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.
Chief, Media Relations, Department of Human Resources and Skills Development
Liberal
Frank Valeriote Liberal Guelph, ON
Okay.
So at no time between your response to the press, as directed by Mr. Sparrow, and the following three weeks, when eventual numbers were given to the press, did you ever talk to Mr. Sparrow about his reasons for altering the release?
Chief, Media Relations, Department of Human Resources and Skills Development
Liberal
Chief, Media Relations, Department of Human Resources and Skills Development
No, but again, he has many other ones that go to him, so I follow his suggestions on the proposed response.
Liberal
Frank Valeriote Liberal Guelph, ON
Okay. I assume you're aware that Minister Finley made a comment on May 4 wherein she said that 51 changes had been made to 235 requests over a period of six months.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Public Affairs and Stakeholder Relations, Department of Human Resources and Skills Development
I'll take that question.
Yes, we are aware. We were the ones who provided her with those figures.
Liberal
Frank Valeriote Liberal Guelph, ON
Okay.
Of those 51 alterations, can you tell us how many of those alterations were a result of Mr. Sparrow's intervention?
Assistant Deputy Minister, Public Affairs and Stakeholder Relations, Department of Human Resources and Skills Development
No. We can't give a precise figure.
Liberal
Assistant Deputy Minister, Public Affairs and Stakeholder Relations, Department of Human Resources and Skills Development
Almost certainly. He's our principal interlocutor in the minister's office, so he would have been involved in some of them for sure. Like I said, my staff deals with him. As to who he consults with, as you heard earlier, he sometimes talks to the minister; sometimes he talks to a colleague. He is the principal person we interface with, though.
Liberal
Assistant Deputy Minister, Public Affairs and Stakeholder Relations, Department of Human Resources and Skills Development
As he answered there, he talks to the minister and his colleagues. I don't know who he talks to, quite frankly.
Liberal
Frank Valeriote Liberal Guelph, ON
No, but I'm talking, I think, about who actually speaks to you so that you would--
Assistant Deputy Minister, Public Affairs and Stakeholder Relations, Department of Human Resources and Skills Development
It's Mr. Sparrow who talks to me or my staff almost all the time.
Liberal
Frank Valeriote Liberal Guelph, ON
So he would have been involved in all 51, then, if he's the one who speaks to you.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Public Affairs and Stakeholder Relations, Department of Human Resources and Skills Development
He would have been involved. Whether he was the one who made the change, I cannot say.
Liberal
Frank Valeriote Liberal Guelph, ON
Okay. So what I think you're saying to me is that he may have made the decision about changing it and communicated it with you, or someone else may have made the decision about changing it and, through him, communicated it with you.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Public Affairs and Stakeholder Relations, Department of Human Resources and Skills Development
Exactly.
Liberal
Frank Valeriote Liberal Guelph, ON
And you can't determine what were those of his own volition and those of someone else's volition.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Public Affairs and Stakeholder Relations, Department of Human Resources and Skills Development
That is correct.
Liberal
Frank Valeriote Liberal Guelph, ON
Okay.
Do you think that it is appropriate to tell a reporter that you have provided him with all the information available when that was not the case?
Because you did have some other information available, Patricia, and you told them otherwise. Do you think it's appropriate?
Chief, Media Relations, Department of Human Resources and Skills Development
Well, again, it's not.... I follow procedures that are given to me, dictated by the department and agreed upon with the minister's office, so it's a mutual decision on how we deal with the media calls.
They come in and we deal with them the same way. We prepare--not we, media relations again...we have to rely on programs. We prepare the responses and get them approved at an internal level and then they are finally approved at the level of the minister's office. We rely on that kind of negotiation. We're actually in the middle.
What I had available at the time, what was available in terms of being approved, it's what was provided to the reporter.
Liberal
Frank Valeriote Liberal Guelph, ON
Three weeks later, the department released the figures, and they were almost identical to the information that the department originally prepared. So I'm wondering...do you wish right now that you had recommended that the original figures go out as you had prepared them?
Assistant Deputy Minister, Public Affairs and Stakeholder Relations, Department of Human Resources and Skills Development
I think Minister Finley answered this when she was here. With advertising campaigns, one never knows until the campaign is over, and I think she gave an example of an 9/11 type of event happening. So that is why the decision was made, as you've heard from Mr. Sparrow and Minister Finley. We can't revise history, take it all over, and do it differently. We try to give accurate, timely information. We follow the procedures.
They were what they were. We can't speculate on what the world would have been different had we done things differently...