Information & Ethics Committee on March 7th, 2011

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Somewhat along the lines of Mr. Albrecht, on the use of data sets, the U.S. representative talked about how they're able to add value because of the open data. The general public or entrepreneurs were able to take that data and add value to it and basically start some businesses and productivity in the public arena. Have you seen any of that in Australia as yet, and how have you managed to achieve greater cooperation? That's one of my biggest fears.

[John McMillan]

I think it is occurring, and it's fairly early for me and difficult to give examples, because it's mostly anecdotal. It's fairly clear to me from just the growth in industry, the government consultation industry around Canberra itself, how many organizations now feed off government information. Unfortunately, I can't give better hard examples of that.

Government agencies have signed on fairly easily to this Gov 2.0 proactive publication agenda because it's a good-news story for government. They see the benefits of better interaction with the community. They like the stories. Obviously, what they find harder is the freedom of information reforms, which give the right to individual journalists and the opposition to request any document they want to get access to.

I don't want to take too much time, but one big sticking point we're discussing is that if government agencies have to publish information online, they're meant to comply with web accessibility guidelines, which means the information is available to the whole of the community, including people with a disability, particularly a sight disability. That's posing a practical challenge for government agencies because of the added cost of making information available in multiple forms.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you very much, Mr. Easter.

Ms. Davidson, up to four minutes.

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

Thanks very much, Mr. Chair.

Mr. McMillan, thank you very much for starting your day with us. Certainly we're enjoying it here, and hope you are there as well.

You ended this last statement you made talking about added costs because of different ways of having information available. These are things I think we're interested in as well. You know, of course, that we have two official languages here, so we see that as a bit of an added cost as well. Perhaps you could talk about the added costs you ran into.

The other thing I wondered if you could address was the copyright situation. One of the issues we've heard about fairly extensively is copyright and the fact that to have truly open government we need to get rid of copyright. What did you do in Australia, what were the impediments that you found with copyright, what were the solutions, and so on?

[John McMillan]

In both areas the answer is that a balance is needed, because legitimate interests are at play.

First, on the cost issue, there is no doubt that the freedom of information and open government reforms impose an additional cost on agencies in dealing with individual FOI Act requests and also in moving information onto the web and making it available in different formats.

To some extent, government accepts that that's a program cost it necessarily bears. And were it not for FOI reform, technology would be driving these changes in any case, but technology also offers efficiencies.

Because it's such an early stage, we don't have any accurate figures on the costs. Government agencies, in my experience, are bearing it happily, though there are concerns. We've tried to take up those issues. For example, I've had discussions with our disability discrimination commissioner, who says if we are too rigorous in requiring that all information published be in PDF, HD, and now Word format, then government agencies will simply stop publishing. We've got to accept that some information will be available in different forms on request but there has to be varying practice. Open government's important enough that we need that adjustment.

Equally, on copyright protection, while government can make freely available the information it has generated, which it calls proprietary interests, a great deal of the information government holds is information on which somebody else holds a copyright interest. When government publishes submissions online, when they publish photographs and so on online, often somebody else has a copyright interest.

Again, there's a need to balance a proper protection of the copyright interest of other holders with free reuse, creative commons licensing of information. Our role is to acknowledge that there's a balance but to drive hard that freedom of information has to be balanced. Don't use copyright and so on as a reason, a justification, an obstacle for not doing more. I think that agencies are now engaged in that balancing process in all areas.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you very much, Ms. Davidson.

On behalf of all members of the committee, I want to thank you, Mr. McMillan, for your testimony today. It's been helpful and very informative. It's fair to say that Canada probably is running a couple of years behind Australia. Your evidence will certainly be helpful as we plot our own course here in Canada.

It is very close to 4:30--I guess it's 8:30 in Australia--so I want to thank you for the hour that you've spent with us. I wish you all the best for the rest of the day.

[John McMillan]

Thank you. It's been a pleasure. I wish you well in your inquiry in this area.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you very much.

It is 4:30. We'll go back to Mr. Easter.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Before you go on, Mr. Easter, as everyone is aware, we do have the Official Languages Commissioner with us, so can we be as brief as possible, under the circumstances? If you can make your points briefly and succinctly, we'll perhaps move on to Mr. Fraser.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

As I said previously, I am somewhat reluctant to interrupt the committee proceedings and other matters to deal with this motion. I've already read it. I do see it as a very urgent matter because it does seem that the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism is basically undertaking tactics to strong-arm the immigrant and ethnic community for votes.

The letter itself was signed by the staffer who we would like to bring before the committee. He is basically the only person who could answer, I think, some of the questions we have.

The letter is pretty straightforward, and I quote it: “I am writing to you today on behalf of Jason Kenney, PC, MP, who is presently out of the country”.

I will admit that the letter is on Hon. Jason Kenney, PC, MP letterhead as a member for Calgary—Southeast. However, in the letter it says, “Minister Kenney has instructed me to share with you the enclosed presentation entitled Breaking Through—Building the Conservative Brand in Cultural Communities.”

It goes on to say, “...we require an additional $200,000 of financial commitment from various Conservative Electoral District Associations to make this campaign a success.”

Finally, it says, “Given the current political environment, we hope to have commitments by March 11, 2011.”

The document is very detailed, and I think this is where we get into some very serious questions, Mr. Chair. The powerpoint presentation headline is “Target Ridings—Very Ethnic”. The data is impressive. I would certainly like to know how many government resources were used to access this data, compile it, and put it into a powerpoint presentation, if in fact that's what happened. There are ten ridings listed in the chart. The takeaway on this in the next powerpoint slide is that “There are lots of ethnic voters”, “There will be quite a few more soon”, and “They live where we need to win”.

It goes on in other slides farther down the powerpoint presentation. It talks about paid media, TV, radio, print, online, and how to focus the campaign to attract that ethnic and multicultural community.

The issue is simple enough, Mr. Chair. How extensive were the activities the staffer was engaged in? What resources of the federal government were used to assemble this material? Who, besides the staffer, was involved in the production and dissemination of this material from the minister's office?

I think the underlying trouble here, Mr. Chair, is that this is the minister who is directly responsible for the very communities this campaign is targeted at. It's a very serious matter in which this minister is in charge, on the one hand, of whether you get family members over to this country. So I believe there's an inherent conflict of interest here in potentially the use of government resources to compile the material to do the targeting in the communities from which I guess the Conservative campaign is trying to gain votes.

Simply put, Mr. Chair, the minister has a lot of influence over the lives of the people who this campaign is in fact targeting. The letter reads, as I said earlier, that the minister has authorized this approach. We need to hear exactly how that was communicated to the staffer. Was the letter edited by the minister in any respect? Was it communicated to others in the office by e-mail or other means? Did the minister's chief of staff, or other political staff, have any involvement? In other words, how deep does it go?

I guess the last point I would make relates to the data, Mr. Chair, and this is where I think it's really troublesome. If a ministry is using the resources of the Government of Canada for strictly partisan political purposes, which I believe they may be, in terms of the data, what was the source of the data? It is very complete. Was the source of the data anything beyond the long-form census statistics? What was the role of the department or other department officials in contributing information to this document? Who communicated that information, and how was it communicated to this staffer and other staffers in Kenney's office or other staffers in other offices?

We might have to go to the minister on this last question. That is, did the minister ever contact members of the communities identified directly with respect to the issues outlined in this document?

I see this as a very serious issue. I believe the only way to address it and get to the bottom of it is to have the staffer appear before this committee. That way the committee can get the information from the individual to see just what is going on, and how deep this goes and how severely ministers of this regime are using their departments and their offices for strictly partisan political purposes, which is not the role of a minister of the Government of Canada, or as I see it has been renamed today in a CRA press release, “the Harper Government”.

I think this is an extremely serious issue, and I ask members to support the motion.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you, Mr. Easter.

Mr. Abbott.

[Jim Abbott, Conservative, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

First off, I think it's very entertaining the way that Mr. Easter has called this an urgent issue and is disrupting the order this committee has.

As noted, Mr. Chair, Mr. Fraser and others are waiting to testify, having been called here. I fail to see why we could not have handled this issue in a matter of 20 minutes at the end of the meeting, as had been previously proposed. I think there is some serious grandstanding going on here. I think the urgency is the 24/7 news cycle, and as long as Mr. Easter and the Liberals can continue to keep this issue percolating along, they will keep it in the 24/7 news cycle.

The thing that strikes me is that the order in which we have been going after the study of open government calls for us to be able to have a meeting this coming Wednesday, when we are going to be giving instructions to our staff, to our clerks, to our researchers so that they can start to work on the report. If you take a look at the work schedule, Mr. Chair.... I have had an opportunity to consult it very briefly, and it seems to me--

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

This is a minor point. I'm not going to belabour it, but the issue you just talked about was discussed in camera this morning, so that wouldn't be something we would bring up. That's not a major point.

[Jim Abbott, Conservative, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

The point is that if we go from next Wednesday to the break week, which is already scheduled, we get into the committee hearing with Mr. Lacroix. This has been quite torturous to organize so that there is a common time for the chair of the CBC to come before this committee and answer questions about access to information in the CBC, which I know he's prepared to do. There is another item that follows on that, and there are other things that are scheduled. Therefore, we can take a look at what we have done to this point on the study of open government and say that we will get around to giving our researchers instructions in May, so they can at least start the process. This way, by next fall we could have the report on the study of open government.

With respect to the motion itself, I found it interesting that Mr. Easter admitted that the motion is rather light in the way it's written. I read the words, “To examine the issuance by the office of the Minister of Immigration”. He tries to imply that because it is noted on the letterhead it is coming from the Minister of Immigration. At one point, he was a minister; he was Solicitor General at one point. I was a parliamentary secretary. That was the distinction we had at that time. But the issuance was not by the office of the Minister of Immigration; in fact, the issuance of the letter was on Jason Kenney's letterhead. I would like Mr. Easter to show us the letter from the Minister of Immigration on his office stationery dated March 3, 2011. This is not an incidental point. This is a motion we are taking a look at, and we would be moving forward from this motion.

This is nothing more than a naked attempt to get at the content of the presentation that was included with that letter. Everybody in Canada who has paid any attention to this—and I don't imagine there are tremendous lineups to watch this thing right now—is well aware that Mr. Kenney has clearly said that this was inappropriate. He has explained that he signs everything that leaves his office, that there was the terribly tragic assassination of the minister in Pakistan, that he was quickly on a flight to Pakistan to pay homage to that gentleman, and that everything was in a turmoil. There was a mistake made by a person in his office, so there was the dispersing of the information.

With respect to the information, I suspect that if there was a close examination of the documents, which I haven't examined myself, one would find that every single statistic included in “Breaking Through—Building the Conservative Brand in Cultural Communities” will have come from sources that are publicly available.

I have personal experience with Minister Kenney, and when I read in the press that he puts in 80-, 90-, 100-hour weeks, I have no difficulty believing it. I have no idea how this man actually manages to attend the number of events and go the distances that he goes. It's astounding. To suggest that there wasn't time within his schedule or the schedule of the people who are employed in his office over the 40 hours, and that they were on government time, is just not on. We have all seen the level at which he and his staff work.

I think it's important that we keep things in context and not bow to the goddess of 24/7, as Mr. Easter wants to do. We should resist his discussion about the urgency and continue with our study on open government. Next Wednesday, rather than getting into this wild goose chase that would work to Mr. Easter's advantage, we should do what we had originally intended and give instructions to our staff so we can carry on with our study on open government.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you, Mr. Abbott.

Mr. Poilievre.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Nepean—Carleton, ON]

I think my colleague has very carefully demonstrated the need to stay on the committee's existing course of study. We have an open government study that we've been working on for months now. If we ever want it to reach fruition, we have to zero in on the final witnesses, drafting, and approval of that report. This could potentially be a multi-day distraction from that effort.

Previously we passed motions for studies to occur and scheduled them later on down the road. An example is the study on the CBC and access to information. I think that motion was passed a couple of months ago, but it was agreed by committee members that the study would occur after we were done with open government. But here we have Mr. Easter insisting that we have an “urgent” study of a matter that has already been dealt with.

That brings me to my second point. Minister Kenney has acknowledged the error. He said that his parliamentary letterhead should not have been used. He apologized for that and took responsibility. The staff member in question who executed the error has resigned, and Minister Kenney has accepted that resignation.

I'm not sure what more could be “urgent”, given that all of these matters have been dealt with succinctly and swiftly by the minister. This matter can continue to be interrogated in the House of Commons, as it was today in question period. I'm very sure the official opposition will pose plenty of questions on it there. But to suggest that we need to derail our entire work schedule here in order to review a matter that has been largely dealt with is erroneous.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you, Mr. Poilievre.

Dr. Bennett, do you want to say something on that?

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

Would I take from that intervention, Mr. Chair, that Mr. Abbott will withdraw his motion on the calling of the members of Parliament who you wanted to call, in terms of the March 9 appearance?

[Jim Abbott, Conservative, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Yes.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

I guess it's hard for me to even understand why we as parliamentarians wouldn't want to have a look at this. This is a difficult thing for all members of Parliament to find that blur between our partisan job and our jobs as parliamentarians. Sometimes it can be a bit blurred, and I think it is the responsibility of this committee to find out if we can find out how that could be clearer in the future. It would be worth looking at this.

This is at least as urgent as it was for the staffer to send out the letter while the minister was still on the plane. This is very serious, and it was signed by the director of multicultural affairs in the office of the Honourable Jason Kenney. This is a real breach of that line. I don't think we would be doing our job as parliamentarians if we didn't ask the committee named for ethics to have a look at this and try to put some recommendations forward such that there would be even clearer guidelines for members of Parliament and particularly for ministers, and particularly for ministers who, in their partisan work, are targeting areas that are actually in the same areas as their ministerial responsibility.

I think if the Minister of Justice were writing letters to all the lawyers or all the judges, we would see that was clearly a breach. In our party we clearly separated the critic for immigration from the critic for multiculturalism because we think that it is problematic and a grey area.

As you know, for a long time I think this committee work has deteriorated down into everything by motion. I think the committee should agree to have a look at this issue of where we draw the lines and learn from this breach that has been apologized for, in a certain way. But it's clear that this wasn't right and it's clear that staffers and members of Parliament and ministers need much clearer guidelines or that this committee needs the ability to make the recommendations such that this never happens again.

[Jim Abbott, Conservative, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Mr. Chair, please bear with me. I want to clarify my response to Ms. Bennett. If this motion fails, I will be withdrawing my motion. If this motion is approved by the committee, I will be then presenting my motion.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Mr. Siksay.

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

Thank you, Chair.

I'm disappointed that we're not dealing with the witness we had scheduled today, but at the same time, this is a really important issue that this committee needs to deal with, so I feel that it's incumbent upon me to participate in the discussion on Mr. Easter's motion.

I have to say that it's unbelievable to me that this has happened. I hear what Mr. Abbott says in his tribute to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration,, and I believe that much of what he said is true. I believe that the minister is one of the hardest-working members of the cabinet; I believe that he puts in incredible hours. I don't agree with a lot of what he does, but I have great respect for the work he does and I have respect too for the kind of partisan edge that there is to a lot of his work.

It's because of that, Chair, that I'm really concerned about what has happened in terms of the revelation of this letter that went out of the minister's office. I believe that if anybody in cabinet or in government today appreciates the distinction between partisan responsibilities and those of government and a cabinet minister, it should be the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, just because he is so directly involved in all of that and because I've been in awe in many ways of the work he has done in that regard. That's why I'm very concerned about what has happened here, about why an official of his office, the director of multicultural affairs in his office, saw fit to use the resources of that office for a very partisan fundraising effort. I think that means that this is a very serious issue.

And given who is involved here directly, I think it is a very serious issue, because if there is anybody I see in government who has exerted political control over their department and over their ministry and who understands those issues, it's the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration. When that messes up, I am led to believe that maybe my impression wasn't so good and that there may be a very serious issue here.

That being said, Chair, I despair at this committee's ability to deal with this kind of issue. We will remember our attempt to get to the bottom of the political interference in access to information requests, and our attempt to bring staff people to this committee to testify about their involvement in it, and how that ended in miserable failure; how we had to subpoena staff people to attend because, I suspect, somebody had told them not to come and they chose not to come. The government took the position that they shouldn't testify and that ministers should testify in their place, and we had a circus in this committee. The committee was not able to do its work, was not able to get to the bottom of it, and ultimately the committee decided to put that question right off its agenda without making a report and without drawing conclusions.

It seems to me that this committee is uniquely incapable of dealing with this kind of situation, and I find that tragic. We spent a huge amount of time doing that work in the past on political interference in access to information, and we got nowhere on that file.

Apparently, another committee is doing a report on staff appearing as witnesses before committees, but we've seen nothing of that report and there's been no action on it. I think we were told at the time that this needed to be done before we pursued the issue of political inference in access to information requests, and yet nothing has come back on that, and it has been months.

So I have to say that I'm not convinced that bringing this issue to this committee will result in any reasonable outcome; that we will get to the bottom of anything, even though I believe it's a very serious matter.

Now, what do I do in that circumstance? I'm struggling with my decision on this motion, Chair. I believe it is very serious and that somebody should be looking at it. That may win the day. But I have to say that I despair at this committee's ability to get beyond the games-playing and the partisanship to get to the bottom of a serious issue about how resources of government and Parliament are used for partisan purposes.

So I'm still undecided at this point, Chair, and I'm looking forward to other comments from other members.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you very much, Mr. Siksay.

There are no other speakers, so I will put the question.

Mr. Poilievre?