Information & Ethics Committee on March 23rd, 2011

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

Okay, thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

There's just one issue I want you to clarify for me, Ms. Shepherd, and this is the controversial issue about code rule 8. It's not my job to carry the debate for the lobbying industry, but we've had a number of complaints and articles written by prominent lobbyists in the Ottawa area who, I should point out, enjoy good reputations and I'm sure would want to follow the rules and would not want to be in violation of any federal statute.

You say the rule is clear, but when I read your comments here today, I'm not getting clarity. I'll quote. You say “...my guidance does not prohibit lobbyists from engaging in political activities”. And in the previous paragraph you state: “...my reports to Parliament clearly indicate that helping someone get elected is in his or her private interest and might put the lobbyists in breach of the Code, depending on their lobbying activities”.

I'm confused at that. I guess you'd be okay if the person didn't get elected. You can be involved in politics, but you can't help anyone get elected.

Are you totally sure, and can you reassure this committee, that the rule is crystal clear and that these people who are in the industry know exactly what they can do and what they can't do?

[Karen Shepherd]

The question becomes...i. It's the intersection of the two. The rule hasn't changed, it's the interpretation that has changed.

When the court's decision came out in March 2009, it indicated that a conflict of interest is created not only when there's a real conflict of interest, but also an apparent conflict of interest. It also explained that in terms of looking at this conflict of interest in terms of how was the tension created between the public office holder's duty, which is to serve the public good, and a tension that might be created because of a private interest. There's been a lot of focus on political activities, but have they received gifts, have they received other.... The chalet in France for two weeks would be something that if it was in the private interest of the individual could put them in conflict. It's the proportion that they're then....

So getting someone elected is one example of advancing their private interests. It's the proportion of the degree that they work. In the guidance I provided where I'm saying you can obviously put the sign on the lawn, you can donate according to the political parties, you can attend the fundraising events and the barbecues because, yes, there's an argument that you're advancing the private interest of the individual, but you're not doing so to a higher proportionate degree, it then becomes the intersection of what they're planning to do vis-à-vis the lobbying of the individual.

The clarifications that I gave on the political activity show a continuum of how things are moving. So if you buy that ticket and attend the fundraiser, it's very different from lobbying heavily the individual or if it happens to be someone who's elected in the government, the minister and their department. I took the same sort of heavy example of where they're doing a lot of lobbying and sort of moved them up and down the scale. There are those, I do believe, who want to be in good stead and there are a number of lobbyists who have indicated--unfortunately not maybe publicly, but I'm getting a lot of comments either from my colleagues or from others--that they are happy with the guidance because it's giving them the freedom to choose which lobbying activities they want to do or which political activities or other avenues they'd like to pursue.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you very much, Ms. Shepherd.

The clerk has indicated to me that the bell we're hearing is a vote.

Is it a 30-minute vote or a 15-minute vote?

[The Clerk of the Committee, Mr. Chad Mariage]

A 30-minute vote.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

I need unanimous consent. This part of the session is nearly over and the next item on the agenda was to have Minister Day for an hour. I'm at the committee's disposal. We could go and start the session with Mr. Day and then come back and go until 15 minutes before the vote, suspend for the vote, and come back after the vote. Is that okay with everyone?

Dr. Bennett.

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

First, I would just like to say that seeing we've only had an hour with the commissioner, I wanted to know if.... I'm sure she has seen the Democracy Watch questions that were posed on the Democracy Watch website, and I was wondering if she would entertain to answer those questions and post them on her website, in view of the fact that this parliamentary session may finish before we finish this study. It would offer some transparency in terms of obviously the concern of the carry-over from cases with the previous registrar. Also, in this document, I think in December, we asked that it be broken down by department in terms of what are ongoing investigations and would she resubmit and table with the committee all of her investigations broken down by department.

As you know, Mr. Chair, we are very concerned that as members of Parliament we are--

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

There's a point of order.

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

Sorry, I hate to go into a speech. I'm not sure if what she's doing is a question or a point of order, but the bells are ringing, so I think per the Standing Orders, the meeting is adjourned.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

I need unanimous consent from the committee. Do I have unanimous consent? No, I do not.

We can come back after the vote.

Madame Freeman.

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

What exactly do you need unanimous consent for?

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

I asked for unanimous consent to continue this meeting until 15 minutes before the vote, but I didn't get it, so that's irrelevant. It's a moot issue. I can suspend until after the vote.

Because I don't have unanimous consent, I'm going to suspend the meeting and resume after the vote.

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

As long as you're suspending right now, I'm good.

It's very important that we follow parliamentary rules. I don't know why the Liberals are in such contempt of Parliament right now.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Okay, the meeting is suspended until five minutes after the vote.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

I call the meeting back to order.

This part of the meeting, colleagues, has been devoted to our ongoing study into open government. As everyone is aware, we're in the final stages of completing an extensive study on the whole concept of open government.

One of the final witnesses, of course, is the President of the Treasury Board, the Honourable Stockwell Day.

The committee is very pleased to have you before us today, Minister Day. Thank you very much for coming.

We did have a delay, and I understand the minister may have to leave at 5:30.

Is that correct, Minister?

This will be an abbreviated meeting, but we certainly welcome the minister and thank him for being here. I'm going to turn the floor over now to him, for his opening comments.

[Stockwell Day, Conservative, President of the Treasury Board]

Thank you, Chairman.

As indicated, I had said some time ago that I would be available here from 4:30 to 5:30, and of course we can never account when we are interrupted by a democratic impulse, which we all just satisfied, and now we've returned. I will stick with my commitment to be here until 5:30, and of course I'm willing to be here next week also, if that's of any help to my colleagues.

The whole issue of open government is something that we have been, as a government, pursuing for some time. I certainly, in relation to my Treasury Board responsibilities, for some months now have been wanting to move this file along. I appreciate the work of the committee and your interest in this.

Some people might say or think or wonder if there's any coincidence in terms of us talking right now about open government, open information, open data.

I would say that this presentation, which has been booked for some time, has been somewhat overtaken by events. Some may see it as a happy coincidence. Others may have another particular view on it.

I want to walk you though what we have so far. This is a new approach to making information available. It's something that some other governments have done. It's something we have been doing in some departments, to a degree, and now we've brought it together all into one focus.

I would like to congratulate you for the work you have done and for your goal to have a more open and more specific portal for our fellow citizens.

It's the approach we're going to take.

I'm going to abbreviate my remarks, given the time, but I do want you to see for yourselves, if you haven't yet, what we're talking about.

Mr. Chairman, this is what the site actually looks like.

We're talking about open government. We're dividing this into three sections, the first being open data, the second being open information, and the third being open dialogue.

I have outlined some of this publicly already and what we are talking about with open data.

First of all, as we all know, all departments and agencies have huge amounts of data available to them from all the work that is done. Largely, that data has not been available in readily readable format for the individual citizen. Because of the increasing demand and expectation for openness and transparency and for all the information that government has that it can legally bring forward, we've selected ten departments and we have indicated to them that they need to start making their data available in a form that is more readily accessible and readable.

It's a comprehensive approach. It's incremental in terms of our being open about the fact that we haven't developed this perfectly. This is a work in progress. This work is going to continue, with your advice too, as it moves along.

Open data is offering government data in useful forms to help citizens, not-for-profit organizations, and others to see what is there, and then to be able to use the massive amounts of the data for viable purposes.

There are five elements of the plan, and we have talked about this. There is the building of a public-facing Government of Canada open data portal, then providing and increasing the access to data that is federally available from departments and agencies, and then exploring the potential. We want to continue to push this envelope, and I know that your committee will assist in doing that.

There have been certain policies relative to open data that have to continue to move not just with the demand, but with the technological capability that's there to make information available. I'm going to be pushing the management policy on this to make this more and more available. When we say that this is a pilot, it doesn't mean we're trying something to see if it works. This is a policy commitment being worked broadly in ten departments right now, but all departments are being served notice that this is going to be the expectation. I don't want to say that it's the way of the future, but it's the way of the present. We are developing a longer-term Government of Canada open data strategy along with the milestones. We have already fulfilled our commitment to build the portal, but we want to move it along.

Just as an example of what we mean by raw data and what happens to it, Environment Canada accumulates untold volumes of information on everything you could possibly imagine related to climate and weather and everything else. I won't even start to go down the list. More and more we are going to require that departments do their data in a way that people can access and use. If people go online, they will see the type of information that Environment Canada makes available. From that people can do something with it in a way that is helpful to individuals. I'm not advertising for them, but the Weather Network was able to take this information and develop an application, also known as an app, related to current weather observations, sophisticated modelling data, and the result is a cross-country continuous feed of weather data.

As a government, we haven't said that this is what has to happen, but by making the data available people can take it individually and they can use it for research and academic purposes. Frankly, it's information that was gathered for public use, so if people want to make an application out of it, they certainly can. We're finding that people have used this for commercial purposes, and there is no issue with that.

Natural Resources Canada uses geospatial data of every type imaginable. Here's a Toronto company that is able to take this data, whether we're talking about information related to congestion in cities, power supplies, emissions, whatever it might be, and come up with an everyday life assessment. This is a Toronto company that has done this. Again, I'm not advertising, just using it as an example. ESRI Canada is able to take this raw data and use it in a way that's helpful for them and also available and helpful to others.

So whether we're talking about entrepreneurs, researchers, academics, or voluntary organizations, this raw data in large numbers--there are now 261,000 different data sets--we're number two in the world with what we've now been able to have online through one portal. We're going to continue to develop this over the next 12 months. We expect to be able to double the amount of available data. It needs to be perfected. It is out there now and people can turn to it, but we want to continue to see it evolve. So this is open data, which can be taken and used in almost any way imaginable.

The second aspect--and I'm trying to really move quickly here--is open information. We are requiring departments to be proactive about everything they do and to make that available in terms of their activities, again, through one portal under open information. Of course the public has a right to know, but they also need the ability to access it.

Government departments, as you know, are always commissioning reports, gathering information, and we want to make the reports that are done, the activities of departments, available and accessible so people can see exactly what is going on. So let me use that in a way that's relevant to some of the discussions we've been having in the last couple of weeks related to access to information.

We are now requiring departments--the ones involved in the pilot, but this will be required of all departments--to summarize the access to information requests they get. We're obviously not putting the individual's name out there--that's something that needs to be protected--but the public broadly needs to see the types of things that government's being asked for and whether government is coming out with the information or not, and if they're not, what the restrictions are.

So we're posting summaries of completed access to information requests online. Also, this moves to allowing access to information requests and payments to be made online to greatly speed up the process. As you know, if you've ever had to struggle with an access to information request, sometimes the delay is because it has to go through numerous departments. This accelerates that process and forces departments to move it through quickly and not to allow that to be a source of any kind of inordinate delay.

The final aspect is that every department literally does all kinds of reports and studies, and these should be made available to the public and to individuals. So we're working with the Commissioner of Official Languages right now. We want to pilot the posting of these reports that are commissioned by the government into what we call a virtual library. There are issues here with translation.

If a department gets a report commissioned for its own use right now, that report may be in either of the two official languages. If we make this available, the cost of publishing every single report in two languages when they're not being asked for would be prohibitive. So we are working with the Commissioner of Official Languages to see about this virtual library being developed and how people can access all the reports, all the various analyses that government does.

Finally, and I'll close with this one, the third portal is open dialogue. This is the “Consulting with Canadians” portal.

As you know, governments consult. They have consultative processes that they engage in publicly, and it's important that they do this, whoever the government is, going out from coast to coast, from town to city, highways and byways, to be available to the public. Obviously, not all Canadians can get to these meetings, and open dialogue means that all Canadians will be able to access all consultation processes that are going on. By requiring the departments to post that online and to post the mechanism so that they can receive input.... And the person having the input, as if they were actually at the public meeting, will also be able to get a response, and they'll be able to track whether their response was listened to, acknowledged, and how it's going to help the process to move along.

As you know, we've got the red tape reduction commission that is going on, so people would be able to look at this list and they can see the public consultations that are going on right now. They click into the one they want and that will pop right up. There it is. Here we are, open government, the red tape reduction commission. Individuals can have their input into that online, expect a response, and expect their input to be evaluated.

What we are requiring of departments is all consultations now would be available to individual citizens online, even if it's an MP, a committee, or whatever it is doing a tour of the country to get valuable input. I could go on, but I don't want to deprive you of some quick questions. This is the direction in which we're going. This is already a fait accompli. Citizens can go on to these portals right now and access this information. We're learning as we go, so I'm not going to apologize if there are imperfections. We do want to see it improve. We do want to see it increase. Open government means open portals on data, on information, and on dialogue.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you, Minister Day.

I certainly want to thank you for this initiative.

We don't have too much time left. In fact we have none, really.

Two minutes, Dr. Bennett, and we'll see how far we get.

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

On a point of order, Mr. Chair, is it possible to ensure that the time is divided equally, what limited time there is?

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

By the time we deal with your point of order--

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

Why don't we just agree to do two, two, two, and two? Is that all right?

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

A quick question each. We'll do it that way.

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

Minister Day, there was a concern when the CIO was here that the Government of Canada didn't actually have an open government policy. Is this declaration that you have there an actual new policy? You have instated a policy of open government. And when will we have the Prime Minister underline it? Everything we've heard at this committee is that unless the person at the top wants the default position to be open, nothing happens.

[Stockwell Day, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

This is clearly government policy, supported by and endorsed by the Prime Minister as the leader of the government.

I did the public presentation of this on March 17, in two different locations, two days in a row. Clearly, I was competing with other media, understandably so, with the devastating things that were going on in Japan, Libya, and certain things that were taking place here, with a committee already in process.

So this is a public commitment, endorsed as a matter of policy by our government and of course, it goes without saying, by the Prime Minister.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Mrs. Freeman, you have time to ask a quick question.

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

Why didn't you tell us about all this work you were doing? You let us work. We've been working on open data since April 1^st, and we never knew that you were doing this work in parallel. We knew about it from the statements made by Ms. Corinne Charette, which is fairly surprising for a government that claims to be transparent.

However, I would like to congratulate you, Mr. Day. I know that you are leaving politics, like Mr. Murphy and Mr. Siksay here, to take on something new. I want to wish all three of you the very best.

So I've taken the time to say that, but I would still like you to answer my question.