Procedure and House Affairs Committee on Nov. 1st, 2018

[Rob O'Reilly]

I don't think we have an approval process for pending legislation, because, as far as I am aware, this is the first time we've actually commented on aspects of pending legislation. Once a bill has become law, we will often speak to the differences between what royal assent may mean and what coming into force may mean. In the case of Bill C-71, there are certain elements that may come into force upon royal assent and some that may come into force at a later date. At that point, we may communicate on those aspects to provide clarity, but it is not our practice to communicate on legislation that is currently before the House.

[Stephanie Kusie]

Thank you.

Do you need to consult your minister's office before issuing publications about pending legislation that the minister responsible for your organization is sponsoring?

[D/Commr Jennifer Strachan]

Again, the spirit of why this communication was being drafted to support Canadian firearms owners was discussed with staff at the minister's office, but I would suggest to you that I was able to look back and find that the actual lines that went up were not run by the staff at the minister's office.

In the spirit of why we sought to do that, there was consultation with staff at the ministry, and they understood that it was in order to better educate Canadians due to the tight timelines that were upcoming in relation to the date of implementation, which would have been the end of June.

[Stephanie Kusie]

So there was some consultation with the ministerial staff, you would say, with regard to the information that was published.

[D/Commr Jennifer Strachan]

Yes, in relation to what it was that the firearms program wanted to do to better support Canadians and why we were seeking to do that, but the actual lines in the media that were put on the website never went over to the minister's office.

[Stephanie Kusie]

Okay, thank you.

Do you need to consult the Privy Council Office before issuing publications about pending legislation?

[D/Commr Jennifer Strachan]

I would suggest that, much as Rob mentioned, it's not common practice to be commenting about pending legislation, and this was an extremely unique case. I will be honest with you. I would want to ensure that there was conversation with the minister's office and then seek their advice in relation to the way forward, but, as has already been pointed out, this is a very rare situation for us.

[Stephanie Kusie]

Would you agree to provide the committee with all drafts of the expunged publications, the incorrect publications?

[D/Commr Jennifer Strachan]

Absolutely.

[Stephanie Kusie]

Thank you.

Would you agree to provide the committee with all emails and memos in an unredacted state concerning the approvals of those drafts?

[D/Commr Jennifer Strachan]

Absolutely.

[Stephanie Kusie]

Thank you.

Respecting the changes to the publications on May 30 after Mr. Motz's May 29 question of privilege, can you walk us through, please, what prompted the changes?

[D/Commr Jennifer Strachan]

I am going to allow my colleague Rob to do that. My apologies.

[Stephanie Kusie]

Thank you, Deputy Commissioner.

[Rob O'Reilly]

As I mentioned earlier, when the bill was first tabled on March 20, we began to receive inquiries and realized that there was a need to provide some information. Therefore, discussions started fairly early in late March around the need to provide communications. We reached out to our internal national communications groups at that point, alerting them to the fact that we would, in the future, need to be able to provide some new content online.

In early April we consulted with our colleagues at Public Safety on the policy side there, too, to alert them to the fact that we were starting to receive inquiries about this one element of Bill C-71. We also were conscious of the fact that the SECU committee dates were coming forward, and there might rightly be questions as to what we were doing to communicate about this singular issue regarding Bill C-71.

On May 8 we published the first version of the web content that spoke to what we believed was important information to convey around the significance of the June 30 date. I'm happy to elaborate on that if the committee so desires.

Shortly after May 8, we received—I believe it was actually on May 10—an inquiry from a journalist asking to better understand the rationale for instructing people to comply with the June 30 date. It became evident, upon review of the website, that there could be some confusion caused by the content that we had provided.

At that point, we immediately began to work on another version of the website that would do two things: first, provide the necessary clarity around this being pending legislation, and, second, better structure the web content. You will notice that whereas the first version was kind of a long narrative, the second version attempted to very quickly say that if are you an individual, here is where you go to find the information for an individual. It also determined whether you were a business, because that was the other thing we became conscious of, that there were different individuals potentially impacted by that. The approval of that content, I believe, ultimately occurred on May 25. Our content was finalized, if you want to call it that, on May 25 and ultimately published on May 30.

The July 3 content that was published was principally necessary because everything we had posted prior to that spoke about an impending date of June 30 and things you needed to be aware of should you wish to continue to own this particular firearm. The fact that June 30 had passed necessitated our changing the content to basically reflect the fact that we were past June 30 and therefore, here were the new realities that you might need to be aware of going forward.

[Stephanie Kusie]

Thank you, Director, and thank you, Deputy Commissioner.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Thank you, Ms. Kusie.

Mr. Christopherson.

[David Christopherson]

Thank you, Chair.

First, I want to thank you for your fulsome answers, especially the RCMP. They're critically important.

I very much appreciated hearing the minister emphasize that again, with some experience in this area, an understanding of how the police can easily find themselves on the wrong side of the perspective of the community, and that means we've failed totally.

It all comes from accountability and transparency as the keys, and you've been providing both. I've been very impressed. There's been no dodging, nothing, no sense that you're doing anything other than being here, and completely forthright, honest, and concise. That's what we expect, and that's what Canadians expect, so thank you for that.

Building on the comments that the minister made, what are your thoughts about how we, Parliament, might go forward to avoid this? What sorts of things could we do to equip you, so we can all avoid this?

[D/Commr Jennifer Strachan]

I'll comment on that, because Mr. Motz had some really good ideas in relation to that. I'm the new kid on the block if you want to call it that, so this is an extremely beneficial learning opportunity for me, and the value that this committee has in protecting Parliament is not lost on me.

This is obviously a table of very experienced parliamentarians. I do believe that when I look at the colleagues I work with at the firearms program, they are really passionate about the clients they serve across Canada, and any kinds of caveats. I come from the operational world, and we call them caveats. When you're talking about intelligence, we call them third party disclaimers, and they're on every piece of operational intelligence that we provide on the national security side and the organized crime side.

Therefore, for me, being new in the position, I thought that conversation was brilliant. Again, putting forward information on a bill that hasn't gone through Parliament is very rare, but to be honest, having some sort of a process or guidance that would come to us to ensure that we stay in our lane and are respectful of Parliament would be very welcome.

I'm saying it like a third party caveat, and that's what we do on the operational side, to be careful about how we use evidence and intelligence. That's my responsibility now coming in to work with this program, to allow my public service colleagues to really keep serving Canadians. It's my responsibility to keep them safe in what they do, and to keep you as parliamentarians confident that we take that very seriously. I would be very open to some guidance on that, which would come from this committee.

[David Christopherson]

Mr. O'Reilly.

[Rob O'Reilly]

I would echo what the deputy commissioner said. I can tell you from a program perspective.... First, on behalf of the program, I want to apologize to the House and to Canadians who may have been confused by the information that we put online. It certainly was not our intent. The deputy is correct that most people who work on the program are, in fact, very passionate about what we do, and believe very strongly in serving Canadians and the firearms community.

When this occurred, it did give us pause. It made us reflect a little bit more carefully on what we do. Sometimes it's very easy, in our haste to provide information, to not fully reflect on all aspects of what we are trying to say. I can give you every assurance that my colleagues and I will double-check everything that we do going forward, and ensure that from a program perspective, we are fully compliant and do things better.

[David Christopherson]

I'm satisfied and have concluded my questions. Thank you, Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Thank you.

It's now Ms. Lapointe's turn.

[Linda Lapointe, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, Lib.]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for being with us today. This is very interesting.

Mr. O'Reilly, you said earlier that this was the third time since 2012 that there has been a bill to amend the Firearms Act. Have you been in your position this whole time?

[Rob O'Reilly]

Yes. I started working for the predecessor of the current Assistant Commissioner, Ms. Strachan. So I took part in the consultations on Bill C-19. I forget at this very moment what year I started the Canadian firearms program, but I was part of the team when Bill C-42 and Bill C-71 were drafted.