Public Safety Committee on Aug. 16th, 2022

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

But she would ultimately be responsible for the decisions made in her department on that final call, on what information is to be considered privileged or not. Is that right?

[François Daigle]

She's responsible. She's leading the team that's supporting the commission, so ultimately all of the decisions that the team is making she would have some accountability for, yes.

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Thank you.

In your letter, you also referred to times when there might be a conflict between the MCC and the Department of Justice. For example, if the MCC raises questions about determinations of privilege, there are meetings held between your department and the MCC to find a way through it.

I don't have a lot of time, but can you explain, generally, how those are resolved? Have they been resolved satisfactorily to date?

[François Daigle]

It's a phone call to Thomas Cromwell or somebody else on the commission counsel team.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Raquel Dancho]

That's all the time we have. Thank you, MP MacGregor.

Now we're going to go to the second round. To start off with the Conservatives, for five minutes, we have MP Ellis.

MP Ellis, you have five minutes.

[Stephen Ellis, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Deputy Minister, for being here.

As you may or may not know, I'm the member of Parliament for Cumberland—Colchester, and I represent many of the victims' families in this terrible occurrence in my riding.

The crux of this matter, of course, is related to not just accountability but also transparency and honesty. I guess the big question that I would suggest people really want to understand better is.... There are two parts. One, you said you were going to provide all of the information you can, which doesn't necessarily sound transparent to me. That's my judgment. Second, you talked about Chief Superintendent Leather being misunderstood.

Let's start with that, sir. Would you not expect that the lawyer cautioning Mr. Leather would make sure that he wanted to be understood, that that reactive versus proactive nature would be understood very clearly?

[François Daigle]

Yes, I think everybody wants to be understood, and the advice needs to be as clear as possible.

[Stephen Ellis, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

Then, sir, how would you come to the conclusion that it was Chief Superintendent Leather who misunderstood the directions given to him?

[François Daigle]

As I said earlier, I have three reasons to believe that.

One, because we didn't know what this report was, our advice was not to raise it unless the commission raised it. That was the extent of our advice in terms of being reactive, or not proactively talking about this. Remember, this was July 5, and he was only appearing on July 27, so our view was that we would have time to get the report, look at it, determine its relevance and figure out whether it could or couldn't be.... Our advice to him was, “It's the first we've heard of this. We haven't seen it. Don't raise it if they don't raise it, but if they do, you'll have to answer.”

The other reason we think he misunderstood is that he suggested during his testimony that we also told him not to provide information about the April 28 meeting, and that makes no sense, sir, because all of the information about the April 28 meeting was already before the commission, so there was no reason for us to suggest that.

There's also his reference to his call to the commissioner on April 22. We learned about that when he testified on the 27th. It's not in his notes, and so for him to suggest that we told him not to talk about a meeting that we'd never heard about doesn't make sense.

That's why my conclusion is that he misunderstood the advice. Our advice was only specifically with respect to the Quintet report, because we didn't know anything about it at the time, on July 5.

[Stephen Ellis, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

Sir, do you think it's possible that Chief Superintendent Leather understood the direction he was given and perhaps that there was interference here in getting the truth out? Are you saying you don't believe that, sir?

[François Daigle]

You'd have to ask Superintendent Leather. I don't know what he was thinking. All I know is what he told the committee on the 25th.

[Stephen Ellis, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

It's interesting, sir, that you know that he misunderstood his directions—that's the unusual thing—but you don't know what he was thinking.

The second part of the question is this: How can the families of these victims be certain that there are no other documents being withheld by your department?

[François Daigle]

We gather documents from seven departments and agencies and we review them for relevance. If they're relevant, they are produced, unless parts of them, or all of them, have to be retained for privilege based on the Canada Evidence Act or other legal privileges.

How can they be assured? We've produced 75,000 documents already and we keep responding and have a very good relationship with the commission and its counsel to produce everything that is relevant so that this commission can get its job done.

[Stephen Ellis, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

Sir, we also know that you didn't report back to the committee originally. When you withheld documents, you didn't make them aware of that fact. Of course, you continue to talk about this voluminous number. That's fantastic. We understand there is a lot of documentation, but there is absolutely no assurance here for the victims' families to say that, yes, all of these documents have been produced and are going to be made available to the MCC.

How can you reassure us, sir, that this is going to happen? Can you?

[François Daigle]

I'm reassuring you that every document that we are provided with at the department will be reviewed for relevance and if they're relevant, they will be produced. This happens on a weekly basis.

In terms of information that came out at the hearings of this committee on the 25th, we learned some new things and we've tracked it down and produced.... For example, Chief Superintendent Brennan's notes were raised for the first time at committee, and we've since tracked those down and produced them. Anything relevant we will be producing to the commission.

With respect to the 35 pages that we held back for review, yes, we should have told the commission that we held those back for review until we were done, but our intent was always to review them and to produce them. That's a process we followed with the commission before, and now we have sat down with the commission and set up a new process to make sure that there are no surprises going forward.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Raquel Dancho]

I'm sorry, MP Ellis, but your time is up.

We're now going to the Liberal Party, with MP Chiang.

Go ahead. You have five minutes.

[Paul Chiang, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Thank you so much.

Good morning, everybody.

Thank you to the witnesses for taking the time to be here with us today.

My question is directed to the deputy minister of justice. Is it true that some documents, such as handwritten notes, take longer to review because they cannot be machine-read in any way and require a person to directly review the handwritten documents? Could this have affected the disclosure of documents to the Mass Casualty Commission?

[François Daigle]

Yes. Handwritten notes do take longer to review because they have to be reviewed in person and they can't be machine-read. Most of the other documents we get electronically, so we have a system that reads them and codes them. That obviously has an impact on the speed with which we can get documents to the commission.

In this case, the handwritten notes were identified as some important information that the commission needed to have, which is why we've produced them as soon as we could.

The ones that we didn't produce and that were being reviewed were going to be reviewed and redacted, if necessary, and produced well before the appearance of the officers before the commission.

[Paul Chiang, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Thank you for that, Deputy Minister.

Can you elaborate on the relationship between your department and the minister's office? How do you coordinate with the minister's office, and what boundaries are in place to prevent any sort of political interference?

[François Daigle]

I'm the deputy minister to the Minister of Justice. We have the same relationship that any deputy minister has to a minister of the Crown. I provide the minister with information and with briefing notes to make decisions. If I ever thought that there was some political interference in a matter where there shouldn't be, I would raise it with the minister and have a discussion with him.

As I said earlier, the Minister of Justice, and his entire office, had no involvement whatsoever in the department's job to review and produce documents before the commission in Nova Scotia. In this case, sir, they would have no involvement whatsoever.

[Paul Chiang, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

So there are guardrails in place to stop any political interference. Are there specific guardrails, or is it just an unwritten rule?

[François Daigle]

There's no buzzer or anything like that, or specific guardrails. We have to look at that in our department, because the minister is accountable not just for the Department of Justice but also for other agencies, including the public prosecution service, where there's clear legislative independence. We have processes in place to make sure that the information the Attorney General gets from the PPSC, for example, follows what's called the section 13 process.

In this case, our minister's office had no involvement. If I thought there was some interference, I would flag that issue with the minister and have a discussion with him.

[Paul Chiang, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Thank you so much.

Can you discuss the steps taken by legal counsel to review documents and ensure non-partisanship in their decision to release these documents to the public?

[Owen Rees]

Once documents are produced by the originating department, our counsel and paralegals review those documents for relevance. They also review them for any legal privileges that may attach to them. They are then produced to the commission. There are ongoing productions over the course of the inquiry, both in terms of the timetable and priorities set by the commission and in response to specific requests by the commission and questions that may arise in the course of interviews or at the hearing. And—

[Paul Chiang, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Thank you so much.

I'm sorry. Did you want to elaborate on that? I cut you off.