Information & Ethics Committee on June 3rd, 2013

[Brent Rathgeber, Conservative, Edmonton—St. Albert, AB]

No. As I said in my opening comments, Mr. Chair, it's certainly the intent of the bill that bonuses, which can be as high as 39%, should be disclosed. The specific “salary” is the word that Bill C-461 uses. Members of the committee might want to think about an amendment to make it clear that the word “salary” includes bonuses, or they might want to just say “salary and bonus”.

I'm not sure if it's clear enough, but I can tell you that as the author of the bill it was my intent that both specific salaries and specific bonuses be subject to disclosure. Based on reflection, I'm not entirely convinced that the words “specific salary” are broad enough to encapsulate maximum performance awards or bonuses.

[Scott Andrews, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

That would be something our clerk could look into when we have our legal person here with the Library of Parliament. I think we could get that answered at that time when we get to that stage.

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

We will look into that.

Mr. Butt, you have seven minutes.

[Brad Butt, Conservative, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Rathgeber, for coming back.

I understand the spirit of what you're proposing in your private member's bill. I know that you've done a lot of homework and a fair bit of stakeholder work on this. I want to give you a bit of my perspective, because I come from the province of Ontario and I'm very familiar with the Ontario government sunshine list.

Again, I think the spirit of the sunshine list may have made some sense, but I think it's completely unworkable now. It's way beyond the scope of what I think the original idea was, and it's actually costing the Government of Ontario a lot of money to administer. As a member of Parliament, I'm not really into creating more bureaucracy in Ottawa. I'm for transparency, but I'm not for greater levels of bureaucracy being created.

You're not proposing an actual sunshine list that will be released each year listing the thousands of people all earning $160,000 now, similar to what members of Parliament are paid. That's not what you're talking about, right? You're not talking about this massive list every year that someone has to compile to send out thousands of names of people who work in all kinds of different government departments, such that if they have a salary of $160,000 plus $1 and higher, their names are going to be published each and every year. That's not what you're proposing, are you?

[Brent Rathgeber, Conservative, Edmonton—St. Albert, AB]

That's correct, Mr. Chair. The amendments to the access act and to the Privacy Act do not call for a publicly viewable website. Although I'm conceptually not opposed to the concept, that would require resources on the crown, and therefore would be beyond the scope of the private member's bill.

My bill amends the access act to allow individuals who pay the fee and fill out the form to receive disclosure information pursuant to their access request. But you're quite right, Mr. Butt, there's no proactive or publicly available or annually released sunshine list. This is an amendment to the Access to Information Act.

[Brad Butt, Conservative, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

Okay.

So what would be the benefit to a private citizen of filing this, of wanting to know what a middle-level bureaucrat in some department somewhere was being paid, assuming the amount was $160,000 and greater? I mean, what would be the benefit, of the thousands and thousands of people who work for the government and for crown corporations at that level...which I still think is a level, like the sunshine list in Ontario, where it's $100,000 and greater?

I'm trying to wrap my head around what the real public benefit value is of average citizens filing these ATIP requests all the time, to find out what someone's salary is at a medium level within the public service. What is the ultimate overall benefit of that? Someone's hired to do a job. They're being paid within a salary range that has already been established within the public service at whatever level they've been hired to work at.

I'm just trying to get my head around the real public service benefit of this kind of disclosure on these potentially hundreds of thousands of ATIP requests or information requests coming in every year to find out what Joe Smith makes working in the Department of Public Works.

[Brent Rathgeber, Conservative, Edmonton—St. Albert, AB]

As I indicated in my opening comments, or perhaps when I was here last week, this type of disclosure allows taxpayers or applicants to compare the performance of an organization with the compensation that is provided to the people running that organization.

I live in Edmonton, as the members probably know, and we have an office of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. Many of my constituents don't understand what the individuals in that office do, or why they're even there, for that matter. Not to be too harsh, but the perception of DFO on the prairies is often that they're there just to create rules and then have a reason to go out and administer them. I'm not saying that's true, but that's a perception that is often provided to my office with respect to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans in a city where there are neither oceans nor fish.

This would allow individuals to determine exactly how their tax dollars are being spent, what those individuals who are being paid by their tax dollars earn, and what those people purportedly do to earn those tax dollars. It's information that allows taxpayers to assess the value they're receiving for their tax dollars.

[Brad Butt, Conservative, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

Did you do any financial analysis of what the costs might be to administer a program like this?

[Brent Rathgeber, Conservative, Edmonton—St. Albert, AB]

No, because I don't know how many there will be. We're not creating a website, and there's really no way to know in advance whether there will be hundreds or thousands, or tens of thousands, or zero, applications pursuant to specific salary disclosures.

I can't predict that, so no, I haven't done a cost-benefit analysis. I don't think that one is practical.

[Brad Butt, Conservative, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

Do we know how many individuals there are at the $160,000-a-year or higher level? That's across all government departments, all crown corporations, the Privy Council Office, and, as Mr. Andrews said, any of these other departments. Do we have any idea of how many actual employees could potentially be subject to an ATIP request?

[Brent Rathgeber, Conservative, Edmonton—St. Albert, AB]

We can't know, Mr. Butt, because currently the government will only disclose ranges of salaries.

[Brad Butt, Conservative, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

But even if you used the ranges—

[Brent Rathgeber, Conservative, Edmonton—St. Albert, AB]

I don't know how many people make $160,000 or above, and I don't know how many people make $188,000 or above, because all I'm entitled to under access to information are these broad ranges. For some of these ranges, the increment is $64,000. It's absolutely impossible to determine how many people will be covered at whatever level the committee decides to set the benchmark.

[Brad Butt, Conservative, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

Do I have more time, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

Forty-five seconds left.

[Brad Butt, Conservative, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

Thank you.

So we're not talking about setting up a registry. We're just talking about whether individuals themselves, or organizations, or whoever wants to file information requests out of their own free will, and we're not 100% sure how many we're talking about in the course of a year. Your request now of the committee is to lower the amount to $160,000 a year from $188,000.

Is that what you're asking the committee today?

[Brent Rathgeber, Conservative, Edmonton—St. Albert, AB]

My first request was that you pass the bill unamended.

I understand that the government is going to table an amendment raising the bar from the lowest level of DM-1 to the highest level of DM-4. However, if the committee is seriously entertaining amendments, if you're going to open up the benchmark, you should be mindful that you haven't heard any evidence to support that proposition. The only evidence you have heard is that the proposed bar set in this bill is too high. The Canadian Taxpayers Federation and the National Citizens Coalition advocated that it should be lowered to $100,000.

I think $100,000 is too low. I think it might have been the right number in 1995 or 1996, whenever Ontario established its sunshine list, but they haven't indexed it for inflation, which incidentally is why this legislation doesn't have a number. It doesn't say $188,000; it says the lowest level of DM-1. If you were inclined to go to $160,000, I would suggest that the words you insert are "the sessional allowance payable to a member of Parliament". The reason the legislation has a category benchmark, as opposed to a number benchmark, is that it automatically indexes it for inflation. As the specific salary goes up, pursuant to that job classification, the disclosure bar automatically rises along with it.

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

Thank you.

It is now Mr. Nantel's turn for seven minutes.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher, QC]

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Rathgeber, for appearing before the committee again to speak to us about your bill.

Obviously, with friends like yours, things must be tough. I have no doubt that you are a very honourable member for your constituents. You represent people who think like you. If I were in your place, however, I would be unhappy, indeed, because it is quite obvious that your two-headed bill will likely get run over. One of its heads will be whitewashed by a government amendment. As far as the other head goes, you must be despairing somewhat after hearing so many independent journalists say that it jeopardized healthy journalistic work.

In that perspective of justice, I would like to ask you how you react to learning that people like Tony Accurso won't end up in the hands of the authorities after an inquiry like the Charbonneau commission. How do you respond when all those people say to you, objectively, that it will not be possible to do work similar to that done for a program like Alain Gravel's, which led to these people potentially being arrested?

[Brent Rathgeber, Conservative, Edmonton—St. Albert, AB]

With respect to journalistic sources, it's my view and the view of the Information Commissioner that nothing in Bill C-461 compromises the CBC's ability to offer assurances to confidential sources that their identities will be protected.

We've gone through them, but I'll start with the one I finished with. Anybody's name is private; it's personal information under the Privacy Act. If a document were to be released, the name of the individual would have to be redacted because it's personal information.

I think the problem—and I said I'm open to this, as you know, because you and I have talked privately—is that if the word "independence" is inadequate to protect the CBC's journalistic competence, then that could be modified. It was suggested last week that "independence" be modified by adding "freedom of expression and independence", and that this might provide a greater comfort level. I would be open to that type of an amendment, because the purpose of this bill is not to jeopardize the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's ability to operate as a broadcaster, or its journalistic integrity.

I believe that not disclosing documents relating simply to activities is not the proper test. We've seen anecdotes as to what happens when documents cannot be released simply because they relate to activities. The National Citizens Coalition indicated that they tried to find out how many vehicles were in the vehicle fleet, and that information wasn't disclosed.

In my view "activities" is too broad. Based on the evidence I heard, I'm going to concede that "independence" might be too narrow. If the members are comfortable with modifying that and adding the words "freedom of expression", as has been suggested, I would be comfortable with that.

However, Mr. Nantel, as you know, I don't get to propose amendments at this committee, nor do I get to vote on them.

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I am going to use the rest of my colleague's time.

You rightly pointed that, nearly seven years after the Conservative Party came to power, Canada is ranked 55th or 56th in the world when it comes to transparency. That isn't a very stellar record for a party that advocated the importance of cleaning up the management of public funds and increasing transparency. That's an admission of failure by your account.

Many departments and agencies have much more serious problems than those at CBC/Radio-Canada, to whom the Information Commissioner gave an A rating, let's not forget.

Why, then, are you going after CBC/Radio-Canada? Other departments have a considerable number of problems, not to mention the fact that your party has a pretty abysmal record when it comes to transparency. Why go after something that's working well, when you should be fixing what's actually broken?

[Brent Rathgeber, Conservative, Edmonton—St. Albert, AB]

Mr. Boulerice, just for clarification, as I think the Information Commissioner confirmed when she was here last week, the report card dealt only with the timeliness of responses, not with breadth of information disclosed. While the CBC did improve and got an A on their last report card with respect to how quickly they were turning over their access requests, I don't think you should read into that or conclude that the breadth of their disclosure has increased.

I agree with you that it would be preferable if there were a comprehensive re-examination of the access to information legislation in Canada. When Canada first got access to information legislation in 1982 or 1983, it was deemed to be at the cutting edge. We were world leaders, and now 30 years later we've become laggards. Our international ranking has gone to 55th out of 93 countries surveyed.

The problem is that I don't see a comprehensive overhaul of Canada's access laws coming any time soon. Maybe that's a project the committee might undertake.

So we're left with individuals who lobby for specific changes to the Access to Information Act. As you know, I tabled questions in the House of Commons about 18 months ago with respect to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, comprising a compendium of issues my constituents had asked me about over the years regarding the CBC, things they were curious about but couldn't find out.

This private member's bill is very limited in scope and very specific. It corrects what I think are some problems with section 68.1, as confirmed by the Federal Court of Appeal. It attempts to bring some meaningful salary disclosure with respect to the top managers in the federal public service, but I admit that it's not a comprehensive change and is very specific and, therefore by definition, piecemeal.

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

Thank you, Mr. Rathgeber.

That brings your appearance before the committee today to a close. Thank you again for coming back a second time.

We will now move on to the second item on our agenda, which we will discuss entirely in camera, in a couple of minutes.

Just before that, I would like to remind everyone that tomorrow is still the deadline to provide the clerk with amendments to Bill C-461, by 9 a.m. We will consider them on Wednesday, as part of our clause-by-clause study.

I will now suspend the meeting for a few moments, just long enough to switch to the second item on our agenda.

Did you have something to add, very quickly, Mr. Rathgeber?

[Brent Rathgeber, Conservative, Edmonton—St. Albert, AB]

I want to thank all the committee members for their interest in this bill, and wish you well in your clause-by-clause deliberations on Wednesday.

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

Thank you.

[Proceedings continue in camera]