Evidence of meeting #36 for Public Accounts in the 39th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was classified.
A recording is available from Parliament.
12:35 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Defence Construction Canada
I would not make any slur whatsoever against the engineers and contractors involved in this job, in that they did follow the rules that were established.
12:35 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Defence Construction Canada
However, it is standard practice in the architectural, engineering, and construction industry that when unclassified documents are to be disposed of, frankly they're put in the garbage. In this particular case they were put in a garbage receptacle. Somehow they appeared in the middle of Bank Street. I can't answer for that.
12:35 p.m.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Are you doing a review, sir? Are you looking to find out how that happened?
12:35 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Defence Construction Canada
No, we're--
12:35 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Defence Construction Canada
--relying on the review that's being carried out by the department to identify--
12:35 p.m.
NDP
12:35 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Defence Construction Canada
They were under the control of the contractors we engaged.
12:35 p.m.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
You engaged the contractors. And you have no role at all in determining what went wrong here?
12:35 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Defence Construction Canada
We have a role. I don't think it makes a lot of sense to launch an independent investigation at the same time that the department is reviewing the situation.
12:35 p.m.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
That amazes me. You feel no need to do an internal review of any sort. You're just going to let a total external review happen, and you have no concerns at all.
How did you react when you woke up the morning the article was in the newspaper, knowing it was your agency, your responsibility?
12:35 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Defence Construction Canada
Obviously I would have preferred not to have found out about it in the same way that others did, by reading the newspaper. However, immediately upon finding out that they weren't classified documents, we go back to the question of what the proper practice is, what the appropriate policy is.
As the deputy has indicated, the government is looking at this. It's a very big issue for government to say that all documents that are not formally designated or classified are to be shredded, for example, to ensure that they don't fall into other hands. That includes every memo, every letter, every jotting of every government official.
They have to look at this very carefully in order to put the correct parameters--
12:40 p.m.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Everybody is going to check all the procedures, but at the end of the day, there is absolutely no common-sense support for this. You can run around and say that it was classified, it was unclassified, it goes into this category, it goes into that category, but the bottom line is that when we have a unit that deals with that kind of security, which is being built in Canada, and the blueprints end up in the dumpster, it's not okay.
You can hide behind all the policies in the world. The only thing I can hope for is that after everyone leaves here, we come back in a very short period of time with a whole new process that allows us, when the procedures are nicely followed, to actually get some common-sense security, because that's what this is about. It's about common sense, and not about whether something was ticked off in a box as being classified or unclassified.
If I have any frustration here, Mr. Chair, it's that we're not getting enough people saying, “Yes, committee, we accept that this doesn't make sense. We're going to go back and do all we can to make sure it doesn't happen again.” I'm not hearing that. I'm getting a little bit of it, but mostly it's, “Well, it wasn't classified, so we can do anything we want with it.” And I have to tell you that at the level of the ordinary citizen, this is just not acceptable. We expect better from all of you here than to be in a situation in which those kinds of blueprints end up in a dumpster. That just ought not be, and it can't be again in the future.
So please, come back to us with policies that will ensure that no one ever again has to deal with a blueprint blunder like this in the future.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
12:40 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Shawn Murphy
Thank you, Mr. Christopherson.
Mr. Fonberg, I believe you want to comment.
12:40 p.m.
Deputy Minister, Department of National Defence
I do just very briefly, Mr. Chairman.
There is a common-sense element to this, but the simple reality is that in a department that deals with 20,000 contracts or something per year, you need more than common sense. You actually do need policies, and you do need procedures.
I would not want to give the member any false hope that the outcome will be different, although, the policies and procedures will be different. We will spend more time at the front end of every project assessing its risks and threats, which is essentially how I interpret the Auditor General's concerns about the end use of the building and the life-cycle realities of what might happen in that building. But I would not want to give false hope in any way that applying that new set of policies and procedures would necessarily or absolutely lead to a different outcome on the classification of these blueprints. It would come out of a process. We have policies. We have procedures.
If you're asking us--
12:40 p.m.
Deputy Minister, Department of National Defence
--to simply apply common sense on 20,000 projects, I suspect we would find ourselves in some extraordinarily awkward situations.
12:40 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Shawn Murphy
Thank you very much, Mr. Fonberg.
Monsieur Bélanger, vous avez cinq minutes.
12:40 p.m.
Liberal
Mauril Bélanger Liberal Ottawa—Vanier, ON
To Mr. Fitzpatrick, the point is well taken. Not everything needs to be declared a high-security matter, and I suspect sidewalks would be one of those, although these days bugs are being put in box springs, mattresses, and so forth, so who knows?
12:40 p.m.
Conservative
12:40 p.m.
Liberal
Mauril Bélanger Liberal Ottawa—Vanier, ON
However, the point stands, and the Auditor General's comment is valid that when you know that a structure will be requiring additional security measures, they should implement those from the start so that you don't end up with a situation like the one we've had, in which there have been extra costs, and the plans have been found on Bank Street.
Incidentally, I'm told that those plans are much more detailed than just the shell. They include schematics for wiring and so forth. So one would imagine that if Trenton needs some security requirements, they will have to do that, and they will incur extra costs.
Will we know that in the review you're expecting at the end of this month, Mr. Fonberg? Will that review be shared with the committee?
12:40 p.m.
Deputy Minister, Department of National Defence
Certainly, to the extent that there's nothing classified. But the review will certainly be shareable.
