Information & Ethics Committee on Nov. 30th, 2010

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

So is it the deputy minister who's accountable, or is it you?

[Gérald Cossette]

It's me, it's the deputy minister, and it's the third...we're three deputy ministers at Foreign Affairs and International Trade.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

So you will take personal responsibility—

[Gérald Cossette]

I will take personal responsibility for this.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

A second round.

Mr. Easter, five minutes.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I have just one question coming off the last exchange.

In terms of the backlog, once you get rid of the backlog, you'll certainly have quite a number of resources freed up to deal with the immediate requests as they come forward.

How much staffing and resources would be involved now in just dealing with the backlog?

[Gérald Cossette]

We have 12 people now dealing with the backlog.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

I do believe it has to be difficult for the department.

In your remarks, you certainly pre-empt the discussion on political engagement in the redaction of documents. I understand that, but I will say this. It's got to be difficult for the.... You know, the bureaucracy is being asked to be transparent, and the laws are in place to push it, yet we have a government in place at the political level that is absolutely consumed by secrecy and spin.

I think Canadians kind of forget. They talk about openness and transparency, but I think they forget how open previous governments were. When cabinet meetings were over, cabinet ministers walked out of the cabinet and faced the media, each and every one of them. The media questioned them. Now cabinet meetings are held somewhere and nobody ever hears of them.

[An hon. member]

I don't think they have them.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

There are very few people, very few ministers, who talk to the press. Press conferences--

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

A point of order.

The government at no time...no cabinet minister ever interfered, so I think the point the member is making is out of order.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Mr. Easter, I'm going to ask you to deal with this issue. I do allow a little leeway, and you can make your preambles if you want to use your five minutes, but I think we do have a fairly serious issue in front of the committee, which is the department's inability to deal with this issue, or their problem dealing with it, which has been going on for five years. Perhaps you could try to zero in on the report of the Information Commissioner and the problems. I think there's enough to keep us all going for the rest of the meeting.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

There's no problem there, Mr. Chair. I just think there's an even greater problem in terms of secrecy on the political side, which really needs to be mentioned. I think all the pressure is on the bureaucracy, while we've never seen such a lack of transparency on the political side in so many forms. I just think that needs to be mentioned.

In terms of your not allowing any political engagement--and as you know, we've had some difficulties with some other departments--what is the process you follow in dealing with ministers' offices to prevent that? What's the process you follow that others have not been able to? Do you send an access to information document up to the minister's office and somebody reviews it? What is the process that has worked in your case?

[Gérald Cossette]

Madame McCulloch may explain the process in detail, but my understanding is that the request comes to the access to information office. It does not come to the minister's office. Therefore, the minister's office is not aware of requests that we receive as they come into the department. We process the file, and then we inform the senior bureaucrats, as well as the minister's office, when the files will be made public. That's the process.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

So you have a request on ABC. The request is dealt with through your access to information people. I understand why you do this. I understand why the minister needs to know: he or she could be walking down the street and get a question.

How much time is there before you release the access to information request or the information publicly to people once you have informed the minister's office that an access to information document has been released?

[Gérald Cossette]

We inform the minister--correct me if I'm wrong--72 hours before the demand is released.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

So the minister has 72 hours' notice.

The other question I had was in relation to the $2.7 million that you said in your remarks today you have basically secured going forward. Where did that money come from? I mean, there are cuts, there's the strategic review.... What's been given up in order to make available that $2.7 million?

I come from Prince Edward Island. We do not have a passport office there, and we dearly would love to have one. We're at a real disadvantage. In fact, the MPs' offices end up doing a lot of the passport work. If there were more money available, maybe we'd have a passport office.

So where did the money come from? It doesn't grow on trees, so where did it come from? What was cut or reduced in order to gain that $2.7 million for this effort?

[Gérald Cossette]

The money did not come from Passport Canada, since the Passport Canada budget is protected. It's a revolving fund. None of the money that comes to Passport Canada out of the fee structure is transferred to the Department of Foreign Affairs. There is a barrier between these two budgets.

With regard to the $2.7 million, basically we have reallocated resources internally from several parts of the department to the ATIP unit. I cannot tell you specifically. We have a $2.3 billion or $2.4 billion budget. Out of this, $1.8 billion is what we call O and M, operational money. If you look around the department, in several places there is a bit of money here and a bit of money there, which accounts for the $2.7 million. We have 171 missions abroad, so we may cut a tiny amount of money from missions and transfer the money to the ATIP budget. That is what we've done, and this is what we do on an ongoing basis. As priorities change, the department shifts money around to meet these requirements. This is something we do as managers on an ongoing basis.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Ms. Davidson.

[Patricia Davidson, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thanks very much, Mr. Cossette, and your colleagues, for being with us this afternoon.

I don't expect that you were any happier to see the report card than we were. I wouldn't mind hearing your comments about that after I finish asking some questions here.

We need to be very clear that this government definitely is opposed to issues where there is not access to information. We definitely support access to information. When we look at where you are today from where you were in 2005, spending four times more on ATIP issues, that certainly stands behind the statement I've just made. I want to make it very clear that this government strongly supports access to information. We are doing what we can to make sure all departments are moving forward on this issue.

I want to commend you for the way you have moved forward and how you have cleared up this backlog. I think that's quite remarkable, the amount you've done so far and the plan you have put in place to move ahead with that. The fact that you're going to have a full staffing complement is excellent. The fact that you have found the money that you need to implement this full staffing complement through adjustments internally is commendable.

That is what we, as responsible government, expect our departments to do, and that's exactly what you have done. I commend you for that. It's not always the fact that we need to be throwing a whole lot more money at things. What we need to be doing is operating in a way that's advantageous to Canadians.

I think you are doing that, and I congratulate you on that.

I want to talk a little bit more about going from a paper-based system to a software-based system. We also talked about some of the challenges of translation costs. Is there a way to go to the software-based system and avoid the issues with translation? We know we must abide by the issues, as far as the two official languages go, and I'm certainly not suggesting that we don't. Is there a policy put in place so that that can be achieved?

[Gérald Cossette]

I want to clarify one thing. When we talk about moving from paper-based to electronic-based or digitally based systems, we're talking about a way to manage the information internally, first, so that we can be more efficient and faster at processing the information.

One of the challenges we have right now is that we do not have a single database where we collect all the information. Some of it is paper-based, some of it is electronic, some of it is highly classified, and some of it is unclassified. We do not have one single system where all the information is available.

The first thing we need to come up with is an electronic system that will allow us to get to the information much faster than what we have right now.

[Patricia Davidson, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

You weren't referring to a public electronic system?

[Gérald Cossette]

No. That's an issue being looked at, as we speak, by central agencies, as to how you would standardize the information across government, and how you would put that on the web in fact for easier access by Canadians. The government and central agencies haven't proposed anything specific yet, and a decision has not been taken with regard to that.

In terms of the issue of official languages, attached to the posting of information, Canadians have the right and do expect that as they access government information, that information will be made available to them in both English and French. At this stage, to be honest, I don't have an answer to your question as to how that could be done.

If Canadians were to request the information in the language in which the information is available and that would be sufficient, that's one thing. But governments have a long commitment toward official languages; therefore, everything that is posted electronically has to be in both official languages. That's the policy as it stands.

[Patricia Davidson, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Is there any area in particular through this entire process in your department where the greatest delay occurs? Is there any one area you can pinpoint?

[Gérald Cossette]

Issues related to national security, of course. Every time you need to speak to a foreign government about security—if it's routine matters, it may be easier—or intelligence issues and how that information was gathered, collected, and so on, that makes the transfer of information or the release of that information extremely difficult and sensitive.