Mr. Speaker, I move that the fourth report of the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates, presented on Friday, June 13, 2003, be concurred in.
I understand that I have 20 minutes with a 10 minute question and comment period. I would like to advise the Chair that I will be splitting my time with the member for Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Aldershot.
The fourth report of the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates was presented and tabled in the House on June 13, 2003. I would remind all hon. members that this report is the one page report in which the committee reported that it had lost confidence in the Privacy Commissioner.
I would like to read relevant extracts from the report, which states:
Officials of the offices of both the Privacy Commissioner and the Information Commissioner, having acknowledged that they were testifying under oath and had a duty to speak the truth, have given the Committee information during a series of in camera hearings that has compelled Members to conclude, unanimously, that the Privacy Commissioner has deliberately misled the Committee on several recent occasions.
The report continues:
Committee Members believe the Commissioner has misled the Committee with respect to: (a) the circumstances under which the Office provided a copy of a letter from which one of the original paragraphs had been deleted; (b) a set of expense reports whose incompleteness was not acknowledged in the cover letter; (c) travel expense forms on which there had been an attempt to conceal, by the application of white-out material, certain information; and (d) the reasons for his failure to appear in person at a hearing on the Commission's main estimates. When these concerns were brought to the attention of the Commissioner or Office officials, some additional documents were provided but the Commissioner has continued to mislead the Committee with respect to these matters in subsequent letters and testimony before the Committee.
The report concludes:
Absolute honesty, in reporting to Parliament and its committees, is a central requirement for all officers of Parliament. Unconditional confidence in that honesty, on the part of parliamentarians, is essential if Parliament is to support its officers in their important duties.
Having deliberated upon the findings set out above, Members of the Committee are in unanimous agreement that they have lost confidence in the Commissioner. We are no longer able to believe that information provided by the Privacy Commissioner about his activities can be assumed to be accurate and complete.
Furthermore, evidence provided to the Committee raises concerns about financial practices in the Office of the Privacy Commissioner, and the Committee has requested by letter that the Auditor General conduct a comprehensive audit of financial practices at the Commission.
First of all, I would like to acknowledge the significant contribution of the member for Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Aldershot. I want his constituents to know that he is an excellent member of Parliament who has earned a lot of respect in this place for the work he did to assist the committee to identify in the first instance some of the threads of evidence that led to this report. He is singularly responsible, and his constituents should know that he has been of enormous assistance to Parliament in addressing this most serious matter.
The Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates is a new committee. We have a number of responsibilities. One of them was to review Bill C-25, a very important bill on the renewal of the public service.
The committee reviewed this very extensive, comprehensive bill, Bill C-25, which came forward after two years of consultation in the preparation of the bill on behalf of the President of the Treasury Board and her department, on behalf of the Public Service Commission, and on behalf of all the representative groups. In the committee's review of the bill, one aspect of that bill and the discussion was the aspect of whistle-blowers. Whistle-blowing is a label given to a person who brings out information when they believe or allege that there is some wrongdoing, which may in fact come back on them in a punitive way, whether it be fear of reprisals, et cetera.
This is a very serious question and I want to assure the House that the President of the Treasury Board, in consultation with the committee and the other stakeholders in this matter, all of us, are working very diligently. In fact, the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates now has struck a subcommittee to examine this more carefully to determine what steps might be appropriate to ensure over the long term that our very honourable and capable public service will have the protections it needs, not unreasonable protections but general protections, so that there are no frivolous allegations, but so that should there come to our attention even the slightest allegation of an impropriety or a violation of the Financial Administration Act or other aspects, they will have a venue to be able to bring that to the attention of those who are in a position to properly investigate and to address it as appropriate.
This was the environment in which our committee was first engaged: this aspect of the need for whistle-blower protection. As a consequence, the rest of our responsibilities involved the review of the estimates of a number of departments to look into the financial activities.
The member for Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Aldershot has been a champion for transparency and accountability, for access to information provisions, for protection of privacy, for the protection of the privileges of Parliament, but not unduly, and has championed that if we set standards, we should set standards by our own performance. He is working very diligently to show that parliamentarians are on side. It is extremely important and it is because of his contribution.
I will not be going into the details of how this has all unfolded, but in my brief time I did want to make the point very simply. I want Canadians to know this. Notwithstanding that a particular office, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner, with approximately 100 employees, of which it has been identified that there are some people who have committed acts in violation of policies, procedures and maybe even criminal law, I want Canadians to know that this should not be taken as a broad brush indictment of the employees of the privacy commission, of the access to information commissioner's office, or of any other public service group or department.
Our work addressed solely the matters that came to our attention with regard to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner. We did not conclude or have any evidence or any indication that the problems we identified in this one office were endemic outside that office. I want to assure Canadians that our public servants continue to be held in high esteem by parliamentarians for their work and the support they give to the processes of making good laws, of making sure that there is compliance with all the rules, the policies and procedures, and the laws of Canada. We had that evidence and the committee is very supportive of our very capable public service.
There is one key area I wanted to mention but that I do not have time to go into, so let me try to wrap up. We will, over the coming weeks and months, be addressing some of the points that came out, not only from the committee's fifth report wherein the details of what we found are laid out and available on the parliamentary website, but also from the Auditor General's report on the Office of the Privacy Commissioner. There will be subsequent investigations ongoing, some even referred to the RCMP and to the tax authorities.
This will be with us for some time, but I want everyone to know that from what I can see in this place, parliamentarians are 100% in agreement, not only that each and every one of these matters has to be addressed and disposed of in the specific cases, but that we are committed as a Parliament to ensure that the tools and the changes are made to ensure that this never ever happens again.