Information & Ethics Committee on Oct. 29th, 2009

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

Okay, I think we're done. It's right on five minutes.

If I may and maybe just to promote a little broader discussion, one of the things we can do is look at where we've been and I'm really interested in where we might go.

Mr. Marleau, proactive disclosure seems to be one of the venues that has been used internationally. In Mexico, for instance, the government just puts everything on the web, other than those things they believe are confidences of national security, etc. Is that something we should consider, along with other innovative or new thinking as to how we can address the right to know?

[Robert Marleau]

My response is, absolutely. Proactive disclosure requires no legislative amendment. It's a matter of policy and leadership.

The Treasury Board minister, following a certain amount of abuse by senior public servants, including the Radwanski affair, which I know something about, ordered that all expenses, restaurant and travel, travel category and hotel expenses and otherwise be posted on the respective websites. To this day, I think the number of requests that used to be filed to get those has disappeared. It's evaporated. Indeed, the complaints to my office because they were being delayed have evaporated. Because it's posted. There's a whole ream of information.

On the one hand, the government could do a snow job on the public by putting so much up there. It would be very difficult to find out what's important and what's not.

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

Well, storage on the web is not a critical issue.

I have one last quick point, and maybe it'll stimulate further consideration before this meeting ends. Do you think there is any one area that stands out as being the greatest risk under the current scenario, the current situation we're in, the greatest risk to Canadians as a consequence? Is there any looming, say, damage that can be done to our parliamentary system, to our democracy, to our rights, to our whatever by not addressing or anticipating conditions as the velocity of information increases?

[Robert Marleau]

As I've said before, if the voter cannot cast his or her ballot in the full knowledge of what is going on in government--whatever the party positions are--then it's a fundamental right terribly diminished.

There's a crisis in the information management of government related to this--that's in one of my reports--but that's curable through administrative means, money, and resources. If anything, this fuels the apathy of citizens. The institutions lose credibility, and to some degree I think Parliament loses credibility if it cannot influence the executives to take needed action--I'm not saying all of the action. But you as parliamentarians lose some credibility when you get this kind of response.

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

Thank you.

On my list I have Mr. Martin, Ms. Simson, Mr. Dechert, and then Mr. Wrzesnewskyj.

Mr. Dechert, do you have a question?

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

Was your intervention just now part of the Liberal round?

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

No. The chairman's discretion is to keep the meeting going smoothly, and I hope that my two little questions were constructive.

Mr. Martin, you have five minutes.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I might not use the total five minutes, because I think we've really gone into the reaction to the letter from the Minister of Justice and his reaction to the 11th report.

But I want to dig a little deeper on the last point you made, Mr. Marleau.

This era coming will be one of belt-tightening and deficit reduction, although the deficit has come back again. They're going to be scrambling for cost-saving measures. I wonder if there's any way to assess with any accuracy the total cost saving to government of full disclosure. Not just your office will need more money to do your job better in the current scenario, with the number of ATIP coordinators agonizing over complex requests for 6, 7, 10, 11 months sometimes, and the number of complaints put into your office.

If you took the total aggregate amount spent on labour in administering a program that doesn't work--just blue-skying it--how much could the government save by voluntarily posting all this information and letting the chips fall where they may? In the next federal election they could run as the first government to have the guts to be truly transparent. It seems like a pretty good platform to me.

[Robert Marleau]

The current cost of administering ATI is over $30 million. I think the attributed cost of the average request is about $4,000. There's a whole bunch of indirect costs that are not calculated there. If you increased it to $50 million to make this statute more efficient, what is that in the budget of the nation? What is it in perspective to the current surplus? What is it amortized over the life of a nation?

When we passed the charter in 1983 there was a tremendous cost to that, but people viewed it as amortized over the life of a nation. So the minister's response about what it's going to cost the courts, that the courts will be too busy, and that we need to establish what it might cost, is a very weak argument. To post information there are certainly costs, but they already have it in digital form. So you're looking at storage issues and how you would access that information from your own computer.

Norway just posted every single tax return of their citizens. It's not universally popular, and I'm not advocating this for Canada, don't get me wrong. The Swedes provide that you can access someone else's tax account and find out what your neighbour is paying. The principle there is that you should know what contribution a citizen is making to support the government apparatus. In Oslo there were so many requests they decided this year to post them all.

It's doable. There's a cost to it, but I'm sure the access requests would go down and the cost of processing these requests would go down. It would be nice to see ATI coordinators going the same way as bank tellers. I don't advocate that as much, but that's what technology would do.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

It would be like the Maytag repairman waiting for his phone to ring.

[Robert Marleau]

Well, in that case it was because there were good machines that he was not called on to fix; this machine badly needs repair.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

So the analogy fails there.

Mr. Chairman, while I still have one minute left, I'd like to move a motion that this committee reports to the House of Commons its disappointment with the response of the justice minister to the 11th report of the committee on the renewal of the Access to Information Act, and that it expresses in no uncertain terms the frustration of this committee over the last many years of the inability to make any meaningful impact on the access to information regime.

I hope that's in order.

[An hon. member]

Is this a verbal motion?

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

I think it's in order when we're on this subject.

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

It is in order for members to make motions. This doesn't require notice since it's concerning the matter before the committee, so it is in order.

But before we consider it, I would ask the member to write it out.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

I'd be happy to.

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

Then we could read it back to the committee precisely as the member would like to propose it. We will deal with it at the next opportunity.

[Greg Rickford, Conservative, Kenora, ON]

Can we write it in French and English, please? It will have to be translated for the benefit of our members. I may have a preference for reading it in French.

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

Thank you, but you're not right.

I have Madam Simson, please.

[Michelle Simson, Liberal, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm looking for some advice, because of your expertise.

By the way, I'm reluctant to speak for any committee members, but I did find this response to the work we did insulting. I don't really want to disagree with Mr. Martin on this point, but it is an “apathy”.

I am actually quite frustrated and very angry at the response we got. He goes into the history of looking at this and studying that. Then it comes to last spring when the committee started examining your 12 proposals—these were 12 quick fixes that essentially we all agreed upon—and later in the letter he says that more extensive study is required.

I'm putting you on the spot, but what did we miss? What more could we have done to get the government's attention to have these revisions done? We had umpteen witnesses. We spent a lot of time on this. It wasn't that we just glossed over it. Can you offer any direction, perhaps even just to me, as a committee member?

[Robert Marleau]

I'd love to give you procedural advice; I used to do that at one time.

The committee has the power to send for persons and papers, and I think that's the breadth and scope you might want to look at. You can't force the minister to appear by a motion of this committee, but you can report to the House and the House can force him to appear.

I've known Mr. Nicholson for a long time—I swore him in as an MP, in 1984—and in no way do I want to diminish his commitment to what he's doing or his relationship with the House. But I know that in Great Britain this kind of response would have the minister sitting in a series of meetings engaged in considerable discourse as to where you go from here.

This is an exercise. That's why I threw this question back to you in my report: how long can Parliament tolerate the gradual and systemic—I won't say premeditated—atrophy of a fundamental right of Canadians?

I don't know if I answered your question, procedurally or otherwise.

[Michelle Simson, Liberal, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

I appreciate the direction, and it would be up to the chair to follow up. It would certainly be worthwhile.

What I took from reading this letter was that the committee was sent away to basically chase its tail. I feel I got a great education from it. But as for amending legislation, which is on the books, and making a first step towards getting it stronger, this response let down all Canadians. We were dismissed out of hand.

I won't ask you to comment on that. That's my personal opinion.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

Thank you.

Mr. Dechert.

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

I'd like to give my time to Ms. Block.

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

Ms. Block, then.