Public Accounts Committee on March 23rd, 2026

[Tomasz Popiel]

Right now, what you have available in the Public Accounts, volume III, is aggregate information about all debt deletions. What this amendment proposes to include is all types of debt. In the previous version of the bill, remissions, for example, were not included. The proposal would ensure that all types of debt are included, which matches the same kind of reporting that you see in volume III of the Public Accounts.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

All right. Shall G-2 be passed by this committee?

(Amendment agreed to)

Up next is G-3. I'm going back to Mr. Turnbull, please.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Thank you, Chair. I'll move this amendment as well.

It is that Bill C-230, in clause 1, be amended by adding after line 7 on page 2 the following:

Exception

(3) Despite subsection (2), the President of the Treasury Board may exclude from the registry any information that, in their opinion, would be inappropriate to make publicly accessible for reasons related to the protection of confidential, personal or sensitive information.

Establishment of registry

(4) The registry must be established within 18 months after the day on which this section comes into force and, on the day that it is established, must include information relating to each debt, obligation or claim referred to in subsection (1) that was remitted, forgiven, written off or waived—after the day on which this section comes into force—during the fiscal year to which the Public Accounts most recently tabled in the House of Commons relate.

Maintenance of registry

(5) Within 90 days after the day on which the Public Accounts are tabled in the House of Commons, the President of the Treasury Board must update the registry to include information relating to each debt, obligation or claim referred to in subsection (1) that was remitted, forgiven, written off or waived during the fiscal year to which the tabled Public Accounts relate.

For greater certainty

(6) For greater certainty, for the purposes of this section, a debt or obligation owed to a Crown corporation is not a debt or obligation owed to His Majesty and a claim by a Crown corporation is not a claim by His Majesty.

Maybe I'll just make a couple of points.

I know Mr. Lemire and the Bloc had an amendment and some concerns when it came to confidentiality and privacy. I think the government shares some of those concerns, and this is our remedy.

What we've done is asked to not include Crown corporations and to be completely clear that they don't owe debts to the Crown and therefore would not be included. The amendments also are designed to reduce any legal privacy or commercial risks associated with the creation of the public registry from an infringement of privacy and confidentiality.

Amendments related to prospective applications are designed to ensure the registry deals only with debts deleted after the coming into force of the provision. Amendments related to timing and frequency establish a timeline for implementation and auditing.

Those are some of the reasons we think this is the right way forward, notwithstanding some concerns that Mr. Chambers expressed to me. I can assure him that the President of the Treasury Board would not, without good reason, redact or withhold information from the registry. It's only to protect confidential, personal and sensitive information, such as when a partner is named in a partnership, that the information could be disclosed through naming the company.

I can think of some good reasons that some information would need to be withheld from time to time from this registry, but only insofar as we need to protect individual citizens and their confidentiality, and they have that right. We all take seriously the responsibility that sensitive information, personal information, should not be disclosed through a public registry, because those individuals could then be targeted. I wouldn't want to see people targeted unnecessarily, or harmed or put in harm's way by something that is a very good initiative to increase transparency when it comes to deleted, waived or written-off debts or obligations.

Thanks very much. I hope we'll have your support.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Ms. Tesser Derksen.

[Kristina Tesser Derksen, Liberal, Milton East—Halton Hills South, ON]

Thanks very much, Mr. Chair.

I just want to point out that we did receive a letter from the Privacy Commissioner that expressed no major concerns, but there was a minor concern with respect to a point of uncertainty in proposed paragraph 25.1(2)(e), which talks about including in the registry “any other information that the President of the Treasury Board may require.”

The Privacy Commissioner expressed some concern about not having enough information or context about what information could be requested pursuant to that paragraph. I'm wondering if anyone here could comment on that and how far that request, or the nature of the information requested, could extend.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Mr. Popiel, you have the floor first.

[Tomasz Popiel]

Thank you.

Including a provision that allows the President of the Treasury Board to add other information gives the government flexibility to adapt the registry over time as needs evolve, without requiring new legislative changes, while ensuring the minimal amount of transparency is there through the requirements that are built into the legislation.

The Privacy Act permits disclosure of personal information if it is required by law, so if the disclosure is in accordance with the legal obligations of the FAA, it is permitted.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Are you satisfied?

Thank you very much.

Mr. Lemire, the floor is yours.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

The President of the Treasury Board is, by necessity, also a political actor. That said, I still have some reservations regarding confidentiality, because the proposed provision is very broad. I am still considering whether to include it. The Privacy Commissioner does not see that many problems with the bill.

In my view, there is an interesting issue here. If I put myself in the taxpayer’s shoes, I can see that the aim is to prevent large companies from benefiting from debt forgiveness. We’ve all been struck by the cases of Chrysler and General Motors.

I’m not sure whether my question is directed more at the motion’s sponsor or at the witnesses. In the case we’ve experienced, could the disclosure of the names of Chrysler and General Motors have been avoided on grounds of confidentiality if the President of the Treasury Board had seen a competitive advantage, if it were part of a strategic contract, or if certain elements could have been politically damaging to the government? I don’t want to go through what we saw with the Stellantis, Volkswagen and Honda contracts. These are examples of situations where the government didn't want to disclose the contracts for reasons that seem obvious to me.

In such a case, might the government want to cover up elements that are politically disadvantageous because the contract did not deliver the expected benefits, thereby avoiding accountability to the public? I have reservations about that. Could the Chrysler and General Motors cases have been made public if this amendment had been adopted earlier?

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Who are you asking?

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

The person making the amendment, but maybe also the experts.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

It's a good question.

What's hard for me to determine, off the top, is exactly what is required in terms of the naming in the registry. The language in the amendment suggests, to me, that it wouldn't be an arbitrary decision. There are definitions of what is confidential, personal and sensitive information, but I'd like to ask the officials to perhaps clarify whether my interpretation is correct here.

I hear what you're saying. You're basically asking how we protect against whatever political party happens to be in power from appointing a president of the Treasury Board who withholds information from this registry. It's a good question.

Could the officials speak to it? I'm not sure who's most appropriate, but I'll let you take the question. Is it possible that the President of the Treasury Board could make an arbitrary decision to exclude information here, based on definitions that are embedded in law already that would indicate what counts as protection of confidential, personal and sensitive information?

[Tomasz Popiel]

I can add that the exception is discretionary and targeted, not a blanket exception.

You used the word “arbitrary”. I wouldn't say that it can be arbitrarily used. For example, there might be situations involving national security as well in which names would have to be withheld.

I would add that the exception applies only when publication would be inappropriate—that's the scope in the bill—due to confidentiality or personal or sensitive information, and the default remains disclosure.

It is not possible to anticipate every sensitive scenario in legislation. This exception provides for cases that cannot be exhaustively defined in legislation and provides some ability to not disclose sensitive information. The authority would rest with the President of the Treasury Board. This would ensure that there is a clearly accountable individual available for any decision made, while allowing for consistent application across government. Of course, the decision remains subject to parliamentary and public scrutiny.

I would further add that we do have the full disclosure of information through the public accounts. It is at an aggregate level, but that further second set of information in aggregate is available as well.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

I take a little bit of solace in the answer that the default is disclosure, but how do you define what is “inappropriate” and how do you define what is considered “confidential, personal or sensitive information”? Do those have strict definitions?

It sounds like “inappropriate” is a little bit more discretionary, but I assume in legislation.... I'm almost positive that I know this, but I don't know from where, so I hesitate to say anything untrue here. I'm sure there are definitions embedded in federal statute that include “confidential, personal and sensitive information”. Is that not correct?

[Tomasz Popiel]

With apologies, I don't know enough of the legal basis of that.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Chair, could we ask the legislative clerk if we can clarify that? I think it would go some length to help comfort Mr. Lemire.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

The legislative clerks are not here to speak on the contents of the bill, I'm afraid; they're here to guide us. It is up to the distinguished members of this committee and to officials to propose ideas, solutions and outcomes.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Okay.

I know that we have legislation that protects private information in Canada. I worked on it when I was a parliamentary secretary to the minister for industry. We tried to update it; unfortunately, we weren't able to do that to the degree that we would have liked.

The point is that I know that there are definitions of private information and confidential information embedded in that act, which is PIPEDA for short.

I would suggest that it's very clear to me and common sense and well known here that there are some pretty rigorous definitions of what those terms mean that protect against arbitrarily using this to just redact or withhold all kinds of information from the registry.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

I'll look to Mr. Chambers for comments on this, please.

[Adam Chambers, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

Thank you.

Perhaps a couple of questions would be helpful in order to form an opinion.

The sole basis for holding some information off the registry could not be solely the Income Tax Act, because we are amending section 241 of the Income Tax Act to make it permissible to disclose information. Do I understand that correctly?

I do. Okay, thank you.

It's because a letter from the Privacy Commissioner was brought up. I'll summarize it to some degree. After the review, the quote says, “...my Office is therefore of the view that potential impacts to privacy, if any at all, would be minor.”

I read that to mean that if there is a proposal or a desire to withhold some information, the reason to do so would have to be over and above the fact that there would be private information disclosed. Is that a fair assessment?

When we reviewed the bill, for example, we talked about how every corporation has a registry, whether it's federally registered or provincially registered, and that you could uncover the directors and in some cases the shareholders of those corporations by just searching the corporate name. Therefore, publishing a corporate name in the registry, on its face, is not a violation of privacy.

I just want to make sure that I'm understanding that correctly.

[Tomasz Popiel]

That's correct.

[Adam Chambers, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

Okay. That is very helpful.

If there is a redaction made, would other information appear on the registry? Would the information proposed to be redacted be redacted, or would there be no entry at all? Would there be a line item that is blank on the name, but the amount and the act under which the debt was waived, forgiven, remitted or written off would appear?

[Tomasz Popiel]

The way it's written right now, “the President of the Treasury Board may exclude from the registry any information that, in their opinion, would be inappropriate to make publicly accessible”. It could be in part or in whole.

[Adam Chambers, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

I guess the question would be how you would envision parliamentarians or the public knowing that a redaction has been made.