Information & Ethics Committee on Oct. 4th, 2006

[Jim Alexander]

I'll be interested to see what the results of the investigation that is under way are and see what the response to it is. When you look at the number of public servants who are involved in this and the possibility that individuals may not be fully following the policy, I wouldn't put it down to a change of government or anything like that. I would put it down, really, to this being a complex area in which there are 25,000 things that happen per year. One or two may go wrong, and those we had better fix to make sure it doesn't in any way become systemic.

[Paul Zed, Liberal, Saint John, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm satisfied.

[The Chair, Liberal, Tom Wappel]

Thank you, Mr. Zed.

We now go to Mr. Kenney. Are you ready, sir?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Yes. I was just inquiring whether we could get a copy of the e-mail I tabled the other day, which provoked the story.

Thank you to our witnesses for appearing before us—

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

On a point of order, I don't think those have been circulated, Mr. Kenney. I would be interested in seeing it too.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

I tabled it so that it could be circulated, but I'm told by the clerk it hasn't been translated, so that's why he couldn't.

[The Chair, Liberal, Tom Wappel]

We can't circulate it because it hasn't been translated, and that's the rule of the committee.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Son of a gun.

[The Chair, Liberal, Tom Wappel]

Yes.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

But I would be happy to show it to you, Pat. I tabled it in the interests of disclosure.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

I'm aware of what's in it.

[Jean-Yves Laforest, Bloc, Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC]

Was the request made in advance? In fact, this document should have been translated before.

[The Chair, Liberal, Tom Wappel]

When something comes to the committee in one of the official languages, it is automatic that it proceeds to translation before it is distributed to the members of the committee. It's just an automatic thing, so that no request needs to be made. When Mr. Kenney gave the piece of paper to the clerk, the clerk would have automatically begun the process of translating the document prior to distributing it.

[Richard Rumas, Clerk of the Committee, Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics]

I didn't do that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Tom Wappel]

You didn't do that? Shame on you.

[The Clerk]

Let me explain.

[The Chair, Liberal, Tom Wappel]

Okay. If you have an explanation, Mr. Clerk, please go ahead.

[The Clerk]

When I looked at the document after Mr. Kenney had tabled it, I noted that there were only about six words in the e-mail that were pertinent to what we were doing, so I asked Madame Lavallée if we could dispense with the translation. She said no, get it translated.

[The Chair, Liberal, Tom Wappel]

Then you did do what you were required to do, which was to find out whether it needed to be translated. So now it's in the process of being translated.

It's in the process of being translated; however, that doesn't prevent Mr. Kenney from referring to it when he's asking his questions. It's his document.

None of that took any of your time away. Go ahead, Mr. Kenney.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Voilà. Merci. Thank you.

Insofar as Mr. Zed was just asking you to comment with your views of the issue that brought us to this study, the particular case, this is an e-mail.... Are you familiar with the e-mail? It's from Mr. Gregory Jack to various officials.

[The Chair, Liberal, Tom Wappel]

Even if he were, Mr. Kenney, I'm sure the other members of the committee aren't.

[Jim Alexander]

I don't recall ever having seen it.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

All right. “Jack, Gregory”; I think the name is Gregory Jack, in any event. I think he's a public servant at the public safety ministry. All members will have a chance to see this, and they've already read summaries in the media. It's effectively just minutes of a conference call between officials of the public safety ministry on March 15 dealing with a number of issues, particularly related to security. It's called the “security and pandemic” call.

The one operative line here that has caused so much concern says: “Noted there will shortly be another Bronskill/CIA Planes article, as new ATIP info is going out from PSEP.” I gather that means Public Safety and Emergency Planning. “The info essentially reiterates that normal procedures were followed and nothing abnormal was discovered.”

This e-mail was then circulated to departmental staff and communications officials on the politically exempt staff side of both PMO and the Minister of Public Safety's office.

When the government made inquiries about this, we were told that the circulation of these minutes of conference calls of officials on communications issues was a standard practice, and that political staff had not requested this information and certainly hadn't requested Bronskill's name, and furthermore, according to the deputy secretary of cabinet at the Privy Council Office, that the officials who used Bronskill's name did not actually know for certain that he was the requester but simply made a deduction or drew an inference from the fact that he had written a series of stories on this issue.

I'm just asking you, if you accept the facts as they've been presented to us and have been presented publicly, is that a plausible explanation of how this name could have ended up being circulated?

[Jim Alexander]

I don't know the details, really, beyond what you've read out there, and now that you read the e-mail.... I didn't remember who had actually sent it, but I actually did see a copy of that e-mail.

What does happen, if I can speak to the generalities around it, is that there are a limited number of journalists who write on fairly predictable subjects time after time. And so you know that this journalist writes on these particular things, whether it be pandemic issues, general public service management issues, whatever, and that there are a number of journalists who work in that area.

There also is—and I guess this is what happens—an awareness that, yes, access to information requests come in, articles then get generated one, two, or three weeks later, or whatever, sometimes referring to access to information, and in that context there are individuals who make the supposition that an individual ATIP request that's in, on looking at pandemic or something, may actually be Fred again, who always seems to write on this. So there is that supposition that happens. In any particular case, and I assume the investigation probably will get down to it, is the linkage of the name with a request, which I'll call general knowledge--that Bronskill writes on this; Kathryn May writes on this, and so on--the nature of the linkage, or was there something else that was released there?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

To the best of your knowledge, at least in this instance, there was no request from any political staff for the dévoilement of the name?