Government Operations Committee on Feb. 1st, 2021

[Allan Cutler]

In what respect do you mean?

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

I'm talking about the fact that everything is so secretive.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Ms. Vignola, I'll let you clarify that question for him, and maybe Mr. Cutler could answer in writing afterwards.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

I don't think she heard.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Okay. I will get back to that.

Mr. Green, you have two and a half minutes.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you very much.

We heard from the testimony of Mr. Bron the concept of regulatory capture. It sounded more like corporate capture, in that it's designed to protect the corporate and commercial interest.

Mr. Bron, would you care to elaborate on ways in which, in your opinion, regulatory capture leads to this type of scenario?

[Ian Bron]

What I was referring to is a situation in which the regulator, to use the example of Transport Canada where I worked many years ago, is too friendly to the industry and they start bypassing their own processes, perhaps not being transparent enough or coming to decisions that other people might question.

There's a tendency to favour industry in a number of agencies in government. My own research has picked this up in places such as Health Canada, the Food Inspection Agency—

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Do you have any examples for the benefit of the people who might be watching?

[Ian Bron]

Of course, there's the case of Shiv Chopra, where he raised the issue of the use of bovine growth hormone and the decision-making process there having been pretty much designed to approve just about anything industry wanted.

Transport Canada had records to do with derailments, for example, that weren't being put out, so the companies looked to be doing a much better job than they actually were. We found out, unfortunately, at Lac-Mégantic just how bad it was.

As Mr. Holman was saying, these records are easily available in the States. Why they shouldn't be available here only serves to protect the company, not the public interest.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

It sounds very much like corporate capture to me. I wonder if you have any quick thoughts on one of the ways this could be immediately addressed, or at least directly addressed?

[Ian Bron]

Well, one way is definitely transparency. There's all kinds of data out there that should just be available for people.

The other one is to empower whistle-blowers, both in the agencies such as Health Canada and in the companies being regulated, because that's what these systems are built on. These days, they have something called “safety management systems”. It really relies on companies to bring forward their own errors, but if they're suppressing whistle-blowers, that information never reaches the right people.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you.

Mr. Kitchen, my clock had me at two minutes and 37 seconds, so I cut it short there for you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Thank you very much, Mr. Green. I actually hadn't started the clock on you, so I was going to give you extra time.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

In that case, I have....

I'm just kidding.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

That said, we'll now move to Mr. Diotte for five minutes.

[Kerry Diotte, Conservative, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Hello and thanks to all three of you for being here.

I was a journalist for 30 years myself, and I dealt with a lot of issues of public disclosure and VoIP hacks and all of that, so I know intimately the headaches that could come with trying to get information from governments.

Now that I am a member of Parliament, the headaches continue.

Just off the top, I think we can all agree that hindsight is 20/20, and it's obvious that the federal government and provincial governments have made some grave errors in dealing with COVID. It wasn't so long ago that we were told that COVID wasn't a threat to Canada, masks weren't really effective, and stopping international travel wouldn't be effective. So against that backdrop—and that's been in just a year—this is kind of a philosophical question, but how would better disclosure of public information ensure that these kinds of grave missteps are avoided?

Any of you could start. Who wants to jump in?

[Sean Holman]

What we know is that when organizations know they are being watched, they'd behave themselves better. The other interesting thing is that when more information is out there, it allows people outside of government to help the government and to say that it should maybe be looking at this and that maybe it got something wrong. It also allows for better decision-making outside of government.

I think the other thing that we should also be concerned about is just the amount of information available in general, not just secrecy but the amount of information available. What we know is that the government in a lot of circumstances isn't actually collecting as much information as it should, and we should be thinking about that too.

[Kerry Diotte, Conservative, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Mr. Bron, go ahead.

[Ian Bron]

I agree with what he's saying. I really don't have a whole lot to add. It's very important that people be able to make decisions. I think that in providing the information, you're in a sense crowdsourcing error detection. You're allowing people to pick up on problems. That's what whistle-blowers do too. They're embedded in the organization. Nobody else is better positioned to spot the wrongdoing, and they can get that information to the people who can do something about it.

[Kerry Diotte, Conservative, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Mr. Cutler.

[Allan Cutler]

I'm in exactly the same situation. The more people learn about information, the more chance you have to have input into it. Yes, mistakes will happen. Corrections will be faster, but over and above mistakes, corruption and wrongdoing will be avoided because people will be watching, because you're publishing information that they can then learn from.

So let's focus not just on mistakes. It's a broader category that we need, and we need openness and transparency to address it.

[Kerry Diotte, Conservative, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Excellent.

Right now, speaking of COVID, Canada is way behind in getting people vaccinated. I know that we've heard from the government that there are lots of vaccinations coming and lots of drugs coming, but when you look at the statistics right now from the Oxford-based Our World in Data, Canada is now ranking 20th globally, well behind our allies like the U.S., United Kingdom, and even some of the middle-income countries like Poland and Serbia.

How would better access to information and improved whistle-blowing legislation solve this kind of great problem?

Anybody could start on that.

[Allan Cutler]

I'll make just a quick comment.

It won't solve the problem, but it might have prevented the problem, because we would have known that there was a problem coming and we would have been in a position of needing to address it. It won't solve the problem right this minute.

[Sean Holman]

Yes, absolutely. It allows for public pressure to be brought to bear, whether by elected representatives, civil society groups or individual citizens. Knowledge allows for action. Knowledge allows for decision.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Thank you, Mr. Holman.

Thank you, Mr. Diotte.

We'll now go to Mr. Drouin for five minutes.