Government Operations Committee on Oct. 29th, 2024

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Can I interrupt for a second? When you say it's your first amendment, are you—

[Charles Sousa, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

I actually have three amendments.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Okay.

[Charles Sousa, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

I'll make it as one.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

That's what I was going to ask. Thanks.

Can you read them all as one amendment, and then you can address them individually?

[Charles Sousa, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

I'll try to read them together.

The first amendment is to remove Minister Anand. She has nothing to do with regard to the directives here and with respect to what's taking place.

Second is to remove all witnesses other than TBS officials, the Information Commissioner and the Public Sector Integrity Commissioner. Again, this is with regard to what is relevant. There is nothing here by which they would add value in terms of the discussion. If you're looking for witnesses to describe....

The other change is to limit the meetings to two. Given that there will be fewer witnesses, it is not necessary to have four meetings.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

We could just limit the meetings to half an hour.

[Charles Sousa, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

We probably could, because there's not much more here, other than trying to get clips.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

On the amendment to the amended motion, I have Mrs. Block.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK]

Thank you very much, Chair.

I think there's some confusion around what the motion is actually asking. In the example that was given in the follow-up, when the mover had the opportunity to speak to the motion, she provided a situation in which this was an issue.

If you take a look at the motion itself, you see that it is in regard to storage policies and how information is managed. We're not looking at delving into a specific issue. It's on a broader level. That is why all of these individuals have been invited to appear: It's to clear up the confusion that there seems to be as a result of the ArriveCAN incident, and the discrepancies that we heard from Minh Doan and the discrepancy that came out with the correspondence we recently received from Erin O'Gorman.

It's highlighting an issue, but it's not the issue. The issue is, how is information stored? How is it kept? When there's a need to access that information, will it be there when we need it, if anything like this ever arises again?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Go ahead, Mrs. Kusie.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I would like to point out the absolute relevance of the motion, relative to the most recent letter received from Erin O'Gorman. She indicated in the second-last sentence of the letter that:

The response above was referring specifically to backup copies of emails in a PST file—a digital file folder created by an employee on a desktop computer—that was corrupted. No backup copies exist of this PST file.

Those two sentences in themselves indicate the necessity of looking into this. The fact that an employee—never mind the CIO of the CBSA—can create the backup copies in a PST file, that they can move them to their desktop computer, that they could be corrupted within their own desktop computer and then corrupted beyond recall so that they cannot be examined in situations like ArriveCAN, which requires the evaluation of all the emails....

In the last sentence that she gives, “No backup copies exist of this PST file”, if we don't have backup copies, we don't know what was in this PST file. We don't know what information we don't have.

My point is that the most recent communication from Erin O'Gorman absolutely indicates the necessity of this motion and of this study.

Further to the omission of the President of the Treasury Board from the motion, you will recall the motion that I moved last week, before receiving the second communication from Erin O'Gorman. The chair indicated that in an attempt to determine from the Information Commissioner the possibility of registering a complaint about the acceptability of this information being stored in that way and about why this information was stored, she indicated that she had no jurisdiction over it and that we actually had to go to the President of the Treasury Board. That was due to the situation that we found ourselves in—without access to these corrupted emails—being under the purview of the Treasury Board's directive on information management, which is governed by the President of the Treasury Board, Anita Anand.

This is absolutely a study that is needed, as I indicated in my opening, to ensure that we completely understand the processes and to ensure that we understand how this came to happen so that it doesn't happen again.

It is clear, by the directives that oversee the possibility of this situation occurring again, that these directives come from the Treasury Board; therefore, the President of the Treasury Board should be here to answer for that, Mr. Chair.

That was incredibly verbose, but I believe I've made my points.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Next I have Mr. Kusmierczyk, and then Mr. Sousa.

[Irek Kusmierczyk, Liberal, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I know that you wanted to say a few things, but I wanted to say that we are absolutely in agreement with a study on information management, on information storage. It adds a piece of the puzzle to the overall work that we're doing here in terms of process. That part we support. We feel, as has been tradition, that we listen to the officials when we're dealing with process in an issue; we don't call the minister up front. We talk to the officials first to get an understanding of the issue and of what the process looks like from the officials' perspective.

Again, removing Minister Anand from that makes sense to us. It adheres to what has been traditionally the way that we've done things here at committee.

At the same time, on removing witnesses, I believe that the only thing Mr. Doan and Cameron MacDonald add to this discussion is politics. They don't add any insight or anything additional to this study. Therefore, I absolutely do support removing anyone except the officials from this study, as my colleague has stated, and I support not including Mr. MacDonald and Mr. Doan as well.

Otherwise, we think this is a good study, and we appreciate its being brought forward.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

I'm sorry, but do you mind if I interrupt?

I see a few heads nodding.

Are we okay with losing Minister Anand, Mr. MacDonald and Mr. Doan?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Perfect. I'll take UC on that.

It is the original motion as amended by Ms. Blaney, and then we're losing the three. Are we all in agreement?

[Irek Kusmierczyk, Liberal, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Could I just have that repeated really quickly?

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Sure.

I don't have the final part in front of me that Ms. Blaney added, but nothing changes in the preamble. For witnesses, it's TBS officials; President O'Gorman; Ms. Maynard from the Office of the Information Commissioner; Mr. Gagnon, who I think is the temporary chief technology officer; and the IT security specialist involved in the investigation. Then there was what was added by Ms. Blaney, which I think was two meetings, and then we get to a report.

Is that correct, sir?

[The Clerk of the Committee, Mr. Marc-Olivier Girard]

Yes, but the amendment moved forward by [Inaudible—Editor].

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

It's just removing those names.

[The Clerk]

I thought the suggestion was that instead of having four meetings, you would reduce it to two.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Yes, that's what I just stated.

Do you want the clerk to read it one last time?

I think we're all in agreement, but just to be on the safe side, do you mind reading it into the record?

[The Clerk]

It is as follows: “Given recent concerns regarding file storage policy following the departure of public servants, pursuant to Standing Order 108(1), the committee call the following witnesses and undertake a two-meeting study to better understand how the Government of Canada's information management policy, the Privacy Act, the Access to Information Act and the Treasury Board directive on information management govern the handling and storage of government records.”

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

To be honest, we might have too many witnesses. Can we say three if necessary? We may not need three.