Evidence of meeting #6 for Library of Parliament in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was documents.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
David Graham Liberal Laurentides—Labelle, QC
This morning I was at the Standing Joint Committee on the Scrutiny of Regulations. I was unable to do both of these committees. At that committee, we dealt with things going back to 1994 that haven't been resolved yet.
This motion was passed in May 2014. I'm wondering if you can tell us if anything has been published to the general public of sessional papers or, because of accessibility issues, that has not happened at all, and we're still studying for the future.
Senior Principal Clerk
No. Parliamentary returns are currently broken down into 19 categories. Electronic petitions and parliamentary returns are posted on the website. Unfortunately, that represents only about 11.5% of parliamentary returns tied to petitions. For written questions, if the answer is simple and similar to what's provided for the petitions, it is published in the Debates of the House of Commons. The answer is provided and it's posted. The answers to questions made orders for returns are the problematic ones. They represent about 75% of responses to written questions. Unfortunately, they are not made available.
The other thing to keep in mind is that some of those documents are already available on departmental websites. We tend to focus our energy on those that are not available and put those on our site. We don't want to duplicate efforts and add documents that are already available elsewhere, at least for right now. Perhaps we should think about having a centralized website for all documents tabled in the House. We aren't there yet, however. Suffice it to say, numerous documents are nevertheless available on the websites of federal organizations. The Privy Council, for instance, publishes order in council appointments. Treasury Board posts documents related to the estimates. People can find all kinds of documents on various federal sites. The Library of Parliament makes a lot of information available, as well.
Liberal
David Graham Liberal Laurentides—Labelle, QC
Responses to written questions are already available to us on the Library of Parliament's internal site, as you mentioned in your opening remarks. Have you considered making that site available to the public? Is there a reason why it can't be done?
Liberal
David Graham Liberal Laurentides—Labelle, QC
So it all boils down to accessibility. There is no statutory or regulatory reason why it wouldn't be possible. Is that correct? It has to do with accessibility.
Senior Principal Clerk
Yes, exactly. The risk associated with making it available to the public is a consideration.
The Joint Chair Hon. Lucie Moncion
Are there any further questions?
Mr. Lauzon, you may go ahead.
Conservative
Guy Lauzon Conservative Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON
Thank you very much.
Gentlemen, it's good to see you here.
Pierre, you mentioned that the answers to the Order Paper questions are published in house.
Senior Principal Clerk
They are published in the Debates, in Hansard. It would be some of them, about 25% of them. Those are the simple ones, those that are not made orders for return.
Senior Principal Clerk
Those that are made orders for return are the long ones, complex ones and technical ones. Those are the ones that do present challenges in terms of accessibility. The other ones are shorter and are usually very similar to what you would get in terms of a response for a petition: a page or a page and a half. Those are published in the Debates every day, as soon as they're tabled.
Conservative
Guy Lauzon Conservative Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON
The orders for return are published internally but not externally.
Senior Principal Clerk
Again, it's the whole issue of accessibility. If we do publish those on a public website, we risk having complaints filed through the Canadian Human Rights Commission, so we're being careful. We're trying to find a solution, and we're trying to make them accessible.
Conservative
Law Clerk and Parliamentary Counsel, House of Commons
Well, I think that we are looking to prevent complaints.
Conservative
Guy Lauzon Conservative Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON
Are you trying to be more Catholic than the Pope?
Law Clerk and Parliamentary Counsel, House of Commons
Well, I think that we—
Conservative
Guy Lauzon Conservative Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON
Seriously, for the greater good, would it not make sense to maybe take a chance and see what happens?
Senior Principal Clerk
It's a balancing act. We want to be as transparent as we can be, and we want to make them accessible.
Conservative
Guy Lauzon Conservative Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON
If you keep it inside, it's not transparent.
Senior Principal Clerk
At the moment, one of the options we're looking at is if we cannot find a technical solution to make them accessible on the public website, what do we do in the meantime. That's the discussion we're having right now.
One solution could be to actually publish them as is with the caveat that those who do request them to be accessible would be provided with an accessible version by a certain deadline, but we're not there yet.
Conservative
Guy Lauzon Conservative Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON
Who can give you the authority to do that tomorrow? I guess what I'm saying is let's just get it done. This is—