Okay. It reads:
That the committee conduct a study regarding allegations of systematic political interference by the Minister's offices to block, delay or obstruct the release of information to the public regarding the operations of government departments and that the committee call before it: Honourable Diane Finley, Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development. At a separate meeting or meetings: Dimitri Soudas, Associate Director, Communications/Press Secretary, Prime Minister's Office; Guy Giorno, Chief of Staff, Prime Minister's Office; Ryan Sparrow, Director of Communications, Office of the Minister, Human Resources and Skills Development Canada; Sebastien Togneri, former Parliamentary Affairs Director, Public Works Canada; Patricia Valladao, Chief, Media Relations, Human Resources and Skills Development Canada; and That the committee submit a report to the House of Commons on its findings.
Mr. Chair, the reasons for putting this motion are pretty straightforward. There appears to be a systematic and ongoing intent of this government to permit tampering with information requests. If news accounts are correct—and I'll go through some of these media accounts in a moment—one has to ask the question, why has this government failed to take any action with respect to the serious allegations of tampering with, or interfering with, an access to information request, which on the surface, at least to me, appears to be a direct violation of subsection 67(1) of the Access to Information Act?
The next question, Mr. Chair, would be, why this specific list of witnesses?
The reason for calling the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development is that the incident most recently reported involved her office and her communications director, Ryan Sparrow. According to an article in the Globe and Mail by Daniel Leblanc on March 29—and I have these articles here—on February 25 an e-mail exchange between Mr. Sparrow and bureaucrats in the department took place in which Mr. Sparrow attempted to block the revelation of the price tag of the ads to promote Conservative budget measures related to the Vancouver Olympics. Ms. Valladao, also identified in the news story, could provide some additional information on the exchange with Mr. Sparrow over this issue.
The minister should be called to explain why a senior member of her political staff intentionally attempted to prevent legitimate information from being released specifically following the issuance of instructions by Guy Giorno, the Prime Minister's chief of staff, on February 19 reminding Conservative political staff to “respect the access to information process”. That almost in itself implies some guilt.
One would have thought respect for the law would be something that senior Conservative staff would not need reminding of, but apparently they do, which brings me to why we must hear from Ryan Sparrow and Sebastien Togneri. Both are, or were, senior political staff to Conservative cabinet ministers, the former with Human Resources and Skills Development and the latter with the Minister of Public Works' office. Both have been identified by the media as having directly intervened in trying to stop the release of information requested legitimately from their departments. There arises, therefore, a serious question with respect to why it is that incidents months apart in separate departments by different individuals have all had the same outcome, mainly the attempt to interfere with the legitimate release of public information.
It's incomprehensible that this is a coincidence. The only possible conclusion, in my view, is that there is and has been an expectation of senior political staff to intervene in the accessing and release of information from the department their minister is responsible for.
This is a serious breach, which brings us to Mr. Giorno and Mr. Soudas, both of whom occupy the most senior political staff positions and should be able to enlighten the committee on their knowledge of and role, if any, in either sanctioning this kind of behaviour and/or what measures they took to deal with those matters.
As a final point, I have to raise the more general issue that has been emerging about this government and the offices of ministers directly involving themselves in the access to information issue.
Lawrence Martin, in a February 24, 2010, Globe and Mail article, raised what must be of concern to this committee. I quote:
Harper spokesman Dmitri Soudas issued a warning that due diligence on access requests “should be done by public servants and not political staff.” If it was an isolated incident, it's unlikely the alert would have been necessary.
This leads me to believe that it was not an isolated incident.
To look at how things were handled on the Afghan detainee file--the attempts to block documents, the blacking out of so much of what was released--is to see all kinds of evidence of mischief.
The bottom line is that there potentially seems to be a serious breach of subsection 67(1) of the Access to Information Act. There are serious concerns here that this may be a systematic and ongoing attempt by the government, using staff, to permit the tampering with information requests. I believe the only way to get to the bottom of this issue and clear the record is to have--as I mentioned in my motion--the various witnesses come forward.
Thank you.
