Information & Ethics Committee on April 29th, 2008

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

Good afternoon, colleagues.

This is our 30th meeting. Our order of the day is Privacy Act reform.

Today our witness again is Ms. Jennifer Stoddart, the Privacy Commissioner, from the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada. I'm going to allow her to introduce her colleagues.

I had a little discussion with Ms. Stoddart pursuant to our discussion at our last meeting, where we had a review of the estimates and some particular questions regarding some of the human resources issues, particularly recruitment, lapsing salaries, etc.

The commissioner has undertaken to provide a document, which has been circulated to all of you. I hope you have it. It's called “Supplemental Information on Human Resources Management”, dated April 29, 2008.

Since this is not really an order of reference but rather a follow-up, we will have some comments from the commissioner on the human resources issues raised by the honourable members at the last meeting. We will probably want to carry this discussion forward to our next meeting with the Treasury Board to see if we can get a little more information. Then we'll decide whether or not the committee wishes to do anything further. There are a couple of options we can discuss at that time. We'll deal with that initially. It won't take very long.

Following that we are going to deal with the other report, also dated April 29, “Proposed Immediate Changes to the Privacy Act”, which I believe all members received in their offices. I want to compliment the commissioner and her staff for doing an excellent job on that document.

Commissioner, welcome. Let's start with the HR subject matter. Maybe you can introduce those who are going to help us get our focus on this matter.

[Jennifer Stoddart, Privacy Commissioner, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada]

You know Patricia Kosseim, our general counsel. Exceptionally, the director of human resources, Maureen Munhall, is joining us. As well, we have Raymond D'Aoust, who is the Assistant Privacy Commissioner particularly responsible for the Privacy Act.

Mr. Chairman, you asked us to begin with the issues of human resources, which we discussed at the last meeting, and so we put together this short paper, which we hope illustrates some of the answers to the questions you asked. Perhaps I'll just go through it and bring your attention to some of the major themes of it. We'll go from table to table, because it's easier sometimes to look at this mass movement of population in a graphic way.

First of all, the challenges that we face in recruiting and retaining employees are common to the public service. Table 1 and table 2 are illustrating our movement compared to the movement in the civil service. In table 1, hires and departures, the red columns are the level we're funded to and the blue columns are our actual employee population. However, you will notice that over the years we've been able to increase our actual population at a greater rate than the increase in our budgeted population, so we are making headway. Table 2 shows the evolution of the actual population, which is steadily going up across the years, in spite of the high level of departures.

Table 3 then shows that in two key occupational groups for us, the PMs--these are particularly people who do the investigations--and the ES group, which does a lot of the privacy analysis, the technological analysis, and so on, there are fewer turnovers as compared to the same occupational groups in the rest of the public service.

Table 4 on page 4 illustrates the issue of retirement, about which we had a few questions the last time. In fact, when we look into it, our rate of retirement is slightly below that of the public service, although this aging of the workforce is expected to continue.

So we think that all in all, although things aren't optimal, we are gradually improving, and there are more employees being hired and retained than are leaving.

What are we doing to strengthen our population base? We're recruiting, of course, and we're moving to, in many cases, Canada-wide recruitment, which is very interesting for us, because they're highly specialized jobs. We're taking into consideration the employment equity representation, which has been a concern of this committee in the past. I draw your attention to table 5, which shows that in some areas we are above the average for the public service. For example, for visible minorities and persons with disabilities, we're well above the average for the public service. We're a predominantly female organization.

In terms of retaining our employees, if we look at table 6, there are several reasons for departures, and many of them in fact are normal departures. If you look at page 6 regarding the normal departures, end of term may refer to employees who are simply hired for a certain time, whose term has come up. As you know, we're not supposed to be turning employees over at the end of their term so that they become in effect permanent employees, so much of that—33%—is those who are moving on.

Finally, our challenge to that in terms of retention--as we mentioned at the bottom of page 6--is to have an exit questionnaire in order to try to focus in more specifically on why employees are leaving, if they're valued employees, and what we could have done to retain them.

I'll continue in French.

We're also developing a work place fitness program and an awards and recognition program, in accordance with Treasury Board policies.

The work place fitness program is very much appreciated, particularly by young employees who are very focused on work-life balance.

We've also invested a great deal in dialogue with employee representatives and the various unions in the work place, and in occupational health and safety at all levels.

Lastly, we have learning plans for every employee so that they can develop the personal and linguistic knowledge necessary for promotion in the Public Service of Canada.

I hope this overview has illustrated the dynamics of our work place a little better. If you have any other questions on it, I will be pleased to answer them.

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

Thank you for presenting us with the supplementary report. I think it will be useful for members to be able to follow this issue.

Why don't we move to questions, starting with Mr. Dhaliwal. Then we'll go to Madame Lavallée and Mr. Tilson.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Commissioner, and thank you also to your associates.

I'm looking at table 5, and I'm very encouraged to see that 71% of the employees there are women. When it comes to equity regarding women and visible minorities, you have these numbers, but when it comes to pay equity, where does your department stand?

[Jennifer Stoddart]

I hope people are adequately and equitably remunerated, but we do not have discretion on the distribution of pay. We pay people according to their collective bargaining agreements and, for the non-unionized employees, according to the directives set down by Treasury Board, which are, as you probably know, formally asexual. I believe the unions across the public service have settled with the Government of Canada as to any adjustment necessary for the female-dominant categories.

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

Thank you.

Also, you mentioned that you have a balance when it comes to workplace and home life. What are the specific needs of the employees, and how do you deal with those particular needs?

[Jennifer Stoddart]

Well, I hope I didn't convey the impression that we have a perfect balance between work and home life. I said we were trying to be sensitive to that.

We find that to be a value that's particularly important to the younger generation of employees that we want to attract, notably because of their skills and their understanding of our technological world. We are looking at what kinds of advantages we can offer them in the workplace in order to meet their needs for a work-life balance--for example, facilitating their access to places where they can do exercise at noon in order to get out of the office and maintain their health.

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

Women make up 70% of the employees, and women face challenges particularly when it comes to maternity and post-maternity issues. How are you dealing with those situations to make them favourable to employees who are in need of those benefits? This is besides the government standard offers, such as one year off work. I'm just wondering what additional benefits or incentives you have for employees who work for your department.

[Jennifer Stoddart]

I don't know that we give them additional benefits or incentives. As you know, the management framework in which we administer personnel benefits is very strictly regulated.

But we have, I think, a fairly normal rate of maternity leaves. This is accepted as a normal part of the working atmosphere, and they come back after usually a year now. We have managers now who go on maternity leave. Their jobs are there, and they come back after a year. We try to schedule all work activities during normal working hours because of possible clashes with day care, family situations, and so on. Some employees, depending on what they do, can exceptionally work at home, if their children are sick, if there are some of the many crises, including the care of elder parents. We have a flexible policy on that. I don't know if there are any other....

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

I'm interested in knowing, other than the normal benefits every employee gets, what is additional. You mentioned exercise. That's a very small incentive. The second one you mentioned was that they're allowed to work out of their home places. Is that true? Is there anything else you can list?

[Jennifer Stoddart]

Mr. Chairman, attitude counts for a lot. I try to foster the attitude that it's normal to have a family and to look after your family as well as giving a high level of professional service to the Government of Canada. We try to be understanding of families' needs. I certainly try not to schedule meetings at all hours. I don't expect employees to work on weekends. Now, some of them may have to, exceptionally, if there's a big deadline, and it's usually the managers. There was a lot of discussion about the use of BlackBerrys, and so on. I don't phone them at home to find out what they think about something for the next day; that's their family time. This is a very important value to me, so I try to make sure those values are respected throughout the office.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

This was an excellent presentation.

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

Ms. Lavallée.

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

I'd like to thank the Commissioner for providing supplemental information. Personally, I don't have any questions, but my colleague Richard Nadeau may want to ask some.

[Richard Nadeau, Bloc, Gatineau, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Good afternoon, Commissioner. Good afternoon to all your colleagues.

We're talking about amending the Privacy Act. I saw in the addendum that you made the last time and in other documents that referred to the act two points of greater interest to me. You talk about stating a clear public education mandate. What does that mean? From what comes to my mind, that involves calling Service Canada for information, but I imagine it will go further than that.

[Jennifer Stoddart]

Yes, it will go much further, and I'll come back to that later.

When this act was drafted and implemented, no one ever thought that one of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada's most important roles—some would say the most important—was to provide the public with information on a broad scale concerning threats to their privacy, how to preserve their privacy and, increasingly, navigating in this technological world that is beyond the understanding of many.

[Richard Nadeau, Bloc, Gatineau, QC]

Another image that comes to my mind is that of Maher Arar. We know what happened and in what circumstances. That individual suddenly wound up in another country in spite of himself, his privacy in tatters, and so on. That's no doubt an extreme case, and I hope that no one else winds up in that situation.

When an individual winds up in a situation in which he is asked for documents or must face a government institution such as a police department, and is surprised to learn that they know things about him, how can you react if that person hasn't even had the reflex to think that there was a Privacy Commissioner?

[Jennifer Stoddart]

I think it would be quite difficult for us to provide any help in that case. The brief that we filed today contains two recommendations on the situation you've just outlined.

The first refers to the need to tighten up disclosure of personal information regarding Canadians to foreign states. This practice is currently quite relaxed. The second talks about giving Canadians more rights under the Personal Information Protection Act, in particular the right to damages, or to ensure that they have access to a recourse procedure when their right to information has been breached. Currently, it's extremely limited. So it's not very useful for Canadians.

[Richard Nadeau, Bloc, Gatineau, QC]

You talked about cross-border information movements. Does that mean that, through international agreements or I don't know what, the Canadian government can transmit information on Canadian citizens to another country, whether they are in Canada or elsewhere in the world?

[Jennifer Stoddart]

That's correct.

[Richard Nadeau, Bloc, Gatineau, QC]

In what circumstances can that kind of thing occur? In your opinion, should the act be amended to protect people? There's the criminal world, on the one hand, but, on the other hand, approximately 99% of the population does not belong to the criminal world.

[Jennifer Stoddart]

Precisely, and that's the last recommendation we're making to you today. We feel that this entire practice should be much more structured than it currently is. That should be entered in records. It should be determined who has access to that information. The agreements should be indexed, which is not currently the case. As I mentioned, this practice is currently quite relaxed. I believe that each department can establish international agreements as it sees fit.

[Richard Nadeau, Bloc, Gatineau, QC]

The departments can establish agreements of that kind, but no process is in effect to manage the matter.

[Jennifer Stoddart]

Not that I know.

[Raymond D'Aoust, Assistant Privacy Commissioner, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada]

If I may, I'll supplement Ms. Stoddart's answer. The Treasury Board has issued guidelines on information sharing agreements. The departments are therefore subject to the Treasury Board policy. It establishes guidelines and parameters in the event an information sharing agreement or contract is entered into. That includes the need to protect information once it is transferred to the foreign government authority and the need to obtain assurances that that information will not be subject to any secondary use. These guidelines exist, but we see in practice that very few oversight mechanisms are applied in the case of these agreements, apart from the work that we do at the time of an audit or investigation.