Evidence of meeting #129 for Procedure and House Affairs in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was information.
A recording is available from Parliament.
12:20 p.m.
D/Commr Jennifer Strachan
I'm a brand new deputy commissioner. I was a commanding officer before.
12:20 p.m.
Liberal
David Graham Liberal Laurentides—Labelle, QC
As a commanding officer, did you have people regularly come up to you saying, "Hey CO, I need to change a comment," and asking for permission?
12:20 p.m.
D/Commr Jennifer Strachan
There's usually a conversation around the spirit of changing communication. Then it's left to the communications folks, who have that expertise, to develop that material. It wouldn't have been something I might have reviewed in the last instance.
I would understand the spirit of why they were changing that communication, for sure.
12:20 p.m.
Liberal
David Graham Liberal Laurentides—Labelle, QC
What you do is pass the intent down and ask them to deal with it.
12:20 p.m.
D/Commr Jennifer Strachan
At a certain level,...and in this case it was—I'll speak to this situation that I'm here before you to discuss today—at the firearms program level.
12:20 p.m.
Liberal
David Graham Liberal Laurentides—Labelle, QC
Have you ever personally edited a web page on the RCMP site?
12:20 p.m.
D/Commr Jennifer Strachan
I have not, no.
12:20 p.m.
Liberal
David Graham Liberal Laurentides—Labelle, QC
Thank you, Ms. Strachan.
I'll pass it on to Mr. Simms to continue.
12:20 p.m.
Liberal
Scott Simms Liberal Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL
Thank you.
Mr. O'Reilly, I want to pick up where we left off earlier.
The issue I want to explore is preparatory work for pending legislation. The situation we have now and the honest mistake that was made put you in a situation where it could be an all-for-naught kind of scenario.
Granted, in the case of majority governments, they usually get it in the end. Nevertheless, you do have to do that preparatory work.
Over the years now, with changes to firearms policy, registries, no registries, amnesties and so on...when you communicate with people, is that the prime importance of why you really have to do a lot of this work, because you do get these calls asking, "What happened here?" All of a sudden what they're carrying now is far more restricted than it used to be, or it is not, or their licensing is different.
I'm just trying to understand how you handle tabled legislation that comes out affecting regulations.
12:20 p.m.
Director, Firearms Regulatory Services, Canadian Firearms Program, Royal Canadian Mounted Police
Okay.
Thank you very much for the question.
As you can appreciate, there have been three firearms bills since 2012, Bill C-19, Bill C-42 and Bill C-71. The program has been and remains intimately involved in the preparation of some cases and in early consultation on those bills. We are very aware of and attempt to respect the parliamentary process. Many of the documents we are asked to review and provide input on are subject to cabinet confidence. We are very versed in the handling of those documents, and the breadth of consultations we can or cannot have as a consequence of that particular privilege.
When it comes to legislation like this, we also are in a position of anticipating what are going to be areas of inquiry. As I mentioned in my first statement, we are not in the habit of speaking on pending legislation. There are many elements to Bill C-71. In this case, it would probably have been our preference to not provide any commentary at all.
Unfortunately, and we've seen this historically, the minute new legislation is proposed or even being talked about in the media or the public context, we immediately get calls.
We don't have the luxury of saying we're not going to prepare Q and As for a particular issue, because the fact of the matter is we have hundreds of employees who have to answer those phones. If we don't have answers prepared to be able to inform those Canadians, they can rightly be more confused or more upset.
12:20 p.m.
Liberal
Scott Simms Liberal Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL
Okay. That's interesting. You're saying that the reason you feel it's incumbent upon you to put information out, regarding legislation that hasn't been passed, is primarily for a communications exercise with the public, so that they are well informed. It's not so much about how your employees would administer these regulations; it's more about the communications, so the people are aware before it comes into force.
12:25 p.m.
Director, Firearms Regulatory Services, Canadian Firearms Program, Royal Canadian Mounted Police
I believe so. Within the Canadian firearms program, I don't think anyone is under any belief that this particular legislation was, or is, law. As I said, we've been working with the machinations of Bill C-71 now, for let's say, almost two years. We're very alive to that, but our first concern, apart from public safety, is providing accurate, timely and clear information to our client base, who are the Canadian firearms owners right now.
12:25 p.m.
Liberal
Scott Simms Liberal Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL
There's a certain amount of confidentiality. I understand that too, but for the front-line people, who pick up the phone with the average gun owner and have to answer those questions, how far down the chain do you go? Is it down to the employees, given the fact that this legislation hasn't passed yet?
12:25 p.m.
Director, Firearms Regulatory Services, Canadian Firearms Program, Royal Canadian Mounted Police
Information that is subject to cabinet confidence doesn't go beyond the management team and those who have the appropriate security clearances to look at that information. It is at that level that the strategic communications messaging is crafted, in terms of, to paraphrase the deputy, the high-level messages. However, we then engage our communications staff to say that we want to communicate on this issue, for example, the CZ and Swiss Arms, what we are hearing from our client groups, in terms of the communications, so please go ahead and prepare some packages for us for ultimate review. They're not given the specifics; they're just given the direction, in terms of what to create.
12:25 p.m.
Liberal
12:25 p.m.
Calgary Midnapore, CPC
Thank you very much again, Deputy Commissioner and Director, for being here today.
Who drafted the publications that have brought us here today?
12:25 p.m.
Director, Firearms Regulatory Services, Canadian Firearms Program, Royal Canadian Mounted Police
Unfortunately, I am not able to answer that question specifically. I can tell you that the communications product itself really has two parts. One part is the information package that we prepared for individuals to self-identify whether or not the firearm they own might be affected. Our firearms technicians, the real experts on firearms identification and classification, prepared that document.
Ultimately, the messaging that appeared on our website was written by internal communications staff, at the direction of the management team.
12:25 p.m.
Calgary Midnapore, CPC
Okay. Who approves the text of those publications?
12:25 p.m.
Director, Firearms Regulatory Services, Canadian Firearms Program, Royal Canadian Mounted Police
In this case, the text would have been preliminarily approved by me, as one of the directors, and then ultimately, by the director general of the Canadian firearms program.
12:25 p.m.
Calgary Midnapore, CPC
Okay, Director, who was the most senior official director to approve the publications?
12:25 p.m.
Director, Firearms Regulatory Services, Canadian Firearms Program, Royal Canadian Mounted Police
It would be the director general of the Canadian firearms program, in this particular instance. As the deputy mentioned earlier, there may be times when we are communicating something that is at a much more strategic level or for which we might be aligned with other departments. Let's say that it's missing children or firearms thefts, which may be related to organized crime and so on, in which case, those messages are strategic and they would go up to the deputy's level for consultation and ultimately for approval.
12:25 p.m.
Calgary Midnapore, CPC
Okay. Is this always the most senior level at which special business bulletins are signed off?
12:25 p.m.
Director, Firearms Regulatory Services, Canadian Firearms Program, Royal Canadian Mounted Police
Special business bulletins, in reference to the Canadian firearms program, would be approved at the director general level, but depending on the nature of those bulletins, for example, if we anticipated a reaction and if we were saying something that we would acknowledge might not be particularly positively received by the entire firearms community, we would certainly provide awareness up through the chain of command to make sure that nobody was being blindsided by something that might appear on the news the next day.
12:25 p.m.
Calgary Midnapore, CPC
Is this the usual approval process for publications about pending legislation and if not, what would the usual approval process for publications about pending legislation be?
