot of emphasis on contracting out. We think the kinds of assessments and evaluations we've spoken about in our presentation would go a long way towards making sure there weren't the problems that have been identified before.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Thank you.

CUPE, your brief dealt with this as well. Would you like to expand on what measures we could see to at least have the obligation of a cost benefit analysis before these measures are undertaken? The one point you made, and perhaps you could start with, is that we actually suffer in terms of accountability and transparency when public money is being spent by private interests, and we don't really have a way of tracking the use of that public fund, do we?

[Corina Crawley]

Essentially, yes, I agree. I think the recommendations we're making are very simple ways of building in private contracts into the powers of the Auditor General. That's one piece. I'll just say that I agree, there is a trend--and it goes far beyond Canada Post in terms of public sector institutions, crown corporations, and so on--towards privatization. This legislation is a manifestation of that, with the changing powers of the Auditor General, public disclosure legislation changes, and the procurement auditor all prejudiced against going with the public sector because it's added bureaucracy and scrutiny for public sector institutions and non-profits, while on the other hand there's a clear absence of anything on private contracts, which the government is increasingly engaging in for the procurement of services and also buildings.

[Toby Sanger]

Can I just add to this?

I think the first step is having greater transparency and disclosure. I think it would be a very good idea to have some sort of assessment process to find out if proposals for private contracting could be done more efficiently in-house, because obviously that would be better. But I think the first step is transparency and disclosure.

My concern with this legislation is that it is so focused on public spending and so little on private contracts and goods and services with the private sector that it is going to put any NGOs, any other public bodies, under incredible scrutiny, and that in itself will lead to an insidious prejudice against public spending in this area because we won't have any focus on the private sector spending.