Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'd like to thank the committee for having invited me to testify.
I'd like to acknowledge the presence of Mr. LaPointe. I'm very honoured to be attending this meeting in the company of such a distinguished journalist.
I will dispense with my biography. I'm sure the clerk can provide it for you, and anybody can find me on LinkedIn or Wikipedia. I left government more than three years ago, but my interest in public sector management continues with my role at the University of Ottawa.
I'll say right away that I have not spoken to anyone inside the government about my appearance and testimony today. I haven't read any of the other briefs to the committee or transcripts of appearances, so I don't know what other advice you've been getting or will have to sort out.
I was a senior executive in the federal government for 28 years, and at the deputy minister level for 17. About half that time, I worked for Liberal governments, and half that time for Conservative governments. I offer the committee some experience and perspective on how access to information impacts the work of the federal public service and works in practice, along with some suggestions on how it could be improved.
My views on ATIP are on the record. They're set out in detail in a one-hour video on YouTube posted by World Press Freedom Canada. I was pleased to participate in a debate they sponsored on access to information in September 2021. Members may have missed it, because they were out campaigning for the election held two weeks later.
In the interest of brevity, I sent a written statement to the clerk last Thursday, which I hope has been circulated to you. I don't propose to read it all today. The short form of the main points I'd like to leave you with today are as follows.
One, the request-based regime of the 1980s' ATIP is not enough. The act should be expanded to become a transparency act for the 2020s and 2030s. The commissioner should be restyled a transparency commissioner and given a broad mandate to examine and make recommendations regarding transparency practices across the entire federal public sector, including the public service, all Crown corporations, Parliament itself and the courts.
Two, there is nothing that would stop a government, now or in the future, from curtailing, rolling back or making exceptions to the transparency practices that have built up over the last 10 or 15 years. To make that more painful, the act should be expanded now, before the next election, to contain a robust statutory obligation for routine, regular and proactive disclosure of a long list of information categories, set out in my brief, so there can be no backsliding after October 2025.
Three, the entire access regime should apply to any taxpayer-funded staff and ministers' offices, including the Prime Minister's Office, to create a completely level playing field between political staff and public servants.
Four, there is no way that a request-based model for accessing information and, indeed, the protection of privacy can perform well unless governments finally take seriously and invest in the storage, management and retrieval of records. No government ever does that, and the state of records management in the federal government is shambolic. To start the long, hard work required to fix this mess, the act should be expanded to contain reporting and feedback loops that force the government of the day to pay attention and report progress to Canadians and, indeed, this committee.
Five, the concept of duty to document is one of those things that sound good if you say them fast enough, but would not work in practice. It could have harmful and unintended consequences.
As a former secretary to the cabinet and clerk of the Privy Council who had responsibility, over three years, for the cabinet process and papers, I'm eager to speak about issues around cabinet confidences and the deliberations of cabinet and its committees. I've set out my views on cabinet government in some detail in my 2021 book, Governing Canada. They certainly came up in the debate hosted by World Press Freedom last September.
The short version of my message is this: It would not be in the public interest to make it harder for cabinet to deliberate and take decisions.
With that lead out of the way, I will be pleased to take questions from the committee.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.