Information & Ethics committee  Mr. Chairman, the specific wording of the follow-up request did not come directly to me. It was conveyed to me over the telephone that there was a follow-up request asking about the original request for the 2005-06 report. I reiterated that we didn't produce such a report. When challenged and pressed by the ATIP officer who was looking to further fulfill Mr.

Information & Ethics committee  I do not have delegated authority for access to information requests. This is why they are processed through the unit that is headed by Madame Sabourin.

Information & Ethics committee  The delegated authority is when the responsibility has been given to an individual to be able to sign on behalf of.... If it is an authority that is delegated from the deputy minister, then the delegated authority is the responsibility of the person who has been given that authority to sign on behalf of the department.

Information & Ethics committee  The package that is provided to the office of the minister at the end of the redaction process—if the minister's office has flagged the report for notification prior to release, which is what the “MINA alert” means—is the redacted package.

Information & Ethics committee  That is correct. The department never denied the existence of the Afghan reports and was in fact in the process of processing a couple of requests at the time the information that no global report exists was provided to the second requester.

Information & Ethics committee  Just to clarify, the office of primary interest is never in direct contact with the requester. The requests are always channelled through the ATIP office. So the requester is anonymous to the persons who are processing the file. However, I note that in the chronology that has been provided and in the letter that was sent by Mr.

Information & Ethics committee  Certainly, Mr. Wallace. This has been an interesting learning experience I think for all of us. I would say that in future situations where I am not able to find a report, even if it is what I believe to be a very specific report, I would ask the ATIP person with whom I'm in contact to perhaps probe a little bit more to find out whether I was wrong in my assumption of what the requester was asking.

Information & Ethics committee  This falls outside my area of immediate expertise. It might be better directed to the delegated authority.

Information & Ethics committee  The delegated authority for access to information requests or the deputy minister would be a better place to answer that. It's outside my area of expertise.

Information & Ethics committee  The issue you're referring to is certainly a question of great importance to Canadians, and I fully agree with that, but the question here is related to the annual human rights reports and their purpose and function. The annual human rights reports are used as an internal working document to inform the policy process, to provide the background and the backdrop to recommendations and to programming and to the work of the department.

Information & Ethics committee  One of the common methods—and it's not the only one by which departmental officials become aware of any changes in any kind of legislation—is through the system of broadcast messages, whereby the employees of the department who would be affected by changes to legislation are all advised of relevant changes to that legislation.

Information & Ethics committee  The department has an ongoing training program for a wide variety of issues of importance to the department. There are training courses on information technology. There are training courses on substantive issues. There are training courses targeted to different kinds of employees who are performing different functions throughout the department.

Information & Ethics committee  I have no information regarding any leak, sir.

Information & Ethics committee  Thank you for the question. The package of reports to which you refer was reviewed as a package, so the same test was applied to all of those years at the same time. Now, about the single appearance of a word in one report—you refer to the existence of the word “torture”, which was released in some of the early reports—I heard the quoting from one of the members this morning, I'm not certain which one, of a significant passage that contained that word.

Information & Ethics committee  The officers review the text looking at the redactions that are allowable under the ATIP law that would apply to the Department of Foreign Affairs. As we look at the document, some of the considerations we look at in terms of things that would be injurious to the capacity of Foreign Affairs to carry out its functions or would be harmful to the integrity of the diplomatic process are questions as to whether release of that information would bring danger to an individual, whether the release of that information would harm our capacity to continue to interact with the government in reference, whether the release of that information would be contrary to a confidential agreement with another government to protect information that is provided in confidence, or whether the release of information would apply to information that would be deemed to be privileged in nature by the person providing it.