Information & Ethics Committee on May 10th, 2007

[The Chair, Liberal, Tom Wappel]

Mr. Van Kesteren.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

First, I'm going to address something that Mr. Martin brought up. He says that it's unprecedented to have documents with large areas blacked out. We had testimony that this is just not true.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

No, but then to reveal the original....

[The Chair, Liberal, Tom Wappel]

Mr. Van Kesteren has the floor.

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

Often when documents are released, especially from foreign governments and agencies that deal with them, there are areas that are deemed by bureaucrats to be blacked out. They have to use their discretion--we distinctly heard that testimony. So this is nothing new.

Furthermore, much of what we're talking about is purely speculation. We haven't had an opportunity to look at these things. I think all we're doing, quite frankly, is going on a fishing expedition to embarrass the government.

When I think about the last meeting we had here with the Privacy Commissioner and what was laid out before us on this important study, it was a colossal waste of time. We have too many other things to do that are of such importance to the people of Canada to just move off in another direction.

I read in our witnesses' brief about the percentage of Canadians who are affected by identity theft, and it's staggering. It's 11%. I know we don't have our witnesses in front of us right now. But there are three standing committees already investigating this very thing, if these allegations are true.

I believe that Mr. Wallace has brought forth a very sensible proposal. If you remember, at the last meeting he very graciously moved it forward to the next meeting for us to look over and study. So to come back and saddle this committee once more with something that is just going to waste our time is an absolute shame.

I know I will be voting for Mr. Wallace's motion. I want to remind everyone that this type of investigation will also prejudice the ongoing investigation. As I said, it's muddling. It's not a matter of getting answers for Canadians; it's trying to embarrass a government at the expense of Canadians, and at the expense of Canadians having their identities stolen.

Mr. Martin said this is an important task for our committee. We have an important task and the opportunity to present some options and solutions to these problems. We've only scratched the surface. How much time do we have left?

I urge all committee members to think about those things. Let's move in the direction we decided on a number of weeks ago. Let's do what we should be doing for our constituents and not go off chasing rabbits.

[The Chair, Liberal, Tom Wappel]

Mr. Dhaliwal.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would like to congratulate my good friend Mr. Van Kesteren for bringing this identity theft issue to the committee. I'm sure he's well aware that we almost unanimously voted to work on this issue. I don't think there's any member on this committee who feels this is not an important issue to Canadians. That's why I and all other members voted for it.

On the issue that Madame Lavallée brought in, when I look at elected representatives bringing an issue to the committee, for the last four weeks she has been trying to put this on the agenda and this has been filibustered every time.

Mr. Stanton said we have a busy agenda ahead of us. Then why don't we just take a vote on this? We all know that the Globe and Mail has access to this report without the whitewash. Mr. Martin has said that the government keeps changing its story every day. It is all about accountability and transparency; it is not about embarrassing the government. I personally feel that we should vote on this and let it go. This has been lingering for the last four weeks.

I remember when I was in private business, if I had a motion like this lingering for four weeks it would affect my company. I think Canadians want to see the truth come out. Let's vote on the motions by Madame Lavallée and Mr. Wallace, have a discussion here, and get back to the identity theft issue.

[The Chair, Liberal, Tom Wappel]

I have two people. I have Mr. Wallace and Madame Lavallée.

I'd like to take Madame Lavallée first, Mr. Wallace, if you don't mind, and give you the opportunity to rebut at the end.

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

You're the first one, so go ahead.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

No, no. I'd like Madam Lavallée to go ahead of me. She's a friend of mine, so I want her to go first.

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

We are faux amis.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Yes, faux amis.

[The Chair, Liberal, Tom Wappel]

Please proceed.

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

First of all, Mr. Chairman, I want to say that the Conservative government does not really seem to know what the word “transparency” actually means. We are still waiting for the Minister to come forward with the new Access to Information Act. You let it slip, at previous meetings, that the Minister of Justice has indefinitely postponed his meeting with the Committee and that he may come and see us in September, at a date that is yet to be determined. That is another demonstration of the fact that this Conservative government—which is starting to be old, as a matter of fact—has no desire to be transparent and is not transparent. One has only to read the internal report from the Department of Foreign Affairs, entitled Good Governance, Democratic Development and Human Rights, to see that this government is not transparent. This is a report that the government has denied ever existed. It has done everything possible to prevent its release. However, it was subsequently forced to make it public by the Information Commissioner. So, it had to go back and do its homework all over again, and ended up blacking out just about everything there was to be blacked out.

As regards the two motions in front of us, I would like to take you back to September 27, 2006, when Jason Kenney tabled a motion almost identical to these ones. It read as follows:

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 previously governments.

The Prime Minister's parliamentary secretary came here to ask us to analyze, study and investigate a special case involving privacy. That is exactly what we did. We had at least seven meetings, in addition to the one where we voted on the notice of motion, and an additional meeting, held in camera, to prepare a report. We had approximately ten hours of meetings with witnesses. In other words, we worked very hard, and our legitimacy is an established fact.

Indeed, it's worth looking at the arguments made by Mr. Kenney to sell us on his idea of an investigation. He began by saying that this was: “[…] a general motion without limiting the Committee.” Have a look at the blues yourself; that is exactly how it is written. He said, and I quote: “This is the appropriate Committee to examine the question […]” and that the Commissioner had told us she had received a complaint. This is exactly the same situation. He added that it was important that we look at the practices of the Conservative government in this Committee. I am still quoting Jason Kenney's exact words on September 27, 2006. Go and have a look at the blues. He also said this: “[…] because we can be less partisan here than in the House, obviously.” Finally, he said—and we can all agree with this: “[…] we all agree that it's inappropriate.”

Mr. Chairman, I'm sure you can understand that I will not be supporting Mr. Wallace's motion and, if he agrees, I would like to ask that we put this to a vote immediately so that, out of respect for our guests, we can quickly dispose of these two motions and move on to discuss identity theft, as Mr. Van Kesteren is asking, in order that at the next meeting, or at a subsequent meeting, we are able to look more closely at government practices with respect to access to information.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Tom Wappel]

Thank you, Ms. Lavallée.

Mr. Stanton, you've spoken before. Is it a new point?

[Bruce Stanton, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

No, go ahead. I'd like to come back at another time, though.

[The Chair, Liberal, Tom Wappel]

Anyone else?

Mr. Wallace, to wrap up.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I appreciate my faux ami across the way pointing out some things from the transcript, because I would also like to point out some things from the transcript with the commissioner, things we dealt with, just to be frank.

If you let me start, I will do one thing to see if I can get some more support from the other side, and it goes to Mr. Peterson. I'll make a friendly amendment to my own motion.

Are you guys listening? You're not going to listen? Okay, good.

After the word “ruling(s) on”, I have “any and all”. I'll change that to “current ATI complaints his office has received”. So if in two years, a year, or six months from now somebody else complains about it, fine, but our understanding is that there are current issues in front of him.

If I can have some time, Mr. Chair, I want to look at what was said in our committee. Mr. Peterson had asked if there were any specific complaints to Mr. Marleau about this piece of paper being blacked out or questions as to why Canadians were denied access to the proper information. Mr. Marleau said, “I'm informed that we have a specific complaint at this time. I'll ask the deputy commissioner to comment.”

Here's what his comment was. Mr. Leadbeater said:

Mr. Peterson, as you know, we have a statutory obligation placed on us by Parliament not to disclose the details of what is ongoing. I certainly would be prepared to talk to you, or any other member, who wants to raise an issue about this.

--because you had raised the question of putting them on notice that the Liberal Party may bring in an ATI complaint--

However, if someone is going to complain about the answer to an access request, it needs to be the person who made the request. Anybody has the right to make an access request. The scope of our jurisdiction is set out in section 30 of the statute. We certainly will take your representation and ask our legal services--

--and so on and so forth.

Then Mr. Peterson asked “Is it legal for government officials to black out a report to the extent that has been reported?”

Mr. Leadbeater said:

There are a number--13, actually--of reasons in the statute that justify secrecy. We have seen cases where one of those reasons will justify the withholding of an entire record, and we have seen cases where the withholding has been overzealous. It would require us to examine the specific case to determine whether it was improper.

That is a quote from the deputy commissioner of the Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada.

Now, my reason for quoting that back to you, so it's a fresh reminder, is that what my motion does is ask that once they've done their work--

[An hon. member]

Let them do their job.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

--then you can call them and then they can comment on it. You do not let them do the work. They will come here, and I can guarantee you they will say it's an issue that's before them and they cannot comment on it. That's even if you call the Information Commissioner or the ATI staff member in Foreign Affairs; they will not be able to give you any answers to any of your questions.

Now, if you want to talk about ATI requests that have been appealed to the commissioner, where the commissioner has ruled, then where the department has taken the commissioner to court--there are 48 of them or whatever--and where the commissioner has won every time, maybe you want to bring all those people back. I think there's even...it's the Government of Canada or the Attorney General...and the minister at the time mentioned a number of them. I think the Liberal minister actually still sits in the House, though not as a minister. We could call them to find out what went wrong in the process, with them blacking something out, people appealing it, and losing in court against the Information Commissioner.

I'll be happy to have a long discussion on where those issues went under the Liberal government, if that's of interest to the committee, but on this particular case that is in front of us, it has been indicated by the Information Commissioner that they will not be giving.... They would not answer even Mr. Peterson's questions when he was asking them. They will not do any reporting on it until they're finished with the investigations they're working on, on these particular ATI complaints.

I'm very sad for the witnesses we had here today. I think we could have dealt with this at the end of the meeting. But I think it has been clear to us that they've already told us that they won't be coming here to deal with it, that it's in the system and they can't comment on anything that's in the system. I made a friendly change to call it “current ATI complaints”, to resolve the issue that the Honourable Mr. Peterson brought up, that it could go on forever.

I think my motion is ruled in order. I think it's the appropriate thing to do. Other members have mentioned that other committees are trying to do things with it. I don't think Madame Lavallée's request is inappropriate, being that this is the access to information committee, but we're here to give advice on the policy pieces on different items.

I could probably talk for another 50 minutes, but I don't think that's fair. I know many people want to hear me for 50 minutes. But we've been told we could try to call witnesses. I would be very, very surprised, based on the information I have, if they would be able to appear with that in front of us, and then we will end up with no motion, because we won't be able to do anything on it, and then where are we? What have we gained?

That's why my motion I think is appropriate and it does what this committee has set out to do. That's my final word on my motion, Mr. Chair, and I appreciate that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Tom Wappel]

The committee has spent at least 50 minutes on this item. First of all, Mr. Wallace has suggested that he would like to amend his motion by removing the words “any and all”, and adding the word “current”, which I would interpret as today, May 10.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Yes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Tom Wappel]

Does Mr. Wallace have the unanimous consent of the committee to amend his motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Tom Wappel]

Okay. The motion is amended.

Madame Lavallée, did you want to say something before we call the vote?

Could you please call the vote, Mr. Clerk?