Information & Ethics Committee on May 25th, 2010

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

I don't have confidence in the chair doing that unilaterally.

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

There you go. That's fine.

Okay, do you want to put the question?

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

I move the motion.

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

Okay. Mr. Siksay moves to give the authority to the chair to summon witnesses who have been approved by the committee, if necessary.

We'll call the question.

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

Could we have a recorded vote, Chair?

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

Yes.

We have a tie vote, and the chair votes yes.

(Motion agreed to: yeas 6; nays 5)

Now, on Thursday we have the President of Mexico. The steering committee is going to meet. Hopefully, we'll have a good answer as to what point we will have reached and will know whether or not political staff will be appearing, or their ministers.

We have the problem that a minister can't be compelled to appear, but even if they wish to appear, their calendar may not tie in with ours. So I'm going to be asking the committee, once we find out later on this week, to consider other dates or times for meetings so that we could complete our work before we rise for the summer. So I want members to be considering that.

Now, we've had two items on our agenda that I've been carrying meeting after meeting. I've had a little discussion with the vice-chair, Mr. Siksay, about the Google and Canpages work we did last session. There have been developments. We have a draft report. We had hoped to review the report and go, but Mr. Siksay has a suggestion and maybe a recommendation to make to the committee.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Thank you, Chair.

Chair, I was very happy with the report that was written and prepared and I was ready to sign off on it until I saw a story in the press—last week, I believe—about some problems that have arisen in Europe, where Google Street View was also recording information about wireless networks when they did the camerawork for their mapping system. A number of European countries have started investigations into that. I believe Google has acknowledged that they screwed up by collecting information that wasn't intended.

It strikes me, Chair, that it would be irresponsible for us to sign off on the report we have before us, given that kind of concern, and I'd like to suggest that we ask both Google and the Privacy Commissioner to come back to explain to us what happened in Europe, and whether similar things happened here in Canada, and what steps Google is taking to protect the privacy of Canadians in this regard.

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

Okay.

With regard to issuing the report, there is good reason why we shouldn't proceed with issuing it.

Is that acceptable to the members?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

So we'll take it off our agenda. The steering committee will consider the recall of Google Street View and the Privacy Commissioner to see whether we might be able to work that in.

The other item on our agenda is the order-in-council appointee rules, and this had to do with.... Rights and Democracy?

Madame?

[Carole Freeman, Bloc, Châteauguay—Saint-Constant, QC]

I'd like to broach the matter of order-in-council appointments. In 2006, the government promised to set up a commission and appoint a chair to review appointments. However, nothing was ever done. At this time, the appointment process is rather tarnished. Perhaps we need to take a look at this. I know that several attempts have been made to do so in recent years, but I think we need to take a closer look at the way the order-in-council appointment process currently works.

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

Okay. Would this be as a little study, or an educational...?

[Carole Freeman, Bloc, Châteauguay—Saint-Constant, QC]

It would be more than that. We should take a closer look at certain appointments, including that of Mr. Latulippe. Would it be okay for the steering committee to decide how best to approach the matter?

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

Okay, we will certainly consider it. We have to be careful with our mandate. It may be more appropriately the mandate of another committee or whatever. We'll have to look at that carefully, but I understand what you're saying.

I thought we were going to have this appointments commissioner who was going to opine on the whole situation. This has not happened yet. I think that's the big question. Until you have that, it's very difficult to start questioning the individual appointments. That's where we have problems, I think, if we want to go--

[Carole Freeman, Bloc, Châteauguay—Saint-Constant, QC]

So then, the steering committee can discuss how we are going to proceed?

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

We certainly can and we will. Thursday, okay.

All right, I have no other business that we had scheduled. I thank you, colleagues, for your patience. It's been a difficult time, but please let's come together and find out how we can continue and complete our work.