Information & Ethics Committee on Nov. 16th, 2010

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Two minutes.

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for being here.

I wasn't part of the committee in April when you were here, so I may have some questions or comments that have already been covered, but I was glad to hear you say that this is not a partisan issue. You've also pointed out that this government has done a lot in terms of increasing the level of transparency and openness. You mentioned specifically NRCan and Environment Canada.

In fact, this government, in spite of what Mr. Easter indicates, has fought for Canadians' right to know how the government operates. We've opened up, for example, the Wheat Board, the CBC, and dozens of other institutions to the Access to Information Act. As I understand it, there are now 70 new institutions that are accountable to Canadians through the Access to Information Act. So for the first time, Canadians now have--

[An hon. member]

You're out of time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

One speaker at a time. Mr. Albrecht has the floor.

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Canadians now can see how these institutions spend their tax dollars. This is something that was sorely lacking, and I'm glad to see that our government did take action on it.

I want to return for a moment to the opening comments you made. In the first paragraph, you comment about “the social and economic benefits of sharing information with the public in accessible and open formats”.

You go on to say “governments, at various levels, understand that collaborating with citizens helps their citizens to make informed decisions, promotes their engagement, instils trust in government...”. Certainly I have no argument with that.

Then you go on to talk about the stimulation and innovation and economic activities. You mention that again later in your brief, and also you mentioned it a few times today.

Can you expand a bit as to how open government would promote innovation and economic activity? I'd like to have a couple of examples so I can understand that.

[Suzanne Legault]

What we've seen in Canada, at the municipal level, are various developments of programs that have been of service to citizens and that would not have been developed by the municipal governments. So at the municipal level, they have schedules for bus routes. With having the information disclosed, they were able to develop programs where you have access to when and where your bus is going show up. It's the same thing with garbage collection and the same thing with openings of various municipal institutions.

We haven't seen much of that being developed at the federal level, although if you talk to somebody like Tracey Lauriault, who is a researcher at Carleton University, she has made tremendous use of geospatial data. She is able to do research in terms of various developments of communities, using the data she collects from the government.

The U.S. is a big proponent of the disclosure of public sector information in order to promote innovation. People who have the technology savvy are able to use the data and develop new applications.

Again, I would urge you to talk to people who have actually done it. They can bring you various examples. Some of these people are on the list of witnesses.

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Do I have any more time?

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

No, that's it.

Ms. Bourgeois, you have five minutes.

[Diane Bourgeois, Bloc, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Legault, I very much appreciate today's discussion. I do not want to discuss the details of proactive disclosure. As far as I am concerned, I prefer transparency, or the concept of open government.

This openness could lead to public consultation. Thus citizens could be proactive, participate in government decisions and contribute their ideas through a vast and permanent process of public consultation.

However, broad, public and permanent consultation would involve power-sharing. This means that we must not be afraid. We must have the firm intention to hide nothing, would you not say?

I think, as you yourselves wrote in your document, that this requires a change of culture. Let me tell you right away that I am impressed with your extreme courage in discussing openness, transparency and cultural change. In fact, as the journalists say, we are currently dealing with a government that withholds information, that grabs it and keeps it for itself, that controls information and finds it difficult to open up. The most striking example is what it is doing with the war in Afghanistan. It does not even want it to be discussed in Parliament.

That being said, with regard to the departments that could profit from showing some transparency, we could look at the Treasury Board itself. When we mention the Treasury Board's transparency, we could also think of accrual accounting. If we had accrual accounting, it would allow the citizens to see, at very precise points in time, what the government expenditures are, instead of doing expenditures spread over two or three years, or within various programs.

I greatly appreciate this discussion. I will leave it up to the committee, to my colleagues, to decide, during upcoming meetings what kind of transparency they want and how its implementation will work. I hope that there will be a follow-up.

You said that you have noticed some openness from the Canadian government. I would like to know what follow-up the Canadian government has done with regard to your suggestions about openness.

[Suzanne Legault]

Mr. Chair, as I said earlier, it seems that, as far as the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat is concerned, over the past few months there was an initiative for a government portal, access to government data, in the context of disclosing requests for access to information. Likewise, we also feel that they are really opening up. These people will be pushing this initiative even further along. We are currently holding regular meetings with people from the Treasury Board Secretariat to try to work together and influence them as we conduct this exercise.

I am sharing my knowledge with you, but my knowledge is nonetheless very limited with regard to government transparency, given the fact that my office does not have the mandate to do research and implementation in this case. It is really the government's responsibility. My work consists in working together with these people while trying to influence them in that sense.

[Diane Bourgeois, Bloc, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

Ms. Legault, I just told you that the people from the Treasury Board have had problems with implementing the accrual accounting formula that the Auditor General of Canada requested 10 years ago.

What do you intend to do? Will you go back to see them again and ask them what they intend to do with regard to accrual accounting? Do you really have enough power to influence the Treasury Board so that it keeps its accounting books so transparent that any simple citizen could see how tax money is being spent? I am not talking about the very general concepts that are found on the Treasury Board's Internet Site as well as the site of Public Works and Government Services Canada. Are you going to do it?

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Ms. Bourgeois, after—

[Suzanne Legault]

Mr. Chair, as you know, I have no power of order. There is no investigation regarding this matter or the Treasury Board Secretariat. One of the witnesses suggested to you was the person in charge of information technology for the federal government. This is a person to whom you could put that question.

[Diane Bourgeois, Bloc, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you, Ms. Bourgeois.

Mrs. Block, for five minutes.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar, SK]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Ms. Legault, for being here today. It's good to have you back to continue the discussion we started a number of months ago in terms of proactive disclosure, and now open government.

Based on the definition of “open government” that I heard you give Mr. Siksay, it sounds truly to me like there is a fundamental shift from the need to disclose information for the purpose of being accountable and transparent to almost being a broker of information so that individuals will have access to it and be able to use it for their own purposes. I want to make sure that's exactly what I'm hearing, so I'll ask you to comment on that after I make just one other observation.

Our government has been looking at open government for some time, and as you've referenced in your opening remarks, other jurisdictions are rolling out some really exciting and interesting initiatives. We do need to be looking at how some of those ideas can best be implemented here in Canada.

Again, going back to the definitions as I've described them, I'm a little concerned. But also I would like to know which model you favour out of the three you've talked to us about today.

[Suzanne Legault]

This is the second time I've been asked this question, Mr. Chair. I guess I will have to make a choice.

I haven't travelled to Australia or the U.K. I've had more contact with the Americans, because they came to see us, and they came to explain what they're doing.

I really like the Australian approach. I guess, perhaps, it's a Canadian approach, in some respects. I thought it was well reflected. I think they had a task force. They had a set of experts.

It is complex. It is not easy. I think it's a measured way of looking at how to implement it.

I like it, as well, because as part of this exercise, they looked at the access to information act in Australia and updated it, which I thought was a key component.

That's my preference. I wasn't going to say it. I think it's important to look at the three models, but my preference is the Australian one simply because of the way they actually took some time to think about it, to consult, and to develop a more comprehensive document, which the government is acting upon. I think that is an important way of looking at it, because it is complicated.

The questions this committee is asking me are a lot of questions I don't have answers to. You need to bring together a community of experts in different fields: privacy, copyright, official languages, security. These people have to be consulted and have to be part of the equation.

By the way, David Eaves was one of the public policy experts from Canada who participated on the Australian task force. So we have the knowledge here in Canada. We're actually exporting it to Australia to benefit their initiatives. I think we should really look at what these people here in Canada know.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar, SK]

Do I have any more time?

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

You have one and a half minutes.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar, SK]

A fair bit of importance is being placed on the leadership of a country making a declaration with regard to open government, and thereby, I guess, signalling intent.

You referenced the U.K. Prime Minister's affirmation of a commitment to opening up data. Getting back to the Australians' response to the government 2.0 task force report, they responded by tabling amendments to their freedom of information act. Do you know what those amendments were?

[Suzanne Legault]

I have some knowledge. I will admit that I did not look at the legislation in detail. I just did not have the time to look at that, and I didn't before this committee. I apologize. I have it in my book, but I didn't have a chance to study it.

One thing that I think we should really look at, because it's a federal system, is that the information commissioner there has order-making power. I think we should definitely look at what it looks like in a federal context, because it's a similar system of governance. It's a federation.

Right now what we have in Canada is order-making power for information commissioners at the provincial level, but they oversee different information holdings than I do at the federal level. It's a different set of information holdings. I think the Australian model is important there.

They have disclosure logs, publication schemes, access to information that is free of charge, and online access to information requests. So they've updated it to make it more in line with the digital environment. And the information commissioner in Australia has a very strong policy mandate.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you very much, Ms. Block.

Now Mr. Siksay will have five minutes.

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

Thank you, Chair.

Ms. Legault, the last time I had the floor, you'd just mentioned that Mexico does something a little different with their access to information requests. It sounded as if they actually post the information that is requested, not just the fact that it has been requested. Is that where you were going? Do I understand that correctly?

[Suzanne Legault]

I invite you to speak to the Treasury Board Secretariat about the Mexican system. The legislation is their own legislation. It functions in their own environment. Obviously, most people in Mexico don't have access to the Internet and so on, so there are all sorts of issues around the Mexican system.

The beauty of the Mexican system is that it was implemented very recently, so it's all web-based. They have an amazing web-based system. Essentially, the way it works is that people can make an access to information request online, free of charge. The institution responds online, and you can automatically make a complaint. It's all online. It's because they are recent in this field, as a jurisdiction, that they basically use the technology to make their system work.

I'm not commenting on any other parts of the system, which is difficult to compare with Canada, but they do have the transparency portal, and they're now integrating all the various federal states that are going to be part of this portal. It's a searchable database, as well. It's centralized. It's something that I wish for Canada.

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

So here in Canada, when you say that given the demise of CAIRS, of that system, four agencies have now gone back to a system where they're disclosing their access to information requests, is that just a listing of what has been requested? It's not the actual information that was provided to the requester. Is that right?