Evidence of meeting #62 for Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics in the 41st Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was commissioner.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Colin Mayes Conservative Okanagan—Shuswap, BC
Mr. Chair, respectfully, you should have said to Mr. Angus at that time that you are running the order of business, that you have Mr. Dreeshen yet to speak to the witnesses, and that we'll then move on to the business of listening to the motion that has been forwarded.
You are the one who's running this meeting, not Mr. Angus.
NDP
Charlie Angus NDP Timmins—James Bay, ON
But I moved a motion that was in order. I have the floor.
I'm sorry; you might not like the rules, but those are the rules.
NDP
The Chair NDP Pierre-Luc Dusseault
I am going to answer that.
Once the motion has been made, I do not have a choice: I must dispose of it. I asked for your consent so that we could continue the meeting and not hold up the witnesses, but some members of the committee were not in agreement. And so, I cannot continue. I can again ask for consent, at least to allow the witnesses to leave. I don't think anyone has any further questions for them. With your consent, we could at least allow the witnesses to leave and return to their work.
Mr. Dreeshen, you may continue with your point of order.
Conservative
Earl Dreeshen Conservative Red Deer, AB
Yes, I do have questions that I was going to ask the witnesses.
I'm sure if you discussed it with the clerk, you would realize that this was the situation.
Perhaps Mr. Angus was mistaken when he thought that was the end of the discussion.
NDP
The Chair NDP Pierre-Luc Dusseault
As I said earlier, the standing orders require in principle that we dispose of the motion once it has been submitted, before we move to the next item on our agenda. And so we must deal with the motion. As I said, unanimous consent would at least allow us to free up the witnesses.
You want to go back to the same point of order, Mr. Andrews?
Liberal
Scott Andrews Liberal Avalon, NL
To the point of order, Mr. Chair, this is one the problems we have with our committee. As you know and the committee knows, I have a motion very similar to this that was submitted beforehand. As we go forward with these meetings, as soon as our motions are dealt with, the government will go in camera. That's the problem we're running into.
The only time we have an opportunity to deal with our motions is when we're actually dealing with witnesses, and that's a problem we have. There doesn't seem to be any goodwill on the government side to not go in camera when it comes to these types of motions. That's the problem we tend to run into, and that's what's causing this today.
It's very disturbing when a government wants to go in camera to talk about these motions in a secretive manner.
NDP
The Chair NDP Pierre-Luc Dusseault
I thank you for your comments, but they were not directly related to the point of order.
Perhaps Mr. Angus wanted to go back to Mr. Mayes' point of order.
NDP
Charlie Angus NDP Timmins—James Bay, ON
Well, I think clearly I still have the floor.
I have no problem inviting the guests, who have been excellent guests, to leave at any time, but I still have the floor. I plan to continue speaking until we have the issue at least cleared, and then we'll go in the normal rotation.
NDP
The Chair NDP Pierre-Luc Dusseault
As we now have consent, I am going to thank the witnesses for having joined us and for having contributed to our study.
I will now suspend the meeting for two minutes so as to allow the witnesses to leave. We will then resume our discussion.
NDP
The Chair NDP Pierre-Luc Dusseault
We will now resume our hearing.
Mr. Angus still had the floor on the motion he had just submitted.
Mr. Angus, you have the floor.
NDP
Charlie Angus NDP Timmins—James Bay, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair. As I said, I think the issue of this motion is very important for our committee to discuss, because it's very rare that an issue of privacy and personal data affects.... Well, it's never happened in a way that has affected so many Canadians. This is the largest breach in our country's history. All of our offices—and I'm sure I am speaking for my Conservative colleagues when I say they're getting the same calls I am from people who are deeply concerned. I was just speaking with people from Matheson today, people from Englehart, people from Kirkland Lake, people from Timmins in my riding, all of whom have been affected.
I see my colleagues on the other side snickering about this. Well, the people who are calling me aren't laughing. They're taking this very seriously.
My colleague, Mr. Mayes, says he hasn't had one call. Well there are 583,000 Canadians. That's one in 60. So if he wants to diminish the concern of Canadians who are very concerned about what happened to their privacy data—and not just their own privacy data.... We're getting calls from people who are asking about their parents' data being affected, because they also signed on the loan applications.
We don't know. These are questions we are trying to reassure people about. I guess the issue here is that for two months the government sat on the breach. That is two months during which Canadians could have been exposed to all manner of fraud, because they can't assure us what happened to that data.
So when they finally admitted that there had been a breach, I know that, from talking to the many people in my riding and talking to other Canadians across the country who were phoning HRSDC, they were simply getting, “We're sorry it happened” but no commitments in terms of responding to the real threat that people faced.
I don't know how many people out there have been victims of identity fraud or have had their Visa cards compromised, but I have had mine compromised and it's a frightening situation, because you don't know how it happened and you don't know if it will happen again.
So it's incumbent upon government to be able to respond and to reassure Canadians.
Now we're at the stage of having four class-action lawsuits on this issue. This is serious business. This is what happens when you break trust with the public.
I think, given that our committee is the committee that deals with privacy and ethics, and given that we have been the committee that has looked at the issues of protecting personal privacy, and that we've just finished the social media study, we are the one committee that is in the best position to deal with what happened and to find out what steps were taken, what the internal culture was that allowed it to happen, whether there is a protocol—now that this has happened in one department—to look at other departments. Could this possibly happen at CRA? Is it possible that it could happen in other departments? We don't know, and that's who we need to hear from.
I think this is a motion we need to discuss.
I see that my honourable colleague from the Liberal Party has a motion with a number of names. I certainly think we can look at how we bring witnesses together, because it's in the interests of all of us to get to the bottom of this.
Conservative
Patricia Davidson Conservative Sarnia—Lambton, ON
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I don't believe there's anybody in this room who would argue with the fact that this incident is completely unacceptable. We all know that.
Having said that, I would make the motion that we move in camera to continue to discuss committee business.
NDP
The Chair NDP Pierre-Luc Dusseault
The motion has been made. A recorded vote has been called for since we cannot debate the motion. Mr. Clerk, you may proceed.
(Motion agreed to: yeas 7, nays 4. [See Minutes of Proceedings])
[Proceedings continue in camera]