Information & Ethics Committee on May 27th, 2009

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

Thank you.

The chair is asking for some words of wisdom here. The issue of costs has come up often, not only with regard to access but also with regard to our work on privacy. If we only had one request, the cost per request would obviously be the entire budget of your department, or not your department but at least the government's cost of processing a request. No complaints--I suppose that would be a great system. Somehow everybody's just cooperating and you don't have to go through the system.

I guess the real question is, how do we appreciate and how should we assess the importance of having an Access to Information Act? Can you remind us of why we have it and why it's important that we finance an effective and efficient Access to Information Act?

[Robert Marleau]

To me it is as important as financing an efficient judicial system. In other words, the courts--the Supreme Court of Canada--have called this a quasi-constitutional right. What price do you attach to the right of a citizen?

His or her right to vote has costs attended to it, and exponentially over the years Parliament and government have improved the electoral act and will continue to do so. Cost is always an issue, but it rarely puts back into question the citizen's right to cast that vote. How can a citizen cast his vote intelligently if he has to pay $500 to get the information he wants to get to the right decision? How do you cost the recovery of that?

To me it's a value judgment. As I said earlier, there are costs, I don't deny that, and we're in tough times. We've been in tough times before. This has to be amortized over the life of a nation, in my view, just like the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. There were great costs to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. As I recall, in 1983 we were in a recession too.

I don't want to be dismissive of the debate. I think it's important to have the debate, because I think it brings you back to the question you've just asked: why do we have this? If it weren't linked to that, then it's just another program, and I don't think it's just another program.

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

On behalf of the committee, I want to thank you for coming again to help us in our thought process. Over the next couple of weeks we are going to be working through the documents and discussing the quick fixes and working on a report, which we intend to table in Parliament before the summer recess. We want to thank you kindly for helping us work through these interesting questions.

I'm pretty sure most members will agree that since you've put some focus on certain items out of 10, if we can't sell the need for changes on one, two, or more of these, then it's quite unlikely there will ever be changes to the Access to Information Act. This is almost a test case, and I think it's the same with regard to the Privacy Act. We need to be successful on some of these, at least; otherwise there is either no appetite or no bravery in touching these two statutes.

Your opening statement about grandma--I think we'll remember that for a little while, and thanks to Mr. Dechert's analogy as well. So thank you kindly.

[Robert Marleau]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I must say we are very grateful as a team for the time the committee has committed to this. I've truly enjoyed the discussion, and I hope I've been respectful of the questions in my answers. There are issues to be debated, and I'm grateful the committee has taken the time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

Thank you very much.

The witnesses are excused. We're going to suspend, and we're going to come back in camera to resume our work on the privacy report.

[Proceedings continue in camera]