Mr. Chair, members of the committee, thank you for inviting me to appear today. As the House of Commons Law Clerk and Parliamentary Counsel, I am pleased to be here so that I can answer your questions.
With me is Michel Bédard, Deputy Law Clerk and Parliamentary Counsel, Legal Services.
I hope that our answers will assist the committee in your deliberations.
As you know, the House of Commons adopted a motion on October 26, 2020, that instructed this committee to undertake a study on the emergency situation facing Canadians in light of the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, and ordered the production of documents from various government departments and ministerial offices relating to this study.
The House's order required that before their tabling in the House and distribution to the committee, all documents be vetted by my office for matters of personal privacy information and national security, and for the category of documents relating to the COVID-19 vaccine task force and its subcommittees, that they be also vetted for information the disclosure of which could reasonably be expected to interfere with contractual or other negotiations between the government and a third party.
On November 24, 2020, the Clerk of the Privy Council, Mr. Ian Shugart, testified before the Standing Committee on Finance that the documents responsive to the House's order could constitute millions of pages.
On November 27, 2020, I appeared before this committee and confirmed that I would devote close to 100% of my office's resources to the review of the documents in order to meet the seven-day timeline provided in the order, and that we could review up to 50,000 pages during that seven-day period. The same day, this committee adopted an order asking my office to prioritize the order in which we vet the documents and confirming that we could obtain an extension of time to review them if necessary by reporting to the committee.
The order also stated that all documents were to be circulated to the committee in both official languages. This became the second report of the committee to the House, which was adopted on December 4, 2020.
On December 7, 2020, my office received approximately 5,000 documents totalling almost 27,000 pages from various government departments and ministerial offices, which we vetted in accordance with the House's order and within the seven-day time period prescribed. In the letters accompanying the documents, the government indicated that my office could expect to receive subsequent batches of documents from the government.
The majority of the documents provided by the government were only in one official language.
As soon as we received the documents, I wrote to the Clerk of the Privy Council to ask him whether the government intended to provide the translated versions of the documents and, if so, when we could expect to receive them.
In his reply of December 18, 2020, Mr. Shugart stated that, in his opinion, following the second report of this committee, adopted by the House on December 4, 2020, my office was best placed to determine the sequencing and content of translation.
On December 22, 2020, I responded to Mr. Shugart’s letter and indicated that the government has an obligation to produce documents in both official languages in accordance with section 8 of the Official Languages Act and consistent with Standing Order 32(4), and that the second report of this committee neither diminished nor removed this obligation.
I added that, to avoid any additional delay, my office would be taking the extraordinary step of providing the documents we have received to date to the Translation Bureau on behalf of the government, but that I expected that, moving forward, the government would take the necessary steps to translate the documents in a timely manner. This is so that we receive the documents in both official languages for tabling in the House and for referral to the committee, once our approval process is complete.
The same day, I reported on this exchange to the committee. My office subsequently received additional documents from the government, so on February 3, I wrote again to Mr. Shugart asking when my office could expect to receive translated versions of the documents so that they could be tabled in the House and distributed to the committee.
On February 26, I received correspondence from the deputy clerk of the Privy Council indicating that the documents were being provided in the language in which they were available in the government's systems to produce them as quickly as possible, and that, given my office's role in determining the priority and sequence for vetting and distribution of documents, the government's position was that we were best placed to determine the order in which documents should be translated and to access additional funding from the Board of Internal Economy of the House of Commons. The deputy clerk also advised that the government expected to provide documents in response to the House's order on a monthly basis.
On March 2, I reported to this committee on the issue and reiterated my position that it is the government's obligation to provide bilingual copies of the documents. I also sought instructions from the committee about how it wished to proceed with respect to the translation of the documents for the fourth, fifth and any subsequent batches produced by the government.
We have to date been able to provide 6,307 documents to the Speaker for tabling in the House.
On February 12, this committee adopted a motion instructing the chair to inquire as to whether the contracts for Canada's seven vaccine agreements had been provided to my office in response to the House's order, and if so, requesting that the translation be prioritized so that the agreements could be tabled in the House and distributed to the committee as soon as possible. The motion also provided that, if the agreements had not yet been produced by the government, the committee request that they be provided by the government to be vetted in accordance with the parameters set out in the House's motion, and this committee review them in camera.
On February 25, the chair of this committee inquired about whether my office had received the vaccine agreements from the government, and I confirmed that we had not. The chair subsequently wrote to the Clerk of the Privy Council requesting that the government provide the agreements to the committee.
Finally, On June 4, the assistant deputy minister of the policy, planning and communications branch of Public Services and Procurement Canada, Mr. James Stott, informed this committee that the government was providing its vaccine agreements after having examined the contracts “under the strict requirements of the Access to Information Act and consulted implicated companies as is required to ensure the appropriate safeguard of their information”, and that the government had applied the applicable exemptions “to protect third-party or personal information, as well as to avoid jeopardizing orders or compromising Canada's negotiating position given the volatility of the marketplace.”
That concludes this review of the facts. I will gladly answer your questions.
Thank you.