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.
Former Parliamentary Affairs Director, Department of Public Works and Government Services, As an Individual
Could you be more precise on...?
Conservative
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Paul Szabo
Order.
Continue.
Okay. The time has expired.
In the event that this is a real fire alarm, we have to leave, but I want to indicate that the members still have questions, Mr. Togneri. As a consequence I am unable to discharge you from the summons, and it would appear that I can't give you a time to come back.
But the committee will advise you as to when you will be asked to reappear to complete the questioning by the members.
I'm going to suspend this meeting until we determine what's happening. Mr. Soudas is here, though.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Paul Szabo
Order. We have resumed the meeting.
Colleagues, our meeting is normally scheduled to end at one o'clock. Mr. Soudas is still with us and has agreed to spend one hour with us to make a brief opening statement, and we'll get in our two rounds of questions if we just keep everything nice and tight.
But extending the meeting time has to be with the concurrence of the full committee. Does the committee wish to go to 1:25?
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Paul Szabo
Okay. Unfortunately, then, we cannot do that.
Mr. Soudas, thank you. I apologize for the disruption. I certainly respect your time schedule, and I will be in contact with you to arrange another date after the break week, as we have other business on Thursday already scheduled.
Thank you, sir.
What I'd like to do, then, is spend a little bit of time reviewing with the committee what we're doing on Thursday.
I'm not sure if the clerk has this, but on Thursday, May 13, Mr. Sparrow is appearing as the first witness. Following, we have the officials, Ms. Valladao.... And then is it Mr. Trottier or is the other person back? There's also Mr. Larose, whom Ms. Valladao had asked to accompany her. They will appear as a panel in the second hour.
Then we have the break week. Our first meeting back would be June 1. I'm going to make every attempt to get Mr. Soudas to appear. He actually would be the last witness that we have on our approved witness schedule.
I would certainly inquire...or entertain that if there were any other witnesses the members feel are essential to have here before the committee, they certainly can raise that for the committee's consideration. You might want to give some thought to that.
We also have two other items that have been carried forward on our agenda. One is the Google Street View report, Mr. Poilievre's project, and Canpages. We have the draft report. To the extent that we have no witnesses with regard to the current study, we will first go to that.
Secondly, we will have Madame Freeman lead us through the issue that she has raised with regard to order-in-council matters. We'll have a little discussion, and I hope members will understand that when we get back from the break week, I want to discharge that request from the member, that we deal with it. You have handout documents, etc.
There is no other business, other than the Minister of Justice, from whom we have received the two reports on the quick fixes: one to the Privacy Act, and the second to the Access to Information Act. I think all members have those responses from the minister.
You will note that the minister did not, however, provide, as requested, dates. The committee had requested that he appear before us for one hour on each report, either at one meeting or two separate meetings, at his choice; we would give him some freedom.
I spoke to him personally yesterday. He said, “Oh yes, I remember, I'll put it in the hopper”. So I will be writing to him again and offering him pretty well any of these dates for the balance before the summer, to give him the latitude to be able to schedule his affairs to appear before us on those two important reports, so we can tidy that matter up.
Liberal
Wayne Easter Liberal Malpeque, PE
Chair, I just have a question.
How many times have you written him already? When a parliamentary committee asks a minister, we expect the minister to come. We see this at other committees, too. Why the reluctance?
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Paul Szabo
I can't answer on behalf of the minister. We can only request that the minister appear.
I'm confident that we will be able to find a time for him to be here. This is not overly time sensitive, but I certainly think the committee will want to have an opportunity to hear from him, to ask him any questions they have with regard to the reports, and if necessary, make a further report to the House on one, or both, or none of those reports. It's up to the committee as to what its intent would be.
There are a couple of other matters that are ongoing. Certainly, there is our work on the proactive disclosure, or maybe we'll have to rename that the “open government project”. The researchers have given us some suggestions in terms of witnesses, and I would suggest that we are going to try to schedule so that we have work for at least that first week.
People were suggested from Treasury Board, I believe...?
Alysia Davies Committee Researcher
There's a whole list, Mr. Chair. It's up to the committee.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Paul Szabo
The key ones, but we will find internally as to the status of what work is going on in regard to open government issues or proactive disclosure.
Mr. Poilievre.
Conservative
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Nepean—Carleton, ON
Yes, the nomenclature is important, because it determines the scope of our study. I understood we were studying proactive disclosure, which is a very precise policy area covered under the broader umbrella of access to information.
“Open government” is a very general term and could lead the study into all manner of directions. So I'm asking that we stay narrowly focused on the nature of the study as it was defined by the committee.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Paul Szabo
I have a feeling that we're all going to discover that this whole area is enormous and that we have to be very realistic about what we can deal with.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Paul Szabo
I think we have to keep it focused. I agree with you. That's my reading of it. We should seek to somehow bring our initial thinking on this project to some sort of an interim conclusion and maybe make a brief report to the House with regard to what we've been studying and indicate--
Conservative
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Paul Szabo
Yes, on proactive disclosure.
Then, over the summer, we would be able to give more detailed instructions to our support staff and the researchers to arrange a more comprehensive game plan for the committee to consider.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Paul Szabo
That would be circulated before we return and we would come prepared to make commitments to meetings. When we come back after the summer, we would certainly also have a steering committee meeting, but I believe that with the annual report is still to come.... I'm not sure when the five-year legislative review on the Lobbying Act is going to be referred to us from the House, but it may also be a matter that we can initially consider and give instructions to the researchers with regard to determining a proposed approach for doing the review for scheduling after the summer.
We're pretty flexible here. I probably will have a steering committee meeting on coming up with a recommendation for the consideration of the committee on the balance of the meetings up to June 22.
Mr. Siksay.
NDP
Bill Siksay NDP Burnaby—Douglas, BC
Chair, I just want to say that I don't believe the committee had intended to have a very narrow focus on the disclosure question. My understanding was certainly that we were talking about that broader discussion and not limiting it to the way the government defines proactive disclosure or has used the term “proactive disclosure”.
I just want to be clear that we were looking at something broader, although I agree that we have to define that, and we haven't done that work yet. The steering committee would be the place to start focusing on some particular issues in that.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Paul Szabo
Thank you for that. I think we do need to have that conversation so that everybody is onside as to exactly how we chunk this as we move forward; I think we have to take it in steps.
The first part would certainly be to educate ourselves, so that as we engage witnesses or travel to Washington or Quebec, say, we should be able to engage them on very detailed and specific matters based on the work we'll have done. The first part will certainly be education and helping us to define where we want to be.
Let's put it this way. This will be a living document, as it were. We're not defined very fully right now, but we will deal with it.
Madame Freeman, if you could come prepared after the break to lead a discussion on the area of order-in-council appointments, I would like to deal with that. I don't want it to sit on our agenda for very much longer. I've been very patient.
