Information & Ethics Committee on June 12th, 2007

[The Chair, Liberal, Tom Wappel]

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for coming.

Obviously, we don't have any witnesses, and that's the purpose of this meeting. I just wanted to advise you of the situation. I asked the clerk to send as much information as possible to you.

Incidentally, on another matter, before we go much further, I have not yet had an opportunity to speak with Mr. Sorenson. I thought I'd be able to speak to him on Thursday evening at the lengthy votes that we were going to have, which all of a sudden developed into “on division” votes. So I didn't get a chance to talk to him.

I was hoping I would speak to him after today's meeting and be able to report to you, but that doesn't prevent any member from talking to any other member of the foreign affairs committee to find out what's going on. This is in connection with what, if anything, they're doing with respect to the refusal of the department to provide an unredacted version.

In any event, as a result of the meeting of the committee, the clerk sent an e-mail requesting the attendance of--and we now know the names of the people who were to appear today--Gwyn Kutz, who is the director of GHH, as well as any other officials in GHH who dealt with Jocelyne Sabourin.

In addition, for Thursday we've requested the deputy minister, and if the deputy minister is unable to appear, then we would like to hear Gary Switzer and Jennifer Nixon on June 14.

The clerk then sent a follow up, saying, “Good morning. Will anyone be accompanying Gwyn Kutz? If so, please advise ASAP so we can amend the notice.”

The answer was as follows: “No official from our department will be appearing.”--full stop, no explanation--“For more information, please do not hesitate to contact me. Sylvie.” The clerk attempted to contact Sylvie, and left, I believe, two messages at least, and Sylvie did not return the calls--at least not during the time the clerk was available, since he also chairs the industry committee. When he got back from the industry committee around 7 o'clock last night, in his office was a letter from the deputy minister. I believe you all have a copy of that.

The deputy minister, as you can see, advises that it's his considered opinion as the Deputy Minister of DFAIT that if the committee wishes to hear from other officials of DFAIT, it's going to be him. I'm paraphrasing, but I will quote this:

The officials whom you have asked to appear before you do not have delegated authority under the Act and are therefore not well placed to provide the Committee with insights into the administration of the Access to Information Act by DFAIT.

Then he talks about nobody being able to talk about the redactions with the committee. He also agreed that he would be prepared to attend, but of course, the way these things work, he happens to be out of town this week--effective yesterday--but he will be available next week.

Basically, the way you'd read this letter, committee members, is that as far as he's concerned, no one else is coming but him.

Allow me to kick off the debate. I view this as a gross slap in the face to this committee. It is not for the deputy minister to conclude who this committee should hear from; it's for this committee to decide which witnesses it's going to hear. And if the deputy minister doesn't agree, well, that's too bad. He can run his department; he doesn't run this committee.

We have no problem with the deputy minister coming. In fact, I'm more than anxious to have him come as a result of this letter, because I think he needs a little bit of an education on the role of committees.

He is also presuming to know why the committee is wanting to ask these people to come, and I totally disagree with him that the front-line officers who initially fielded this request would not know anything, at least about procedure. I'm not going to the redacted portion or anything like that; we've already talked about that.

It seems to me that the people who were given these files at first, if you'll remember.... I believe it was Professor Attaran specifically who quoted Mr. Switzer saying he would have to consult with somebody. I'd like to know who he would have to consult with, etc.

First of all, there is the insulting response by Sylvie, whoever Sylvie is, without any explanation as to why no official would be appearing and without any attempt to ameliorate the situation. For example: “No official from our department will be appearing. The Deputy Minister is going to be writing to the chair today”, or something like that, but nothing. Simply, “Nobody is appearing. Call me if you've got a problem.” We call because we have a problem and no one answers the phone. To me, this is absolutely unacceptable. I think if we have any backbone at all as parliamentarians, we have to stand up for our rights as committee members. This has nothing to do with the government. This is an official running a department who believes that he knows how our committee should run. That's simply my view.

If the committee is of the view that we should do something, then I think we have to do what we discussed before, which is to summons the witnesses so that there is no wiggle room.They either have to attend, or they have to take the consequences of ignoring an order of a parliamentary committee. I think that includes the deputy minister, although for all intents and purposes we can't provide him with a summons when he's out of town.

I'm not going to ascribe any motives. I'll simply say each committee member can read the letter as it's written. We all know that we're getting to the end of this session. We all know that sooner or later we're going to adjourn. That doesn't mean, as we said at the last meeting, that we can't have another meeting during the summer and it doesn't mean that we can't have these people attend during the summer.

It's truly up to the committee to decide what it wants it to do. I don't think we need a huge amount of debate on this, but if that's what it takes, that's what it will take.

As a reminder, the people we were thinking about are Ms. Gwyn Kutz , who is the head of GHH; Francine Archambault, who took the first request from Mr. Esau; Gary Switzer and Jennifer Nixon, who dealt with Professor Attaran's requests; and of course the deputy minister. Indeed, the deputy minister has agreed to attend, so that's fine, but the question is when.

I'm open for discussion and guidance from the committee.

Mr. Dewar.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

I concur that a message needs to be sent from the committee. It isn't about the details or the issue itself, it's about structure and function in governance and committees' roles and the people who serve the public.

Having said that, if you look at the debate we had last meeting, when we were discussing having the Minister of Justice here, we had a compromised motion in the end, which I think Mr. Stanton was behind and helping out with, and we all were kind of growing together, if you will. I think we should do the same on this issue.

It's really important. I had questions about the security preparation of documents. If we don't have the public servants here to be able to answer that question, then the issue we're looking at, be it this specific case or the wider issue of access to information, is lost. I'm understanding that the originator of the document is the person who is responsible for classification. I wanted to be able to ask that question, to find out from the deputy minister or someone who is involved with that what exactly happened here. Who was the originator of the document?

I know that's what we're trying to get at with Gwyn Kutz coming. If we're looking at a document that was classified in a certain manner or was changed and we don't know and we're not able to shine some light on that, it's very difficult, as I mentioned at our last meeting, to be able to propose amendments to an ATI or to improve ATI, and it's certainly impossible to shine light on this case.

Finally, I want to say that as a committee we've talked about the government needing to bring forward its ATI plan. I'm not casting aspersions here, but when we're asking to find out more and we have empty chairs, that's really frustrating. It's perhaps a metaphor for what's happening on ATI with the government.

Hopefully, we'll be able to get the will of the committee to do whatever it takes to have people here to move forward, because we're moving sideways and backwards. If we can move a strongly worded motion to get people in front of this committee so we can shine some light on this case, I'd be in favour of that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Tom Wappel]

Thank you.

I want to repeat that in my view this is not an issue about the executive or the government. This is an issue of how the bureaucracy responds to committee requests.

Mr. Tilson.

[David Tilson, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

Mr. Chairman, I agree with your position. My only question is that we'd like to hear from the deputy, and yes, we'll decide who we want to see.

You can see from some of the questions I've asked that my concern is the question of delay. So if two witnesses aren't familiar with redaction or blacking out—I like that better—then I'd like to see those people too. The question I have is, would we ask the deputy to come separately or with these officials?

My question to the clerk is, do we know where the deputy is? He says he's travelling. Is he in Ottawa, or do you know?

[The Clerk of the Committee, Mr. Richard Rumas]

My understanding is that he's out of the country.

[David Tilson, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

I wanted to concur with your position. A subpoena is a pretty tough position to take, and I'm wondering whether it might be more appropriate to let the deputy know that the committee wishes to see the people we requested, and that's that. In other words, perhaps we should give him one more chance. If he's out of the country, you're going to have trouble finding him to do a subpoena. You may know where he is, but what are you going to do, send someone over to Europe?

I support your position. The question is, what does one do next? I suppose the choice is a subpoena to all witnesses. Secondly, a letter from you or the clerk could be sent indicating that the committee wishes to thank you for your letter, but notwithstanding it, the committee wishes to see the following witnesses.

But I quite concur with what you're saying. We don't take orders from the deputy; the deputy takes orders from us.

[The Chair, Liberal, Tom Wappel]

Thank you.

Since the deputy has already agreed to appear, I won't recommend that we issue a summons for him. The issue is the people who we want to appear but he refuses to produce.

Mr. Dhaliwal.

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

Mr. Chair, I agree with you. Our problem is the people we want to appear, even though the deputy minister is saying that they don't have the delegated authority. We already noticed that two witnesses from DFAIT appeared. I don't see that they're open, transparent, and honest about what has happened over the last year. We should have an open, transparent department, and let those witnesses come here. We should put all the pressure we can as a committee, because they think that elected representatives have no authority to make those people come in. That is a slap on the voters who sent us here.

[The Chair, Liberal, Tom Wappel]

Thank you.

Mr. Pearson, followed by Mr. Wallace.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I think I was on the record last week saying that after these two witnesses were to come before us today, it would be time to get back to identity theft and other things. As a result of this correspondence, I no longer feel that way.

As I said before to this committee, and I mean it—I work a lot overseas, as people know—there are human lives at the end of this chain affected by the decisions that are made, not made, revealed, or concealed. I worry about this, not just for detainees and others, but also for our troops over there. They would also probably like clarification about who they're turning these people over to.

We were encouraged to ask these two people to come, and we've been told, “No, they're not the right ones. I will come. The buck stops here with me, but I'm out of town and won't be here.”

I'm not comfortable with that, and it's got me to change my position on where we should go with this. Like you, I want to speak to the people who were directly involved with this decision. As a committee, we have a right to hear that. What we're hearing from the bureaucracy is “No, we'll decide what's going to happen.”

I believe that people's lives depend on our abilities to do this properly, to get this information properly. They have no right to get in our way of doing that. So I very much concur with you that I would like to see these other two witnesses.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Tom Wappel]

Thank you.

Mr. Wallace.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Mr. Chairman, I don't know if you're looking for a motion, but I think you hit it on the nose. The ADM has agreed to come. Let's invite him to the next available meeting, which will likely be—if we're here—next Tuesday. We could be here either way, as a group.

The issue for me is that I think we should.... If you want to give the ADM a lesson on the role of the committee, and so on and so forth, I have absolutely no issue with that. I think we should deal with that first and hear from the ADM, and then deal with the other witnesses—if it's the committee's wish to speak to them.

I would like to see the ADM first, and then we could deal with the other folks. He can stick around for that. I'd like to see all of it done in one day. If we have to come back next Tuesday to do it, and we have a little bit of an extended meeting to make that happen—I love extended meetings—I'm willing to do that.

I don't know if you need a motion, Mr. Chair, or if the direction you're taking is just based on the general discussion.

[The Chair, Liberal, Tom Wappel]

Thank you.

It's the deputy minister, not the assistant deputy minister. It's the person who reports directly to the minister.

If I understand the procedure, we would pass a motion agreeing to summons—we don't use the word “subpoena”, I believe—certain officials by name, and we would ask them to appear at a particular meeting and to remain until they're required, so that if we don't get to them at a particular meeting, they can come to the next meeting. I agree it would make sense, given that the deputy minister has agreed to come, for us to schedule him for the meeting of Tuesday the 19th—assuming we're here.

We would make it clear to the deputy minister that if, for some reason, Parliament is adjourned, there may very well be a meeting in the summertime, depending on the wishes of the committee. In that event, we would hear from him at that time.

I don't think it would be prudent for us not to issue the summons to the other witnesses. I think we could agree to hear the deputy minister first, but I think it would be wise to let the deputy minister know that his letter did not in any way, shape, or form affect our judgment, and that we do want to hear from these particular witnesses. They can sit in the back, and when we're finished with the deputy minister.... Or in fact they can offer him the advice, because you can bet your life the deputy minister doesn't have time to go through 10,000 ATIP requests at DFAIT on an individual basis. Anything he's going to tell us will be what he's been told by the officials below him. They can just as easily tell us directly; there's no need for him to run block for them.

So what I would suggest is that we have a motion to summons the people I've named—there are four of them—to appear at our next meeting, and to invite the deputy minister to appear at our next meeting. Then we can agree that we'll hear from the deputy minister first.

The four names are Gwyn Kutz, the head of GHH in Foreign Affairs, the division that dealt with this request; and Francine Archambault and Jennifer Nixon, the initial people who dealt with the requests; and Gary Switzer, who took over on one of them.

You weren't here, Mr. Wallace, but we also agreed that after we've heard everybody, we may decide to call Madame Sabourin and Ms. Thomsen back—after we've heard from everybody—depending on what the evidence is.

That's how I would suggest we proceed.

We have Madame Lavallée, Mr. Van Kesteren, and Mr. Tilson again.

Madame Lavallée.

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

I thought you had forgotten me.

[The Chair, Liberal, Tom Wappel]

No, no.

Never.

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

I have received this letter, and my first thought on reading it is that it is not clear that Mr. Edwards is the deputy minister. His title is not given, in fact. The letter seems to indicate political interference at Foreign Affairs. I wonder why he does not want to let his employees come to meet us if he has nothing to hide, if everything is transparent. Why does he not let Foreign Affairs' employees, team leaders and department heads, come to provide explanations? He thinks that we will ask them how they administer the Access to Information Act. No, we are just going to ask them to tell us what happened. There is a sequence of events here, a chronology. I do not know who wrote the letter, but I imagine that it is Ms. Sabourin. We are going to ask different people for their views.

A quick reading tells me that Gary Switzer is an analyst. But it looks like Mr. Melvin Chuck is the team leader in the Access to Information and Privacy Protection Division. Mr. Melvin Chuck must be involved. If I understand Ms. Sabourin's testimony, he provided directions and recommendations, telling her how to censor the document. I feel that Melvin Chuck is one of the people we must see. As I understand it, he is the team leader in the Access to Information and Privacy Protection Division.

I think that we have done enough pussyfooting around, Mr. Chair. On a number of occasions, we have said that it would be nice to invite them, that we would love them to come, etc. We have patiently waited for Ms. Sabourin, and, after three weeks, our patience is running out. Now the deputy minister casually puts off his appearance before the committee until it fits into his plans. This behaviour, this way of responding to the committee, shows a lot of arrogance. I think that a notice to appear is essential, especially given the fact that a reading of the report shows that this is one of the worst departments—perhaps the worst—when it comes to access to information. In previous years, I have seen that the committee invited departments that were having difficulty fulfilling their access to information obligations. The committee asked them to appear in order to ask them how they intended to improve their record. I think that the least that the people whom we have invited can do is come to explain to us how they have handled the documents and how they have responded to the access to information requests made by Mr. Attaran and Mr. Esau.

We are nearing the end of the process. There is not a lot of time left either. I feel that Mr. Edwards and Ms. Sabourin show that in their responses. They think that they will wear us down, and that time will be on their side, that is, that we will run out of time to bring them here. That is what they are counting on, just like the Conservative government. They are counting on the fact that the committee will never have enough time to hear from them.

I think that we should send notices to appear next Tuesday to everyone we want to see, including the team leader Melvin Chuck, and we should tell them that the meeting is scheduled for Tuesday whether the House is sitting or not. We will meet here on Tuesday, from 9 a.m. until we have seen them all. I think that it is the least we can do, and that it must absolutely be done before the end of this session. When we have heard from them all, when they have all appeared...If the House is not sitting, the meeting can last all day, and we will find a way to make it work. We must invite them all because we have important questions to ask. No one can laugh in the face of the Access to Information Act and get away with it. Nor can anyone give people the runaround, not consumers, not members of the public asking for documents in good faith, not this committee.

By the way, at 11 a.m. this morning, the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade is meeting; they will be hearing from the authors of the report we are studying directly from Afghanistan by videoconference. I think the meeting is in the Centre Block. I am planning to go. It will add to the information I have at hand.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Tom Wappel]

Okay.

Madame Lavallée, I just want make sure I understand. You want to have Melvin Chuck, who is mentioned as the team leader in the chronology on page 2 of the English version on the April 13 date, “File reviewed for Quality Control by Team Leader/Melvin Chuck”. Is that the person you want?

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

I have just received the chronology, so you will understand that I have read it very quickly. The person I want to see is the head of the Human Rights Division, the one who gave Ms. Sabourin the advice.

[The Chair, Liberal, Tom Wappel]

Yes, that's Gwyn Kutz.

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

Fine. Mr. Kutz will do.

[The Chair, Liberal, Tom Wappel]

I don't think we need to call 15 or 20 people for one meeting. We can hear what these people have to say. If they identify other names and if we consider that we need to hear from those, we could call those. Because there's only so much we can do in the meeting, there are only so many questions we can ask.

Okay, do you or do you not want us to put the name Melvin Chuck on the list now?

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

No, if you are saying that the department head is Mr. Kutz and that is the person who advised Ms. Sabourin, that is the person I want to hear from.

[The Chair, Liberal, Tom Wappel]

It is Ms. Kutz.

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

It is Ms. Kutz! I am terribly sorry.

What is her first name?

[An hon. member]

It is Gwyn.