Evidence of meeting #15 for Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics in the 40th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was brunswick.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Borys Wrzesnewskyj Liberal Etobicoke Centre, ON
There's a nasty streak to the chair; that's what he's saying about his letter writing.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Paul Szabo
No, no, I will circulate my letter; it will speak for itself.
The Canada Border Services Agency and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service have responded. The Treasury Board Secretariat, that is, Mr. Cochrane; the RCMP, or Chief Superintendent Paulson; and Justice Minister Nicholson have not responded. So two out of five have responded.
Conservative
Russ Hiebert Conservative South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC
I find it a little bit ironic that at a time when we've had discussions about the power to subpoena witnesses and the authority of Parliament, you're seeking to preserve our privileges, on the one hand; but on the other hand you're not willing to follow up even further to make sure that people fulfill the commitments they've made to this committee.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Paul Szabo
I hear you and I understand. They made those commitments or undertakings, so we'll get you that information. Three of them have not responded, including a minister. You know I can't subpoena the minister. I could call for information. It could get a little bit messy.
However, in my own view, the bottom line is that the minister has indicated he will not be appearing before us again vis-à-vis the Privacy Act. What I said before still stands.
I encourage you and those who haven't read it to read his views on the current Privacy Act and its state of affairs. Once you've read that, I think you will understand more why I'm not terribly concerned about forcing out more information, because I doubt it's going to change the outcome of our work in any event. Okay?
We could continue to push, but I don't think it would be a good use of the time. We'll just take note of those who have decided not to respond to us. Maybe I might just get back to each of them and say that we are going to complete our work and haven't received a response, and say that if they are not going to respond, it's unfortunate, but we will be proceeding. But I'm not going to push in a formal way.
Okay, so we'll do—
Liberal
Borys Wrzesnewskyj Liberal Etobicoke Centre, ON
Mr. Chair, on that point, it may not have an impact on the final report in a significant way. It may or may not. The odds are, you seem to be indicating, that it will not.
But there's a different principle at stake here. When commitments are made by institutions such as the RCMP to respond to a parliamentary committee, and if we are to function as an oversight body, when we allow these sorts of things to slide, it undermines the very roles and responsibilities we take on as parliamentarians and our committee work.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Paul Szabo
Okay, let me help you there.
With regard to the Treasury Board Secretariat and the RCMP, in both cases we asked them to give us specific statements and reasons why they supported or didn't support the 10 items, because they didn't cover it in their testimony. They commented only on the ones that they wanted to and didn't comment on others, and weren't asked about others except at the very end...you know, we'll provide more testimony. I think they commented on the items that were really most relevant to them. It was not specific information that a member requested that was vital to understanding the essence of something. They ignored issues. They didn't want to talk about them and they have nothing to offer. I will accept that.
Your point is well taken, though. You have to take each on its own merit. We were trying to fill out a chart: here's what the various witnesses said on each of the 10 points. If some of them didn't give us details on all 10, do we push them to give us responses on matters that maybe are not relevant to them or on which they didn't think they had anything serious to offer? I don't consider that to be a major breach of withholding information. It's simply that they don't have any opinion. I suppose they could easily slough us off by saying they have no further opinion.
I'd rather save our clubs for bigger game. With regard to the minister, probably some more substantive meat to the request for him to provide information...but he's the minister. I think he has made his views fairly clear on this, so we'll move forward. We have him for the estimates. If anybody is bold enough, they could sneak in a little question or two on the Privacy Act at some point. But let's move on.
We'll try certainly with the Integrity Commissioner, Mr. Poilievre's motion, on the Wednesday. We'll be dealing with Mr. Van Loan, and possibly the 10 recommendations on privacy, to give us an idea and to get us prepared, because coming down within about a week and a half thereafter is our final meeting with the Privacy Commissioner herself. We'll have an idea of how the committee feels about these items, and we'll have one last go-around with the commissioner. Then we will have a subsequent meeting to discuss doing a report. We'll have a draft report and instructions for the researchers to do a draft report on our behalf, whether it's on an item-by-item basis or whether basically it will be what items to consider, a lot of people for and against--interesting. Notwithstanding that, I think they are worthy of consideration by your department vis-à-vis any potential changes to the Privacy Act.
It may be that simple, or it may be if there are one or two or three there that we really would like--because I thought we got some interesting stuff there. The justice department has been monitoring our activities and has all of the documents as well. It's helpful to them as well. But it will really ultimately be their call if there are going to be any amendments to the Privacy Act. We just have to get something to the House that says there are some interesting things on the table. To the extent that we respond or put in detail, that's up to the committee to decide. So we'll have that little discussion at the right time simply to make sure we continue to use the full two hours of our allotted committee time.
Okay, we are finished. Thank you.
The committee is adjourned.