Evidence of meeting #15 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 sparrow.
A recording is available from Parliament.
12:40 p.m.
Bloc
Carole Freeman Bloc Châteauguay—Saint-Constant, QC
Good afternoon, Mr. Larose.
Good afternoon, Ms. Valladao.
Mr. Larose, I want to know what role you played in this case. According to the notes we have and the emails that were sent to us, Ms. Valladao informed Mr. Sparrow and other political officials that the The Globe and Mail may be given a response that was not correct. So you were consulted because people were not comfortable with the idea of providing information that was not correct. Why did you then determine that the information was not correct? In fact, “misleading” was the term used in English.
12:40 p.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Public Affairs and Stakeholder Relations, Department of Human Resources and Skills Development
As Mr. Sparrow and Minister Finley have explained, the program provided an estimate. The minister's office, as the final spokesperson, decided not to provide the information until the campaign was over. I spoke to Mr. Sparrow about it, and he said there's only a couple of days left in the campaign, let's wait. I said that seemed reasonable to me and that's what we did.
12:40 p.m.
Bloc
Carole Freeman Bloc Châteauguay—Saint-Constant, QC
Is that the usual procedure when requests are made? You prepare the responses, and the minister's office decides whether to withhold or release the information.
12:40 p.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Public Affairs and Stakeholder Relations, Department of Human Resources and Skills Development
We treat every media inquiry exactly the same. We get somewhere between 700 and 800 a year, typically, and, yes, we treat them all the same. A question comes in, Patricia or her colleague deals with the department; they try to get the response together. Once it has been accumulated or developed, it is sent to the minister's office for final approval for its release to the reporter.
12:40 p.m.
Bloc
Carole Freeman Bloc Châteauguay—Saint-Constant, QC
The statistics we received show that 22% of inquiries—which are sent to you and for which you prepare the information requested by the reporters—are altered. You prepare the correct information, and then the minister's office deliberately alters it.
12:40 p.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Public Affairs and Stakeholder Relations, Department of Human Resources and Skills Development
Well, I think, as both the minister and Mr. Sparrow have provided, sometimes they will add additional information or context or sometimes they may sort of want to elaborate certain points more. It's not a question of them altering the numbers or anything like that; it's just changing some of the context or information around it.
Most of the questions we get have seven or eight or ten sub-points. They're often quite long, so it may just be a question of how they are framed, but yes, we do send them all there.
12:40 p.m.
Bloc
Carole Freeman Bloc Châteauguay—Saint-Constant, QC
Thank you, Mr. Larose. In any case, we will have the opportunity to examine all of those documents. We will be able to look at the changes that were made to the responses you prepared and see what information the minister's office chose to alter. Then we can make a determination on the matter.
12:40 p.m.
NDP
Bill Siksay NDP Burnaby—Douglas, BC
Thank you, Chair.
Thanks for being here, Ms. Valladao and Mr. Larose.
Ms. Valladao, who are Peter Martin and Benoit Trottier?
12:40 p.m.
Chief, Media Relations, Department of Human Resources and Skills Development
Peter is with the program of response, the program of communications, and Benoit Trottier is the director general for strategic communications.
12:40 p.m.
NDP
Bill Siksay NDP Burnaby—Douglas, BC
Thank you.
Ms. Valladao, has it ever been suggested to you by the minister's office that it would be better that a particular media request was handled as an access to information request and that it should be done in that fashion?
12:40 p.m.
Chief, Media Relations, Department of Human Resources and Skills Development
12:40 p.m.
NDP
Bill Siksay NDP Burnaby—Douglas, BC
I think Mr. Larose touched on this a moment ago, but is there any system for priorizing media requests in your office?
12:45 p.m.
Chief, Media Relations, Department of Human Resources and Skills Development
No, we treat requests the same, regardless of which media outlet they come from. We take into consideration, of course, the deadline of the reporter, making sure that we can provide, in a timely fashion, accurate and concise information in trying to meet the reporter's deadlines. So prioritizing it would depend basically on the deadline.
12:45 p.m.
NDP
Bill Siksay NDP Burnaby—Douglas, BC
So there's no system of amber-lighting particular requests from particular organizations or individuals? There's no system at your end of identifying something that might be considered more sensitive than other requests?
12:45 p.m.
Chief, Media Relations, Department of Human Resources and Skills Development
12:45 p.m.
NDP
Bill Siksay NDP Burnaby—Douglas, BC
Okay.
As a result of any conversations you've had with the minister's office with regard to an impending or a suggested media information release, have you ever felt pressure to self-censor at your end, to make changes in the information before you send it to the minister's office or second-guess the recommendations that come from your policy or program officers?
12:45 p.m.
Chief, Media Relations, Department of Human Resources and Skills Development
No. Again, my role is really to act as the hub in between. I don't feel the pressure. I think at the end of the day it's their decision how they would like that response to be framed and go out. I do have a role in recommending what comes to me and putting that into words that will be clear to the reporter.
But again, they make the changes they see fit. It's not my role to judge that.
12:45 p.m.
NDP
Bill Siksay NDP Burnaby—Douglas, BC
In the situation where there's been a decision to change the information that's proposed to be released, has it ever been suggested to you that the suggestion for that change came from the Prime Minister's Office or somewhere outside of the minister's office?
12:45 p.m.
Chief, Media Relations, Department of Human Resources and Skills Development
12:45 p.m.
Conservative
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Nepean—Carleton, ON
Well, let me open by saying that it appears from all of the information that has surfaced that your department in general, and Ms. Valladao in particular, have conducted themselves in an unimpeachable and highly ethical fashion, so I congratulate you for that.
It's also clear that your department worked together with the minister's office to ensure that accurate information was released to the public within three weeks, well before the three-month deadline. I think this is an occasion to congratulate all public servants who go to work every day and execute their duties in an honourable and honest way, as you have been an example of doing in your conduct on this file. So thank you very much.
One of the members across the way suggested that Ms. Valladao perhaps should not have said that the information was unavailable, but all the information we have seen, everything we've learned, suggests that the information was in fact unavailable, and that it would become available three weeks later when the costings of the advertisements were complete. And at that point, three weeks later, it was in fact available. And when it became available, it was released.
Is that not the case?
12:45 p.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Public Affairs and Stakeholder Relations, Department of Human Resources and Skills Development
Yes.
