Information & Ethics Committee on May 4th, 2010

[Carole Freeman, Bloc, Châteauguay—Saint-Constant, QC]

Good morning, Ms. Finley. Thank you for being here.

I am sorry, I was in the House for a speech. So I missed your presentation, and the first question that the Liberals asked. I hope that I will not be repeating the same questions. With that introduction, I would like to thank you for being here and for answering our questions.

Mr. Giorno recently came before this committee and talked at length about the fact that the Prime Minister's Office had issued directives to the various departments about the way in which information had to be provided and about the fact that there must be no interference. That memo had been sent by the Prime Minister's chief of staff to all ministers.

Did you receive that memo and did you take note of it?

[Diane Finley, Conservative, Haldimand—Norfolk, ON]

My department would have, yes.

[Carole Freeman, Bloc, Châteauguay—Saint-Constant, QC]

Actually, there were several. He made it clear that political staff were not to interfere with officials working to provide information. The memo was sent twice, on February 9 and February 12, I believe. Are you aware of that too?

[Diane Finley, Conservative, Haldimand—Norfolk, ON]

I wouldn't know the particular dates.

[Carole Freeman, Bloc, Châteauguay—Saint-Constant, QC]

On the other hand, the incident reported by Daniel Leblanc in the Globe and Mail occurred on February 24 and 26. So that is three weeks after Mr. Giorno's memo ordering that there be no interference by political staff.

[Diane Finley, Conservative, Haldimand—Norfolk, ON]

There is a very important distinction to be made. Mr. Leblanc asked us a question as a member of the media. We follow a specific procedure when we respond to those questions.

Mr. Chair, the member also alluded to access to information requests. Those are two quite distinct things. The rules require that there be no interference, no influencing of the answers provided under the Access to Information Act. No one here has said that there was.

We are talking about a reply to a media request today. Those two things are very different and so are the rules we have to follow.

[Carole Freeman, Bloc, Châteauguay—Saint-Constant, QC]

I would like to remind you about the first item on the agenda, on the notice of meeting for this committee: “allegations of interference in access to information requests”. We all agree that that is why we invited you. But, given that you are here, I feel that we can broaden the subject under discussion a little.

Could you tell me how you differentiate between access to information requests. This morning, for example, I asked another department for some information and the department refused to provide it to me. I would like to know what your procedures are. Is there one way to respond to journalists, another way for members of Parliament and yet another way for the general public? How does your department interpret the Access to Information Act? Are there three versions of the act and three procedures?

Apparently, when a request comes from a journalist, that is one thing. When the request comes from a member of Parliament, it is refused. I can even tell you that journalists at Le Devoir have noticed the problem, since they reported that it took them 300 days to get certain information. For the Globe and Mail , it was 32 months. At the Agence de presse du Québec, it took 82 days to get information from ministers' offices. There is a problem. Are there versions of the Access to Information Act that we are not aware of? It seems that there could be one for journalists, one for members—the version that does not give access to information—and one for the general public. How do you see the act?

When I looked at your website, Ms. Finley, I saw that you can delegate your power to provide information. I read what it says about that. To whom do you delegate your power? According to the act, you have to delegate it to your officials. Could you tell me to whom in your department you have delegated your power and how many versions of the Access to Information Act you subscribe to? Is there one for journalists, one for members of Parliament and one for the general public? I would like to understand how your department works.

I wanted to tell you that you got an F in providing information, according to Canadian Journalists for Free Expression. That is the Conservative government for you. No A for you in transparency.

[Diane Finley, Conservative, Haldimand—Norfolk, ON]

Mr. Chair, there are a number of questions there. I would like to answer the first one first.

It must be understood that there is one act that governs access to information. There are formal rules, as you know. When we get a request under that act, I think it costs $5 to get an answer. There is one specific system under the Access to Information Act. My office plays no role in compiling the answers. We are informed about the answers, but this is information sharing only. We never take part in the task of replying to the requests. That is what the act stipulates and we comply with it.

The act also applies to all requests, whether they come from the public, from the media, or from whomever. I have already mentioned the procedure we follow when a request comes from a journalist. We get a lot of them.

I would also like to say that, according to the Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada, our department is one of the 10 best, out of 24, in replying to access to information requests. But we are still trying to improve our performance.

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

Mrs. Block, please.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar, SK]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Before I start my questions, I do want to recognize that the minister indicated she was only available for the first hour of this meeting; therefore, I want to know where we're at in terms of where we go from here for the next 50 minutes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

We only have three people to go to finish the second round for it to be equitable.

Is that okay with you, Minister?

[Diane Finley, Conservative, Haldimand—Norfolk, ON]

I'd be happy to do that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

Thank you.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar, SK]

Okay, thank you, Minister.

As you well know, Minister, you were able to come to my riding and talk about the apprenticeship grant campaign and actually to meet many of the individuals who were able to participate in the grants. You saw the impact on the lives of some of the younger people in our riding who were able to get the skills they needed to move forward. I think it was an amazing program, and I just want to thank you and our government for moving forward on it.

One of the things I want to ask you about is the reference in your opening remarks to a number of different campaigns that are going on. I'm wondering if you could tell us about the different initiatives you've introduced as a minister.

[Diane Finley, Conservative, Haldimand—Norfolk, ON]

Thank you very much. I'd be very pleased to, because the programs and expansion of existing programs that our government has brought forward really have gone a long way to helping many people who have been unfortunate enough to lose their jobs during this global economic downturn.

We first introduced, with the economic action plan, an extra five weeks of EI benefits and expanded the maximum that people could qualify for. That was the very first step. It has helped over 600,000 workers who have lost their job so far. I'm very pleased with that, because we know that as times get tougher, it gets even harder to find a new job, so it takes longer.

Work-sharing programs, as I mentioned, have protected some 255,000 Canadians' jobs since February 2009 alone. That program has been in existence for quite a while, but we expanded it and made it easier for people to participate and get the benefits. That's been a huge success. Without it, we could well have seen 10% unemployment rates. Fortunately, we didn't.

Another program we've done, apart from apprenticeships, was providing specific help to long-tenured workers. This has helped many in the manufacturing and forestry sectors who have worked and paid into EI for many years without collecting. Now, they don't know how to find a new job. It takes longer for them. We've provided them with anywhere from five to twenty weeks of additional benefits.

Of course, we've also introduced new, special EI benefits for the self-employed. We want to make sure that families who are self-employed or with one member who is self-employed don't have to choose between their work and taking care of a newborn or a gravely ill family member. We're there to support them.

These are all new programs, and it's really hard for people to keep up with them all. That's what the intention of these programs was—to make sure people know what's available to them.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar, SK]

Are all the initiatives you just talked about included in the ads? Which ones specifically were included in the ads?

[Diane Finley, Conservative, Haldimand—Norfolk, ON]

There was a very long list. I'm going based on my recollection of seeing the ads myself. That was the list I just rhymed off to you. I was saying that there is help for older workers, there's help for the self-employed, there's help for apprentices, there are work-sharing programs. Those were all in the advertisements.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar, SK]

I want to pick up from what my colleague was saying about the responsibility and accountability we have as members of Parliament. Certainly nothing goes out from my office under my name that I haven't seen or approved. I can't understand how our colleagues across the way can't understand that there's even more accountability in being a minister. You have the right to know what is going out under your name. It boggles my mind that such a concept isn't understood.

What I do want to ask you is, what have you done to instill the importance of maintaining an open and transparent government among your political staff?

[Diane Finley, Conservative, Haldimand—Norfolk, ON]

That's really quite an excellent question.

Mr. Chair, if I might, I'd like to elaborate a bit on that.

We've done quite a lot. We've had the challenge, recently, of merging the ATIP departments of both of our legacy departments' ministries, but through that process, we've been working very hard to improve performance in terms of responsiveness to ATIP requests. I'm hoping that the new numbers coming out regarding 2008-09—I get mixed up with our budget years—will show a significant improvement over our performance before that.

In terms of my own political staff, I've made it very clear, so that they understand, that ours is an open and transparent government and that they are to conduct themselves accordingly if they wish to remain on my staff.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar, SK]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

Mr. Siksay, please.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Thank you, Chair.

My apologies, Minister, for missing the bulk of your presentation this morning. I was required in the House. It's nice to see you at the end of the table again, from our days at the citizenship and immigration committee.

Minister, you will remember that back on March 29, when the issue around the allegations of interference by political staff in a request for information by a journalist first came to light, I asked you in the House about it. In your response, you said:

We do make sure we make every effort to ensure that Canadians receive the information they ask for. We want that information to be complete, accurate and provided in a timely manner. We will be using this example to modify our procedures as we go forward.

Minister, I'd like to ask specifically what you meant by “using this example to modify our procedures as we go forward”. Can you tell us what procedures needed to be modified and what actions you've taken as a result of that incident coming to light?

[Diane Finley, Conservative, Haldimand—Norfolk, ON]

Mr. Chair, if I may, when I made that comment I obviously hadn't had the opportunity to do a deep analysis of what had happened. I undertook that immediately. It was revealed that everyone had performed exactly according to the government guidelines on communications. The one thing I have asked to be done is that in our communications with each other, whether it's department members to department members, my office to the department, and vice versa, we make sure our communications are clear and complete.

Often as we get busy with our BlackBerrys we tend to give really short answers. Sometimes these can be misconstrued because we think the other person knows what we're talking about. So I've asked that in cases like this, if an answer is to be provided, that the whole answer be provided, not just a yes/no, but along with that the rationale as to why. Everything was done in a prudent manner, consistent with the way it's been done in the past. Unfortunately for people who are reading, people from outside who aren't aware of the procedures, the standing processes, the things we assume people know, it may not be clear to them. So we want to make sure those communications are clearer.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

We know the Information Commissioner released her report cards recently, and your department got a C, but I'd say it probably was an optimistic C because the commentary seemed pretty optimistic that some things were turning around in terms of your department.

When the report card comes out, what do you do with that information as minister? Do you read the report card? Whom do you take it home to, to get signed and brought back? What happens with that specific instrument in terms of how you function as minister and how your department functions?

[Diane Finley, Conservative, Haldimand—Norfolk, ON]

Frankly, Mr. Chair, we take the report card as a harsher judge. We're probably our own harshest judges. The last report released by the Office of the Information Commissioner dealt with a period of time when the HR departments of my two legacy ministries, Social Development and Human Resources, were merging. The ministries have since been combined to form one. There were some growing pains, and we had to make some adjustments there. I am pleased to say that things seem to be going better now.

I'm hoping that will be reflected in the next report from the office of the commissioner, that we will move up from our three-star rating, which is fundamentally average. We were in the top 10 of the 24 departments evaluated. That's not good enough by my standards, and I've been working with my deputy and she with her public servants to make sure we do better for Canadians, because we feel they deserve that from us.