Information & Ethics Committee on April 23rd, 2026

[Some hon. members]

No.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

We don't have unanimous consent. The bells are ringing. We will return after the bells to continue our work as the ethics committee.

The meeting is suspended.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

We're back, everyone.

The meeting was suspended for the votes. When we last left our superheroes, it was Mr. Hogan who had the floor.

Go ahead, Mr. Hogan.

[Corey Hogan, Liberal, Calgary Confederation, AB]

Thank you, Chair.

When we ended, we were talking about the purpose of the tools provided to us by parliamentary tradition and ethics legislation. Of course, the ultimate purpose of them is to protect the public interest, ensure the integrity of decision-making and allow government to attract people with diverse backgrounds. We talked a bit about the components within each of those. I won't go back to that point.

We need to talk about the costs—the cost of production orders and the cost of regular reporting.

I encourage colleagues to do a thought exercise. I think we can all agree that daily reporting would not make sense. Of course it wouldn't. That's because of the pressures it would put on the system. Those are inherently obvious when you simply think about the costs involved. Because people don't see the activity behind the scenes, they may not always appreciate what it means to the public service to have to do these things.

Let's start by agreeing that not all production orders—all the time, in perpetuity—are in the public interest. We can have a more constructive approach than that. We can have a more thoughtful approach than that. I've heard many speakers talk as though all production orders are unalloyed goods. It's very easy to speak in those absolute terms, as though any kind of frequency is good frequency: “Let's just do them perpetually. Let's just have this hamster wheel of production orders.”

The challenge is that overly broad production orders from parliamentary committees create real tensions that work against the public interest. Committees need meaningful powers to obtain evidence in order to hold governments to account, but when those powers are exercised too broadly—without clear scope, relevance limits, privacy safeguards or proportionality—you damage other public goods that Parliament is also meant to protect.

I really want to underline that. This is the core public interest challenge we all have to deal with in a thoughtful fashion. It's not inherently one thing or the other. We need to exercise judgment as to when to use these powers in the right way.

There are many public interest challenges that production orders can bring, which I want to put on the table—not all of which will apply here. However, it's important context as we assess Mr. Barrett's arguments about the intrinsic value of acts like this.

One challenge is the privacy right of individuals. I won't belabour that, because it's not much at play here. Even if names are later redacted, disclosure risks embarrassment, reputational harm and deterrence from interacting candidly with government. When you talk about providing a report that has people's names in it, there will be people who do not want to have their names, in an ongoing fashion, presented in that fashion.

That ties closely to the second point: Production orders can chill honest, internal advice. Government depends on candid internal discussion. In public service circles, we talk about fearless advice and faithful execution. I'm sure you've heard those words before, or variants of those words.

Officials need to be able to test weak ideas and weak assertions about whether or not something is, for example, a conflict of interest, run it through the entire process and get to a conclusion before they are required to report to a committee. If they don't have that ability, people will worry. It will be caught midway through the stream of work and cause challenges and disagreements, frankly, before a decision is made. If every kind of draft thought ended up as a speculative note that then became something the committee, on the 15th of each month, dealt with, officials would write less candidly. They would avoid discussing these things.

I want to return to this point. I want to underline it. It is important that you think about the behaviour you're incentivizing within the public service when you start saying that on the 15th of every month, you want to hear exactly every thought that has been in someone's head about this, absent any of the context that would be provided by the process playing out in full.

We can talk about some of the other challenges, which I think we would all agree on—my colleagues across the way would agree too—but we need to consider this when we think about the benefit of transparency to national security, public safety and the public interest. Records can contain all sorts of things. When we release them on an ongoing, drumbeat basis, we are not allowing some of these processes—which often take many weeks even to get into context—to play out. You have to think about that as well.

This leads to harms to commercial confidence and economic interest. Government is routinely talking to people about economic activity. In fact, I'm quite sure this is the pith of many of the concerns that have been voiced, however you feel about their legitimacy, regarding this bid. Do you really want to encourage people to not work through government processes and not talk to government about things that might be of benefit?

They talk about bids, procurement pricing, trade secrets, market-sensitive plans and investment negotiations. We all know the very act of meeting can be a signal to capital and a signal to competitors of that capital. If it gets out in the middle of a process rather than at the end when a decision is made, you are potentially damaging commercial interests. If you are damaging commercial interests and driving people away from conversations with the government, you have to ask yourself whether you're acting in the public interest.

It can also undermine cabinet confidentiality and collective decision-making. I won't dwell on that. I think we can all appreciate that there are limits on that front.

One that is very important—and it's one I know well—is that it can create paralysis through administrative burden. Large-scale ongoing production orders require thousands of hours of work to locate records, review relevance, identify privileges, redact personal data, prepare translations into English or otherwise, brief counsel, and manage secure transfer. This diverts scarce resources from public capacity. As I mentioned, one of the scarcest resources we have, and certainly the one that is the highest cost, is our most senior officials, as we're talking about in these particular moments.

When we are talking about those privacy considerations and whether it is always in the best interest to put something into the public interest, we also need to think about selective or misleading use of raw documents. Documents without context can be misunderstood. One of my challenges with the way this order is written is that it demands documents in a certain format: drafts, incomplete chains and shorthand notes. These informal exchanges can be presented as definitive evidence when they are not.

I think about an experience in my own career. I was at the Government of Alberta, and a colleague of mine, probably three levels down the managerial chain, was speculating as to what the motives were of the former premier of Alberta, Jason Kenney, for a particular action, as speculated in emails. That individual didn't know, but that became part of a paper document that was presented in a raw format. That raw format then was used to suggest that Premier Kenney was doing something untoward that he simply was not. It was speculation.

[Gabriel Hardy, Conservative, Montmorency—Charlevoix, QC]

I have a point of order.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Mr. Hardy, the floor is yours.

[Gabriel Hardy, Conservative, Montmorency—Charlevoix, QC]

I imagine that my colleague from the government likes to hear the sound of his own voice, but what are we talking about? We're supposed to be talking about removing point b) from the motion, and we're talking about the Government of Alberta. We're getting back to—

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Thank you, you're right.

Mr. Hogan, we're on the amendment to remove part (b), so carry on with that, please.

[Corey Hogan, Liberal, Calgary Confederation, AB]

Absolutely. I would hope, as all these things have to do with the production of documents, that it is self-evident, but if you'd like, I will say that production of raw documents, as I just noted, can cause these challenges, which is why I'm speaking to the removal of this particular thing. Is the production of documents without a request for narration useful or good? That is something I would ask this committee to think about.

Sometimes that context tells the entire story. I would always hope, when I was in my previous role, that rather than compelling a production of documents, somebody would reach out to me first, because that context is very important. I think about the Kenney government and how quite often these actions were weaponized against it in order to create a picture that was not necessarily complete or compelling.

Then, of course, as we have talked about at length, one of the challenges that a production of documents provides is that it can prejudice ongoing proceedings. These broad disclosures can interfere with the activity going on and prejudice it in such a way that we get a negative outcome for the public. Mr. Sabia and Mr. Blanchard provided very reasonable commentary on this point. I think I'll let their commentary stand.

There are then the ephemeral things, such as reduced co-operation from witnesses and stakeholders. Outside experts might be less likely to engage, knowing that their commentary might show up on the 15th without context. Municipalities, provinces and civil society groups might believe their communication will be broadly exposed later and used against them without context. They may share less information with government.

Government runs on information. It is important that government have access to it. That is why all of our access to information laws reflect this point. That is why ATIP here at the Government of Canada and FOIP at the Government of Alberta always provide the ability to protect those interests.

Federal, provincial and international relations can be strained by the release of these documents. We talk about the release of things that will maybe be read about by some of our partners in a way that's, again, without context and indiscriminately dropped out. That causes challenges. It also normalizes this unlimited power without guardrails.

This is the point that I started on. I said that by using these powers to produce indiscriminately, you are creating a challenge where all of a sudden these powers will be used perpetually and no longer for their intended purpose. If they're used without the norms of restraint, future committees of all parties may inherit and escalate those practices. Colleagues have spoken about this, but I want to underline that short-term tactical gains can create long-term institutional damage. We are all here to serve the long-term institution.

I get that this is hard. There are always two public interest intentions: transparency and accountability on one side, and effective, lawful, rights-respecting government on the other. What is important for this committee or any committee to consider as it is going through this is that it acknowledges that this is hard. It does not play this game where it pretends there is an unalloyed, universal good of always acting in one fashion or the other. Neither of those two things—transparency and accountability, and effective, lawful, rights-respecting government—can automatically defeat the other. Better practices need to protect both.

Strong committees use narrow, disciplined approaches. They define precise subject matter. They set relevant date ranges. They identify custodians or departments. They exclude clearly personal data. They use in-camera review more regularly. They appoint law clerks or independent arbiters. They permit explanations for withheld materials and for given materials. Most importantly, they require productions when it makes sense rather than demand everything at once or on a regular drumbeat. It has to be triggered by an action. It has to be triggered by a concern. Otherwise, you are wasting time that does not belong to us but rather to the good people of Canada.

The issue is not whether committees such as those in the House of Commons of Canada should have production powers. Of course they should. The issue is whether those powers are exercised with enough discipline to serve accountability without impairing wider public interest.

I appreciate that an overly broad production order can provide short-term wins. Isn't that what is happening here? However, it loses the longer-term governance fight. It weakens candour. It weakens privacy. It weakens state capacity. It weakens trust. It weakens institutions. The best committee work needs to be forceful and precise, but considers weaknesses it might otherwise be introducing.

I will mention again that I was a senior official. I want to provide what happens when a production order comes in. Everybody downs tools. Other work, including other ATIP work, stops. That is suddenly the top priority.

In Alberta, there's FOIP. It's called FOIP because of the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act. There are a number of different considerations that go in every single time one of these orders comes through. I appreciate that sometimes individual interest looks like it's in conflict with public interest, but those are conversations that happen behind the scenes with officials, as we're going through.

Not everything can be released easily or makes sense when it's released. What might some of this information be that we've had to deal with in the past? What if one person has sent an email and the other person has deleted the email? They maintained their retention policy, but all of a sudden, there's a gap in the record, so we need to see if somebody has a version of it or we need to make sure that it exists in some way, shape or form. This happens all the time in government.

I'm not sure if people fully appreciate what the best practice in government is. It is that we maintain final documents. There were a number of documents along the way in the Government of Alberta, which the Kenney government had, that were not final documents. We didn't always have records of them as we were going along, because at the end of the day, we knew we were required to have the final documents for records production. This was a real and present challenge we had in those cases.

There were also many conversations about how we could make the system work more fluidly with the deputy ministers' council. I was not previously in a situation where I could stand up and say, “Let's have sanity prevail.” I was in government—it was my job to do what the officials were doing—and I am now. That is why I was happy to come here and make sure that I could provide my insights into what it looks like from the other side.

There are many costs that are incurred. We drive people from the public service. They're not just people like the Prime Minister, but people who are in possible situations because of motions like this.

Mr. Sabia and Mr. Blanchard are consummate professionals. They have a commitment to our system—absolutely. It cannot be impeached. You should consider the incredible irony here. If you want to truly manage a conflict in the public interest, to keep it from the Prime Minister's awareness, you can't be reporting it to committee every 15 days. You put them in an impossible situation. To protect the public interest, it would actually be in the interest of a government official not to do this, but they know they must do it for the benefit of the committee. They're not going to come to the government if you put them in these impossible positions. You might be passively incentivizing future governments to break rules. You might be discouraging moral people from joining the public service.

Colleagues, it is easy to talk in absolutes. It is easy to take absolute positions. I'm asking you to take thoughtful positions. Are you responsible enough to not talk in absolutes and to acknowledge the downsides of such overly broad and overly prescriptive motions?

With that, I want to wrap by saying this. Mr. Hardy talked on Thursday about trust in institutions being lower. Why might it be lower when insinuations run amok, when leaders thoughtlessly insinuate for political gain and when institutions are weaponized into fishing expeditions? Why, in that situation, would we be surprised if people don't have trust in institutions? We ask a lot of our public servants, particularly our senior public servants, and we are throwing more and more at them all the time. The role is evolving, and we are asking them to help us at a critical time for our country. I ask you, colleagues, does this actually serve the public interest?

With that, Chair, I conclude.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Thank you, Mr. Hogan.

Next I have Ms. Church, on the amendment.

[Leslie Church, Liberal, Toronto—St. Paul's, ON]

Mr. Chair, I'll pick up from where my colleague left this discussion, with his very thoughtful consideration and past experience around the notion of effective and accountable government and how we best achieve that.

We have just come out of debate on a motion in the House that amended the Standing Orders. I'd like to take some time to consider that with the committee. I'd like to move a motion to move the committee in camera.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

It's a dilatory motion. It's non-debatable to move the committee in camera.

(Motion agreed to: yeas 5; nays 4)

The motion to move in camera carries. I'm going to suspend while we change over to in camera.

[Proceedings continue in camera]