Evidence of meeting #2 for Finance in the 43rd Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was chair.
A video is available from Parliament.
7 p.m.
Liberal
7 p.m.
Liberal
Sean Fraser Liberal Central Nova, NS
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I will continue. I was at bullet 6, I believe:
6. Due diligence analysis of any financial scrutiny undertaken with regard to the WE charity during this process. Attached at Annex 5, you will find the detailed explanation prepared by ESDC of the controls embedded in the contribution agreement to ensure stewardship and appropriate use of funds, as well as a brief overview of the typical process used to evaluate projects and recipients. Further information relating to due diligence that was done by officials in relation to the Canada Student Service Grant is provided in Annex 1 and in the packages that other relevant departments are providing to this committee. 7. The full text of the contribution agreement This document was provided to the Committee by ESDC on Friday July 24, 2020.
Obviously, that was a key document in this entire series of considerations around the Canada student service grant. The letter goes on:
As I noted when I appeared at committee on July 21, 2020, my intent has been to be as expansive as possible in relation to the information that I provide.
This is a key part:
The committee's motion stipulates that Cabinet confidences and national security information are to be excluded from the package.
That is to say, we never asked for them as a committee.
No information is being withheld on the grounds of national security, since the information does not so pertain. With respect to Cabinet confidences, you will note that considerable information on the Canada Student Service Grant that were Cabinet confidences, is being provided to the Committee.
I think that's rather extraordinary, Mr. Chair. Those are my comments and not part of the letter, which continues:
This is in keeping with the public disclosures of information on this matter made by members of the Queen's Privy Council for Canada. A principled approach was adopted to this information to ensure a non-selective application of the protection afforded by Cabinet confidentiality. As a result, considerable information on the Canada Student Service Grant that would otherwise constitute Cabinet confidences is being released. Information not related to the Canada Student Service Grant that constitute Cabinet confidences is withheld and identified as not relevant to the request. In this package, I have also chosen to disclose certain personal information contained in the Privy Council records relating to individuals working in ministers' offices as well as personal information of individuals who work for WE. I have decided to disclose this information because in my view the public interest in disclosure clearly outweighs any invasion of privacy....Similarly, because I believe that it is in the public to do so, I am prepared to issue a limited waiver of solicitor client privilege as it relates to the information that is being provided by departments in response to this motion and my undertakings.
Lastly, I wish to draw the committee's attention to a Note to File, prepared by Christiane Fox, the Deputy Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs at the Privy Council Office. In that note to File, Ms. Fox provides a clarification regarding references in two email exchanges (Annex 6). I trust that the Committee will find the above explanations helpful in its consideration of the enclosed materials. Sincerely, Ian Shugart Clerk of the Privy Council Office
Mr. Chair, there's a similar letter that was sent to this committee as part of the disclosure package that provides important context for the documents that have in fact been disclosed. The reason it's important is that it helps us understand the appropriateness of the redactions, rather than our jumping to the conclusion, as members of the opposition have, that it has somehow violated our privilege. Instead they're seeking to include the context that explains specifically why redactions were made. That remittal letter came specifically from the Clerk of the Privy Council, who is responsible for the public service, of course, but more broadly for much of the document disclosure.
If we actually dig into some of the documents—I'm looking specifically at document number 000049—we see a document labelled at the top as “Not Relevant”. There's obviously no obligation to produce documents that were not relevant to the committee's request. In the example that we're looking at here, this is a Privy Council Office document that accompanied the letter that I just read into the record, which the initial motion with the amendment would specifically exclude from the evidentiary record. There are a number of programs listed in the left column, including youth employment skill strategy programs and student work placement programs, such as the student learning program, the Canada service corps, other financial support, Canada student loans program, doubled Canada student grants, the Canada student benefit, and then at the bottom data blocks that were in fact redacted because they didn't connect to the matters relating to the Canada student services grant, which was included in the committee's request. Instead the two areas that were not redacted related to the Canada service student grant and the WE social entrepreneurship initiative. There are a number of programs listed there that just had nothing to do with what the committee had asked for.
However, in keeping with the motion, the items that related to the Canada student service grant were released. Although a significant amount of that page has in fact been redacted, when you have the benefit of the remittal letter that explains why certain things were redacted, including their relevance, then you very quickly understand that the approach taken mirrored what the committee had asked for.
I go to the next PCO disclosure document at page 76. We have an email from Craig Kielburger to Christiane Fox, who was again specifically named in the remittal letter. The email was sent on April 22. Many committee members would have seen this before. The entirety of this email appears in full text. There are no redactions until you get to the very end of the document. The email, though sent to Craig Kielburger, has a byline at the end for one Lauren Martin, the executive assistant to Craig Kielburger. It includes one telephone number. In the way an ordinary email looks, that appears where the office number would follow under the e-signature. The remaining contact detail of that individual is in fact redacted.
Personally, I think you will appreciate having now heard the benefit of the Clerk of the Privy Council's transmittal letter that there's nothing untoward about redacting the phone number of Ms. Martin in this particular disclosure. The meat of this particular document is actually really interesting and important. It's timed importantly, having been sent on April 22, 2020, in the middle of the pandemic, around the time this student service grant was being considered. All of the text about the previous phone call, about the proposed youth summer service program and the youth social entrepreneurship program is included in full. The only piece that was redacted, as far as I can tell, is the personal contact information of the executive assistant to Craig Kielburger at the time.
We continue on. Again, this is still part of the same PCO disclosure that came attached to the letter from the clerk, which I had just gotten into. If we actually look at page 105, for example, we see that we're dealing with a document marked “Secret”, “Confidence of the Queen's Privy Council”. It is a memorandum for the Prime Minister. It's entitled “Increased Support for Canadian Youth and Students”.
This is a document that is not commonly shared in a public forum like this. Again, if we actually scroll through it, we can see a description of the memorandum and some of the measures that were announced on April 22, 2020. It includes a description of the Minister of Finance's decision. If you go to the following page, you will find redactions that do take up a significant chunk of the page. They fall under headings of “Youth Employment and Skills Development Programs” and “Canada Student Loans”. Those redactions have nothing to do with the Canada student service grant, but now having had the benefit of considering the remittal letter from the Clerk of the Privy Council, you can understand precisely why those redactions took place. They're not relevant to the matters that the committee has asked for. There are portions of the document that have been disclosed, as explained in the letter from Mr. Shugart, where he viewed the public interest to outweigh the privacy concern, or where there were matters that were relevant, in fact, to the development of the Canada student services program.
When you go through this page for page, you see that the redactions, as extensive as they may be on any given page, tend to pertain to something that either is simply not relevant to what the committee had asked for or specifically relates to matters where the committee said that it doesn't want these documents documents disclosed, namely, cabinet confidences. In this particular instance, we even have the recommendations by PCO to the Prime Minister that were disclosed to this committee.
I don't know how more private a document can be in terms of cabinet confidences than recommendations made by the Privy Council to the Prime Minister. Nevertheless, the portions that touched on the matters that are before this committee have been disclosed, despite the long and storied history in parliamentary democracies of protecting confidences of the Crown. Mr. Chair, for what it's worth, I used to deal with document disclosure controversies all the time in my job prior to politics, and even the courts would not have had the ability to compel documents that were properly subject to Crown privilege or cabinet confidences.
Continuing with the PCO disclosure—again, all of which was attached to that original letter that is being excluded from the evidentiary record, which the subamendment would bring back onto the record—if you actually go to the pages beginning at page 189 of the PCO disclosure, there is an email between Rachel Wernick and Tara Shannon from the Privy Council Office. As the motion expressly stated, unrelated cabinet confidences were removed. That portion of the motion has been satisfied, and Ms. Wernick's cellphone number was removed.
I don't think it's appropriate that we need to be compelling the disclosure of that particular motion. These are the kinds of things that actually remain in dispute before the committee in the present debate. Obviously, as I mentioned in my previous remarks, cabinet confidences are not controversial. We didn't ask for them. They didn't need to be produced. The government produced them anyway. The only thing of dispute is, who would have been responsible for redactions on things like Ms. Wernick's personal cellphone number? The government officials who redacted it or the law clerk?
The struggle here is that the law clerk is saying that their law is supreme, and the civil service, who has actually made these redactions on things like the personal information and contact details of Ms. Wernick and others, is saying that “there is legislation that binds us, that insists we can't share that”. Where possible, as you've seen in the other remittal letters that we've covered previously on debates related to other proposed subamendments, those remittal letters explain the significant efforts that were undertaken to actually obtain the consent to disclose some of this personal information.
To me, I don't really care who redacts the personal cellphone number of Ms. Wernick, whether it's the Clerk of the Privy Council or the parliamentary law clerk. That information should be redacted. I don't think that should be a matter of public record. I think our public servants deserve not to be exposed to the public in that particular way. In any event, I can imagine that most public servants, if they had their personal contact details disclosed, would probably get a new cellphone number in any event.
If we actually scroll down in this particular email, it has a small redaction of one line. It appears to relate to a personal conversation that had taken place, and then again at the end, as I've mentioned, before the office email address we see the mobile phone number. You can tell because it has the word “Mobile” and only the phone number has been excluded. You're beginning to see a pattern here, I think.
If you go now to the next couple of pages of PCO's disclosure and page 191 of their release—again, which is all attached to the remittal letter that I've raised as being essential to provide context—it's another email between Ms. Wernick again and Ms. Shannon. The only thing on this page that seems to be missing is again the personal mobile number for Ms. Wernick. The entire email talks about the policy intent, which is more narrow for the student grant program. It discusses what people are comfortable with.
There is some information that is perhaps irrelevant that could have been further redacted but was not. There is a discussion between Ms. Shannon and Ms. Wernick relating to the Internet being cut out, which is clearly not of import to the matters that the committee requested document disclosure on. Nevertheless, the document was provided. The only thing that was redacted was the personal cellphone number.
If we go to the next page of PCO's disclosure—again, which context was provided for, and they explained the process through which they redacted certain kinds of information—there are no redactions on page 192. It's a further email chain between some of the folks I've mentioned and others. The only redaction, if you go to the following page, was again Ms. Wernick's personal cellphone number.
These are the kinds of things that are in dispute right now. The big-picture items, the pages that Mr. Poilievre argued in public during his press conference to have been blacked out, are largely related to cabinet confidences, which, again, this committee didn't ask for. If this dispute is really about who was the appropriate person to make redactions between the parliamentary law clerk and the civil service, which has legislative obligations, it seems to be overkill that we're going to have the opposition insist that the disputed personal cellphone numbers of civil servants should be produced. It doesn't make sense.
Mr. Chair, if you don't believe me with respect to the cabinet confidences being redacted—and that's, in fact, what was in those big pages that had significant redactions—I'd invite you to check out page 219 of PCO's disclosure. It's a rather remarkable document in a lot of ways, considering its production. You'll see that the document, marked “Secret”, is labelled “Confidence of the Queen's Privy Council” and dated May 8, 2020, which I recall is the date of the cabinet meeting that formed the basis of part of the Prime Minister's testimony before this committee. It's entitled “Cabinet Scenario, Friday, May 8, 2020”. The following information was redacted. A synopsis of the meeting heading is there, and a significant majority of that page has been redacted.
The fact of the matter is that there are reasons that cabinet documents are redacted. If we park, for the moment, the idea that the committee specifically said that we don't want documents that are subject to cabinet confidence, even had we asked, it would be the convention in Parliament over hundreds of years that this document would properly be the subject of Crown privilege or cabinet confidence. The reason is that there are obvious decisions that are taken after discussion, which should be full and frank, and that cabinet ministers should be able to challenge one another in private to consider different ideas that relate to things like the development of Canada's vaccine strategy to ensure we're going to be able to access the earliest batches that are safe for Canadians to help protect them from COVID-19.
These documents could exist as a result of threats to our national security. In the present instance, the remittal letter indicates that no redactions were made explicitly on that basis, but cabinet also deals with matters and decision points that could move markets, and it would be important not to have that information in the public domain prematurely, for fear that it could compromise an important social, economic or environmental outcome.
There is a good reason these things are often not produced publicly, but in this case there is a trump card in that the committee specifically said that we don't want these documents. The government produced it anyway. This is what makes it remarkable, in my mind.
If you scroll to the bottom of the following page, there is information that was relevant to the Canada student service grant. This would ordinarily be subject to cabinet confidences, specifically on the cabinet agenda, but it was nevertheless disclosed. It says, “For the item on the Canada Student Service Grant, turn to Minister Chagger to provide an overview of her revised proposal”. It then describes some of the matters that were presented in cabinet surrounding the Canada student service grant, all of which would be relevant to the study, even though we didn't ask for it. Even though it is subject to cabinet confidence, it was nevertheless disclosed.
In addition to the description of what took place, PCO offered a comment. Clearly this document is beyond the scope of what the committee asked for, but it was produced anyway.
We know that because the remittal letter, which, again, is not on the evidentiary record, nor would the opposition have it be there, provides that important context. Now we know why we have this document, in part, and that the remainder of the document was not redacted to bury something secretly related to the program, but in fact it's a document that we didn't ask for and a document that in any event would be subject to cabinet confidence.
Mr. Chair, if I can continue, I'll draw your attention for the moment to.... The document number I'm looking at is 254. I'm looking at this lengthy disclosure. If the context for these documents is not going to be provided, I intend to go through a significant number of the redactions.
7:25 p.m.
Liberal
Sean Fraser Liberal Central Nova, NS
Yes, but Mr. Chair, before I continue.... I don't know if everyone is willing to do this, so I move that the committee do now adjourn.
7:25 p.m.
Conservative
7:25 p.m.
Liberal
7:25 p.m.
The Clerk
Is there unanimous consent?
7:25 p.m.
Conservative
October 21st, 2020 / 7:25 p.m.
The Clerk
Then we can go to a recorded division.
(Motion negatived: nays 6; yeas 5)
7:25 p.m.
Liberal
7:25 p.m.
Liberal
7:25 p.m.
Conservative
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Carleton, ON
Yes, I just wanted to say that we would love to get on to the pre-budget consultations—
7:25 p.m.
Liberal
7:25 p.m.
Liberal
Sean Fraser Liberal Central Nova, NS
Thank you.
Despite the suggestion that they want to get on with pre-budget consultations, they denied us the opportunity to do just that earlier in this—
7:25 p.m.
Liberal
Sean Fraser Liberal Central Nova, NS
In any event, Mr. Chair, you were correct to point to page 254 of the PCO disclosure, which was accompanied by the remittal letter that, again, is not part of the series of documents that the opposition would have come before this committee in this session of Parliament. It's an email from Tara Shannon, with PCO, to Shannon Nix.
The page is not redacted at all. It talks about the Canada Service Corps partners and the fact that they're already struggling to deliver their existing programs and don't have capacity to take on more placements. Now, this would have followed the May 8 cabinet meeting, during which, as the Prime Minister testified, in fact the civil service was sent back to consider what alternatives there were to WE Charity in terms of delivering some of the program.
It goes on to talk about the fact that “[Canada Service Corps] programming is not focussed on volunteering to help respond to the COVID-19 needs in communities”. I think that would be relevant. Although it's maybe not at the very crux of the issues we're looking for, it does provide helpful context. Again, none of it has been redacted. If we continue to scroll down, after it talks about an overview of the program, you'll see that at the very end of the correspondence the only redactions on this page are the phone numbers of the director of policy and cabinet affairs in the office of the Minister of Diversity and Inclusion and Youth, and then again the same phone number is redacted when the email signature appears in French.
This is the kind of controversial information that the opposition is trying to have produced. I find it ironic, in fact, that the phone number has been redacted twice. I assume it is the same in both English and French. Nevertheless, that is the totality of the redaction in that correspondence.
If we look to page 268 of the PCO disclosure, it's an email exchange between Ms. Wernick and Mr. Philip Jennings from PCO. They are looking at an attachment that Ms. Wernick forwarded to the Privy Council Office. It seems odd here, but believe it or not, the only thing that remains is Ms. Wernick's phone number. The lengths to which the opposition has gone are nonsensical, when its dispute is presumably not even over whether that information should have been redacted but who should have done the redaction.
I think we can all agree that it's absolutely inappropriate to disclose that kind of personal information. Honestly, I don't think the opposition wants to have that information. I think they want to keep up the illusion that the government was not forthcoming with the documents. When they actually go through them, they will see that the kinds of things that have been redacted are entirely appropriate.
If we look at PCO document disclosure number 348, we see that, similar to the previous cabinet scenario document, it's labelled “secret”. Again, it's labelled “Confidence of the Queen's Privy Council” and dated May 22. We heard about that cabinet meeting in detail as well during testimony—unprecedented testimony in a lot of ways—before this very committee. Under the heading “Synopsis of the Meeting”, the material is blacked out. I suspect the reason why that information was blacked out was that, one, it's subject to cabinet confidence, for the same reasons I explained earlier—that cabinet ministers need to be able to have full and frank conversations—and two, again, we didn't ask for it. But we know that conversations relevant to what we've been exploring on this committee took place during that meeting, so even though we didn't ask for the document, and even though had we asked for it the government would have been within its rights to refuse it, the government produced it. They included, presumably, a portion of this page only to demonstrate that it came from a cabinet scenario.
The next page is just labelled as not being relevant and appears blank. Perhaps that is why, in fact, it wasn't produced, rather than some secret, malicious intent.
If you scroll down, you'll see that about half of the document.... I'm looking at PCO disclosure 350. The first half of that page is redacted. It's continuing from the synopsis of the meeting, but near the bottom of the page or about halfway down the page you'll see that the document is no longer redacted because it relates to the Canada student service grant.
We didn't ask for it. The government would not be obligated to produce it, yet in any event the government chose to release it in the interest of transparency so we could actually see the nature of the discussion that took place at the cabinet meeting on May 22 about the Canada student service grant. We didn't ask for it, and there was no obligation to produce it, but nevertheless the government produced it in an effort to be as transparent as possible.
After the synopsis of the meeting that took place on the Canada student service grant program, we have a short PCO comment that relates to the discussion that took place, and again the balance of the document is redacted as not being relevant to the Canada student service grant program.
Mr. Chair, there is a series of other documents here. I find it interesting—and I believe that Mr. Gerretsen made this point during our last meeting—that one of the very key documents in the document disclosure is the funding agreement between Her Majesty the Queen in Right of Canada, as represented by the Minister of Employment and Social Development, and the WE Charity foundation. This is the agreement that was put forward between the parties.
When I scroll down throughout this document, what I find interesting about it—I am through several pages—is that the first page has absolutely no redactions. The second page has no redactions. It goes on. I'm looking through this entire document. This is really the foundational document of the relationship between the government and the WE Charity organization with respect to the Canada student service grant program, and there are no redactions, Mr. Chair. It was turned over in full.
One of the first things you're taught when you're jumping on a document disclosure program is to look, as a starting point, to the agreement behind whatever is in dispute and we have it in full. There are no redactions. It's clear that perhaps the most important document in the entire package is completely available to the committee.
If we look at schedule A to the agreement—and this is document number 376 in PCO's disclosure bundle—there are some redactions; in fact, there are four. They involve the telephone numbers and email addresses for two individuals. One is Dalal Al-Waheidi and the second is Scott Baker. The only redactions I see are of the telephone numbers and email addresses of these individuals. I don't think it would be appropriate to disclose them.
In any event, it seems bizarre that the point in dispute here is not even whether the information ought to be disclosed. Again, I know that one of my colleagues did have some fun on this point during our last meeting. The only dispute was as to whether the person who should have redacted these phone numbers was the law clerk or the civil servant who has legislation saying that they shouldn't disclose this information, even to the law clerk.
I realize there is a real tension between what the law clerk has said and what the Clerk of the Privy Council has said. I actually think that it might be appropriate to get them before us to talk about who should do which redaction and why the Clerk of the Privy Council felt compelled not to share the personal cellphone number of private individuals or civil servants. If we have to bring them here, because the remittal letters, including that context, don't form part of the evidentiary record, maybe that will be appropriate.
If you continue through the annex, after those specific phone numbers and email addresses had been excluded, you'll see there are no further redactions. It's really extraordinary when you see the level of disclosure on some of these things. It seems that the two buckets of documents, as all the remittal letters have pointed out, that have not been produced relate either to cabinet confidences, as I've been demonstrating, which have not been asked for by this committee, or to private personal information of individuals.
Again, what the opposition is digging their heels in on is not even that the phone numbers should be produced. I don't think they believe that. I find it odd that this has become such a big deal when the dispute is only over who should have made the redaction of those private phone numbers.
The document entitled “finance proposal” is the implementation of the Canada student service grant. This is PCO document 394, all of which, by the way, still relates to the documents that were described in detail in the remittal letter of the Clerk of the Privy Council. The document “Finance Proposal: Implementation of the Canada Student Service Program” is between pages 394 and 401 of the PCO release. It gets into the implementation plan for the Canada student service grant in full detail, unredacted. If we go through the document, you'll see the section entitled “Overview” is not redacted.
The next section, “Proposal Description”, is completely unredacted. If you go to the costing of the program, you see it is completely unredacted. They talk under that heading about the first 20,000 placements and the anticipated cost of those placements. They look at the second cohort of 20,000 placement opportunities and the total programming cost there. If you continue, you see they have details about the initial processing and administrative capacity for the Canada student service grant, which is there in full detail, including an estimated cost.
If you continue to scroll down, they have the initial funding envelope for the grant, with the costing available, and the contingency fund for additional grants is present, with the projected costing.
7:35 p.m.
Conservative
7:40 p.m.
Conservative
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Carleton, ON
I wonder if we could get voting so we could get back to pre-budget consultations.
7:40 p.m.
Liberal
Sean Fraser Liberal Central Nova, NS
Excellent.
You have the funding envelope and the contingency fund. Picking up where I left off, you have the program support costs for ESDC, which included creating and launching the “I Want to Help” website. A cost estimate is included in there. There are assumptions about how those costs were arrived at, details on the plan to implement the program over a series of pages, and a heading entitled “Results”, which talks about what the anticipated outcomes would be. They are all there, in full and unredacted.
The final page of this document includes two redactions of, once again, the contact information for two individuals. Their names are present. Their position titles are present. One is Ritu Banerjee, executive director with the Canada Service Corps Secretariat in the skills and employment branch. Their phone number has been redacted. The second person is Sara Wiles, director at the Canada Service Corps Secretariat in the skills and employment branch. Their telephone numbers are redacted. In the entirety of that document, which describes in great detail the plan to develop, fund and implement the plan, including costing assumptions, including contingency plans, including implementation, all of it's there. Nothing has been redacted from that document, which, I would suggest, would be a key document in this entire controversy. The only redaction is the individual phone numbers of those two individuals who work with the Canada Service Corps Secretariat in the skills and employment branch.
Mr. Chair, let's look at page 404 of the same disclosure package, all of which still relates to the remittal letter that would be brought in by the subamendment. It's really a helpful document, I find. If you look at page 404, and I hope you're following along, there's a meeting invitation to discuss the WE contract. Now, the key part that was redacted in this document—Mr. Chair, if ever there was a smoking gun, it's here—was the conference ID for the teleconference hosting it. That's it. The details around it have been produced. I don't think anybody would have even cared if this document hadn't been produced, but it is relevant technically, so it should have been. It demonstrated that there was a teleconference where the WE contract was discussed. I only know that because that's the subject of the calendar appointment.
Actually, it provides the dial-in to the conference line, just not the conference ID to access it. Presumably, that same contact line has either expired or is still used by an organization. I don't know that it would be appropriate for members of the public to potentially be dialing in to a conference ID that could be in use by the government or others. It demonstrated that the meeting began at 4:30 and ended at 5. This technically is relevant, because it touches on a meeting, but by no means do I think it essential or appropriate to be disclosing something like the conference ID for the specific teleconference that was hosted that day.
Again, I'll make the point that the dispute is not even over whether this information should have been redacted. I expect that most members of the opposition—who, by the way, I tend to get along with personally when the cameras are not on—care about this conference ID. The fight is not even about the disclosure of that conference ID. It's about who should have made that decision.
Let's continue on to page 417, still from the same PCO disclosure that is attached to the original remittal letter I read out at the beginning of my remarks. It is labelled as “Secret”, “Limited Distribution” and “Confidence of the Queen's Privy Council”. It has a heading entitled “Memorandum for the Prime Minister”. It's a remarkable document. I don't expect memoranda to the Prime Minister would ordinarily be disclosed at all. Again, it's pages 417 through 419. It's a cabinet confidence document, clearly stamped “limited distribution”, as I mentioned. This particular memorandum to the Prime Minister asks for his decision regarding the Canada student service grant as well as other matters.
In this motion, which was put before the finance committee in the previous session of this Parliament, matters related to the grant program were requested. Here that information has been released, yet the items unrelated to cabinet confidences were redacted. They weren't asked for. They don't need to be shared, because even had we asked for them, they're subject to cabinet confidence, but of course the document was nevertheless produced. Only the issues that were outside of what the committee requested or that were subject to cabinet confidence would have been excluded, while some information that was relevant, which was nevertheless subject to cabinet confidence, was in fact disclosed.
If you continue, you see only minor redactions on the very first page, and then at the very end before you get to PCO recommendations. If you have access to the remittal letter, you'll understand that the Clerk of the Privy Council explicitly shared that certain items that were relevant to the discourse the committee was undertaking were shared with the committee, even though they would ordinarily be subject to confidence. In the absence of those remittal letters, which members of the opposition are seeking to have excluded, you might rightly have some questions about why certain documents were redacted, but it's been explained to us by the Clerk of the Privy Council. In fact, the entirety of this document ordinarily would not be subject to disclosure; nevertheless, the document in large part has been provided.
You're probably starting to pick up a bit of a theme, Mr. Chair. I'm looking at document number 426, still attached to that initial remittal letter from the Clerk of the Privy Council. It's an email from the PCO release, sent by Ms. Rosanne MacKay at PCO to one of her colleagues, Alain Beaudoin. The topic is a cabinet meeting note for the Prime Minister. The redaction here, once again, is Ms. MacKay's phone number.
The document itself includes some information that probably didn't need to be produced. It goes into detail about different programs on an agenda from the week prior to the email being sent that related to a whole series of government programs, like the Canada emergency wage subsidy, CERB, IRAP, the Canada summer jobs program, the Canada emergency commercial rent assistance, the Canada emergency business account, OAS, the guaranteed income supplement, RRIFs for seniors and the CESB for students. Each of these programs, of course, was advanced in the midst of the pandemic and was covered as part of the attached draft meeting management note.
If you scroll down to the end of the correspondence, what you're left with again is a single redaction, and it's Ms. MacKay's phone number. Again, I feel compelled to point out that the dispute is not over whether that should have been redacted but only about who should have made the redaction. We're having this debate now over whether it should have been the Clerk of the Privy Council or the parliamentary law clerk.
I don't think it would be appropriate, and again I really don't think my honourable colleagues in any party actually want this information. I think they want to maintain the suggestion that because there were any redactions, the government is hiding something, when in fact we're showing, by going through these documents one by one, that even where there is no obligation to produce a document, the government often did so when it was relevant, and it actually provided useful information to the committee.
If you look at pages 428 through 432, again from PCO, there is a document with very limited redactions. At the top of the page you will see that a conference ID for a teleconference was blacked out on this particular page. The information that's actually been included relates to the wage subsidy, and they explain the different civil servants who were involved with the call. They talk about some of the different programs related to the pandemic response. There is one small piece that has been redacted and is labelled not relevant.
Similarly, on the next page, 90% or more of the document has been disclosed. There's a small point that's not relevant. If you read the remittal letter, you will understand specifically how decisions about relevance were made and why those particular pieces of information were not disclosed as part of the page that was included in the disclosure package.
If you continue to scroll down, you'll see that the pages following are entirely unredacted. All of the information about these different programs is already there. In fact, it probably goes significantly beyond what the committee asked for, but we know from the explanation that was specifically given in the remittal letter that some of these documents were included so as to give as wide a disclosure as possible.
When you continue on through the document, you'll see that there are no further redactions at all. Some of this information probably didn't need to be produced, but in the spirit of a broad document production, it's pretty clear that the way this document was redacted demonstrates that the government wanted to show all that it could show that could possibly relate to the program.
I'm looking now at pages 433 to page 434. The complaint here seems to be that—
7:50 p.m.
Liberal
