Procedure and House Affairs Committee on Nov. 20th, 2018

[Charles Robert]

I think that would be a worthwhile exercise. We would be willing to bring the architects and the other designers, as well as the heritage specialists, who would be willing to answer questions and deal with suggestions you might have about how you would like to see the building renovated.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Along with the architects working for the House of Commons, I think you would want to have architects from Public Services and Procurement Canada. That would be valuable.

Frankly, I think it's essential for the House, during the time of the renovations, to continue to emphasize the importance of public access to Centre Block to parliamentarians and to media. The idea of having the “hot room” where it is now is very important because they're more able to get down to question period quickly, to be present here in Centre Block and to question members about what's going on. To me, this is essential to our democracy, and I would hope that whatever members are here over the next 10 years will continue to emphasize it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

It's 13 years.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Whatever number it is....

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Committee members, we will move to some votes on supplementary estimates (A).

HOUSE OF COMMONS Vote 1a—Program expenditures..........$15,906,585

(Vote 1a agreed to on division)

PARLIAMENTARY PROTECTIVE SERVICE Vote 1a—Program expenditures..........$7,127,658

(Vote 1a agreed to on division)

Shall I report the votes of the supplementary estimates (A) to the House?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Thank you to our witnesses. We'll do a really quick turnover so that we can get into the next session for the next witnesses. We'll suspend for 30 seconds or so.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Good afternoon, and welcome back to the 132nd meeting of the Standing Committee of Procedure and House Affairs as we continue our study on the question of privilege related to the matter of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police publications respecting Bill C-71, an act to amend certain acts and regulations in relation to firearms.

We are pleased to be joined by Charles Robert, the Clerk of the House of Commons, as well as by the following officials from Treasury Board Secretariat. We have Louise Baird, Assistant Secretary, Strategic Communications and Ministerial Affairs; and Tracey Headley, Director, Communications and Federal Identity Policy. Thank you for making yourselves available today.

We'll begin with Monsieur Robert's opening statement and then Ms. Baird. Please go ahead, Mr. Robert.

[Charles Robert]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Members of the committee, I am pleased to be here with you to help the committee with its review of the question of privilege raised by Mr. Motz, the member from Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, concerning the documents published by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police website on the subject of Bill C-71.

When questions of privilege are referred to the committee, they are an opportunity to study in detail an issue put forward by the members themselves and to issue recommendations that will benefit everyone. It is through your committee that witnesses can be heard, documents obtained and concrete action taken, if that is the will of the committee, of course.

Respecting the dignity and authority of Parliament is a fundamental right which the House takes very seriously. The mission of the Speaker as a servant of the House is to ensure the protection of the rights and privileges, not only of every member, but also those of the House as a whole. In that sense, any affront to the authority of the House may constitute contempt of Parliament.

As its states on page 87 of the House of Commons Procedure and Practice, third edition:

There is [...]no doubt that the House of Commons remains capable of protecting itself from abuse should the occasion ever arise.

In his ruling on June 19, 2018, the Speaker of the House of Commons summarized the facts surrounding the publication of information about Bill C-71 on the RCMP website. While the bill in question was following the normal legislative process, the information published on the RCMP website suggested its provisions would necessarily be enacted or had been already.

The Speaker reminded the members that Parliament's authority in scrutinizing and adopting bills remains unquestionable and must never be taken for granted. He then added, “Parliamentarians and citizens should be able to trust that officials responsible for disseminating information related to legislation are paying attention to what is happening in Parliament and are providing a clear and accurate history of the bills in question.”

When questions similar to the one before your committee were raised by members in the House, previous Speakers have repeated that situations such as this should never occur and have urged the government in various departments for which they are responsible to find solutions. Indeed, the Speakers of the House have always taken great care to act as defenders of Parliament's authority. An affront to that authority constitutes a transgression or a lack of respect for the House and its members. As Speaker Sauvé said on October 17, 1980, the publication of information harmful to the House may, for example, turn into a contempt of Parliament.

In the current case, the Speaker noted the careless attitude the RCMP displayed to the fundamental role of members as legislators. For him, parliamentary authority with respect to legislation cannot and should not be usurped. The Speaker explained the matter well when he said, “As Speaker, I cannot turn a blind eye to an approach by a government agency that overlooks the role of Parliament. To do otherwise would make us compliant in denigrating the authority and dignity of Parliament.”

I thank you once again for this invitation to testify.

I would now be pleased to answer your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Thank you.

Ms. Baird.

[Louise Baird, Assistant Secretary, Strategic Communications and Ministerial Affairs, Treasury Board Secretariat]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, for the invitation to appear before your committee.

I have Tracey Headley with me today. She's the Director of the Communications and Federal Identity Policy Centre with me at Treasury Board Secretariat.

I am the assistant secretary of strategic communications and ministerial affairs, where I have responsibility for the Government of Canada's policy on communications and federal identity. I am also the functional head of communications at the secretariat, so I'm responsible for the communications work within the department.

In my opening remarks, I would like to give you an overview of the communications policy and highlight some of the changes that were made in 2016.

As you can imagine, a lot has changed in recent years in the communications environment. The amendments to the policy reflect those changes. Communications are central to the Government of Canada's work and contribute directly to the Canadian public's trust in their government.

One of the key requirements of the policy is that communications to the public must be “timely, clear, objective, factual and non-partisan”. That applies to all communications activities, including those in relation to legislation before Parliament, which need to be clear and factual to ensure there is no confusion and no presumption of the decision of either chamber. Public servants, by virtue of our Values and Ethics Code for the Public Sector, respect the fundamental role Parliament has in reviewing, amending and approving legislation.

The communications policy sets out deputy heads' accountabilities in ensuring the communications function is carried out appropriately in their organizations. As part of that, they must designate a senior official as head of communications. The policy does not prescribe departmental approval processes. Instead, it allows the departments to determine the best way to manage their communications given their specific operational requirements. This makes sense given the wide array of diverse organizations covered by the policy.

The government communicates with the public in both official languages to inform Canadians of policies, programs, services and initiatives and of Canadians' rights and responsibilities under the law. The administration of communications is a shared responsibility that requires the collaboration of various personnel within individual departments as well as among departments on horizontal initiatives.

The new policy is supported by the new directive on the management of communications. Together they modernize the practice of Government of Canada communications to keep pace with how citizens communicate in what is largely now a digital environment.

One of the changes in the new policy is to make accountabilities more clear. The previous policy was targeted at the institution as a whole. The new policy clarifies accountabilities for deputy heads and designates a senior official as head of communications to manage the department's corporate identity and all its communications.

The directive lays out the specific accountabilities for heads of communications. For example, they are responsible for approving communications products and overseeing the department's web presence, collaborating with the Privy Council Office and other departments on priority initiatives that require input from multiple departments, and monitoring and analyzing the public environment.

Both deputy heads and heads of communications are responsible for ensuring information is timely, clear, objective, accurate, factual and non-partisan.

Another new feature is the significant strengthening of the policy and directive on non-partisan communications. While the previous policy required the public service to carry out communications activities in a non-partisan way, it did not include a definition of non-partisan. For the first time, the new policy explicitly defines the term non-partisan communications in the following manner.

Communications must be objective, factual and explanatory, and free from political party slogans, images, identifiers, bias, designation or affiliation. The primary colour associated with the governing party cannot be used in a dominant way unless an item is commonly depicted in that colour, and advertising specifically must not include the name, voice or image of a minister, member of Parliament or senator.

Turning to digital communications, another new feature of the policy puts greater emphasis on the use of digital as the primary way to connect and interact with the public. What this means is that departments and agencies are using the web and social media as the principal communications channels.

It's important that the government make information available and engage citizens on the platforms of their choice. At the same time, we recognize there are Canadians who will continue to require traditional methods of communications, so multiple channels are still being used to meet all the diverse needs of the public.

As I mentioned, I am the functional head of communications at the Treasury Board Secretariat. This means that my sector is responsible for developing communications products and providing advice and services in consultation with subject matter experts in the department. This includes internal communications as well as external communications, and to that end, my team organizes things like ministerial events and press conferences. We also prepare communications strategies, speeches, news releases and a variety of other communications products.

We also provide a Web presence for the secretariat, manage the corporate social media accounts, and manage the media relations function.

These core communications functions are relatively standard across government departments and agencies. As I mentioned at the beginning, however, there are some differences, based on the nature of the work and the specific operational requirements of the organization.

This concludes my remarks. I would be happy to take questions if it would please the committee.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Simms.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

Thank you, Chair, and thank you to both of you.

Ms. Baird, in your speech, the key words you have are “timely, clear, objective, factual and non-partisan”. Can we just focus on the word “timely” for a moment? I understand the mistake of this, implying that a legislation has passed when it has not, but I do believe that all government departments must exercise due diligence to anticipate this type of thing.

I compared this situation of Bill C-71 with Bill C-76, which is about the election. Of course, Elections Canada has to get its act together, as it were, before legislation is even passed. Otherwise, it would not work. The coming into force is taken seriously, and so on and so forth.

I understand how some departments can rush ahead with something that was not given sober second thought, if I could steal that term from the other chamber, but in this particular case, you talk about your communications both outward and inward. Although the mistake was the result of something that happened in Public Safety that was an outward mistake, it's the inward mechanisms by which it could have been solved.

This doesn't pertain to your department, but how do you take responsibility for this, and how do you fix it as an inward communication exercise among the other departments?

[Louise Baird]

How do I, or how should individuals who are responsible for that within their department?

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

How would you communicate to them that what they did was not right, and here's how we can fix it? You say, for example, here are particular wordings we can use, such that we avoid giving this royal assent before it has been royally assented.

[Louise Baird]

We do provide advice and outreach to departments quite regularly through Tracey's team. They are the ones who develop the policy, ensure compliance with it and create awareness of the rules and the requirements within the policy. Reminders do go out regularly.

To your earlier point, communications divisions along with other parts of a department do have to be ready for something. There should be appropriate communications around the tabling of a bill. It needs to be worded appropriately to acknowledge its status, but that is part of regular communications work.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

Have we engaged in this type of exercise? Do you know of any examples where maybe certain departments—not your own—have said, “Okay, here's the wording that we can use”? Have you seen internal communications that point this out?

[Louise Baird]

I don't think I have seen anything specific to this very specific circumstance. I can say that our regular monitoring shows that communicators around town are quite aware that they have to use the conditional. They have to use words like “if passed”.

If you look at news releases and things that maybe get a bit more scrutiny than the example that we're talking about today, I would say those have a very high level of compliance in using the appropriate language.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

I understand. The department seemed to be quite apologetic about the situation that happened. They admitted to the mistake, but what they said through the minister—you probably read his testimony—was that this should be looked at in the future, to be fixed. It sounds to me like you are on your way, or have fixed it really already. This seems to be a one-off. Is that a fair statement?

[Louise Baird]

I think this specific type of situation is fairly unusual. I don't hear about it frequently.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

The situation that they found themselves in, where they were in the wrong.

[Louise Baird]

Yes, but I think there's room to remind people of the rules around that and that there are channels, existing channels, through our communications network.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

And that's your responsibility.

[Louise Baird]

That would probably be my responsibility. It can be my responsibility. As a head of comms for a central agency and responsible for the communications policy, it would probably be something I would look at doing jointly with PCO because they're the functional head for communications.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

I see. Perhaps that's a recommendation we could make in our report, to basically put out a template of language by which we don't....

Mr. Robert, I am happy to see you again.

I just want to ask you about the question of privilege. I've been reading up on privilege over the past little while and trying to find out through the history books about privilege and how it has evolved in many different ways. I give credit to Mr. Robert Maingot, who wrote a book on this and he did a great job.

Does this really impede upon our responsibilities as parliamentarians? When this happens outside, does it really affect us inside? How is this a breach?