Debates of May 4th, 1999

Access To Information Act

[Brenda Chamberlain, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Labour]

Madam Speaker, the motion put forward by the member for Red Deer proposes that parliament extend coverage of the Access to Information Act to federal crown corporations and the Parliament of Canada.

According to recent lists, there are 49 parent crown corporations of which 29 are subject to the act. For example, the Bank of Canada and the Canadian Film Development Corporation are subject to both the Access to Information Act and the Privacy Act. The Canada Post Corporation and the Export Development Corporation are covered only under privacy legislation. Atomic Energy of Canada Limited and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, on the other hand, are not subject to either act.

The standing committee on justice and the solicitor general examined this issue in 1987 during the review of the Access to Information Act and the Privacy Act. In the report entitled “Open and shut: Enhancing the right to know and the right to privacy”, the committee made three recommendations.

The first recommendation was to extend coverage of both acts to all crown corporations and wholly owned subsidiaries.

The second recommendation was to apply the legislation if the Government of Canada controls a public institution by means of a power of appointment over the majority of the members of the agency's governing body or committee.

Finally, the committee proposed that the acts apply to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation but provide an exemption in relation to its program material.

The government responded to the committee's report by promising to review the proposals from the perspectives of the need for openness, to promote government accountability, the role of the institution involved and the need to ensure that any extension of the act will be in the public interest.

The government needs to support openness, needs to consult with organizations which potentially could be affected by this motion and also needs to ensure that there are provisions within the Access to Information Act to protect the legitimate commercial interests of the crown corporations.

The Canadian public is sending us the same message. They want a more open and accountable government. They believe that they have a right to obtain information controlled by federal institutions whether the institution is a department, an agency or a crown corporation. It is important to note that this right is already afforded to them in other jurisdictions.

Recent provincial freedom of information acts have established a precedent for including crown corporations within the scope of their legislation. Alberta, British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec laws, for example, cover provincial and municipal agencies, boards, commissions and corporations.

Last spring Bill C-216 was debated in the House. Bill C-216 also proposed that crown corporations be included in the schedule of the Access to Information Act. Both Bill C-216 and Motion No. 2 complement a private member's motion that the government make all crown corporations subject to the Privacy Act. This motion was debated in the House in April 1997 and passed with all party support.

Motion No. 2 complements the government's commitment to enhancing privacy rights which are outlined in a public discussion paper entitled “The protection of personal information: Building Canada's information economy and society”. This paper examines the privacy issues surrounding electronic commerce and associated consumer transactions. It addresses the need to develop legislation that will permit Canadians to take advantage of the opportunities afforded by advances in technology. At the same time, it proposes a means by which the security of personal information can be protected in the private sector.

When the extension of access to information legislation is contemplated, there is frequently a reaction that such an extension will result in increased costs to the institutions. In fact, the principles underlying the provision of access reinforce the principles of good information management.

Sound information management practices ensure that all information holdings are created and organized in accordance with recognized standards.

In addition, they require that organizations properly schedule their records for preservation, retention and disposal. As a result, information is readily available for current decision making purposes as well as for the future study of decision making in government.

Before supporting extending coverage of the Access to Information Act to the category of crown corporations, we must take into account the other two elements to which I referred to earlier: the need to consult with the crown corporations, and the need to ensure that there are provisions within the legislation to adequately protect their legitimate interest.

We must recognize that it would be absolutely necessary to consult with the affected crown corporations and to identify any unique circumstances under which they operate.

It would be absolutely essential that we consider adjustments to existing legislation to avoid causing damage to the commercial interests of one or more of the organizations. One of the cruxes of this particular piece, I think, is that we do have to consult. There are no two ways about it. I see the member nodding yes, agreeing that is right.

Determining the impact of subjecting parliament to the provisions of the Access to Information Act would require extensive study to ensure that basic democratic principles would not be undermined.

Although extending the act to cover the administrative functions of parliament has often been suggested, it is unlikely that complete coverage would be feasible. This is particularly pertinent to operations that directly affect party affairs or the affairs of constituents.

From the perspective of encouraging openness in government, we appreciate the intent underlying the motion presented by the member for Red Deer. However, it does not strike an appropriate balance between promoting the accountability of public institutions on the one hand and, on the other hand, the requirement to protect the public interest in ensuring that the operations of its crown corporations and parliament are not unfairly compromised.

Consequently, at this time we cannot support this motion. However, it is important to note that the intent of the hon. member from the Reform Party is a good one. I think everyone does want openness and transparency. For that I commend him. We do not believe the balance is quite right yet, but certainly the intent is a good one.

[Ghislain Lebel, Bloc, Chambly, QC]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to speak for a few minutes on Motion M-2, which reads:

That, in the opinion of this House, the Parliament and Crown Agencies should be subject to scrutiny under the Access to Information Act.

When we talked about raw milk cheese, during the previous parliament, I tried to get information on available raw milk cheese import quotas. I went to the Access to Information Commission, but the minister imposed a veto. He used all his energy to keep this information from me. Is there anything more harmless than this information on cheese import quotas?

On another occasion, I asked for information from another department. I got the information, but it made no sense. Much had been covered with a big black marker, and this was probably the gist of the document. I was left with the date at the top and a signature at the bottom, but hardly anything in between. And they claim they are abiding by the Access to Information Act.

Some ministers screen just about any request for information on their department. It is a sign of fear. Why would a minister bother to read, in some cases up to 95%, of all such requests? Does the minister himself cross out everything he wants to keep from us? In that case, the Access to Information Act is pretty much useless.

Everything we want to know or everything that is likely to be of interest to the person who made the request is crossed out by the minister, his assistants or his staff, which makes the Access to Information Act almost totally ineffective.

Crown corporations that are separate legal entities from the government should be subject to the application of the Access to Information Act. However, and I agree with the parliamentary secretary on that point, there are types of commercial information that cannot be released.

Let us take, for example, the Canadian Investment Corporation, the corporation responsible for managing the federal government's housing stock. If a competitor had access to its list of prices, its costs and other information of a purely internal nature, information related to the daily management of its affairs, we can see the damage the corporation could incur if it were forced to provide these details to its competitors.

It is not always MPs who request information, it is not always people who are concerned with protecting a certain part of the internal affairs of these organizations. Therefore, there is some danger in that and it could cause a lot of damage. I think the member for Red Deer, who made the proposal, agreed with what the parliamentary secretary said earlier, and I have to say that I share the same view. I am greatly concerned about this.

In parliament, we, the members, would be compelled to provide information. I believe there are things all would want to keep confidential. That is what we call the right to privacy. When we consider issues that have nothing to do with management but only with members themselves, it means that, pursuant to the Access to Information Act, one could ask individual members of parliament how much money they have in the bank, whether their house is mortgaged, how much money they owe. The motion before the House could be construed to mean that this kind of information could be obtained through the access to information commission.

I do not think that is the purpose of this motion nor the goal of its sponsor. No one in the House would want this either. It would be rathr difficult to apply the terms of such a motion. Of course, we respect and understand the sound principles on which it is based. My party share the concerns of the members of parliament and especially the hon. member for Red Deer who brought forward this motion.

But maybe we are overshooting, as my grandfather used to say. Some people could be affected and hurt if this motion were passed. Fortunately, it is not a votable item. It could have very undesirable if not deleterious effects, which would make us regret the day we passed such a motion.

I think the principle is sound. When I was co-chair of the joint scrutiny of regulations committee. When we asked to examine the bylaws of crown corporations, our requests were often turned down. We were told “We are an independent agency. The bylaws that we pass and publish are none of parliament's business”.

That was pretty frustrating, because these crown corporations are government creatures run on public funds. But when they are asked to give us information, they pretty well tell us to drop dead.

In my riding of Chambly, there was a post office sandwiched between two malls. There was a rumour that it was up for sale. The two mall owners came to my office. They asked me whether they could be assured that they would be notified in order to put in a bid, to purchase the post office business, which would have to move. Fortunately, it did not happen.

At the time, I had recently been elected and I was not very familiar with how to handle this. I phoned Canada Post Corporation and talked with an official. I wanted some assurances. Would there be a call for tender? Would it be public? I was told “Listen sir, if Canada Post decides to give away its post office, the government has no say in that decision. As long as we submit a positive balance sheet to the government, it does not ask any questions”. I thought it was totally appalling to get such an answer, but it was the truth. The person who gave me the information did not want to mislead me. He was telling me that the act, as it was worded, allowed Canada Post to do that.

As members can see, the Access to Information Act could be used in that situation. We could ask bodies, organizations or crown corporations to appear before a House committee or someone to justify their actions.

Therefore, we agree with the principles behind this motion. But it would have to be amended before we could support it.

[Peter MacKay, Progressive Conservative, Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough, NS]

Madam Speaker, I similarly am pleased to add but a few remarks to the motion put forward by my hon. colleague from Red Deer.

It is truly not a new debate certainly in this House. I submit that it is a very admirable attempt to address an issue that has become of increasing concern to parliament. I know that my hon. colleague personally has been very persevering on this issue.

The motion before us is whether to make parliament and crown agencies subject to scrutiny under the Access to Information Act. The Freedom of Information Act itself and the laws are built around the basic principle “that government information ought to be publicly available whenever possible”. This comes from the secretary of state in 1977 on the issue when the Freedom of Information Act was first enacted.

This legislation is aimed at helping to keep government itself honest and certainly to bring about greater accountability. I think we can all agree that this should be entrenched and wherever possible there should be transparency. It is something I believe that the public is now expecting and further to that, demanding of parliamentarians. There is a growing degree of frustration among members of parliament in this session and certainly the public as well that this is not the case. The current legislation is not achieving that end.

Private sector restructuring has affected current freedom of information laws. Currently the freedom of information laws do give citizens, including obviously members of this House and both provincial and federal members, the right to obtain government held records, except in certain cases where it is in the public interest to maintain some secrecy.

The federal government's freedom of information law is known as the Access to Information Act. However, there are times when that information is not accessible, so there is a bit of an anomaly there.

This is consistent I suppose with the back and forth debate that went on when this type of legislation was first enacted, the balance that had to be struck, and it is a proper word to be used. It was used by the parliamentary secretary in her remarks. There is obviously a need to balance the right to protect an individual's privacy or a business's privacy in some instances versus the general public's right to know.

I would submit that cutbacks to the public service have caused an increasing delay in government processing of freedom of information requests. The federal information commissioner has made remarks along these lines calling this a festering silent scandal.

I would submit that further to that, this is consistent with some of the results that we have seen coming from the government, that there is a delay. Delay can be the deadliest form of denial when there is a need for information. A certain policy approach is developing that seems to grind citizens down and perhaps grind even individual members of parliament down in their attempts to find out information from the government.

The government has obviously taken the position that it has to be accountable fiscally. No one denies that and certainly the attempt to achieve this result is going to result in cuts. I think these cuts account for much of the delay that happens within the federal government. However, experimenting with new methods of delivering public services, privatization of former government controlled agencies, has been a necessary means to the desired end of that fiscal responsibility, but there is a risk of efficiency and risk of delay in taking this approach.

All governments are constantly searching for ways to transfer functions out of government departments and back into the private sector. Contracting out on the delivery of public services has obvious problems as it relates to freedom of information requests. I suggest that there is also a creation of mistrust if the contracting out to these private sector companies results in the government's ability to say that it can no longer give this information because it is out of the government's hands.

Activities that are being delegated to industry run organizations that then become exempt from freedom of information laws are of a real concern. One example is Nav Canada which provides traffic control services. Like politics, private industries are very competitive and there are occasions when they will fiercely guard certain trade secrets. Bids for government contracts would be a perfect example.

Crown corporations, single purpose agencies that are still wholly owned by the government have been created to allow for these formerly government controlled industries to operate. In some cases they operate free from access to information requests even when technically they are covered by the freedom of information laws, the thought being that compliance could decline as the traditional public service is fragmented. This would leave them free, one would suppose, from government influence yet they are still being funded by the Canadian taxpayer. That element of taxpayer support should outweigh the government's ability to hide behind the supposed arm's length relationship they have with the government.

There we are on the horns of the dilemma. There is a need for the public to know, certainly on most occasions, but the government has obviously distanced itself from this obligation by saying it is a private sector company. The Canada Customs and Revenue Agency and Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation are other examples of where the government has moved toward privatization of a formerly publicly run agency.

Government services are run like private industries on many occasions. Efficiency has improved as a result when the private sector enters in. Still there is this competing issue of the bottom line fiscally versus the need to be accountable in the public sector. This is the case in private industry as well. There are occasions when the government has to step in and demand information. When there are issues of environmental concern and certainly when there are potential Criminal Code violations, then the government has to actively pursue even private sector companies.

As governments attempt to find new non-tax revenues, they may also undermine access rights. An example is that several governments may sell information and this information would then be exempt from freedom of information laws regardless of the price. Information protected for a price undermines equal access to government information.

Presently the Access to Information Act appears to be something the government itself is prepared to look at in terms of possible amendments. There is certainly a great deal of merit in doing that when there is increasing demand from the public that we as parliamentarians be more accountable and more open in that regard.

There is a quotation that knowledge is power, but further to that, a little bit of knowledge is sometimes dangerous. When it comes to making an important decision, not having the full picture is something the public and members of parliament sometimes wrestle with when it comes to an access demand. The balance that must be struck is something we must constantly strive for.

Should parliament itself be subject to the scrutiny of access to information? Obviously it is public money that is paying the salaries of individual members of parliament and I would suggest there is already a great deal of public scrutiny toward members of parliament. I would also suggest there is a higher degree of accountability on the part of the government to meet that obligation. There is a higher degree of accountability when it comes to disclosing decisions that not all members of parliament have participated in.

With access to information, I would suggest the Canadian public do have a certain degree of a right to know. There are obviously occasions which have been mentioned previously, national security, trade secrets, the concerns that individual constituents might have about access to information requests that would affect them, those considerations are always going to be kept in mind by the information commissioner himself.

The information commissioner should have the authority to review reasonableness for fee schedules for freedom of information requests. There should also be a release if that price continues to be unreasonable. There should be a release of records where citizens' complaints are justified. Monitoring of the system as a whole is something I believe would be a very worthwhile exercise.

I personally support the initiative of the hon. member. I believe there is a huge public appetite for this type of exercise to occur. If it happens in some small way, we might contribute to the restoration of a degree of public confidence in parliament and politics generally as an honourable profession.

[Gurmant Grewal, Reform, Surrey Central, BC]

Madam Speaker, Motion No. 2 states:

That, in the opinion of this House, the Parliament and Crown Agencies should be subject to scrutiny under the Access to Information Act.

This motion is brought before the House for debate by my colleague, the hon. member for Red Deer, who is also our foreign affairs critic.

What is access to information? Any Canadian should be able to write a letter asking for information from a federal government agency and get that information within 30 days. That is the Access to Information Act. We should be able to see the books or get minutes or papers relating to why a certain decision was made in the administration of the policy and programs of our federal government and crown agencies.

There should be nothing to hide about the Canadian Wheat Board, for example. Canadians know about the mess this Liberal government either created or at least allowed surrounding the Somalia inquiry. In that case documents were altered, severed, lost or destroyed. Canadians will never know what really happened because the Liberal government did not want us to know. It shut down the Somalia inquiry.

We use access to information to track the Liberal government's mismanagement of the expenditure of our tax dollars. The Somalia debacle is the prime example of the importance of the Access to Information Act. A CBC reporter using access to information received two copies of the same documents from national defence. The copies were different but they were supposed to be the same documents. The Somalia inquiry is a very sad chapter in Canadian history in terms of the Liberal Party's lack of respect for democracy.

Our access to information laws should be reviewed and strengthened. That is what this motion is asking. We should constantly be pursuing a freer and more democratic government and society. That is what the official opposition is trying to accomplish with this motion. We should not risk our national security, but we should try to be as transparent and open with the Canadian taxpayers as possible.

The Canadian taxpayer finances federal government endeavours. Where are the details? Why are the details concerning the expenses of the operation of the Canadian parliament not covered by ATI? That is a big question. Why are other important agencies protected? We need to know that. That is why we are debating Motion No. 2.

The Liberals could have taken action concerning this matter as soon as they saw that my colleague's Motion No. 2 was on the order paper. Rather, he had to wait for the lucky draw for his motion to be debated. The Liberals forced the debate to take place.

There is another way the Liberals could have proceeded. If the Liberals had looked through the lens of issues and not through the lens of political stripes, they would have read Motion No. 2 and done something about it. However we know they do not do that.

The official opposition is forcing the government to talk about accountability as it relates to crown agencies as well as parliament. There should not be a Liberal in the House who would oppose my colleague's motion. Every Liberal should want their constituents to have access to information concerning crown agencies and parliament. As our federal government contracts out more and more work, the records of these contracts become more and more important. We need access to information.

We have seen the Prime Minister strangle a taxpayer. We heard him talk about an imaginary friend. We have seen him apparently throw away the rights of Canadian university students in favour of a foreign dictator. Most recently we saw all parties in the House, including the Liberals, agree to televise all House of Commons committees. Yet the Prime Minister and the elite Liberals do not want it to happen. Maybe the report on televised committee sittings is in the same place where Motion No. 2 was before the member for Red Deer forced the Liberals to take it off the shelf and debate it in the House.

The democratic record of the government is abysmal. Members across the way should be ashamed of their record on democracy. They have moved closure or time allocation to limit debate in the House more than 52 times. The government does not like the democratic process.

When I was deputy critic for foreign affairs I tracked the shenanigans at the Canadian International Development Agency, CIDA. When my staff requested studies from CIDA, ATI requests came back saying “no such study was ever done”. Did CIDA change the name of the study? Or, was there really no such study? It is difficult to tell.

When our ATI laws are so weak it is difficult to know the facts and the truth. It makes it difficult to track the government, to hold the government accountable, to make the government more efficient, to find out where our money is being spent, where there is duplication and where there is waste. Canadians have the right to know what is happening with their money.

This is all wrong. It should be easy to track the government so we can be proud of our record and proud of the way the government is run. In conclusion, I urge members of the House to support Motion No. 2 and let us ensure that the Liberal government does not continue to make a mockery of democracy.

[John Bryden, Liberal, Wentworth—Burlington, ON]

Madam Speaker, when we talk about access to information what we are really talking about in the final analysis is the good of the general public but very specifically the need for the watchdogs of government, parliamentarians and the media to be able to have the instruments and the tools to scrutinize government to make sure it is honest and efficient.

Certainly that is the role of both backbench government MPs and opposition MPs. We need good information. We have to be able to get that information from government so we can do our job.

It is the same with the media. The media must have the tools of good freedom of information legislation in order to do its job for all Canadians and for parliament.

In the context of the media I cannot tell of my surprise when after the member for Red Deer submitted his earlier bill, Bill C-216 that would do the same thing, open up crown corporations, I received a letter in November 1997 from the chief operating officer of the CBC, in which the chief operating officer appealed to me as a member of parliament—and I imagine this letter went to every other member of parliament—to resist Bill C-216 because it threatened the independence of the CBC under the Broadcasting Act and it threatened journalistic integrity and it threatened the CBC's competitive position. The CBC, we understand, is a billion dollar plus crown agency operating primarily on government funds, so I was surprised by that.

As a former journalist I fired a letter back very quickly in which I said to the chief operating officer of the CBC that as a former journalist I knew that his concerns were unwarranted and that in fact I myself had a private member's bill, Bill C-264, which put in enhanced protections to corporations and organizations like parliamentarians and the CBC in the sense that Privacy Act considerations would prevent any damage to journalistic integrity, and that he had no fear of losing the independence in the Broadcasting Act simply because the CBC would be required to disclose its administrative procedures.

There is a huge issue here. As I pointed out to the chief operating officer of the CBC, the issue here is that it is the one organization in the country that is completely outside any kind of government scrutiny even though it gets money from the government. We cannot see any of the salaries in the CBC, as I explained to the chief operating officer. We cannot see any mismanagement in the CBC, as I explained to the chief operating officer. We cannot even see nepotism in the CBC.

We as parliamentarians are subject to all kinds of scrutiny. When we undertake patronage, which is the source of all kinds of controversy in the country and which the opposition is constantly attacking the government on, we are talking about a form of nepotism that is at least public. In the CBC we can see none of that.

I wrote him back and got a letter back from him again. He simply said that he was sorry, that the CBC's administrative procedures must remain secret because exposing CBC records under the access rules for administrative purposes would in fact expose all CBC records whether gathered for administrative, creative, journalistic or programming purposes. That is not true, not true at all.

I wrote to Peter Mansbridge, one of the top journalists in this country. In my letter I said “Peter, as a journalist would you disclose your salary as an example to the rest of the CBC to show that you as a journalist believe in the principles of access to information”. He wrote me back a letter in which he said “Given the kind of scrutiny, both real and imagined, that public figures are faced with in this country, there are few things that remain private. In my case I am fortunate that my employer chooses to at least keep my salary details private”. And so it goes. The top journalist in the country, while he demands transparency and accountability of parliamentarians, is not prepared to submit to it himself.

When the journalism community is not prepared to have the same kind of transparency it demands and asks of government, then it should not criticize those bureaucrats who are afraid of the type of legislation we all know is very necessary in this country for the efficiency and honesty of this country. I say to the member for Red Deer, way to go.

[Bob Mills, Reform, Red Deer, AB]

Madam Speaker, I thank all members who have spoken today, in particular the member for Wentworth—Burlington for his example. That example is probably what it is all about. While there are many things I would like to say in conclusion, I think that says it all. While the member was talking about the CBC, I could make exactly the same statements about the wheat board and other crown corporations in my constituency.

While working on this for some six years now, I discovered that the criteria for a crown corporation being subject to the Access to Information Act was not under the jurisdiction of the information commissioner or the justice department, but under the jurisdiction of the governor in council. In other words, the cabinet decides which crown corporations are subject to the Access to Information Act and which ones are not.

I do not believe that in a day when we pride ourselves on being democratic and when we pride ourselves on going around the world democratizing other countries, that it is acceptable to have our openness subject to the decision of just the cabinet. As we have more crown corporations because of government downsizing, it is time to open this up. Yes, we should protect competitiveness and those kinds of things, but that is a lame excuse for not having crown corporations open to the Access to Information Act.

In 1994 I was told by the then justice minister that this was about to be changed. I was not to worry. We would not have to work on access to information for more than another year and it would all be opened up. That has not happened. We are still waiting. Canadians are waiting. As we into the 21st century, I think it is critical that government open up and let people know what in fact their tax dollars are being spent on.

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Thibeault)]

The time provided for the consideration of Private Members' Business has now expired and the order is dropped from the order paper.

It being 6.30 p.m., the House stands adjourned until tomorrow at 2 p.m., pursuant to Standing Order 24(1).

(The House adjourned at 6.27 p.m.)