Finance Committee on Nov. 24th, 2014

[Daniel Therrien]

The concern I'm raising is not related to the use of the SIN for the unemployment program but with the open-ended nature of the authority to make regulations, to share information with provincial governments for cooperation between the federal government and the provinces. That could be good, but depending on the scope of the regulations that would be made, that could lead to a problematic sharing of information.

I don't know whether the rules in question will be problematic or not. I'm just saying that the bill leaves a lot of discretion in the making of regulations. In the spirit of working with the relevant departments to ensure that privacy considerations are borne in mind, I'm asking to be consulted in future stages of the development of the program.

[Gerald Keddy, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margaret's, NS]

I appreciate that, but you would agree that social insurance numbers in particular are shared now. I would think that information would be in the best interests of the worker vis-à-vis working with provincial authorities, labour groups, and anyone interested in the temporary foreign worker program. That information is fairly available.

[Daniel Therrien]

If the use is for the employment program in question, I would not have a problem, but again, the regulations could speak to any number of purposes not necessarily employment-related.

[Gerald Keddy, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margaret's, NS]

Thank you for that.

The other question was on the profile of a relative's DNA when we're searching for missing persons. Your concern specifically is with the cross-matching of missing persons in foreign jurisdictions. Why, specifically? If that sharing of information led to the uncovering of another crime that had been committed, why not find that out?

[Daniel Therrien]

To be clear, my concern is not with respect to the exchange in a foreign context. My concern is with mixing the provision of certain information for humanitarian purposes with using information for law enforcement purposes, whether that is done domestically in Canada or whether it is done by sharing information with another government. The location doesn't really matter. There are provisions in the bill for inter-jurisdictional sharing. My concern is with mixing humanitarian uses with criminal law enforcement purposes, whether in Canada or internationally.

[Gerald Keddy, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margaret's, NS]

I appreciate that. I would just question on missing persons—sometimes it's strictly a humanitarian case, but very often the criminal element is involved in that, so therein comes the sticking point.

[Daniel Therrien]

What I'm saying, though, is that I would put the missing person himself or herself in the same position as the relative. There is a provision already that recognizes that the DNA of a relative cannot be used, cannot be matched against criminal indices, presumably on the basis that information is provided for humanitarian purposes. I'm saying the same should go for the DNA of the missing person himself or herself.

[Gerald Keddy, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margaret's, NS]

Thank you.

My next question is for Elizabeth Kingston with the Chamber of Mines. You talked a little bit about marine shipping and, especially with the advent of climate change and the lack of multi-winter sea ice in the Arctic region, the increase in shipping in the Arctic and the fact that we can continue shipping products throughout the Arctic in an environmentally friendly way with a very small environmental footprint. Can you just talk about that a little bit vis-à-vis the amount of ocean mapping that's done, where the shipping lanes would go, and if your group has been working with CHARS and other groups on that?

[Elizabeth Kingston]

Thank you. I'll answer the second part of the question first.

With respect to Arctic ocean mapping, that is actually one of the areas for which we would be looking to groups like CHARS and other research agencies, to help fill in some of those gaps. There are a lot of gaps with mapping in general in the north. It's largely an under-mapped or unmapped region of the country, so we would be looking for additional support and projects specific to that kind of research.

In terms of the shipping itself, the fact is that the waters will be open for longer periods of time, whether due to climate change or a warming climate or what have you. The fact remains that there will be more shipping activity that's going to be required as part and parcel of what our projects will need, to get our ore to market, but our ships and our processes are held to very high environmental standards, so we would like to have research that would support this belief. Our records have indicated that we generally ship using safe mechanisms, and we would be looking for research that would support that initiative.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Keddy.

We will go to Mr. Rankin, and colleagues, we'll continue with the seven-minute rounds. We should have time.

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Thanks, Chair.

Thank you to all of our witnesses.

I'd like to start with Professor Hoffman. We had the benefit last week of having the chief public health officer here, Dr. Taylor, who was excellent. We're very fortunate, as Canadians, to have such a talented individual before us. I suppose, like you, as a lawyer, I looked at this and had a very different understanding from the one he provided, in which he seemed to think there was no issue with independence. When I read it, I had exactly the same perspective as you did.

Your point about loss of independence as regards the old bill was something that caught my eye as well. The devil is in the detail in drafting, and I thought that Dr. Kettner made the same point very well when he said the chief public health officer has the ability to make reports and he hopes it's broad enough to do the big communication. Well, so do I, and that's the problem with the drafting of this bill. There's no communication responsibility. You have a person who is now subordinate to a CEO who is an official, and our model doesn't seem to provide that ability to go forth and speak.

Do I have the gist of what you're saying is wrong with this?

[Steven Hoffman]

I think that's exactly right. That's exactly my concern. I think it's particularly important in the context of a Canadian federal model like we have.

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Yes. Your colleague Mr. Culbert, from the Canadian Public Health Association, put it well, I think, when he said that “rank matters”—being equal at the table or something—given this role we're supposed to create for this national figure.

I thought you also did an excellent job of reminding Canadians of the importance of this, of the health costs and of the SARS example, and why we want to improve things going forward. As my colleague Mr. Brison said, it's bizarre that we're talking about this in the finance committee in dealing with a budget bill, but there you go.

You talk about “demotion and politicization”. Those are very serious accusations. Could you elaborate a bit on why you say those are accurate characterizations?

[Steven Hoffman]

Well, it's clear that the proposed bill would mean that the chief public health officer is no longer the agency head, so that's a clear demotion. Even in the way that the current chief public health officer was hired, it's clear that it was meant to be a lesser role than what the previous chief public health officer had.

In terms of politicization, I wouldn't say that's happened yet. I'm not sure. But it's clear that the opportunity for it is there, certainly with the visa restrictions that were enacted on October 31 against West Africans interested in coming to Canada or, more recently, quarantine regulations against people, including Canadians who had been there or who intended to be there within a three-month period. That's something where we didn't see the chief public health officer making a statement, even though we had the World Health Organization and other countries criticizing Canada on the basis of public health.

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Mr. Culbert, you made another similar comment in the context of the fact that these two people—the president and the CPHO—both appear before the minister and may have different views. You've pointed out, I think accurately, that Public Administration 101 says that you don't have two people, you have a hierarchy. Yet if such a dispute were to occur in the future in good faith between these two individuals, it would be for the minister to resolve.

You were careful and I think you appropriately said that it's the minister who has to take political responsibility in our system. I agree, but what if the chief medical officer of Canada thinks we have a bigger crisis than the bureaucrat and the politician think? Essentially, it's the politician who gets to decide whether SARS is a big deal or not a big deal at a moment in time, when maybe no one really knows. Is that not the concern?

[Ian Culbert]

I would say that's exactly the concern. Quite honestly, I'm less concerned about it during an emergency situation, at which point scientific advice is ignored at the peril of anyone who chooses to ignore it. It's during ordinary times that it is of greatest concern.

If I can speak directly to the question about public communication and the end report of the CPHO, while the CPHO will still have that report, the CPHO will no longer be deciding how many resources are allocated towards the writing of reports. If the CPHO has to write his annual report by himself, it's a report that's very different from what we've seen for the last 10 years.

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

On the point of communication, I know, and Mr. Therrien may also know, that there's been a big debate within the Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada about whether the language in their statutory mandate allows public communication. They still fight about it. They don't have it in their law and it's not been inferred because apparently the legal advice in the past has been that we can't publicize Canadians' rights of access. That's their advice.

We don't have anything in here that talks about the ability to publicize, not a single word, just reports, which, as Dr. Kettner says, we hope will be broad enough. It's really quite a scathing indictment.

I'd like to, if I may, ask you another question about the Naylor committee, Mr. Culbert. You talked about how the Naylor committee said that the chief public health officer should be the head and should have the responsibility to promote public health. We got half of that, I suppose, right? We did not get the head, but we have a person with responsibility. I'm trying to marry that up with the point about resources that Professor Hoffman mentioned.

You said they're dropping section 258, as they've done in division 20, and this doesn't allow for “reimbursement”. Could you elaborate a bit on what you meant by that?

[Steven Hoffman]

There's a provision in the Public Health Agency of Canada Act that says the public activities of the chief public health officer will be reimbursed. It gives the language to make sure that this public mandate is able to be funded. For section 258, there's the removal of that provision. There's language about the chief public health officer being allowed to report but not necessarily to be reimbursed. Hopefully, they'll be reimbursed, but—

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

As a matter of statutory interpretation, when you specifically repeal something that used to exist, one can infer, in interpreting that statute, that you no longer want there to be that reimbursement. It doubles the problem that they're silent on, that they repealed. Would you agree?

[Steven Hoffman]

I would agree that it's definitely sending that signal.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you.

We'll go to Mr. Allen, please.

[Mike Allen, Conservative, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to our witnesses for being here.

Mr. Kettner, in your role as the chief public health officer in Manitoba, you made a few comments as you went through the pros and cons of the change in legislation. You also indicated that you didn't see the broad reporting capability diminishing. In fact, you saw the deputy minister being less free-speaking. So in some ways, it might remove the shackles, if it were that way.

You also talked about regulations. I wonder if you could elaborate on the regulations that supported your role as a public health officer in Manitoba. Do you see that role you had in Manitoba being very similar to this one being laid out today?

[Dr. Joel Kettner]

In a couple of ways it's similar; in a couple of ways it's different.

First of all, there's no province that I know of where the chief public health officer is at the deputy minister level. Some of them have assistant deputy minister level and functions; most of them report to a deputy minister and have the ability to advise the minister directly. That was the situation for me.

The ability to speak to the public and the ability to speak to anyone within the province was clarified in The Public Health Act of Manitoba as an expectation. I believe that's also clarified in the federal Public Health Agency of Canada Act. It's clear in subsection 12(4) that the chief public health officer issues a.... Anyway, there's a point where it says very clearly that the role of the chief public health officer is to communicate to the public, and that is very important.

When it comes to the role of a deputy minister, it's clearer in my mind and in my experience that the deputy minister is expected to speak on behalf of the minister and to work at that level in the political system. Although there is an advantage, potentially, to sitting alongside deputy ministers as a chief public health officer, the problem that can occur is the chief public health officer is no longer playing the role at the level they should play, in my view, which is to bring advice and a position on behalf of public health and on behalf of the provincial, territorial, and federal public health officers to the conference of deputy ministers as a whole, and through them to the ministers.

With that split in function, the levels of authority and responsibility are potentially confusing. I think the ability of the chief public health officer to speak openly and to communicate with the public is potentially more difficult as a deputy minister than as an official, which I understand this change will make: the chief public health officer will be an official.

The other thing that I may need to be educated about in interpreting the bill—because I've heard this said by a couple of the other witnesses—is this view that the chief public health officer is subordinate to the CEO or president of the agency. I don't see that in the way this is worded. I see that the chief public health officer advises both the president and the minister, and is hired by the Governor in Council, as is the president. The chief public health officer is not hired by nor reports to the president. I think that's very important. If I'm misinterpreting that, then I think the concerns that have been raised need to be paid attention to, but it's not clear to me.

[Mike Allen, Conservative, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

Thank you very much for that because that's certainly consistent with the testimony that Dr. Taylor gave us the other day as well.

Mr. Therrien, you were talking about the temporary foreign worker program. A significant amount of information is shared, obviously, in the existing temporary foreign worker program today. We have situations whereby some of these temporary foreign workers go to provincial nominee programs, and lots of other things happen where information would get exchanged.

When you look at the information exchange either across federal departments or across provincial and federal departments, are there models for the regulatory environment that ensure that these workers are going to be protected? A lot of them will be under provincial jurisdiction, but then there's privacy, so sometimes they will clash, I'm assuming. What are the best models you have for regulation to ensure we protect the worker but at the same time maintain their privacy?

[Daniel Therrien]

We have a bill in front of us that provides for wide-ranging, regulation-making authority. The models that I think would be good models from a privacy perspective would be regulations that would authorize sharing of information between levels of government for employment-related programs. If the purpose was for other purposes, which may be relevant to a provincial government, then that would have to be looked at more closely. I readily agree that if the sharing is to administer employment-related programs, this would be appropriate from a privacy perspective.