Information & Ethics Committee on June 5th, 2007

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

No, not at all, I am trying to understand. I would just say in all sincerity that I do not understand at all. However, it is my impression that some people are quick to decide that something may be injurious, and claim that something may likely be injurious in an apprehended way or whatever, and decide that if something could embarrass the government, it could be injurious. This is a mistaken way of looking at things. It is a mistake not to distinguish between embarrassing the government and determining what is injurious. It seems to me that this is quite a generalized practice, something done not just by public servants acting in good faith, but involving political decisions as well. I imagine when the government decides to challenge a decision made by the Information Commissioner, there must be a political decision involved somewhere. In any case, the minister must be consulted.

That is all I am trying to determine. I'm also trying to see what exactly would be injurious in the case of torture. It is true that this would embarrass the government, but in my opinion, that is not what is injurious.

I'm going to come back to what you told me earlier. You said that generally, when an access to information officer applied subsection 15(1), he or she would have to define which of the three grounds is the most at issue. But how does the official do that? I have a document here, and 15(1) has been written in everywhere. Nowhere do I have a choice between the defence of Canada, the conduct of international affairs or the detection and prevention of certain activities. I do not know where these three grounds appear.

[Denis Kratchanov]

I have not seen the document. I've also not seen the covering letter that often is included with this type of release of information by the Access to Information Office.

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

That was in the covering letter.

[The Chair, Liberal, Tom Wappel]

Your time is up.

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

It is up already? Are you sure I had five minutes?

[The Chair, Liberal, Tom Wappel]

Yes, you had 5 minutes and 47 seconds.

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

What an abuse!

[The Chair, Liberal, Tom Wappel]

Mr. Dewar has a brief question.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

I just want to follow up on my line of questioning from the last round. One thing I want to state is that notwithstanding the importance of having experienced people, for some it can be at times a double-edged sword in terms of perception. And no, I'm not casting aspersions on anyone here, or accusations, but you could see that someone could be very experienced at concealing information as well as revealing. It could go both ways in terms of someone's experience. You know the tricks of the trade, so to speak.

At any rate, we monitor delay. We look at timelines. The policy certainly outlines the importance of looking at timely response. But to go back to my question, we don't really have a mechanism for what I'll call quality control. Let's talk about numbers, for instance. What are the percentages of correct decisions made? You know, look at the positive. Look at that facet--not just the time, but the content.

I guess my question is on the propositions, on the suggestions as to possible policy or procedural or legislative reform that might deal with this issue of quality control. As the chair mentioned earlier, this question we had posed by Mr. Esau, on chapter 2-4, is really critical. What we're talking about here is this: do you understand what I'm asking for, and if so, why aren't you forthcoming?

So perhaps I can ask you for some suggestions or ideas on policy on procedural reform and legislative reform that would help deal with this issue.

[Jim Alexander]

Mr. Chair, maybe I'll start with that.

I would like to just mention broadly the community and those ATIP coordinators. Before I had this role, I was in a department working with ATIP coordinators as one of the subject matter experts in a program area. Since I've been in this role, I guess I've been extremely impressed. Those ATIP coordinators are very much the champions of access to information. They are the community that's really, really pushing for that.

So I couldn't necessarily agree with it being a double-edged sword. I think they really are probably some of the best allies. They are the ones working with their departments to make sure it does work the way the legislation says.

In terms of policy and legislation and the possible reform that we could do, I would hate to actually start to make that up as I'm sitting here, but I know we carry out conversations with the Information Commissioner. With the new Information Commissioner, we've had some very good conversations already in terms of how we can work cooperatively.

In the context of the legislation, those complaints that come in to the Information Commissioner are extremely valuable sources of things that haven't worked in individual instances. That's about 5% or so, something like that. That's a good sample there. As well, the data that we would be gathering as part of...[Technical difficulty--Editor]...the statistics that we will be gathering, we're also looking with the Information Commissioner on what sorts of statistics would be valuable so that we can actually start to get insight into where things aren't working, either from his perspective or from the perspective of citizens and businesses as they're going at it.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

On content as well as--

[Jim Alexander]

On content as well as time, yes.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

That's helpful.

Just to follow up on that, I guess I would go back to the need for not only a debate on this but some action by the government. I want to look toward how things are coordinated.

We look back to Mr. Esau's experience, and we have correspondence with DFAIT and correspondence with PCO. Is there a team approach on this? If there are similar files, who would call who in terms of the access to information officers? Would it be, for instance, DFAIT calling over to PCO when they share similar files? How does that coordination work? Are they siloed? Do they call each other up and ask if they have the same request on human rights in Afghanistan? Do they share that information?

[Donald Lemieux]

The last time we were here, Mr. Chairman, we did mention the coordination of access requests. There is the CAIRS tracking system, where departments are required by policy to list requests. That's a tool that's useful in putting a department in touch with another department where there are like access requests.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Is there a protocol or guideline on who calls who first? In the case of PCO, would they call over to DFAIT? Or do we know how that works?

[Donald Lemieux]

No, Mr. Chair, there is no protocol. ATIP coordinators not only feed into CAIRS but they also review CAIRS, as does Treasury Board Secretariat. So if the need requires—I'm not saying in this specific case, because I have no knowledge—Treasury Board Secretariat might call in departments to try to facilitate that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Tom Wappel]

Mr. Dewar, it's amazing how two small questions become five minutes and 55 seconds.

Mr. Pearson.

[Glen Pearson, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, for accommodating this question.

Mr. Tilson stole my notes and asked the question I wanted to ask, but I think for both he and I this whole idea of procedure and how this works is important.

As a committee we were on a whole other stream. This event came along. We're trying to study it. Now it appears as though investigations are going on, certain things are happening. Perhaps we're slowly running our course on this, I don't know. But as a committee, this has introduced us to some new realities. For instance, if I hear the word “redacted” one more time, I've learned I probably won't be able to stand it.

But obviously there are some flaws I think that we have seen as a result of this, the last few weeks of testimony we have had. One was indicated by Ms. Sabourin, who said that when a request came in she tried to follow certain guidelines that come from the Treasury Board. As a result of some of these guidelines perhaps not being updated, she voiced that she thought they should be. I think you, Mr. Alexander, said you concurred with that. I think Mr. Dewar was talking about an audit and similar types of things. I presume that is going to be done. After this particular case is over, we have to move ahead as a committee on to other things. But we want to make sure we tidy up whatever is seen to be perhaps some weakness here.

Could I ask you, if you were going to update these guidelines, how long a process that is? I'm not going to ask you what you do because I think Mr. Lemieux answered some of that.

[Jim Alexander]

Mr. Chair, we've committed to the President of the Treasury Board that we would have the policy revised by the end of the fiscal year. In looking at all of these implementation reports and this document and then pulling those ones together, Mr. Lemieux and I, in discussions on how long that could take and the timing of it, we would see that as something we would be tackling in the coming fiscal year, so beginning in April 2008. Exactly how long it will be will depend a little bit on what some of the other priorities are. But my sense of a document like this that will require the updating, and some consultation, and running it through some of the ATIP coordinators, is that it's a good chunk of a year to actually get one of these things fully done, consulted around to make sure that from a Justice perspective it's not wandering into any areas that it shouldn't have. So that's the approximate timing. It's under two years, but not a lot.

[Glen Pearson, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

That's a bit of a concern to me. I wish it were shorter. I'm sure you understand. But we'll be very interested in committee to make sure that is firmed up because it is something that as a committee we feel a responsibility for.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Tom Wappel]

Thank you, sir.

Mr. Stanton.

[Bruce Stanton, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I have more of a comment than anything. I'm just picking up on Mr. Dewar's line of questioning in regard to quality as a measurement, not just the kinds of indications we've seen here.

I'm reminded as I look through the annual report from the commissioner to the 2006-07 report...I notice here there are about 31 complaints that the commissioner found to have merit out of the 500-some-odd requests that DFAIT actually received. That seems to be about a 6%, or put better, a 94% batting average, when you consider from a quality point of view that it's actually the requester who is ultimately the judge of whether the department has satisfied their request vis-à-vis that information. I think 94% is pretty good, but I think as we go forward, looking at the quality side, it really is the requester who makes that determination.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Tom Wappel]

Thank you.

Madame Lavallée.

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

I'm very pleased to have the floor again. I want to make sure that we have a few minutes to talk about the witnesses who will be appearing before us on Thursday.

[The Chair, Liberal, Tom Wappel]

There are no witnesses on Thursday; we're going to talk on Thursday about further witnesses. That's what we agreed to last week. I was going to wrap up with that.

I may as well mention it now. Thursday's meeting will begin with carrying on the discussion we ended last week. It will be in camera because the previous discussion was in camera. I've also asked the clerk to put the fifth report of the subcommittee on the agenda, so if we deal with the subject of witnesses and what future business we're going to do with respect to this subject matter, then we can deal with the fifth report of the subcommittee, and that would not be in camera.

That's where we're going to go. So there won't be any discussion of witnesses today. We'll deal with that on Thursday.

Do you have any questions?