Information & Ethics Committee on June 19th, 2006

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

On the other issue, if it's in the public interest it should be released. Is there a good definition of public interest and criteria?

[J. Alan Leadbeater]

It's the very same as what the minister was saying before about section 1 of the charter. What is reasonable in a free and democratic society? That has evolved over time with jurisprudence. It is an objective standard cast in subjective terms. The laws follow them--the reasonable person test and the public interest test.

It just means that a body independent of government will weigh all the factors, pro and con disclosure, and decide what is in the public interest.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

That will be a court.

[J. Alan Leadbeater]

Yes.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Do I have 30 seconds? I must have 30 seconds left.

[The Chair, Liberal, Tom Wappel]

You're already 30 seconds over. I apologize, but we'll come back to you.

For those watching, just so everybody knows, the proposed act that the commissioner brought forward at the committee's request--and a lot of us are new--was brought here, and Mr. Leadbeater gave a technical briefing, as the commissioner said, and then there were no other witnesses. Then there were discussions among the committee members, and then it was unanimously felt that the act, as drafted by the commissioner, should be tabled so that, one presumes, there would be a government response and that would get the thing moving. But in terms of whether there were witnesses, no, there weren't any.

[J. Alan Leadbeater]

I'll make just one correction. The commissioner was also a witness. I came in one meeting and then the commissioner came.

[The Chair, Liberal, Tom Wappel]

Thank you for that correction.

We now go to Mr. Peterson.

[Jim Peterson, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

The process the government is adopting here involves further study. Now, you've been around a long time, Commissioner. Has not this issue been studied to death at the committee level?

[John Reid]

It's been studied to death. There has been an endless stream of reports. There's been a lot of committee debate, and I think most of the issues referenced in the minister's statement have been dealt with in public debate. We basically know everything we need to know. It's really a question of having the final debate as to where we want to go.

[Jim Peterson, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

You mentioned earlier that you felt that Parliament usually works best, in dealing with difficult issues on which conscientious people can have differences of opinion, when there is a text from which to work. In other words, this committee can be most effective in assisting the government in its express desire to reform access to information if it is presented with a draft bill.

[John Reid]

That's my opinion.

[Jim Peterson, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

I agree with you wholeheartedly. The only interpretation I can put on this government not wanting to put a draft bill before Parliament, or to table a bill, is that they are not interested in seeing reform. They want it to die through the process of lengthy discussion and debate.

You don't have to comment on that, but if you wish to, you may.

[John Reid]

I do not read the mind of the government.

[The Chair, Liberal, Tom Wappel]

I knew that answer was coming.

[Jim Peterson, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

That is certainly my interpretation, and I can only conclude that since the election, the government has done a 180-degree turn on its desire to see access to information as part of an accountability package, which was promised. And I'm very disappointed about this, because I would have thought that this should go far beyond partisanship. It's going to affect governments of all stripes in the future.

I know that the committee, under our very able chairmanship, does have experience dealing with some of these very difficult issues and could come to a conclusion if we had a text on the table to deal with. Otherwise, we're going to be discussing philosophy for a very long period of time. And I've seen this in discussions in the WTO. It was so complex, but only when you had a text on the table could people focus on where you were going and make progress.

I want to commend you for the vigilant role you've taken over the years as commissioner in what I think is a very valuable aspect of any viable democracy, which is access to information. Openness and transparency are critical to good governance, and we see so many countries in the world where you do not have that, and consequently governance gets in the way of all sorts of good things, including investment and prosperity.

So I hope we can clear up your role very quickly, and I hope you will continue to do everything you possibly can to ensure that we get a text-based act of Parliament from this government tabled at the earliest opportunity. I can assure Canadians that we will work diligently as a committee to make those tough decisions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Tom Wappel]

Do you have any comments?

[John Reid]

I'd like to say that this is why I suggested that I would be happy to provide the committee, at its request, with a cleaned up version of the act. I think I should also note that it was the committee that asked my office to prepare the first draft of the open government act, and it was the committee that took the lead in that regard. I think it's appropriate for the committee to continue to take the lead on that.

[Jim Peterson, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

This committee can only recommend to the government. Until the government is seized of this by a bill being put on the table, we have no assurance that it will do anything with your good work or any subsequent work that we might do to it. It could be another academic exercise of the worst order.

[John Reid]

That's true, Mr. Chairman, but it seems to me that the strategy that was followed by the previous committee is one that you should look at closely, where the committee unanimously recommended the open government act they had and moved it as a report in the House of Commons. I think that's one way to focus the attention of everybody in the House on how important this is.

[The Chair, Liberal, Tom Wappel]

I think, Commissioner, we should have those discussions probably sooner than later, and thank you for your opinion.

Mr. Van Kesteren.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

A lot of my questions have been asked and some of them answered.

If we could go back, sir, to something you said about section 13, the issue of foreign state, you said at the time that most of the provinces have adopted procedures that would be in place. But wouldn't you agree that a province wouldn't be in the same position as a sovereign state would be? My follow-up question would be, have other states, like Great Britain and the United States, adopted...? It would seem to be quite a radical suggestion we should take, that is, what's in section 13. That was the one with a foreign state information commissioner.

[John Reid]

Let me pose the question to you. People who work in this field will often say that they can get really good information about Canada by putting in a freedom of information request in the United States. They come along and they ask for the same information in Canada and they can't get it. We often have that situation in federal-provincial relations, where the province will release it but the federal government won't release it. At some point, you have to look at it and say, how do we correct this odd state of affairs? We want to make sure that Canadians can get information from their own government without having to go to another government.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

Those are just some of the concerns.

[John Reid]

Those are legitimate concerns.