Procedure and House Affairs Committee on Nov. 21st, 2013

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

Thank you, Mr. Julian. I'm sure you'll have your opportunity in a moment.

I have a couple of questions. You've talked about access to information in institutions such as the Speaker's office, the Library of Parliament, and the like, saying that there should be more information disclosed so that ordinary Canadians.... Would that extend to officers of Parliament—to your own office, as an example?

[Suzanne Legault]

We are subject to the Access to Information Act, and your—

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

My question is, on your website do you have proactive disclosure of everything your office spends its money on?

[Suzanne Legault]

Yes, we are basically complying with all of the proactive disclosure rules of the Treasury Board Secretariat, and we are subject to the Access to Information Act as well, since the Federal Accountability Act.

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

Would the correct course of action be, or would it be something that could correct what you consider to be a failure in access to information—an ambit of access to information—if the rules and the bylaws of the Board of Internal Economy were changed? I believe right now, if I'm hearing your correctly, that the biggest reason you feel there is a bit of a failure lies not in the fact that they're not complying, but that the rules and bylaws perhaps are too restrictive in terms of access to information.

Would that be a correct characterization on my behalf? You said you examined the rules and the bylaws before you came here. If they were altered somewhat to increase transparency in your view, would that be a proper route to take?

[Suzanne Legault]

I think that would be good. As I said, any additional proactive disclosure is excellent; there is no question about that.

What I'm saying is, even if you do that, there is no level of proactive disclosure that will replace being subject to the Access to Information Act.

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

Okay.

How much time do I have, Chair?

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

You have a minute and a half.

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

Then perhaps for the benefit of members of this committee, you could, within about a minute, talk about the access to information requirements that you think the Board of Internal Economy should be subject to. If you can deal with some specifics, I think that would be more helpful than the generalities.

[Suzanne Legault]

I do think that the Access to Information Act should be amended to cover the administration of the House and the Senate. I think there should be a proper provision—

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

Commissioner, I'm sorry to interrupt, but—

[Suzanne Legault]

No, no, I will get there.

And there should be a proper provision for the protection of parliamentary privilege, which is crucial. That needs to be embedded together.

The access act would then provide protection for personal information, solicitor-client information, and so on, so that the discussions occurring in the administration of the House, such as discussions that are being conducted or documents that are being reviewed by the Board of Internal Economy in making and implementing the administration of the House, would be subject to the act, but would have the appropriate protections for the appropriate level of confidentiality that's required when one discusses legal matters, when one discusses labour relations matters....

But having the whole House administration subject to the act needs to be embedded in the access act, and there would need to be an amendment to the Parliament of Canada Act because there is, in section 50, a provision for secrecy for the Board of Internal Economy. That would need to be addressed. Even if you want to open up the Board of Internal Economy, I think that provision in the Parliament of Canada Act needs to be addressed somehow.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Thank you.

Mr. Christopherson for four minutes, please.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thanks very much, Chair.

Thank you very much for your attendance today. We appreciate it. It's very helpful.

I would like to just give a clarification from this side of the House, notwithstanding Mr. Lukiwski's view of things. The actual motion that was passed unanimously by the House of Commons didn't just say, “Oh hey, take a quick look at that and see what you think.” It was far more specific. The unanimous mandate from the House was to “conduct open and public hearings with a view to replace the Board of Internal Economy with an independent oversight body”.

So this isn't just a drive-by hearing—this has meaning.

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

[Inaudible—Editor]...talking about the—

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

I'd like to just offer a bit of a vision of where this side so far is beginning to evolve to in terms of what we'd like to see. There's still hope that we'll all come to agreement, because that's still the best: if it's unanimous.

But here's where we are. We agree with the idea of a stand-alone, independent, arm's-length agency, as referred to in the motion, and we do like the IPSA model. We had them here the other day. We asked them questions.

It's our thinking that it allows for the kind of.... If we go with that model and accept the principles they have, it seems to us that it would satisfy some of the requests and requirements that you're putting forward on behalf of the Canadian people to allow access to information to be a part of IPSA, a Canadian version of it. Also, the Auditor General has said that he very much likes the idea that IPSA is subject to audits by the National Audit Office, which is his counterpart. So for two of the biggest legislative concerns, not from an insider old boys' club of MPs, but from the public point of view in terms of what they would like and need, we see this model as allowing and requiring at least those two changes to legislation to give IPSA access through the AG and through your office.

We believe that a stand-alone mandate by Canadians...and IPSA goes so far as to regulate the process of who gets hired. It's an open competition. Their stand-alone mandate is to be accountable to the British people for the supervision of MP expenses and their claims, so it removes some of that conflict that does happen when MPs are sitting around and it's MPs' interests versus public interest, and guess what? Guess how it's going to go and who's going to get the benefit of the doubt nine times out of ten? Whereas we think that if there's an independent mandate of Canadians who are accountable to Canadians for the supervision and accountability of our expenses, that kind of benefit of the doubt to the insider is not going to happen.

Lastly, it still allows BOIE to continue, because their work is not just MPs' expenses, and most of that work can then be done in public because there's no need for privacy concerns: they've all been removed to the IPSA shop.

That's kind of where we're evolving. We'd very much appreciate your thoughts on that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

You have 30 seconds.

[Suzanne Legault]

Mr. Chair, I feel as if I'm reciting media lines, but, really, in my view, I think that one has to also look at the cost of IPSA. I think it's somewhere around £6 million or $6 million Canadian. Anyway, it's in the range of six million, which is a lot of money. Unless the administration of Parliament is brought under the access act, whether or not you add an independent body like IPSA, it will not solve what I consider to be the accountability and transparency deficit of the administration of $500 million of taxpayers' dollars.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Thank you.

Mr. MacKenzie, you have four minutes.

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Madam Legault, I've heard you say $500 million more than once. I suspect that $500 million includes the salaries of members of Parliament and senators, many things that are very, very public. I don't know where else that number would come from. The vast majority of that $500 million is quite available, I do believe.

But I have looked at your website and I can't find any disclosure. Would somebody have to use access to information to obtain the information for your department, or is it available to the public online?

[Suzanne Legault]

It is, in the Proactive Disclosure section on the website, and lists “Travel expenses”, “Hospitality expenses”, “Contracts over $10,000”, “Position reclassifications”, “Proactive disclosure of grants and contributions over $25,000”, etc.

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

Okay. I couldn't find it here, so maybe it's my lack of ability on the computer.

I want to be sure that what we're talking about in this committee is proactive disclosure. I had the feeling that what you're talking about is access to information by your office, by requests that would ultimately go through that process.

Are we talking two different things or are we talking the same thing?

[Suzanne Legault]

Well, Mr. Chair, the motion actually indicates that the committee is going to look at whether or not there is a necessity to amend any other acts in order to provide accountability and transparency. This is the extent of my presentation today.

Proactive disclosure is part of the spectrum of transparency and accountability. You have to decide what level of proactive disclosure is necessary. I'm saying that even if you do have a high level of proactive disclosure, access to information is a tool by which people can verify and legitimize the expenses that are being made by anybody who uses taxpayers' dollars.

My office receives access to information requests based on some of the things that are proactively disclosed; for example, access to information requests based on minutes of our management meetings. People have all sorts of access requests because they want to find out what, exactly, is being done, and how the money is being spent, and whether they think it's appropriately spent.

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

Okay, I appreciate that.

If Parliament took your advice and brought all of Parliament into that realm of disclosure in the privacy of information, how many more staff members would you calculate it would take for your department to be able to handle whatever the increase would be in demand?

[Suzanne Legault]

I really can't tell. I really don't know. What I've tried to do is see how much it would cost to have an access to information office within the administration of the House. Based on the percentage being spent right now, it would be around $400,000, and would be a few people. Again, if we look at what's going on in the U.K., they have a lot of proactive disclosure, which has led to few access to information requests to the Parliament in the U.K. What they did is, once they received access requests, they then started to proactively disclose what had been requested on a proactive basis, and there have been few complaints to the information commissioner's office.