Evidence of meeting #125 for Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was discussion.
A video is available from Parliament.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Bob Zimmer
I call the meeting to order. This is the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics, meeting 125.
Pursuant to Standing Order 106(4), this is a meeting requested by four members of the committee to discuss their request to undertake a study of communications between the President of the Treasury Board and the Irving Group of Companies.
Mr. Kent.
Conservative
Peter Kent Conservative Thornhill, ON
Thank you very much, Chair.
Just as a matter of clarification, it is, as you said, a motion signed by all four opposition members of the committee. It was a letter that I drafted and that Mr. Angus very graciously agreed to and signed. As he is wont to do, he submitted it before we accumulated the signatures on the other three letters. While it's in his name before us today, I just want to let you know that it was an all-party agreed letter.
I will read the motion:
That the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics invite the Clerk of the Privy Council of Canada to appear before the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics, to ensure that all briefing notes, reports, and emails related to the 16 communications between the President of the Treasury Board and the Irving Group of Companies since February 17, 2016; and all briefing notes, reports, and emails produced within the Treasury Board Secretariat related to Project RESOLVE since October 19, 2015, have not been destroyed.
The opposition, as we've made clear in recent weeks, is not at all interested in what the contents of any of those cabinet documents might be, but we are, with regard to the fair and equal judicial process that every defendant should be allowed, and we request that those documents be released by the Prime Minister and the Privy Council Office to ensure that Vice-Admiral Norman is properly, adequately and fairly prepared to defend himself against the charges, which we believe have more than a little political overtone to them.
I know there are those who have ridiculed the request in the past few days, but we are making this motion because we know that there are individuals within the Prime Minister's Office who have been associated with the criminal destruction of documents in the previous Liberal government of Ontario, so we have a very legitimate concern.
We would not, on the attendance of the Clerk of the Privy Council before us, be interested at all in asking any questions about the contents or the nature of those documents. It would be simply to ensure, as I believe we need to be assured—Canadians need to be assured, and certainly Admiral Norman needs to be assured—that those documents requested exist and have not been interfered with, and to make, of course, the continuing request, more to the Prime Minister, that he follow the sterling example of former prime minister Paul Martin in 2004 at the time of the developing advertising scandal when he voluntarily provided hundreds of cabinet documents to the defendants in that case.
Thank you.
Conservative
Liberal
Nathaniel Erskine-Smith Liberal Beaches—East York, ON
I'll just very briefly say, having reviewed the letter and then reviewed Treasury Board policies with respect to the preservation of documents, that there's no evidence that those policies haven't been followed. As a result, I certainly won't be supporting the motion, and I don't think anyone on this side will be.
Conservative
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Bob Zimmer
Okay.
The question is on the motion of Mr. Kent.
(Motion negatived: nays 5; yeas 3)
Yes, Mr. Erskine-Smith.
Liberal
Nathaniel Erskine-Smith Liberal Beaches—East York, ON
Given that we have some time for discussing committee business and given that we have a few meetings in November that we need to fill since the analysts will be drafting the report if we give them recommendations on Tuesday, I'd like to move that pursuant to Standing Order 108(3)(h)(vii) the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics invite credit card companies to attend to investigate how statements and purchase history are shared with U.S. authorities and any potential prejudice to Canadian customers including of cannabis.
Conservative
Peter Kent Conservative Thornhill, ON
We would agree to that request. Do we have an open date at the moment?
Liberal
Nathaniel Erskine-Smith Liberal Beaches—East York, ON
It would be one of the days we have free in November.
Conservative
Peter Kent Conservative Thornhill, ON
This brings us to a point of consideration that we talked about briefly the other day, and that is whether we are still intending to deliver our final report on the Cambridge Analytica/Facebook/AggregateIQ scandal before we rise at Christmas or we are considering that it might be delayed until we return in January.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Bob Zimmer
Let me just remind members that we're getting into committee business and this is televised currently. I don't know if we still want to have that as part of our televised presentation or....
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Bob Zimmer
Okay.
Basically our schedule for next week is open. We're looking at discussing committee business on Tuesday. We're actually looking at a more fulsome...because of what Commissioner Therrien said today about his reports coming out in December.
Liberal
Nathaniel Erskine-Smith Liberal Beaches—East York, ON
Why don't we have options and then discuss scheduling in the next meeting?
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Bob Zimmer
Just hold on a second.
There was to be a discussion, and also about the London trip, too. That was all to be taken into account in our final report. I would advise that we do that.
We might want to do that in the spring, but that might be too late, but it should be at least by the end of this next month, after November's expired. Are there any thoughts on that?
Liberal
Nathaniel Erskine-Smith Liberal Beaches—East York, ON
My colleague, Mr. Saini, made a good point to me, which is simply that in terms of scheduling, let's resolve that in camera on Tuesday, but in terms of adopting motions substantively, let's do so today. We have a little bit of time.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Bob Zimmer
Let's deal with the motion, then, on the table. Is there any further discussion on the motion of Mr. Erskine-Smith?
NDP
Don Davies NDP Vancouver Kingsway, BC
I would just advise that I think it would be Mr. Angus's preference that the StatsCan study be of a more timely nature and it might be something that the committee would want to proceed with first.