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.
Peter Larose Assistant Deputy Minister, Public Affairs and Stakeholder Relations, Department of Human Resources and Skills Development
We actually don't have any statements. We were simply going to introduce ourselves.
Patricia Valladao Chief, Media Relations, Department of Human Resources and Skills Development
I'm Patricia Valladao, chief of media relations for HRSDC.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Public Affairs and Stakeholder Relations, Department of Human Resources and Skills Development
I'm Peter Larose, the assistant deputy minister.
Because Patricia was copied on the e-mails to Mr. Leblanc, she will answer those questions. If there are any general questions about how we do business at the department, I'll answer those, if that's okay with the chair.
Liberal
Frank Valeriote Liberal Guelph, ON
Thanks to both of you appearing today. I appreciate it.
May I call you Patricia?
Patricia, how long have you held your position?
Chief, Media Relations, Department of Human Resources and Skills Development
At HRSDC, I started on January 11 of this year.
Liberal
Frank Valeriote Liberal Guelph, ON
This year? Okay.
Has anyone at HRSDC or the PMO or the issues management team spoken to you about your appearance before this committee today?
Chief, Media Relations, Department of Human Resources and Skills Development
Liberal
Frank Valeriote Liberal Guelph, ON
No one. Okay.
Now let me ask you about the following. You're familiar with all the e-mails that went back and forth on the issue of the cost of the advertising at the Olympics and the responses that were given by you after having been subject to the intervention by Mr. Sparrow.
Was it your understanding that the cost of this ad campaign was going to be substantially different from that which your office originally prepared for release? Because it seems you were confident, by your e-mails, in the accuracy of these numbers, based on your initial response.
Chief, Media Relations, Department of Human Resources and Skills Development
Well, my role as chief of media relations is really to act as the broker between the department and the minister's office to prepare a response and get that response approved and delivered to the media. So no, we are not the experts on all of the issues. That's why we rely heavily on the program officers to provide us the information.
So, no, at no point... I did not know. I pass the information that's given to me by a program to the minister's office to be approved. We have procedures that are given to us that we have to follow and those are the directives I had. So I did not know at which point we were and therefore I had to get them approved.
Liberal
Frank Valeriote Liberal Guelph, ON
But you did have numbers in one of your responses, which were removed by Mr. Sparrow, did you not?
Chief, Media Relations, Department of Human Resources and Skills Development
Yes.
Liberal
Chief, Media Relations, Department of Human Resources and Skills Development
On my program officers.
Liberal
Chief, Media Relations, Department of Human Resources and Skills Development
Well, again, I'm not the--
Chief, Media Relations, Department of Human Resources and Skills Development
When it's given to me, I don't know which stage we are at. I deal with many other issues at the same time, so when it comes to me, I would understand that it's something that, you know, we could propose.
Liberal
Frank Valeriote Liberal Guelph, ON
Right.
Did Mr. Sparrow ever tell you why he had taken the numbers out of the original release that had been prepared by you?
Chief, Media Relations, Department of Human Resources and Skills Development
No, but it's his prerogative to do the final approval.
Liberal
Frank Valeriote Liberal Guelph, ON
All right.
This issue erupted shortly after the inquiry by the press, and I'm curious. When that issue erupted, did you ever have--
Liberal
Conservative
Patricia Davidson Conservative Sarnia—Lambton, ON
Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'm sorry to interrupt the honourable member, but I wonder if we could have the documents that he keeps referring to tabled.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Paul Szabo
Madam Davidson, that's not a point of order.
We're going to go back to Mr. Valeriote, okay?
Liberal
Frank Valeriote Liberal Guelph, ON
All right. Thank you.
Following the eruption of the issue, did you ever have any discussions with Mr. Sparrow about these e-mails that had gone back and forth between you and ultimately to the press?