National Defence Committee on Feb. 26th, 2024

[Gregory Lick]

It would be difficult to understand how it would be handled without having all the details. If it was a criminal matter, we would make sure that it got to the right place to deal with it, whether that's with the military police or whatever else.

With that particular instance, while I don't have all the details, obviously we could put in legislation. How would I escalate it? Would I escalate it to the Prime Minister or beyond the minister if I'm not getting action on it? Would I escalate it to this committee? There are a variety of ways we could do it for the different situations we might encounter. My point is that it should be escalated to someone who can take action on it and who is apolitical or not political.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB]

At least you'd be able to get action on it, and you wouldn't have the cover-up that we witnessed under the previous Minister of Defence. I appreciate that.

If we start looking at your budget, you're saying that there are cuts coming. Those are a unilateral decision made by the Minister of National Defence, and you don't even have any input in saying what your budget is or what your needs are. Are they just going to give you the budget and you have to make do with what you get?

[Gregory Lick]

They've proposed cuts to our organization. We do have the ability, through the business planning process, to say what the impact would be. Generally, though, the decision on those cuts at the very end is not mine. The decision is the department's.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB]

You're saying that it's going to impact your travel—being able to go across to bases, meet with members of National Defence and meet with members of the Canadian Armed Forces—and your contracts. Would the contracts you're talking about be for specialized inspectors or investigators?

[Gregory Lick]

It could be, yes. Generally, it's a contract for professional services. That could be hiring a team, as we have done, or an organization that would help with research, as we do right now. It could be something as simple as IT support. It could be a variety of things. It doesn't really matter.

One thing we'll likely have problems with going forward is our IT system. We don't have the experience in-house to do that.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB]

You're done on July 2. Do you know whether anyone has been appointed, or is somebody in the works of being vetted to replace you as ombudsman?

[Gregory Lick]

No, we do not.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB]

Is there a similar problem over at the MGERC, that you don't have a permanent chair or vice-chair at this time and no indication that anyone is being appointed to fill in?

[Col Vihar Joshi]

The vice-chair was appointed last week. We got notice of the OIC last week with a start date in April. With respect to a permanent chair, we understand that it's in the works. We can expect something very soon, but I do not have a date for that.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB]

Then the foot-dragging on appointments is impacting the ability to get work done. Who knows what will happen going forward with the ombudsman's office if they don't extend your contract?

You talked about the CDS referring cases to the military grievance committee. Does CDS just cherry-pick these, or are they escalated by some other means?

[Col Vihar Joshi]

For the mandatory grievances, there's no choice in the matter. If it fits into a subject category, mandatorily it comes over to us. For discretionary files, we have no visibility on the criteria being used. Up until very recently, we received almost all discretionary files, but as of last year, the number of discretionary files we've received has gone down significantly.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB]

You say that it takes 16 months to do one of your reviews and to report back to the CDS. ATIPs take, by law, 45 days. If ATIPs were actually handled in a transparent manner and were going from Department of National Defence and Canadian Forces to members or to those asking for this information, whether it's on privacy or just extra information, would there be as big a backlog facing your committee in dealing with grievances?

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Be very brief, Mr. Joshi.

[Col Vihar Joshi]

ATIP does not affect us at all. We come outside of it. However, if a time limit were put in place, absolutely it would have an impact on getting back the information.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Mr. Bezan.

Mr. Fillmore, you have the final five minutes.

[Andy Fillmore, Liberal, Halifax, NS]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, witnesses, for your work and for your time today.

I want to switch gears a bit. There are many facets to the questions the committee is studying. The facet that I'm interested in is the information and data, how it moves and how it's accessed.

This question is for whoever would like to talk about it with us.

A 2020 paper by the Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada talked about options for establishing a declassification strategy for documents to do with national security and intelligence records. Would an automatic declassification regime be beneficial in your work as it pertains to DND and CAF records?

[Gregory Lick]

For my purposes, we very rarely deal in classified information. Most of the information we deal with is “protected B” and that type of thing. That particular issue of having a way of declassifying information with regard to the Information Commissioner I don't think would affect us in any material means.

[Andy Fillmore, Liberal, Halifax, NS]

Mr. Joshi, does having access to classified documents or getting documents declassified aid you in the work of the MGERC in any way?

[Col Vihar Joshi]

Very similar to the ombudsman's position, it would have very little impact. In fact, there's an obligation under the National Defence Act for the chief of the defence staff to provide to us all relevant information. Of course, it behooves a griever to provide us all relevant information if they want us to consider their grievance fully.

[Andy Fillmore, Liberal, Halifax, NS]

Thank you for that.

Staying with this theme of data and information, it was brought up at a previous committee meeting on this topic, on this study, that we live in a modern era. The preponderance of data that comes with that is pretty vast. Whereas a grievance in 1980 might have involved walking down a hallway, opening some file drawers and finding some papers, now there's a great deal of searching for electronic records and so forth.

Do you think the preponderance of electronic information and data is linked in any way, even in the smallest of ways, to the length of time or the timelines we're talking about now to fulfill the requests for information?

[Col Vihar Joshi]

It, in fact, speeds it up, because the search, for us, is a bit more efficient than having to look through all the paper files to find the information. How we can store and access it within the committee is enhanced by having it electronically.

[Andy Fillmore, Liberal, Halifax, NS]

Is there anything from your office, Mr. Lick?

[Gregory Lick]

Sorting through boxes and boxes of paper files was a pretty inefficient way of finding information. With our investigations, the issue is sometimes a time issue and getting information from the department. We have to search through the information. Sometimes it's an issue of getting the information from the complainants as well, because it's hard to get hold of them, so it's on both sides.

[Andy Fillmore, Liberal, Halifax, NS]

I'm thinking a lot about the infrastructure with which the federal government moves information. We know there is a lot of information out there, with records that need to be accessed, and sometimes I wonder if we overlook the train tracks that this information has to move on.

Thinking about it through a lens of modernizing systems, do you have any reflections on that as it pertains to your work?

[Gregory Lick]

Certainly, as I said, we need to update and modernize our IT system, just as any IT system needs to be updated over time. The department, in our case, has zero access to the information we store on our IT servers. That's really important for the confidentiality principle that we work under, but it does need to be modernized, absolutely.