Thank you, Mr. Chair.
As the Law Clerk and Parliamentary Counsel for the House of Commons, I am pleased to be here today to address any questions that the committee may have with respect to the House's motion and the role it prescribes for my office. I hope that my answers will assist the committee.
As you know, the House's motion includes an order for certain documents from the Government of Canada to be provided to my office no later than November 30. This includes documents from the Office of the Prime Minister; the Privy Council Office; the Office of the Minister of Public Services and Procurement; the Office of the Minister of Health, Health Canada and the Public Health Agency of Canada. This also includes all documents relating to the COVID-19 vaccine task force and its subcommittees; the Government of Canada's COVID-19 vaccine distribution and monitoring strategy; and the government's communications with the World Health Organization concerning the Global Public Health Intelligence Network.
The motion states that the Clerk of the Privy Council Office may request an extension of up to seven additional days by writing a letter to the committee.
The House's motion expressly excludes from its order the minutes of meetings of the cabinet and its committees. It also requires that all documents provided in response to the order be vetted by my office for matters of personal privacy information and national security, and that the category of documents relating to the COVID-19 vaccine task force and its subcommittees also be 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.
The motion provides that my office is to complete this work within seven days of receipt of the documents from the government, and to provide them to the Speaker for tabling in the House of Commons at the next earliest opportunity. Upon being tabled, the documents are to be permanently referred to this committee. I confirm that my office has not yet received documents in response to the order.
The order allows the government to exclude any minutes of meetings of cabinet and its committees.
For all the other categories of redactions—personal privacy, national security and information that, if disclosed, could reasonably be expected to interfere with contractual or other negotiations between the Government of Canada and a third party—the order is clear that my office must vet those redactions.
In our view, the House's order does not preclude the government from proposing what it feels the redactions on those grounds should be, but my office needs to see the documents and make the final determination about what is provided to the House and to this committee in accordance with the order.
It is up to this committee, and ultimately the House, to determine whether it is satisfied with documents provided in response to the order, with the government's approach and with any redactions made. This is consistent with the House's role as the grand inquest of the nation.
In terms of the process and resources, my office has 15 counsel, along with two paralegals and other employees, including jurilinguists, the publications team, translators, administrative assistants and an articling student, for a total of 35 employees.
My office provides comprehensive legal and legislative services to Parliament, the Board of Internal Economy, the House and its committees, members of Parliament and the House Administration. It's also responsible for drafting private member’s bills and motions to amend government bills, and for the printing the bills as they progress through the legislative process. In some sense, it provides similar types of legal and legislative services to the House that the Department of Justice provides to the government.
In response to the House's order, we've taken steps to acquire additional resources in anticipation of receiving a very large volume of documents for review and redaction.
My office has reviewed the House's order and made the necessary preparations so that we can respond and begin our work as soon as we receive the documents. We have established a project team to prepare for the receipt of documents, led by the deputy law clerk and parliamentary counsel, legal services, Monsieur Michel Bédard, who is with me today.
The project team has carefully reviewed the text of the House's order and developed an internal process for uploading, organizing, reviewing and redacting documents. As mentioned, we've taken steps to acquire additional resources in anticipation of receiving what we expect will be a very large volume of documents for review and redaction. This includes hiring two additional legal counsels to assist with this work as required.
We have taken steps to mobilize and leverage our existing resources in anticipation of this work.
The House's order states that we are to complete our work within seven days of receipt of the documents. We understand this to mean calendar days. We are then to provide the redacted documents to the Speaker, who will table them, and they will then be referred to the committee.
At this stage, while I do not know how many documents we will receive from the government in response to the House's order, I understand it is expected to be a very large number of documents.
Indeed, in his testimony before the finance committee on Tuesday this week, the Clerk of the Privy Council, Mr. Ian Shugart, suggested that it could be millions of pages. Given the unprecedented volume of documents, we are expecting that this will represent a significant amount of work and full-time, dedicated resources.
I'm prepared to devote close to 100% of my office’s resources to the review and redaction of documents for the seven-day period set out in the motion.
This means that all our other activities—including the provision of legal advice and drafting of private member's bills—will be severely curtailed or delayed, except those services that are essential.
Since the House is sitting, those essential services include the preparation of government bills; the publication of bills tabled in the House; the reprint of bills at the request of a committee; the printing of parchment copies; the drafting of amendments to legislation at all stages; and responses to requests for urgent legal advice.
Now let's see how many pages we could process in seven days.
Basically, if all counsel each review between 300 and 500 pages a day, we estimate that we could process up to 50,000 pages in the first seven days following the receipt of the documents.
This estimate is based on the 6,000 pages that the government recently sent us in response to a production order by the Standing Committee on Finance.
In this case, the volume of documents could be exponentially more than that, and the scope of redactions my office has to vet is also larger. Of course, these estimates may change depending on the volume and type of documents we receive in response to the House's order. The approach the government takes may also impact our estimated timelines.
Should the volume of the documents provided go beyond what my office can complete in seven days, I will immediately inform and seek guidance from the committee with respect to the way forward.
With that, my colleague and I would be pleased to answer any questions.