Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is a rare privilege and an honour for me to be here this morning. I have a brief opening statement. I will spare you my biography and my career path, as I understand that the members have been provided copies of my curriculum vitae in both official languages.
Let me begin by addressing the reasons why I have agreed to stand as a candidate for the post of Information Commissioner of Canada.
I won't pretend for a minute to be an expert in matters of access to information. This post is an important component of the Canadian modern governance model and it goes to the very essence of our form of democracy. The Information Commissioner is first and foremost an agent of Parliament and there lies my interest in the position.
Agents of Parliament are an extension of Parliament itself. They're given a special trust to oversee government and report back to Parliament with findings and recommendations.
As a former officer of Parliament, I was frequently in contact and interacted with many agents of Parliament. As a young committee clerk, I watched the former Commissioner of Official Languages, Keith Spicer, defend his estimates before my committee in this very room.
Keith Spicer set the bar so high on the quality of reports to Parliament that I don't believe it's been reached again by any agents of Parliament since his tenure.
In the 1973 minority Parliament, as clerk of the special committee on electoral expenses, I worked by the side of the former Chief Electoral Officer, Jean-Marc Hamel. In my view, Monsieur Hamel set the standard of ethical conduct for parliamentary agents and had a profound influence on my own comportment and career.
Later, as Clerk of the House, I served on the executive of the Association of Heads of Small Agencies with John Grace, a former Information Commissioner. I worked to advance the understanding of the principles of independence and the autonomy of agents of Parliament, in particular with the central agencies.
In 2003, I briefly interrupted my retirement when I accepted to serve as Interim Privacy Commissioner, after the resignation of George Radwanski. I worked diligently with the Auditor General, the Public Service Commission and the Standing Committee on Government Operations to restore the trust of Canadians and the trust of the Canadian Parliament in that office.
I believe that in my short stay there, I accomplished what I set out to do in terms of the renewal of that office. I also dealt with some major privacy issues such as the National ID card proposal and the problem of surveillance cameras in public places.
More recently, on behalf of the Treasury Board—and I know your committee knows something about this—I was the architect of a pilot project for an alternative process for financing the big five agents of Parliament. I negotiated a framework agreement between the Treasury Board Secretariat, the Chief Electoral Officer, the Auditor General, the Information Commissioner, the Official Languages Commissioner, and the Privacy Commissioner. That pilot project is now in its second-year cycle, and hopefully it will lead to a more permanent process that will have parliamentarians continue to play an active role in the analysis of the financing of these agents of Parliament.
In retirement, I have served on the panel of external advisers to the Auditor General and on the external audit committee of the President of the Public Service Commission.
On the international side, I'm the volunteer chair of the board of directors of the Parliamentary Centre, an NGO that fosters democratic and parliamentary development in failed states and developing countries.
In a recent speech I gave to the Public Service Commission annual employee forum, I addressed the role of parliamentary agents in the accountability loop of our style of parliamentary government. I reminded them that in order to preserve and maintain their statutory independence, their first allegiance must be to Parliament, their second allegiance must be to Parliament, and their third allegiance must be to Parliament. I also underlined that while the Canadian Parliament has indeed recently reaffirmed the Public Service Commission's mandate to guarantee a non-partisan, competent public service recruited on the basis of merit, they should not forget that they are themselves accountable to Parliament, not only for the outcomes of their work but also for their ethical conduct and the stewardship of moneys voted to them. When Parliament grants an agent of Parliament a trust on behalf of all Canadians, the very least Parliament deserves to receive in return is leadership that it can trust.
When I left the public service after some 32 years, I sincerely thought it was for good. When I was invited to consider this position, I was asked to not say no at the outset, but to give it serious consideration. Why would I leave the calm comfort of an active retirement life with my spouse and family, you may ask? That is the question I had to ask of myself.
Simply put, after discussion with my wife, we decided it was basically the right thing to do. What I have to offer is parliamentary experience, process and procedure expertise and sound management leadership abilities. I confess that I have a bias against the status quo when it comes to management. If confirmed, one of my priorities will be to assess the management structure and practices of the Commission, to satisfy myself that Canadians and Parliament are getting good value.
As an ombudsman and mediator, I'm primarily an optimist. I usually see the glass as half full rather than half empty. My style is to find common ground and work on agreement from there. I can tell you that I have and will have a bias against going to court. It usually costs the taxpayer a lot of money and the outcomes are typically unpredictable. The former commissioner stated before this committee last fall that the Information Commission barely sees 10% of access requests through the complaints process. That leads me to think that the system is not that badly broken if somehow 90% of requests are not subject to complaints. That doesn't mean there isn't room for improvement.
The Information Commissioner must fiercely protect his independence from government, but at the same time, he can only be effective in that role if a civil and substantive dialogue is sustained with the agencies and departments he oversees. Nevertheless, Canadians have rights under the ATIA and they deserve the best service the commission can deliver with the resources granted by Parliament. Despite my reluctance to go to court, when citizens' fundamental rights are at risk and mediation has failed, then the commissioner has no choice but to aggressively pursue the matter before the appropriate tribunal, including the Supreme Court of Canada.
On the advocacy side, I want to state for the record that to push for more comprehensive access to information in order to increase government transparency and accountability is an inherent part of the Commissioner's role. This was unanimously acknowledged during debate on second reading of the original bill introduced in 1981. Unfortunately, all of the former information commissioners have expressed frustration over the fact that successive past governments have only committed to more study and more consultation, rather than to meaningful reform of the 1983 legislation.
I may be overly optimistic in expecting that under my watch, the Act will be significantly amended to strengthen its provisions and enhance its impact. If confirmed in the post, I will devote most of my efforts to that goal.
However, the commissioner is not the legislator, and at the end of the day, despite the commissioner's best advice, it is Parliament, in its wisdom, that will determine what kind of access to information regime Canadians enjoy. The Information Commissioner remains a servant of Parliament, and through the legislation he is an extension of Parliament's authority. I believe that Parliament has to be seen to be the first champion of access to information.
Honourable members, may I suggest that you simply cannot delegate that responsibility to one individual and expect that the government of the day will straight away lose its innate reflex to avoid transparency. You must stay ever attentive, react to the commissioner's recommendation, and keep the pressure on the governments to be even more transparent.
With your support, I believe I can advance the cause of open government by tenacious, focused, and timely interventions. Those who doubt my resolve need only revisit my short tenure as Privacy Commissioner. Those who seek proof of my independence of government perhaps need only review my career as Clerk of the House of Commons.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I am in your hands.
