Evidence of meeting #130 for Public Accounts in the 44th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was change.
A video is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Conservative
Jake Stewart Conservative Miramichi—Grand Lake, NB
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
First of all, I have a question for Mr. Conrad. The government is claiming that the emissions reduction target of its $8-billion net-zero accelerator initiative fund is protected under cabinet confidence.
Seeing as your role is with the Privy Council Office, can you explain why?
Associate Secretary to the Cabinet, Economic and Regional Development Policy, Privy Council Office
Mr. Chair, if the question is why we are protecting cabinet confidence, it's a legal requirement—
Conservative
Jake Stewart Conservative Miramichi—Grand Lake, NB
Excuse me. That's not the question. I'm asking why we protect under cabinet confidence information that should be public. On this file in particular, it's about the net-zero accelerator initiative fund.
Associate Secretary to the Cabinet, Economic and Regional Development Policy, Privy Council Office
I can't speak to the specific program. I can say in general that we do not have specific rules for the release of different programs. We apply—
Conservative
Jake Stewart Conservative Miramichi—Grand Lake, NB
Can anybody from the Privy Council speak to this issue?
Associate Secretary to the Cabinet, Economic and Regional Development Policy, Privy Council Office
I can speak to the cabinet confidence issue—
Conservative
Associate Secretary to the Cabinet, Economic and Regional Development Policy, Privy Council Office
I can't speak to the specifics of the program. That's an ISED program.
Conservative
Jake Stewart Conservative Miramichi—Grand Lake, NB
No. That's enough. It's my floor now, not yours.
Why would cabinet choose to conceal under a shroud of secrecy its own targets, which should be public information, from the taxpayer?
I'm going to go over here and ask a question of Jean-François Tremblay, deputy minister of the Department of the Environment. You said earlier that you can't release the information. Is it that you can't release it, or you won't release it? Those are two different things.
Just answer if you can't or won't.
Deputy Minister, Department of the Environment
I just need specificity. If you're referring to information that they said was under cabinet confidentiality, I can't release it.
Conservative
Jake Stewart Conservative Miramichi—Grand Lake, NB
So it's “can't”, then.
I have another piece of paper here from the Parliamentary Budget Officer where, on behalf of the Honourable Steven Guilbeault, Minister of Environment and Climate Change, you put a gag order on Mr. Yves Giroux, the PBO. You said, “I request you to ensure that this information is used for your office’s internal purposes only and is not published or further distributed”. That is your signature on this. You're gagging the Parliamentary Budget Officer on behalf of your minister.
If the answer is “can't” rather than “won't”, at this point, who instructed you that you couldn't release it?
Deputy Minister, Department of the Environment
Okay. There are just a few things. We can—
Deputy Minister, Department of the Environment
You have the right to ask the questions that you want, but you're not going to gag me. I should be able to answer your questions—
Conservative
Jake Stewart Conservative Miramichi—Grand Lake, NB
Oh, I'm not trying to gag you. I'm asking questions.
Conservative
Jake Stewart Conservative Miramichi—Grand Lake, NB
Hold on. Hold on.
I want to point something out, Mr. Chair. It's important.
A lot of questions earlier, you said that you just couldn't answer it because that wasn't your purview. This is. I expect an answer.
Deputy Minister, Department of the Environment
Yes. I'm answering.
First of all, we didn't gag him, because we gave him all the information he needs to develop his own analysis. There was nothing there that was actually not provided to Yves Giroux. That's the first thing to say.
Now—
Conservative
Deputy Minister, Department of the Environment
What we told them was that we requested them not to—
Conservative
Jake Stewart Conservative Miramichi—Grand Lake, NB
Excuse me. I just read what you told him. You told him, “I request you to ensure that this information is used for your office’s internal purposes only and is not published or further distributed”. You told him he couldn't put it out—precisely.
Deputy Minister, Department of the Environment
[Technical difficulty—Editor] because the information had not been vetted in terms of protections from a legal perspective—it could be protected under a certain act—and also because it was never released. We asked him to not release it. We gave him confidential information and said use it for your analysis.
As I said to your colleagues, the issue of releasing or not this information or data is a decision for governments to make.
Conservative
Jake Stewart Conservative Miramichi—Grand Lake, NB
That's great. To go back to my initial point, who instructed you to carry out this letter to the PBO—
Deputy Minister, Department of the Environment
No one instructed me—
