Evidence of meeting #14 for Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was togneri.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Bloc
Carole Freeman Bloc Châteauguay—Saint-Constant, QC
But I just want to check something regarding proactive disclosure, so that it is clear. When will we discuss the issue? The steering committee has to meet. Since I had provided a rather comprehensive list of witnesses, I thought we would do an in-depth study of that issue as well, and not just spend one or two meetings on it.
What were you planning? When did you plan to discuss the matter?
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Paul Szabo
After the break week we have to slot in Mr. Soudas and Mr. Togneri and any other witnesses that may be considered.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Paul Szabo
Then, as far as I understand and am aware of now, we will have completed the witness phase. I'm going to ask the researchers if they would begin over the break week to prepare a draft report of the witness summary, etc.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Paul Szabo
Yes, a summary of the evidence that we have so far, and we will try to bring that matter to a report, because the motion did call for a report to the House.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Paul Szabo
With regard to your item, once I get those two witnesses and the Minister of Justice in--I want to give them all the flexibility to plug those people in to our remaining meetings before the summer--I will be able to advise the committee of when we will have this discussion again, just a round table discussion, about the proactive disclosure, based on what was recommended by our steering committee and adopted by the committee.
Because we've had all this other activity, I think we have to just refresh ourselves about what we talked about, what we agreed to do, and how we will proceed from there forward. We do want to make sure that the meetings are used. Certainly one of the meetings would be to have one or two of the government departmental areas that are already doing work in relation to proactive disclosure. We want to see what they're doing, what those kinds of things are.
Mr. Poilievre, you had a point?
Conservative
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Nepean—Carleton, ON
Yes. I know that I raised a point earlier about the nature of the committee's study. I don't want to put too fine a point on it, but the committee did make a specific decision on April 1, 2010, for which I do have the recorded minutes. They state, “It was agreed, — That the Committee undertake a study on Proactive Disclosure.”
“Proactive Disclosure” is displayed as a proper noun, with a capital P and a capital D, meaning that it has specific properties to it.
The committee can study anything it wants. If the committee wants to put forward a new motion to study open government or the Ten Commandments or the BNA Act or the nature of democracy itself.... There are any number of broad subject areas that we can commence a study on, given that we are in fact the masters of our own domain. The point is, we didn't decide to study any of those aforementioned things; we decided to discuss proactive disclosure.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Paul Szabo
I think I raised that terminology of open government simply because when we had the Information Commissioner before us she tended to suggest that “open government” might be a better or more reflective terminology for what the intent is, for what target we're intending to address.
I guess it really comes down to how we change the administration of access requests to deal with backlogs and high volume, etc., so that in fact the matters which still must be requested are those where there is reason to believe they should not be fully released. It's a very good question. When we have our first open slot for that subject matter, those are the kinds of questions, I think, that we should review and reaffirm so that everybody's on the same wavelength, okay? I agree with you. We'll make your case there, let the members speak, and the committee will decide our course of action.
Is there anything further for the committee?
No? Good. We're adjourned--
Oh, sorry, Mr. Siksay.
NDP
Bill Siksay NDP Burnaby—Douglas, BC
Chair, since the Google Street View report has been on our agenda for weeks now and we still have time--and I don't think it's going to take a lot of time--could we not deal with that report now and try to sign off on it?
Conservative
NDP
Bill Siksay NDP Burnaby—Douglas, BC
But it's been on the agenda for weeks, Chair, and it's on the agenda for today as well.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Paul Szabo
It's been carried forward.
Mr. Siksay, I should have but couldn't have anticipated where we would be right now, and I think I can understand that the members probably don't even have their copy of the draft report here to do it justice.
But I do want to get that dealt with. I would encourage members to bring it to every subsequent meeting should we have 10 or 15 minutes to work with. Okay?
Thank you.
We're adjourned.