Information & Ethics Committee on June 19th, 2007

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

So it would be completely inappropriate for us to be talking about any report, whether it's redacted or not, until that.... The Information Commissioner can come back saying the department was completely accurate in what they did, that it needed to make some changes, or it needed to make a lot of changes. Is that an accurate statement?

[Leonard Edwards]

I wouldn't presume to agree whether or not it's appropriate for you to have that discussion. All I will say is that this is the process that protects the requester across the board, that the Information Commissioner serves as a court of not even last resort, but a way by which requesters can have the discretion that's exercised by officers in a supplying department, to have those judgments examined by an outside officer, and an officer of Parliament.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Okay.

All your ATIP people are familiar, then, with these access to information guidelines from the Treasury Board.

[Leonard Edwards]

They would be familiar with that, yes.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Maybe you can explain to us what “delegated authority” means. What does that mean in terms of dealing with these issues?

[Leonard Edwards]

Formally?

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Yes.

[Leonard Edwards]

It means that an officer is given the authority to sign, to say that this material can be released, or should be released, and I approve the redactions that have been made and the selection of documents, and it represents to the best of our knowledge and ability the material that's been requested by the requester.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Okay, so you have delegated authority. Is that correct?

[Leonard Edwards]

I do, but it's like a chain. I get it, I pass it down to Ms. Thomsen, and she passes it down to Ms. Sabourin.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

And that's where it stops?

[Leonard Edwards]

That's where it stops.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

There has been some view from some, and I think you were fairly clear in your opening statement, that there has been no political interference on this particular file or any other access to information issue that you have been familiar with in your career as a government official. Is that an accurate statement?

[Leonard Edwards]

Yes, that's what I said in my opening statement.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

There has also been discussion, and I think it's obvious that there was some confusion on the wording, that when somebody makes a request for a global report, the interpretation of that was that there was one human issues report that dealt with the whole world; that doesn't actually exist, but there are reports that are done in the field, it would appear, on individual countries. Is that an accurate statement?

And I'd like to know what the comparison is with the United States, where there may have been the confusion.

[Leonard Edwards]

The United States—and I have seen these reports over time, but I haven't read one recently—prepares a global report, and that report is public from the moment it is written. It's written for public consumption by those who prepare it.

That's the difference with our reports. First of all, they aren't written for the public consumption point of view. These things are written with confidential sources, with a full and frank assessment of the situations in different countries, not intended for public consumption.

So if you look at one of these reports—and again, I haven't seen one recently—as I recall, they tend to be almost statements of media reports of violations of human rights in a country, and so forth, some of them not even verified but simply quotations of individuals who have alleged there to have been, and that sort of thing.

So they're not rigorous, but they do represent to the governments that produce them a compendium of observations that they believe serve a useful public purpose.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

And that is not the case in these reports.

[The Chair, Liberal, Tom Wappel]

Monsieur Vincent.

[Robert Vincent, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Edwards, a report such as this which deals with torture and that kind of thing and which is censored both by senior officials and by yourself, because it goes through you, could have significant repercussions for Canada, since the terms of the Geneva Convention may have been violated. You stated that the Minister was unaware of this report and that the Prime Minister was not involved in the decision-making process. If the report was released one day, would you be the person people would contact?

[Leonard Edwards]

I guess I'm a little confused by the question, because it has to do with what advice—

[Robert Vincent, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Fine then. Let me put my question another way. You indicated that as a result of section 15(1), Canada might find itself in a rather embarrassing position. If the report was redacted because potentially it could have embarrassed Canada, did you advise the Minister of this fact?

[Leonard Edwards]

Again, I'm somewhat confused about—

[The Chair, Liberal, Tom Wappel]

It's a theoretical question, a hypothetical question.

If someone in your department comes across documentation that may be potentially embarrassing to Canada or involve international relations under one of the sections that have been quoted, would you, in the course of your business, notify the minister?

[Leonard Edwards]

If that's what I'm here to do, to testify on these sorts of questions—and I am not absolutely sure that's why I'm here—I am prepared to make a comment. That is, in the course of information that we get around the world from many, many sources, there will be information that comes into the department, some of which will go to the minister, some of which will not go to the minister, and I rely on the judgment of the officers who work in my department to decide what information should go in different formats.

In cases where the judgment of the officer—and you're talking about officers at the desk level, director level, and director general level who will make these determinations; in some cases material goes up and in some cases it doesn't.

[Robert Vincent, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

I see.

Moving on to the topic of transparency, we have been told that 111 US human rights reports and hundreds of others are available on the Internet. What do we have to hide? Why are Canadian reports not available on the Internet? Why must we censor our reports, whereas other countries make their reports accessible? For the past two years, Canada has been boasting that it operates in a transparent manner, but we seem to be hiding everything. Why is that?