Evidence of meeting #48 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 amendment.
A recording is available from Parliament.
9:50 a.m.
Bloc
Robert Vincent Bloc Shefford, QC
What motion does he want to amend? Has a motion been tabled? I have not seen or heard anything about this.
9:50 a.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Tom Wappel
The motion was moved by Mr. Martin that the fourth report be concurred in. So the motion is that the fourth report be concurred in. And that motion is this motion, and Mr. Reid would like to move an amendment to it. I believe that is in order, depending on the wording of his amendment, of course.
9:50 a.m.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON
It may be that there'll be some need for adjustment to the motion. I apologize, I haven't had the time obviously to speak to the clerk and make sure that it follows all the procedures, so I do hope you'll be indulgent in making suggestions that will make it in order, if there is some technical reason why it's not. But certainly it's in the spirit of the initial goal.
What I propose to do is on line 5--these aren't numbered--which begins “the document” in English, insert the following after the word “appear”:
in the following order: (1) the Information Commissioner and such other witnesses as are necessary to establish which sections of the Access to Information Act may have been violated;” (2) Jeff Esau and Paul Koring of The Globe and Mail; (3) Professor Amir Attaran; (4) Jocelyne Sabourin, Department of Foreign Affairs; and (5) such other witnesses as the committee, acting as a whole and in camera, decides to call;
I apologize. I haven't had a chance to write this down. I was actually working on it, but my number came up. I guess you'd have to then, after the bullets, start again where it says “and further”. That would continue on. I'm not suggesting that be taken out, but obviously the parts that refer to individuals and to today's date would actually be removed.
9:50 a.m.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON
Yes, I can. I apologize for my handwriting, Mr. Chairman.
9:50 a.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Tom Wappel
I'll ask for the indulgence of the committee until the clerk and I are sure we have the motion in the exact wording, and I will read the whole motion into the record so that there's no argument later that I did not state the motion correctly or we don't know what the amendment is.
I think I have the amendment correctly stated. I'm going to read the amendment. It is moved by Mr. Reid:
That the fourth report be amended by inserting after the word “appear” in the fifth line the following:
in the following order:
(1) the Information Commissioner and such other witnesses as are necessary to establish which sections of the Access to Information Act may have been violated;
(2) Jeff Esau and Paul Koring of the The Globe and Mail;
I'm not sure that Mr. Esau is of The Globe and Mail, by the way. I believe he's a freelance. So we'll just say “Jeff Esau, and Paul Koring of The Globe and Mail”.
(3) Professor Amir Attaran;
(4) Jocelyn Sabourin of the Department of Foreign Affairs; and
such other witnesses as the committee, acting as a whole and in camera, decides to call.
So the motion as suggested to be amended, just so we all understand what we're talking about, reads as follows:
That the committee begin its study of the Department of Foreign Affairs' internal report, “Afghanistan 2006: Good Governance, Democratic Development and Human Rights” in relation to Access to Information requests for the document, by inviting the following people to appear in the following order:
(1) the Information Commissioner and such other witnesses as are necessary to establish which sections of the Access to Information Act may have been violated;
(2) Jeff Esau, and Paul Koring of The Globe and Mail;
(3) Professor Amir Attaran;
(4) Jocelyn Sabourin, Department of Foreign Affairs;
(5) such other witnesses as the committee, acting as a whole and in camera, decides to call; and further,
that the Clerk of the Committee request from the Department of Foreign Affairs a copy of the censored version of the report.
The motion is in order. It has been moved. Is there any discussion of the amendment?
I'll call the question.
9:55 a.m.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON
Hang on, Mr. Chair, I wanted to explain what I'm doing here.
9:55 a.m.
Conservative
9:55 a.m.
Bloc
Carole Lavallée Bloc Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC
The cases have already been made: people will only start repeating themselves.
9:55 a.m.
Liberal
9:55 a.m.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I've been saying that I think this has been a court of star chamber, and given the behaviour of Mr. Dosanjh and Madame Lavallée, I'm going to be very direct. This is what I've been opposed to, and I've tried to be very low key about it. The idea that people shouldn't be allowed to speak to motions; the idea that they shouldn't be allowed to consider in camera secret decisions, which they were only informed of when they arrived at the meeting; the idea that they should be expected to question witnesses who—
9:55 a.m.
NDP
Pat Martin NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB
Your representative was there. It was a subcommittee—a planning committee meeting, for God's sake. The Conservative Party was represented and in fact took a large chunk of the meeting.
I can't sit here—
9:55 a.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Tom Wappel
Order, please. Mr. Martin, you've made that point.
Mr. Reid, you have the floor.
9:55 a.m.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON
I appreciate Pat's attempt to impersonate Joseph McCarthy—
9:55 a.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Tom Wappel
Order. That's totally inappropriate, Mr. Reid.
You have been respectful. I'm going to ask you to continue to be so. Kindly address your motion.
9:55 a.m.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON
I appreciate that, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Chairman, I've been interrupted, I would say, at this point—what, 15 to 20 times in the course of my comments?
9:55 a.m.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON
It's something of that nature, if you add up all the different people. It's really very frustrating. I would just like the opportunity to make my points without interruption. I don't think that's unreasonable. It is frustrating.
There is a procedural problem here that was going to turn this committee hearing into a court of star chamber. It looks to me as if Madame Sabourin, who was being called in here to sit on a panel where she would be simultaneously accused—I assume the goal was to accuse her—of having violated the law in some unspecified—
9:55 a.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Tom Wappel
Mr. Reid, I'm sorry. You have come to some conclusion for which there is no evidence. Madame Sabourin was called as a witness. There's no indication that she would have been called and seated at the same time as Mr. Esau or the professor. I think that's something you can move on from.
9:55 a.m.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON
I stand corrected on that, and I apologize, Mr. Chairman. You're quite right that this was an assertion on my part that was not verifiable.
What I've tried to do in this motion is establish the kind of procedure you have if you're trying to deal with this question in a logical manner that will be respectful of the rights of all those involved. You are going to start by finding out where the law might have been broken.
From what I've heard from previous discussions, the assertion was that the access to information law was broken because the untruthful statement is said to have been made that there was no report, and reference was made to Madame Sabourin—she's the person cited in the relevant articles—as being the person who presented a letter that made this comment.
Now, we haven't seen the actual letter. We only have The Globe and Mail's report of a letter. She was going to be here today to respond, but no one would have the capacity to question her properly. I guess we could have hoped we would be able to recall witnesses and ask further questions, but given the temperament on the far side of the room, where people are constantly interrupting, shutting down, I see no evidence to believe that this was actually going to happen.
Anyway, I had reason to be concerned. So the attempt here is to determine what aspects of the law are actually being broken. I intended as well--and I didn't have a chance to write it in my motion--to ask our Information Commissioner what aspects of the report we would be able to look at without ourselves violating the secrecy laws, before we tried to actually look at the report.
Can we look at things that have been redacted—that is, blacked out—but then have been leaked? To what degree can we ask to see the full documentation? I'm assuming The Globe and Mail may or may not have had more documentation. It certainly seems possible. Could we look at it? Would we have to look at it in camera as opposed to not in camera? As we can see, that itself has become contentious in this committee.
This is not meant to be a forum at which we proceed to reveal additional government secrets. That would be inappropriate. It could happen. I'm not saying it's anything anyone intended. I've tried in my comments to make the point that it is the result of inadvertence that we've gone down this path, but I think we have gone down a path where this sort of thing could occur.
This is one point.
Another point I want to go on to is that we're trying to ensure that we won't have a recurrence of today, where people come effectively without notice. We knew about Mr. Esau, but we didn't find out about the other witness, Professor Attaran. We didn't know he was going to be here.
The observation has been made—
10 a.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Tom Wappel
Mr. Reid, I'm sorry. I guess this will be interruption number 16. You are being repetitive now on that point.
Could you move on?
10 a.m.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON
I'm trying to move on here. But I think it's important to point out with regard to this that I could not have known that, right? We were saying, well, your committee member could tell you. We're not supposed to breach the in camera rule and talk about what goes on inside in camera meetings.
Anyway, regarding the structure, asking Mr. Koring to come, as well as Mr. Esau.... I stand corrected about the fact that Mr. Esau doesn't actually work for The Globe and Mail. But the only basis I have to know anything about Mr. Esau at this point is what was mentioned in The Globe and Mail. It was basically a passing reference that he had placed a number of research requests. So at this meeting, I was operating under the incorrect assumption that he was a Globe and Mail employee.
The reason I suggested Mr. Koring is that he wrote the relevant article. It was part of a series of articles, but he wrote the article that's relevant and related to the issue of access to information documents, as opposed to the separate discussion of the treatment of detainees in Afghanistan, prisoners in Afghanistan.
I was trying to think of all the people at The Globe and Mail, without being exhaustive or abusive of the process by asking people who aren't relevant, who could actually comment and provide us with proper information on this issue. Thus, the two names.
I listed Jocelyne Sabourin, who of course was mentioned. It's appropriate that she be here. I suggested her coming after the other witnesses, partly because at that point she'd have the capacity to respond. Also at that point, we would have been able to ask Mr. Esau to give us the full text of the correspondence that had gone on between us.
It seems to me that if the assertion is made that someone has been misleading and is in violation of the act, the attempt was made to point arrows at somebody. I'm worried that she would not have an adequate opportunity to defend herself. So that's the logic of putting her on the list.
I apologize. I don't have a copy of my motion in front of me. I'm trying to do this somewhat from memory, Mr. Chairman, as I go through the points.
