Evidence of meeting #25 for Government Operations and Estimates in the 45th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was request.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Pauline Rochefort Liberal Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON
That's fair.
Quickly, I'd like to come back to The Hill Times. There was a....
I think I have about a minute left.
Liberal
Pauline Rochefort Liberal Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON
In the context of the world that we're now in, which has become very dangerous and so on, how should a department like national defence balance their legal duty to transparency with their responsibility to protect sensitive operational intelligence as they work with allies?
Information Commissioner, Offices of the Information and Privacy Commissioners of Canada
Again, in the act there are exemptions especially for that. They can definitely look at the documents they have and redact the information that should be protected. There's discretion, and, if they can provide the information but think it's going to have an impact or is harmful, they have a way to redact this information and it won't be disclosed. You can do both.
Conservative
Tamara Jansen Conservative Cloverdale—Langley City, BC
Commissioner, accountability in government depends on one basic thing: records. If records disappear, accountability disappears with them. Under the government's new policy, chat and text messages can be permanently deleted after 15 days, and emails after 30 days, even when they relate to government business. I need to ask, how can you, on behalf of Canadians, hold anyone accountable if the evidence is allowed to self-destruct?
Information Commissioner, Offices of the Information and Privacy Commissioners of Canada
It comes back to whether those documents are transitory or not. There is no requirement to keep transitory documents unless there's an access request. It's really the timing, for me. If there's an access request, then everything is accessible. If there's no system in place to stop the deletion, then that's a problem. Ultimately, government employees should know that their responsibility is to keep track of decisions in the proper way, not through emails or text. It should be in minutes, records and briefing notes. Those are the documents that should be accessible.
Conservative
Tamara Jansen Conservative Cloverdale—Langley City, BC
If your office investigates complaints, delays, refusals and improper conduct under the Access to Information Act, and texts and chats are deleted before an access request is even filed, what's left for you to investigate?
Information Commissioner, Offices of the Information and Privacy Commissioners of Canada
I can tell you that usually we will find, and we will ask, who was tasked, where the information was, what was deleted and when. All of these things will be investigated.
Conservative
Tamara Jansen Conservative Cloverdale—Langley City, BC
Who's going to actually be in charge of investigating that?
Information Commissioner, Offices of the Information and Privacy Commissioners of Canada
It will be my office.
Conservative
Tamara Jansen Conservative Cloverdale—Langley City, BC
In past political scandals, both here in Canada and abroad, deleted messages were often the smoking gun. Isn't it true that, under this policy, those smoking guns would never exist long enough to be found?
Information Commissioner, Offices of the Information and Privacy Commissioners of Canada
Again, if it's a decision that should have been kept somewhere and documented, then that's when we can start talking about the government not doing its job and not properly documenting the decision. However, it shouldn't be done through chats. These tools should not be used and should be banned by the government if they're going to be improperly used.
Conservative
Tamara Jansen Conservative Cloverdale—Langley City, BC
If senior officials know that their chats disappear in 15 days, isn't the real risk that important decisions will simply move to platforms designed to leave no trace?
Information Commissioner, Offices of the Information and Privacy Commissioners of Canada
It would be the same thing as saying that people do everything on the phone and orally. It happens. There are some countries that have great laws, and you can't find any records of any of their documents because.... We don't want to go there, and I don't want to say that this is what's happening. Actually, I see the opposite. A lot of people take it very seriously. There are always going to be those people who don't understand that this is proper management, proper leadership and that—
Conservative
Tamara Jansen Conservative Cloverdale—Langley City, BC
Thank you.
Commissioner, can we shift gears a minute to the vaccine files? Again, public health depends on trust. We have to be honest that a lot of trust was lost during COVID. Many Canadians felt that decisions were made behind closed doors, guidance changed without clear explanations and important information wasn't always shared in real time. That loss of trust didn't disappear with the pandemic ending. I hear from constituents, especially young mothers, my daughters included, who still feel that information was kept from them. Whether those perceptions are fair or not, they do exist.
At the same time, Canadians learned that vaccine safety and adverse reaction records are being sealed for 15 years. Now, from a trust perspective, that raises alarm bells. When that information is held, people start asking about it: Why can't we see this? What aren't we being told?
Would you agree that this kind of long-term secrecy has a risk of deepening mistrust, especially among parents making decisions for their children?
Information Commissioner, Offices of the Information and Privacy Commissioners of Canada
I totally agree. This is my speech for Right to Know Week. Without records, without accessibility and without transparency, you lose the trust.
Conservative
Tamara Jansen Conservative Cloverdale—Langley City, BC
Right. I was going to say that transparency isn't just about oversight after the fact; it's about maintaining confidence before fears take hold.
Do you agree that rebuilding trust requires more openness, not more secrecy, especially after the strain Canadians experienced during COVID?
Information Commissioner, Offices of the Information and Privacy Commissioners of Canada
Yes. You need to be transparent by default.
Conservative
Tamara Jansen Conservative Cloverdale—Langley City, BC
Health Canada's justification is that there are millions of pages. If that becomes an excuse, why is your office...? I'm sorry. Has your office been able to require staged or tranche releases with firm deadlines in cases like this?
Information Commissioner, Offices of the Information and Privacy Commissioners of Canada
We can sometimes, but not in all cases, issue an order for a transition—yes.
Conservative
Liberal
Iqra Khalid Liberal Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Ms. Maynard, for being here today. We always love having you here at committee, whether it's at ethics or government operations.
I'll start by picking up on something my colleagues have been talking about, and that's deleting text messages. I doubt that anybody is going to request the grocery list that Mr. McCauley sent to his assistant over the phone in a text message and that later got deleted, or what have you. I really appreciated what you said: I think common sense is, or should be, more common than what my colleagues seem to think. You generally know what to delete and what not to delete, I would think. Our government does operate in an honour system. We trust one another to do the right thing and to do right by Canadians.
Building on that, I also hear that as technology evolves, you can't really delete any texts. You can't fully delete emails. Is that something you would be able to get access to?
Information Commissioner, Offices of the Information and Privacy Commissioners of Canada
We ask institutions whether they have backups if there's reason to believe that something was deleted by mistake or if something should be somewhere. They may have backups, but it's really rare that they would start researching. It's a different type of research. It really depends, again, on the type of technology used and how long they keep those, but we would ask that—yes.
