Government Operations Committee on March 8th, 2011

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

As you can see, this committee in particular is balanced, and of course the chair is an opposition chair, and he's doing a great job.

But I was wondering, can you tell me when this office was actually created?

[Patricia Hassard]

It was created in 2006.

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

What act created it?

[Joe Wild, Assistant Secretary to the Cabinet, Machinery of Government, Privy Council Office]

The office was created under the Public Service Disclosure Protection Act, which had been amended by the Federal Accountability Act.

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

That was principally an act that came out as a result of the sponsorship scandal of the previous government, and of course trying to end the corruption of the previous Liberal government and restore some accountability to this place. So thank you for clarifying that for me.

I looked back because we were talking just a bit about how the process happened, and I came across a couple of quotes. The Honourable Diane Marleau, June 14, 2007: “Mr. Speaker, the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates met earlier today” basically to concur and to approve the appointment of Christiane Ouimet, the former commissioner. All the members agreed. I'm not sure which members here were on the government operations and estimates committee there, but it appears to me that it was a unanimous decision at that time.

I looked a bit further, and I had a comment from the Honourable Liberal Senator Serge Joyal: “Ms. Ouimet is a stellar example of someone who will be able to discharge her function with a high degree of competence”. He went on to extol a lot of the virtues of Ms. Ouimet at the time.

I'm trying to find some areas where there was disagreement.

Hopefully you can explain this a bit further to me, because this appointment is a bit different. It's subsection 39(1):

The Governor in Council shall, by commission under the Great Seal, appoint a Public Sector Integrity Commissioner after consultation with the leader of every recognized party in the Senate and House of Commons and approval of the appointment by resolution of the Senate and House of Commons.

This is the process that was followed under the last appointment, and you've made some changes to it. I'm not going to ask you whether there were any disagreements, because obviously we had a commissioner appointed, so clearly there were no disagreements, and I haven't been able to find any.

But are you changing that at all? Will there be any changes to the fact that there will be consultations with the leaders and there needs to be a House of Commons and Senate resolution?

[Patricia Hassard]

No, Mr. Chairman. Once the government has identified a nominee, that person's name and curriculum vitae are sent to the leaders of the opposition parties by the government for consultation. So there is an opportunity at that time, if there are issues to raise.

There's also a secondary step in Parliament, as I'm sure you're aware, where both the Senate and the House of Commons must consider the candidacy and pass resolutions to approve that individual before the government can issue an order in council making that person the Public Sector Integrity Commissioner. So it is a fairly elaborate process.

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

Can you explain just a bit further the one change, the psychometric assessment? What are some of the elements of that? If you could, just describe that a bit more in depth for me.

[Patricia Hassard]

Yes.

I take the point that psychometric assessments have been used for several years. We're relatively new to them as a tool, and I must say we're finding that they're very useful. The way they are done is that a trained psychologist will interview the individual candidates—in our cases, we have done it with usually the short short list of candidates—and will assess over a series of tests online and in person what the person's quality of character is, how they think, whether they are strategic thinkers, what their relational capabilities with other individuals are, how they make judgments, how they operate under stress. It's a very interesting way to assess the qualities of a candidate for some of our leadership positions, and I think it is one that has helped us make distinctions among final candidates. In other words, we have used it to help in deciding which candidate on the short short list is the right candidate for that organization at that moment.

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

Here is a last question, and then I'm going to turn it over to Mr. Holder.

If there is any unfortunate reason that a public service integrity commissioner needs to be removed from office, what is the process for removing an officer of Parliament?

[Patricia Hassard]

Well, it's not a process we know very well, because it has not been used. In the statute, essentially a person who is an agent of Parliament.... The Public Sector Integrity Commissioner could only be removed for cause after address of both houses of Parliament.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

You have two minutes and fifteen seconds, Mr. Holder.

[Ed Holder, Conservative, London West, ON]

Thank you, Chair. Thank you to our guests as well.

Madam Hassard, we've referred to Mr. Keyserlingk's thoughtful note to Mr. Martin back on December 15, 2010. I've just seen it now. What was his background prior to his role as stated? Do you know offhand?

[Patricia Hassard]

I don't know Mr. Keyserlingk.

[Ed Holder, Conservative, London West, ON]

I heard one of our colleagues opposite say that he would exclude past or current civil servants regardless of their talents. I find that interesting, because I guess, based on that, the Speaker of the House should not come from our list of parliamentarians because there's the potential for bias. And I would suppose that the Governor General should never be a former parliamentarian, as Madame Jeanne Sauvé and Mr. John Bosley and even the New Democratic Premier Ed Schreyer were, because of their past political relationships. And I suppose even the Ambassador to the United States, the Honourable Gary Dewar, should not be the ambassador because he had past relationships. I was a little curious about that step of logic.

You have mentioned that June 18, 2011, is the time when the interim commissioner's role will be complete. Will that give you sufficient time, with all the things you need to do in putting the committee together and all, to find an appropriate replacement?

[Patricia Hassard]

I believe it will.

[Ed Holder, Conservative, London West, ON]

Okay.

The interesting thing, Chair, and I would say this to all committee members as a former employer with some 30 years of background in which I have literally hired hundreds of people over my time—many of them quite personally, before I had a group of experts to assist me, people who are much more skilled than I am—is that this really becomes an issue sometimes of learning the things that you've done right. Often, you don't even know until you get someone in the chair how effective and how exceptional you hope they will be, and sometimes that process, notwithstanding all our best plans, becomes one of those situations in which, unfortunately, it's not the right fit. But what I'm impressed by is that, from what I see of what you're doing, you're putting processes in place to go forward. I think that is the key. And you have indicated that from your standpoint this—a case of someone stepping down from this position—is a first-time experience as well.

So I commend you for taking the proactive role in going forward. I think that is important.

That wasn't a question; it was more a comment, Chair. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Mr. Martin, you have eight minutes.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I think that we as a committee should begin with an apology to all of the courageous whistle-blowers who came forward with information to save the country money, or for whatever reason they came forward; we let them down profoundly. The appointment process was the genesis of that failure.

I was shocked to learn, and the scuttlebutt is in the senior bureaucracy, that she didn't apply for that job at all. In fact, she was head-hunted; she was specifically sought out because the government was looking for a compliant stooge who wouldn't rock the boat. That's the horrifying thing to me. Twelve qualified people applied and were turned away. Another short list of six was developed, and they chose this one person, who turned out to be a maniacal despot the likes of which we haven't seen since George Radwanski.

You say, Ms. Hassard, that we've never exercised this right to fire an officer of Parliament. We did in fact run George Radwanski out on a rail—he's lucky he wasn't tarred and feathered—and his golden parachute was clawed back.

I'm a former union rep and I've dealt with a lot of severance issues. In what lunatic universe does a person get a golden parachute like that when they quit their job? It's unprecedented.

My question is, who negotiated this insane severance package? Why is a gag order a part of that severance package? And what active steps is the PCO taking to get back every penny of that severance package—and I would argue even further, to claw back the wages she was paid, because she didn't do her job?

What steps are actively being taken by you to get that money back?

[Joe Wild]

It's difficult to figure out exactly what the question is under the list of questions that were asked.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Start with the last one. What are you doing to get us our money back, Joe?

[Joe Wild]

There's absolutely nothing incongruous with the settlement arrangement the government arrived at with the former commissioner. That agreement follows standard—

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Incongruous is a strange choice of word. What does it mean?

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Mr. Martin, let Mr. Wild finish, please.

[Joe Wild]

The agreement follows standard practice in providing both weeks of severance as well as pay in lieu of notice, in light of the fact that this is a person who approached the government to—

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

But she quit; she wasn't fired. You have said so.