Evidence of meeting #2 for Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics in the 39th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was chairman.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Information Commissioner, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
Certainly, the annual report was tabled in June. It's permanently referred to the committee. If you wish to follow up on any of the gradings we did in the last annual report, absolutely.
Conservative
Information Commissioner, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
Completely.
Conservative
Carole Lavallée Bloc Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Welcome, Mr. Marleau, Ms. Stoddart and Ms. Dawson. I am very pleased to see you here this morning. I have a number of questions for you, but I'm sure you will understand that this may not be the right time to ask all of them.
However, I would like to comment on the Access to Information Act. In the last 15 years, Parliament, the Senate and the Bryden Committee have all reviewed the legislation in depth. The previous commissioner even put forward a new bill. In addition, our committee unanimously passed a motion in December 2005 calling on the House of Commons to accept the strengthened and modernized Access to Information Act that had been drafted by the commissioner of the day. The year 2005 is not that long ago. During the election campaign, the Conservatives actually promised to include a new, strengthened and modernized Access to Information Act in the future accountability act, Bill C-2.
And what did they do? They included a few minor points, but that was all. They did not keep the promise they made during the election campaign. But I did remind them of the commitment they made in February 2006. I came back to this committee. Some motions were passed to have the new legislation strengthened and modernized. In addition, when the Justice Minister, Vic Toews, appeared before the committee in June 2006, he took the initiative of speaking to us about the act. He told us to take our time, to look into it as a committee, to do some analysis and study. We told him that the bill had already been drafted and that he had it before him.
In the end, we repeated our request. We even gave him a deadline—December 15, 2006. We heard nothing more about it until he was replaced by the leader, Stephen Harper. On several occasions, we asked the new minister, Rob Nicholson, to appear before the committee. Of course, Mr. Wallace will remember this. Never ever did Mr. Nicholson agree to appear before us to talk about the Access to Information Act.
Last June, our committee asked all the senior officials to appear, because the minister would not come. Finally, he changed his mind and agreed to come. He was supposed to appear before us in October, but the session was prorogued.
For all these reasons, I would really like to ask Mr. Marleau to speak on this matter and to tell us whether in his opinion, the minister should appear before the committee to present a new Access to Information Act as he promised...
Conservative
Bloc
Carole Lavallée Bloc Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC
... however, I will not ask the question, because I want to be able...
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Paul Szabo
Madame Lavallée, I very much enjoy your enthusiasm, but we do have to keep to the order of the day. We will certainly address that question, if you wish, at committee, if we can maybe have a motion to the committee to have a discussion with regard to that.
I would like to move on now to Mr. Del Mastro, please.
Conservative
Dean Del Mastro Conservative Peterborough, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I promise I will get to a question.
Ms. Dawson, I fought the last election on the Federal Accountability Act, largely, because I believed Parliament needed to be held to a higher ethical standard. I wanted Canadians to feel confidence in the federal Parliament. Your office is a creation of the Federal Accountability Act, and I welcome it wholeheartedly.
You made a number of statements about the reporting, and so forth, that you will be doing, the powers given to your office.
Just very quickly, is it your opinion that the creation of your office should provide Canadians more confidence in Parliament, that you will be able to report to them largely on Parliament, and that the Federal Accountability Act will be effective in assuring them that the House is held to a higher ethical standard?
Ethics Commissioner of Canada, Office of the Ethics Commissioner
I certainly hope so. My office will do everything they can to facilitate that.
As I said, I was underlining particularly the preventative aspect of this. I'm hoping people will continue to come to my office, as they do in large numbers, and check on what they're thinking of doing. I think that's in fact probably the most effective use of the act.
Conservative
Conservative
Dave Van Kesteren Conservative Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, witnesses, for attending again.
Formerly, at committee, Ms. Stoddart, you indicated that the Privacy Act—I'm sorry, PIPEDA—needs tweaking. For the most part, you were quite satisfied with the way things are going.
There was an article in the paper, and you alluded to more changes needing to be made. I'm curious. Have you changed your position because of our study? Can you elaborate on where you think we should be going with that?
Privacy Commissioner, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
With PIPEDA? Yes.
The world of regulation, or the attempt to regulate personal information by traditional means—that is, law—moves very quickly. One of the changes that is surging to the forefront of attention is data breach regulation.
There has also been a very interesting document just tabled, I think the day before yesterday, by a committee of the Alberta legislature that goes into some other very practical, slight changes; for example, definition of employee information and of exactly what you could do as an employer with employee information, in terms of giving references, doing reference checks, and so on. Incorporating them into PIPEDA would make the act clearer for business, particularly for small businesses where people often don't have the myriad of advisers that larger businesses have. Some of those changes coming out of Alberta could I think be incorporated.
Conservative
Dave Van Kesteren Conservative Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON
You indicated, too, that we need to study identity theft. Would you agree, then, that before we make those changes to PIPEDA, we need to first establish identity theft and have a thorough study of it?
Privacy Commissioner, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
Yes, I would suggest as a priority to continue the study of identity theft and have publicized hearings at which different people could provide input on the problem, because it spills over the jurisdiction of the federal government into others. I think that would be a great contribution, just to make the public aware of it through your hearings.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Paul Szabo
Thank you very much, colleagues.
I appreciate everyone's cooperation in having a useful dialogue without taking up the whole one hour.
I want to thank all of the commissioners for taking the time to present to us and to assure you that the good relationship this committee has built up since its inception will continue. We look forward to working not just on a reactive basis but rather on a proactive and a cooperative or collaborative basis with all of you.
Now we will be moving on to some motions that we have before us. You're welcome to stay and listen, but I don't believe there is any further business for you, so if you need to excuse yourselves, please do.
Colleagues, we have five motions that have been submitted to the committee for—
Conservative
Mike Wallace Conservative Burlington, ON
Have all five met the criteria in terms of notice? I moved four motions that I think are within the notice period.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Paul Szabo
Mr. Martin actually put one in yesterday. I believe it was transmitted to the clerk at around 4 o'clock—somewhere around there.
NDP
Pat Martin NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB
We go by the “one sleep” rule here, in my experience. The one sleep rule is the way we've conducted ourselves at this committee.
Conservative
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Paul Szabo
Yes, there are. There is a final one. I will just highlight for the members what they are, and it is my intent to deal with motions in the order in which they were submitted for notice.
The first motion was from Mr. Martin with regard to looking at the Airbus thing—basically, the whole thing.
Then Madame Lavallée was the second to submit a motion, and it is a motion dealing with the same subject matter, but dealing with it only during the time of the current government, basically from January 2006.
The third one submitted is from Mr. Hiebert, whose motion is that we commence a comprehensive review of the Privacy Act.
Then Mr. Hubbard is number four, and Mr. Hubbard's motion is similar to Madame Lavallée's, to deal with the current government with regard to the Mulroney affair.
And finally, Mr. Martin submitted another motion yesterday. Proper notice was given. It basically is calling for Mr. Mulroney and Mr. Schreiber to appear on specific dates, and he will speak in more detail to that.
Conservative
