Procedure and House Affairs committee  There is definitely room for reminders. Through our well-established channels, we are certainly happy to go out and remind people about their responsibilities in this area.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I'm not aware of any training as part of communications training. PCO, among their responsibilities, may or may not have something like that. I don't know. In my area, for example, I have responsibility for both parliamentary affairs and communications, and the groups work very

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes, it is.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Generally...?

Procedure and House Affairs committee  There is a range of things that can be done in cases of non-compliance. Typically, our starting point, depending on the seriousness of the nature of the infraction, would be to work with the department to correct it, to fix it. We would then make sure that the department was awar

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes, the RCMP does fall under that.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  The issue was never brought to us at the Treasury Board Secretariat as a compliance issue. We obviously have learned about it since then. The accountabilities—what I spoke about a bit at the beginning—are clear for the deputy and the head of communications. In this case, the he

Procedure and House Affairs committee  There's nothing in the policy that talks about communications generally around parliamentary business. There is one very specific requirement to do with advertising, which says that you can't advertise anything if it requires parliamentary approval, before that approval is secure

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Do I know why there might be nothing in the policy? I think it's that the policy, as you mentioned, is not at that level of granularity.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I think that's up to the committee and what they would like to recommend. I do think that there are some tools at our disposal that guide communications officials in the government that may be better placed to provide this type of guidance. We have a well-used document called the

Procedure and House Affairs committee  How do I, or how should individuals who are responsible for that within their department?

Procedure and House Affairs committee  We do provide advice and outreach to departments quite regularly through Tracey's team. They are the ones who develop the policy, ensure compliance with it and create awareness of the rules and the requirements within the policy. Reminders do go out regularly. To your earlier po

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I don't think I have seen anything specific to this very specific circumstance. I can say that our regular monitoring shows that communicators around town are quite aware that they have to use the conditional. They have to use words like “if passed”. If you look at news release

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I think this specific type of situation is fairly unusual. I don't hear about it frequently.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes, but I think there's room to remind people of the rules around that and that there are channels, existing channels, through our communications network.