Information & Ethics Committee on Oct. 18th, 2017

[Ruth Naylor, Executive Director, Information and Privacy Policy Division, Chief Information Officer Branch, Treasury Board Secretariat]

Thank you very much for the question.

To clarify my role, I've been involved in the development of the bill, as opposed to making decisions about access to information requests. We have another unit at the Treasury Board Secretariat that is responsible for that. So I can respond at a general level to how these decisions are made.

The act, as it now stands, sets out certain discretions, but the ultimate accountability is for the head of the institution. That's delegated down generally to access to information coordinators to exercise those discretions on the part of ministers, and there's very clear guidance provided about how those discretions are to be exercised, if that helps.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Zimmer]

Do you have a set of guidelines as a document that you could provide to committee?

[Ruth Naylor]

We have a very large set of policies that exist right now, as well as a manual that we provide. It's actually available online, so we can provide the information to the committee on that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Zimmer]

Thank you. That's all I had.

We still have approximately five minutes. We'll go to MP Dubourg for five minutes.

[Emmanuel Dubourg, Liberal, Bourassa, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

It’s my turn to greet you and to bid you good afternoon.

I would like to follow the example of my colleague Frank Baylis and ask a very general question. As we all know, Bill C-58 concerns the Access to Information Act and the Privacy Act.

Certain departmental documents are labelled “PROTECTED”, “SECRET”, or “TOP SECRET”. Do they continue to be accessible? What does Bill C-58 provide for these types of documents?

[Jennifer Dawson]

Documents are classified based on the sensitivity of their content. For example, in a classified document, there could be only one sentence to keep from disclosing. In those cases, we provide the whole document without that confidential sentence. The system used to label documents does not really allow to determine if content can be disclosed in part or in whole.

[Emmanuel Dubourg, Liberal, Bourassa, QC]

I’m asking you this because in 2011, we saw situations where entire sections of memoranda had been redacted, for instance when environmental situations were concerned, given the policies of certain groups.

If Bill C-58 is passed, would it still be possible to redact almost all those memoranda that would be publicly released?

[Jennifer Dawson]

Bill C-58 in no way impacts exemptions and exclusions. As such, the current situation would not change.

[Emmanuel Dubourg, Liberal, Bourassa, QC]

All right.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Zimmer]

I would like to thank those who appeared at committee today for your time and for answering our questions.

The meeting is adjourned.