Procedure and House Affairs Committee on Nov. 19th, 2013

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

You said that under your open access law, or sunshine law, people can make a request to see further information, and at that point papers are released. When you say “papers”, do you mean reports that have been prepared for you, or do you mean that at that point the verbatim discussions are released?

[John Sills]

It's reports, advice, and things like that; we don't publish verbatim transcripts.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

In circumstances, including in response to requests from the public...?

[John Sills]

Yes, that's right. For example, if we're advising the board on changing the rules on something or other, if there's a paper on that and somebody asks to see it—because they've seen it referred to in the minutes—then we'll consider what we can and can't show them.

Our assumption is to try to, if we can, actually provide the information. We just have to ask ourselves whether there is personal information in it, what impact it would have on what is defined as the effective conduct of public affairs, which is a key part of the Freedom of Information Act. But we don't publish transcripts; we don't have a transcript.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

One of the things that has concerned me with our own Ethics Commissioner, who I think is a very good person and does her best with the rules that we've given her, is that when she makes her rulings and decisions, they are frequently in the form of confidential advice to members, which means that it's difficult to establish a body of precedents. That, I think, is inherently a problem that exists in any decision-making process that is at least partly private. Is that a problem that you feel exists, or do you feel you have found a way around that?

[John Sills]

I think it's quite important to distinguish between two things. I referred to the compliance officer, and he looks at claims and whether they should have been paid or whether they should have been made in the first place. He doesn't look at the conduct of MPs. That is handled by the parliamentary commissioner for standards, who is part of Parliament. I think some of what you were referring to is probably closer to that.

On the compliance officer, though, what he does is that if a complaint is made against an MP's claims or he's looking at the appeal I referred to earlier, he'll first assess the issue, and that will be done privately. But if he decides to investigate it, then that will be made public. That's published on his website, that he is making an investigation into an MP's claims, and he'll publish the outcome as well.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Great.

Mr. Bellavance, four minutes, please.

[André Bellavance, Bloc, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Sills, a first question comes to my mind. I am convinced that the population is asking itself the same question, and that when this happened, people in your country as well wondered how a system could have allowed such inappropriate expenses as home renovations, the purchase of electronic devices, etc.? How did MPs, ministers and even House personnel manage to fall through the cracks?

[John Sills]

There are two answers to that question.

First, if you really wanted to know, in terms of the people who set the rules and so on, you'd need to ask people from the House of Commons rather than me. But I think the general answer is lack of transparency. It was a closed system for most of the time, and like any closed system, things happen, ways of doing things develop, so when they come out and are revealed to the public, the public recoils against them. That's essentially what happened. When the public saw some of the claims that were being made, they weren't happy about it. Transparency, though, is the key.

[André Bellavance, Bloc, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

This type of expense had become acceptable for the office that did the audits, and I imagine that this had been going on for years.

[John Sills]

I think so, yes. Some things were, but it's easy with hindsight. The vast majority of MPs would say, and I think we'd have to respect this, that it was allowed, that it was in the rules. For example, we could take the furniture claimed for accommodation. We don't allow that, as a response to the scandal. There were examples of MPs buying big flat-screen televisions and so on, but they were allowed, so if something is allowed and it's not published, then it's much easier to think it is okay and one is not doing anything wrong. But when it's exposed there's a different view.

[Technical difficulty--Editor]

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

I'll suspend.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

We're back, Mr. Sills. It's good to have you back again. We missed you while you were gone.

[John Sills]

Hello. Thank you. Fingers crossed....

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Monsieur Bellavance, carry on.

[John Sills]

Okay, I think I finished my answer.

[André Bellavance, Bloc, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

Mr. Sills, since IPSA took over the audits, do you receive a lot of claims that seem inappropriate to you? Have you had to refuse many expense claims from MPs or ministers, or have past practices been completely eradicated?

[John Sills]

I can't remember the exact percentage of the number of claims I turned down. It's a tiny, tiny amount. Again, you can see them on our website individually. We call them “not paids” and they are very few and far between. So yes, I think it's fair to say that the vast majority of MPs are complying very happily with the rules and are claiming things they need for their parliamentary business.

[André Bellavance, Bloc, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

May I continue, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

I'm going to call you there. How's that?

Mr. Scott, you have four minutes, please.

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

And thank you, Mr. Sills, for being with us.

Could I just go back to the discussion of the tribunal processes? Apparently there's one case that's still instream where you went to a lower tribunal. Did the lower tribunal affirm or reverse the information commissioner?

[John Sills]

It confirmed the information commissioner, and we are appealing to a higher tribunal, essentially on points of law.

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

That's what I wanted to come to next.

As a matter of law, or policy mixed with law, what is the basis on which you're resisting the disclosure of receipts? Is it the fact that the whole system is designed around not uploading receipts and that this, therefore, would be an end run around it? What's the reason?

[John Sills]

I think there are two principal reasons.

One is that we believe very strongly that all the relevant information has already been published, and the way we do it helps to deal with that risk, as I said earlier, of accidentally giving away personal information. The information commissioner disagreed with us and it was almost for things like, what's the colour of the heading, or did the MP scribble something on it? It's that kind of thing. It becomes quite an arcane argument about what constitutes information. I won't bore you with that now but that is the sort of legal issue.

The other issue, which in many ways is just as important, is that this will be an incredibly costly exercise. It would cost at least a million pounds a year to have the redaction team that is necessary to take out all the personal information. We also have a backlog. We've got about 600,000 to 700,000 receipts now, and if we have to publish all of those, that would cost us, again, almost a million pounds. It would be a massive undertaking with very little public value.