Evidence of meeting #16 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 chairman.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Tom Wappel
Excuse me, Mr. Pulcine, but the question was whether that $4 million was all salaries.
Director General, Corporate Services and Comptroller, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
Sorry, sir. All of those numbers that I just quoted are a combination of salary and non-salary.
Conservative
Mike Wallace Conservative Burlington, ON
If I look on page 17-3 of this book, which is what we had sent to us, under Justice, and then under the voted part under “Ministry Summary”, maybe I'm misunderstanding what the vote means, but it shows program expenditures for 2005-06 at $3.925 million, and then it goes to, in 2006-07, $14.4 million. What's the difference? What am I misunderstanding?
Director General, Corporate Services and Comptroller, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
I'm sorry to keep bringing you back to the table on page 27, but the number you just quoted is there, $3,925,000. Once again, the odd situation that the Office of the Privacy Commissioner found itself in last year and for the previous three fiscal years was that it was getting only the money for the Privacy Act under main estimates. It then had to come back—
Director General, Corporate Services and Comptroller, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
—to Parliament to get supplementary estimates.
Conservative
Mike Wallace Conservative Burlington, ON
I fully understand that. Thank you very much.
So we're having no issue in terms of hiring. We're still hiring people, but using contractors because we still don't have enough people. Is that what you're telling me?
Director General, Corporate Services and Comptroller, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
Yes.
Conservative
Mike Wallace Conservative Burlington, ON
There was an article in the National Post this November 3 that talked about our Privacy Act. Did you see it?
Privacy Commissioner, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
Yes, I saw a version of it on a BlackBerry.
Privacy Commissioner, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
I was at a conference.
Conservative
Mike Wallace Conservative Burlington, ON
You were at a conference.
It says we're number two in the world in terms of privacy protection. I wouldn't mind your comment on what the article had to say. Did you get a chance to read it?
Privacy Commissioner, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
Yes, well, I'm familiar with it because at the conference, it was announced that it was based on a text from a Washington think tank called EPIC, which rated a certain number of countries.
Our second place is largely due to our constitutional protections, the new law, PIPEDA, the government's privacy impact assessment program, and so on—and the fact that on an international scale we don't have national ID cards yet. We don't have a lot of video surveillance like Britain, and we don't have a lot of monitoring. We don't have one—
Conservative
Mike Wallace Conservative Burlington, ON
We're still pretty good compared to some of the others, would you not agree?
Conservative
Mike Wallace Conservative Burlington, ON
Oh, come on, one more quickly, please.
Are you coming back for another couple of hundred thousand dollars in supplementaries? Did I read that correctly somewhere?
Privacy Commissioner, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
No, not that we've defined. We are doing an exercise as to the implications of Bill C-2, the Federal Accountability Act, as are all agencies and government departments at the request of Treasury Board. But we've just started that analysis.
Director General, Corporate Services and Comptroller, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
Although having said that, there may be some technical adjustments that all departments and agencies will get through the supplementary estimates process, such as collective bargaining settlements, etc., that were not known at the time of the main estimates. So it's not necessarily stuff that we would demand.
Conservative
Mike Wallace Conservative Burlington, ON
Okay, it's something that is automatically required. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Liberal
Conservative
David Tilson Conservative Dufferin—Caledon, ON
Mr. Chairman, thank you.
I'd like to return to a topic raised by Madame Lavallée, and that has to do with travel and hospitality.
In 2003, which I think is when you started, there was $54.22, and in 2004 this jumped to $67,278.72—and that was for yourself, Ms. Black, and Mr. D'Aoust. In 2005 it jumped to $99,534.49, and then for the first six months of 2006 it was $72,744.10. There's been an increase in hospitality spending of about 20% from 2005 to 2006.
What do you attribute this public expense to?
November 8th, 2006 / 5:05 p.m.
Privacy Commissioner, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
Mr. Chairman, to give the honourable member an accurate answer, I'd have to go over all the hospitality figures. The honourable member should know that, as I remember, in hospitality there are also things like muffins and coffee for staff meetings, and so on. It's not just what we would traditionally think of as hospitality. Hospitality also covers the dinners of the advisory committee that now come twice a year. It's been expanded. I don't think that there's a huge increase other than that in our practices, but I would have to analyze it in order to see what the—