Once again, this amendment follows up on a recommendation of the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security. The committee recommended to strengthen the obligation to provide the minister with copies or summaries of advice provided by the Advisory Board. The amendment I am proposing seeks to strengthen that obligation, rather than let the board decide on its own whether to submit its reports or not.
I will read subsection (3) of section 45.18: “The Management Advisory Board may provide the Minister with a copy or a summary of any advice, information or report that it provides to the Commissioner.” My argument has to do with the words “may provide” and, in French, “peut donner”. It goes without saying here that the provision needs to be strengthened a bit. As the subsection is currently drafted, this is not an obligation, and the board can do it or not. There is no obligation.
My amendment seeks to ensure that the Advisory Board must give the minister “a copy or a summary of any advice, information or report that it provides to the Commissioner”, and that it “shall provide the Minister with a copy of every report that it provides to the Commissioner.”
The introduction of the passage “shall provide the Minister with a copy of every report that it provides to the Commissioner”, means that, beyond summaries, advice or information, when a report is provided to the commissioner, the board shall provide a copy of it to the minister in charge of public safety. I hope to have my colleagues' support to strengthen this obligation to provide the minister with reports.