Evidence of meeting #77 for Procedure and House Affairs in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was information.
A video is available from Parliament.
12:30 p.m.
Liberal
12:30 p.m.
Bloc
Marie-Hélène Gaudreau Bloc Laurentides—Labelle, QC
Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
Mr. Wernick, just an hour ago, we heard an argument that an independent public inquiry would not only shed light on this, but also make legitimate recommendations, including legislative ones. We've already discussed the creation of a foreign influence registry, but we were talking about partisanship. I would therefore like to repeat that the Bloc Québécois' goal is to shed light on this issue and restore people's confidence.
I'd like to hear your comments on Mr. Johnston's report on how we can correct the situation regarding trust in our democracy. Where do you think we stand?
12:30 p.m.
Jarislowsky Chair in Public Sector Management, University of Ottawa, As an Individual
That's quite a question.
I think that we now have a problem with trust in our democratic processes and institutions and that we must act quickly together to restore that trust before the next election. There are just over 200 sitting days left before the end of this Parliament and the next election. That's not a lot of time.
So I go back to my point. If you get your inquiry—it's a minority government, so you can force it—what are you going to do during the inquiry? I think that, at the same time, you could study a bill, debate it, amend it and improve it, so that there is legislation in place to protect the next election.
12:30 p.m.
Bloc
Marie-Hélène Gaudreau Bloc Laurentides—Labelle, QC
I really appreciate your comments. Ultimately, with all the bodies that are currently in process, the noose is tightening, as I said earlier, and we see a guideline that has to be worked on in parallel in many tasks. You understand that, in order to shed light on the lack of an independent public inquiry, our committee is looking to obtain documents that could help it in its work. Earlier, the previous witness mentioned that it was virtually impossible to get access to these documents through the law clerk.
Could we basically get some documents that can be redacted, but that would be useful for our work?
12:30 p.m.
Jarislowsky Chair in Public Sector Management, University of Ottawa, As an Individual
I think you can get an inquiry, but not one that's entirely public. It's a phrase that a lot of people use, but it raises issues around documents and sources of information that we don't want to interfere with.
So we need to look at a hybrid process. I'm not a lawyer, but the Rouleau commission model, which came out of the occupation of Ottawa, seems to me to be a hybrid model to follow, with some aspects of the inquiry being public and some in camera.
12:30 p.m.
Bloc
Marie-Hélène Gaudreau Bloc Laurentides—Labelle, QC
With regard to the search for the documents we're requesting here at the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, we were told that the law clerk was unable to provide them to us because of a lack of security clearance. You know as well as I do, even though I haven't gone through it, that the process for obtaining such clearance can be lengthy. What do you think of this situation?
12:35 p.m.
Jarislowsky Chair in Public Sector Management, University of Ottawa, As an Individual
Yes. I hesitate to recommend any particular mechanism, but there is a link between access to information and obtaining security clearance. You can't have one without the other. Whether we're talking about judges, members of the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians or stakeholders in feedback mechanisms, all of these people have gone through the security screening process.
Provincial governments are another very important point that Mr. Johnston raised. In fact, I think it's time to expand the number of people who have access to this kind of information, provided they first undergo security screening. It would be a good idea for provincial premiers to have access to that information, as well as some provincial officials.
I think that the threat we're facing as Canadians and Quebeckers is obvious, and that we must now strengthen our defence mechanisms.
12:35 p.m.
Bloc
Marie-Hélène Gaudreau Bloc Laurentides—Labelle, QC
I have a few seconds left, but we can continue our discussion later. I'd like to know what your priority steps are. I'd like us to be able to name them, here, when we talk about legislating and, yes, investigating and cleaning up all our bodies. You have a few seconds, and you can continue in the second round.
12:35 p.m.
Jarislowsky Chair in Public Sector Management, University of Ottawa, As an Individual
That's a great question. The question of whether or not to hold an inquiry has become a political issue—one that politicians will resolve. In my opinion, an inquiry isn't the goal. The goal is to have safeguards in place, and for that, legislation is needed. Therefore, we don't need to hold an inquiry first and legislate later. I think that we can do both simultaneously. I'm now convinced that an inquiry is essential.
12:35 p.m.
Liberal
12:35 p.m.
NDP
Rachel Blaney NDP North Island—Powell River, BC
Thank you so much, Chair
Thank you to both our witnesses for being here.
Mr. Wernick, thank you for coming back so soon. It's good to see you again.
This is really about addressing the point of privilege, which I think is incredibly important, and what we've heard very clearly from multiple sources is that Mr. Chong was not made aware of issues soon enough. That's an important component of this.
We also know that the process to get that information to Mr. Chong seemed to get stuck somewhere in top secret email world and all of these different challenges.
I know you speak a lot about legislation and those types of changes. When you look at this system that we have in place, which is currently failing us in the way that it builds a sense of distrust not only with Canadians, as you said, but potentially with our Five Eyes partners, could you talk about the work you've done? Do you have any process or any legislative ideas around how this information should get to the people who need it in a timely way, while also honouring the reality that it has to be substantive enough, before anything else, to be shared?
I'll leave you to that.
12:35 p.m.
Jarislowsky Chair in Public Sector Management, University of Ottawa, As an Individual
It's a big question. I do think that Mr. Johnston's report is very helpful on this. We have a problem. Hindsight is always better than foresight, so we now know things that we could have known earlier, but we didn't.
It's now 2023. It's time to act.
I think part of the problem that Mr. Johnston identifies is that nobody felt fully accountable. It's one of those issues—and I'm familiar with others—where people assumed that somebody else was doing something, and there wasn't a clear accountability.
I would legislate the role of the NSIA. I would give them a fixed term of five years so that if somebody goes into that job, they've made a choice to stay in it for a while. The turnover that happened over the last few years was not helpful. I would make that person accountable for where top secret and above information goes within the government.
May 30th, 2023 / 12:40 p.m.
NDP
Rachel Blaney NDP North Island—Powell River, BC
Thank you for that.
I think that is pretty apparent in the information we've seen. It seems to be a bit of a human condition: that you hope that somebody else is dealing with the issue at the time.
We did hear previous testimony from our last witnesses talking about the importance of the process of sending and receiving intelligence and making sure that the people sending it actually know what the people on the other side need and if it's useful to them. I think that's an interesting gap in the process. I'm wondering if you could share any thoughts about that, based on your years of service. I really do appreciate your idea of having that level of accountability.
I wonder where the intersection is between those two roles.
12:40 p.m.
Jarislowsky Chair in Public Sector Management, University of Ottawa, As an Individual
It's a tough one. I cover this a little bit in my book, if you don't mind the plug for that.
The problem, if you go at the very top, if you're the Prime Minister of Canada, the chief of staff to the Prime Minister or the Clerk of the Privy Council, is that you are at the end of a funnel of so many issues running in parallel. Your job is constant multi-tasking. You cannot read everything. You can't meet everybody. You can't see everybody. There are choices about time management and choices about what gets sent to the Prime Minister, what the Prime Minister has time to read—the several roles a prime minister plays and so on. That's an accountability of the clerk and the public service side, and it's an accountability of the chief of staff on the political side.
You will not be able to just apply some rule book or algorithm that will sort it for you and get it right every time. There will be lapses of judgment because you cannot see in advance that this thing turned out to be as important as it did, and you may be sending stuff that turns out to be trivial and unimportant.
The point about intelligence services is that they're constantly exercising judgment about information. I think I heard the tail end of that conversation. What's reliable? What's important? There are 200 countries in the world. Are we going to follow every single one of them in detail? No, there are some that are more important than others.
That's why people get these jobs of national security adviser or clerk or chief of staff to the Prime Minister: to exercise those kinds of judgments and put processes in place that reduce the risk of gaps in error. We have learned from this exercise that there are gaps that need to be addressed.
12:40 p.m.
NDP
Rachel Blaney NDP North Island—Powell River, BC
In terms of having the NSIA's accountability increased, is that something we need legislation to do, or is that something that can be a decision made by the leadership right now to see it move forward?
12:40 p.m.
Jarislowsky Chair in Public Sector Management, University of Ottawa, As an Individual
My understanding, based on news stories, is that there already was an order in council that directed the agencies, or at least CSIS, to pass information to the Minister of Public Safety. You will have to make a judgment, as legislators, on whether that accountability should flow through the Minister of Public Safety or flow through the Prime Minister. In a sense, everything ends up on the Prime Minister's desk. That's a legislative design issue that you can debate when you have a bill in front of you. The NSIA works for the Prime Minister, not for the Minister of Public Safety, and acts as a coordinator for all of those agencies.
Anyway, I don't want to get deep in the weeds of governance, but these are the kinds of things where writing laws and setting up the processes and institutions will affect how people then behave and exercise judgment until you change the legislation again. We've rewritten our national security legislation roughly every five to six years because the world keeps changing. No doubt we'll have to do it again.
12:40 p.m.
Conservative
Luc Berthold Conservative Mégantic—L'Érable, QC
Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
Mr. Wernick, thank you for meeting with the committee again. I haven't read your book, so I won't refer to it.
12:40 p.m.
Jarislowsky Chair in Public Sector Management, University of Ottawa, As an Individual
It's available only in English.
12:40 p.m.
Conservative
Luc Berthold Conservative Mégantic—L'Érable, QC
Over the past few months, I've learned to read a few lines in English, so I should be fine.
Mr. Wernick, you said earlier that the memo on Michael Chong should have been sent directly to the Prime Minister. I'm going to give a hypothetical scenario. While you were clerk of the Privy Council, how would you have reacted if you learned that such an important memo hadn't been shared with the Prime Minister?
12:40 p.m.
Jarislowsky Chair in Public Sector Management, University of Ottawa, As an Individual
Every debrief exercise seeks to determine how the situation happened, what the process is now, and how to fix it to reduce the risk of the situation happening again.
12:45 p.m.
Conservative
Luc Berthold Conservative Mégantic—L'Érable, QC
Would you have initiated an internal inquiry to determine exactly what went wrong? I imagine that it would have provoked various reactions and email exchanges within the Privy Council Office.
12:45 p.m.
Jarislowsky Chair in Public Sector Management, University of Ottawa, As an Individual
There's a series of informal, semi-formal and very formal mechanisms, yes. This exercise allows lessons to be drawn from those kinds of situations.
12:45 p.m.
Conservative
Luc Berthold Conservative Mégantic—L'Érable, QC
You said yourself that this memo should have been shared with the Prime Minister's Office. Would it have been appropriate to trigger the formal mechanism to rectify that? I'm just trying to understand what the reaction might have been to prevent that kind of situation from occurring.
12:45 p.m.
Jarislowsky Chair in Public Sector Management, University of Ottawa, As an Individual
Yes. I think that a number of steps have already been completed. Mr. Johnston interviewed 32 individuals, all the people involved. There's an appendix I haven't seen—
