Information & Ethics Committee on April 29th, 2010

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Nepean—Carleton, ON]

What kind of data do you mean?

[Suzanne Legault]

It depends on the different data sets. Open government in the U.S. has a variety of data sets. You'd have to look into it.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Nepean—Carleton, ON]

Specifically you used the example of our economic action plan versus the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. What data is available to an American journalist that is not available to a Canadian journalist, vis-à-vis our governments?

[Suzanne Legault]

They have all the financial spending data, as you would if you looked at a financial statement and had all of the disaggregated data and could actually use it, because it's in a format whereby you can use different technological applications and do different graphs—

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Nepean—Carleton, ON]

What data do they not have right now? Specifically what data is it?

[Suzanne Legault]

I didn't conduct a detailed analysis, Madam Chair, of the data set that's available in the U.S., but it's essentially the distinction between a static disclosure of information and an open government disclosure of information. It's that you have access to the raw data and can conduct analysis. That's essentially the main difference.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Nepean—Carleton, ON]

It's still not clear to me what data we're talking about. Perhaps you could get back to the committee, if you want to develop your example to show, practically speaking, what data a journalist studying the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and its projects would have that someone studying the Canadian government economic action plan would not have. I am not clear on what the distinction is.

Right now, it's relatively easy for anyone to find out which projects the federal government funded and for how much. Most municipalities have data regarding jobs that they predict will come from each of those projects. As far as I know, we have all the same data available with our economic action plan as exists in the United States.

Is there any other example you could give us to perhaps illustrate the mechanical difference that I would experience if I were investigating American government spending or decisions, or any other matter? What advantage would I have there that I do not have here? Please be very specific.

[Suzanne Legault]

Okay.

Madam Chair, the best person to give that specific response to the member is Jennifer Bell of VisibleGovernment.ca. She is here in Ottawa. She has basically looked at the two different portals concerning stimulus spending as between the Canadian experience and the American experience. She is much more a technology expert than I am to answer this question. I think she would be best to answer this question, because she can actually show you—

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Nepean—Carleton, ON]

Sure. What can you tell us about the differences, though?

The reason I ask is because there's been a lot made of this declaration the President uttered in the aftermath of his inauguration. In all the reading I'm doing, I'm not quite clear on what it actually means in a tangible sense. I know it has a tonal importance, a rhetorical importance, but I'm trying to get a sense of what the real tangible difference is.

[Suzanne Legault]

Well, one of the differences you can actually look at in Canada is the website I mentioned in my presentation in terms of open parliament. The difference between Hansard and that portal is that with Hansard you'll have to do a search to look for a member's name and everything this person has done. The other is a centralized portal where you can get all of this information. It's a different application in Hansard. You can actually get all the words that are spoken, all the motions and everything, in one search engine.

So that's the difference. It's a static data set that you can actually manipulate and reuse for different applications. I don't know how to explain it in any other manner.

The other thing they have in the U.S.--

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Nepean—Carleton, ON]

It sounds to me like it's not the availability or the supply of data but the ability to apply technology, to manipulate it and perform different studies on it.

[Suzanne Legault]

Yes, that is in large part what the difference is. The other thing is that there's usually a centralized portal. The data they have on government is everything the institutions have been asked to disclose as part of the open government initiative in a central portal.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Nepean—Carleton, ON]

So that everyone can access it.

[Suzanne Legault]

Yes, but it's also one central website where you can access all this information as opposed to going through each government institution. It's very similar, if you want to think about it, to what the federal government did with Service Canada in terms of program operations, where they have a one-stop shop.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Nepean—Carleton, ON]

Right, a one-stop shop.

[Suzanne Legault]

Yes. The idea with this open government initiative, with some of these databases, is that it's a one-stop shop.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Nepean—Carleton, ON]

When people talk about proactive disclosure, they talk about it as though it's some sort of an ethical change--

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Patricia Davidson]

You're running out of time.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Nepean—Carleton, ON]

I'll just wrap up then. It's like an ethical change in the evolution of freedom of information. But what you're telling me is that we're talking about the efficiency of the way already available information is presented, making it a little bit easier and a bit more convenient. Is that correct?

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Patricia Davidson]

Okay, thank you. I'm afraid we'll have to wait for that answer, Mr. Poilievre.

We're moving on now to Mr. Murphy.

[Shawn Murphy, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you very much for your excellent report. I just have a few questions.

You've compared what's going on in Great Britain, Australia, and the United States. It's my understanding that with Great Britain and the United States, it is part of their affirmative policy to go with open government. Is Australia's 2.0 report similar, would you say?

[Suzanne Legault]

The Australians commissioned a task force, and the task force issued a report in December 2009. The task force was composed of experts in the field, and they produced this report where they make recommendations to the government. To my knowledge, the government has not yet implemented it.

We've sent some questions to one of the people who worked on the task force. In fact you have a list of questions in your handout. We're proposing to get the answers from these conversations, get them translated, and send them to the committee. Because we're not quite sure... We're reading materials, but we don't know what has actually been done in Australia.

[Shawn Murphy, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

So it looks like Australia has done a report, and Great Britain and the United States have made an affirmative policy direction. Canada is in a stage that's called proactive disclosure, but that's just one component of open government.

[Suzanne Legault]

In my own understanding of the definition of proactive disclosure, open government is taking it to a different level.

[Shawn Murphy, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

I know that Treasury Board had its directive on the administration of access to information. Are there any other policy directions out that you're aware of dealing with access to information?