Evidence of meeting #10 for Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics in the 39th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was requests.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4:50 p.m.
Liberal
Jim Peterson Liberal Willowdale, ON
Let me be clear. Can a minister's staff be apprised of the content of the request?
4:50 p.m.
Vice-President, Public Affairs, Canadian Newspaper Association
How can a question be a matter of national security? The answer--
4:50 p.m.
Liberal
Jim Peterson Liberal Willowdale, ON
Of course, because as a minister, often you want to know about what you're going to be hit with the next day in question period or the next time you scrum. If an access to information has gone out from your department, and you're hit with it, the public knows about it before you do. Your only answer can be, I don't know anything about that, I'll have to go and bone up on it. If that's what you're suggesting, I'd like to know for sure.
4:55 p.m.
Lawyer, As an Individual
If we are to be entrusting a minister with the secrets of the state and the management of a portfolio and have him as a privy councillor, then on a rare occasion he may have to have access to the identity of a specific requester--not for the purpose of entering into a scrum, not in question period, and not before the press, but for reasons of state. So the door is cracked open, and I say the minister because the authority in the first instance flows from him--all of it.
4:55 p.m.
Liberal
4:55 p.m.
Conservative
Bruce Stanton Conservative Simcoe North, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Continuing on that line, we heard some testimony in the week prior to the break with respect to this very question. What we heard fairly clearly, I thought, from those who were giving testimony is that it's perfectly within the confines of the Privacy Act for ministers and people within the department to know the name of the requester--provided under subsection 8(2). That's the section that comes to mind as the section that enables that. There are some ten categories that allow that purview. It speaks to the earlier point that I raised in relation to Mr. Martin's point, that just because it's allowed doesn't necessarily mean it happens.
The same question came to mind as at least of couple of you spoke in your testimony about different instances of coming across information suggesting you've learned that somehow someone in the department knew that the name of the requester was there. That very fact doesn't necessarily mean that anything was out of sorts. It could very well be within the context of the Privacy Act that this information was known. It gives me pause to wonder why one would conclude that it would be anything different from that.
We've also heard, certainly through your testimony today, some suggestions about how things should change with the Access to Information Act, and that's all well and good. We're concerned today with coming to understand better how this process of the names of the requesters is being handled within the departments. That's the context of our discussion today.
On this question of the minister knowing the name, how many of those instances that you mentioned might well be quite legitimate under the Privacy Act, which exists today?
4:55 p.m.
Lawyer, As an Individual
It probably exists today. But to go back a step, when somebody submits a request to an institution, and in it there is his or her personal information--his name, his address, his date of birth--it's provided for a specific purpose: to obtain access to information in records. If you're going to use this personal information for any purpose other than satisfying the request, then you can do it in one of two ways. You can either ask consent of the individual, saying, “Do you give me consent to divulge or to disclose?”, or whatever, or do it on an issue of public interest. The Privacy Act says you can disclose personal information on an issue of public interest.
If it is not one of those two issues, then you're in violation of the Privacy Act. If you're going to say you will now use this information to let your communication staff or anybody else--deputy ministers or political staff--say, “By the way, John Smith has asked this request because of...whatever”, that is not required to process a request and to disclose records, and that would be in violation of it.
4:55 p.m.
As an Individual
Some of the applicants who are asked to apply are also asked for their social insurance number, for their fingerprints, given the nature of the files.
4:55 p.m.
As an Individual
It's common practice if you're applying, for instance, for a criminal file or certain other files. You have to give some further identifiable information.
Where do you draw the line in terms of how much information it is? I guess the point I keep trying to go back to is that when you create parallel systems and there are privacy concerns and tracking concerns, surveillance concerns, you're meshing those two together, and there's bound to be some bad judgment or unnecessary waste of people's time. I still feel it's very counterproductive to how the system should work.
The government witnesses said that all we need to solve this is training. I'm sorry, I came in front of this committee and the Senate to pass the only amendment to the access act, which is on record penalties, after the Somalia cover-ups and after the committee destruction of records. It was to put forward jail terms and penalties for people who altered records.
Well, there's a situation here that should be treated seriously. You can have all the training in the world, but when you have a training system inside that's, as one witness put it, a call centre away, we'll tell you, we'll remind you, that it's not good enough. You need a bit of a carrot. You need those penalties and you need a serious realization that you can ruin reputations, or you're just wasting your time, spinning your wheels.
5 p.m.
Conservative
5 p.m.
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative David Tilson
Mr. Stanton, that concludes the second round.
For the official opposition, it's Mr. Peterson.
5 p.m.
Liberal
Jim Peterson Liberal Willowdale, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Could I come back to you, Mr. Rubin? I understand your position that you don't want the identity ever disclosed to the minister or his staff or officials outside the small group of information officers. What about the content never being disclosed to the minister?
5 p.m.
As an Individual
The minister deals with a huge range of topics and is responsible for various pieces of legislation. He has a lot of officials who are supposed to brief him and tell him about these. If you're on top of your files, there is no need to sidetrack yourself and ask what the latest—
5 p.m.
Liberal
5 p.m.
As an Individual
He's going to read it in the papers, or different groups will use it in certain ways. I don't think it's that relevant that he know—
5 p.m.
Liberal
Jim Peterson Liberal Willowdale, ON
I tend to disagree with you. If you've given the content to an outsider, at least at that time shouldn't the minister be made aware of what was disclosed? What is improper about that?
5 p.m.
As an Individual
Once it's released, of course— everybody should know. It's improper before a release of an access to information request; it's for interference or potential interference in the situation.
There's another scenario too, and that is that when third parties seek or get your identity—maybe corporations are after it—that poses certain problems as well. The flip side is that there's more than one prying set of eyes after your identity at times—and that puts an access request in for it.
5 p.m.
Liberal
5 p.m.
As an Individual
People sometimes put in applications strictly seeking to know who put in x requests, including my requests. That just shows you how silly the system can get.
5 p.m.
Conservative
Jason Kenney Conservative Calgary Southeast, AB
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I moved the motion that led to these hearings, and I'd like to read back to the committee and witnesses that motion, because we are straying far afield from it. It is a very simple, limited, and discrete motion: “That the committee investigate and report on issues related to the alleged disclosure of the names of Access to Information applicants to political staff of the current and previous governments.” Point—period.
It's not a general, open-ended discussion of access to information policy. We've had that at this committee; we can have it in the future. It's an issue, understandably, of perpetual debate. But we're not here to discuss sidetracking and all these other practices that appear to be perfectly legal, according to the information and privacy commissioners' offices, which appeared before us. We're here to discuss the alleged disclosure of the names of ATI applicants to political staff.
I have a simple question, and I think it's the only relevant question really for the witnesses, and I'm not quite sure why we're having witnesses who don't seem to speak directly to the motion; I wish we could bear down on this. Quite frankly, these hearings are happening because the opposition alleged the government had deliberately violated the Privacy Act in at least one instance. I'd like to know whether that is true
So I have a simple question for any of the witnesses. Do you have any concrete, specific, tangible evidence that you can furnish the committee with of the names of ATI applicants being furnished to political staff?