NRGO Committee Meeting

STANDING COMMITTEE ON NATURAL RESOURCES AND GOVERNMENT OPERATIONS

COMITÉ PERMANENT DES RESSOURCES NATURELLES ET DES OPÉRATIONS GOUVERNEMENTALES

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Thursday, June 4, 1998

• 0908

[English]

The Chairman (Mr. Brent St. Denis (Algoma—Manitoulin, Lib.)): Colleagues, seeing we have sufficient quorum to hear witnesses and wanting to be sure that members, especially members on the opposition side, have lots of time to ask questions, we will open the meeting.

We are meeting this morning, the Standing Committee on Natural Resources and Government Operations, at the request of the House leaders under Standing Order 108 to receive John Reid as a witness in order to simply ask questions of Mr. Reid so that members might know him better. This is further to some discussions over the matter of who might be recommended for the position of information commissioner for Canada.

Mr. Reid, we are very pleased to have you with our committee this morning. I think the clerk had indicated to you that possibly you might speak for ten minutes, give or take, and we will allow members lots of time to ask questions. The committee is under some constraints for time this morning. We have to adjourn by 10:30 so this committee can reconstitute itself at 11 a.m. for its natural resources work. With the indulgence of all members, I will ask Mr. Reid to open today with some remarks.

Hon. John M. Reid (Individual Presentation): Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

• 0910

I have asked the clerk to circulate to you a copy of my curriculum vitae, and I hope you have received a copy of that. What I would like to do is take you through it and talk a bit about my experience in the information business as it applies to the office of the information commissioner.

I came to Ottawa to write a Ph.D. thesis in history. My father was a very active political person and recommended that I go and see the member of Parliament for Kenora—Rainy River. I did so and he offered me a job. I was reluctant to take it because I had just done my orals and comprehensives at the University of Toronto, but we did strike a deal where I would work mornings at the archives and afternoons for him.

I soon discovered I preferred working in politics to doing archival research, and I converted so that I became a political assistant to Mr. Benidickson, who at that time was the minister of mines and technical surveys. I still had commitments, so each summer I went off to the University of Manitoba to lecture, as I had a contract with the history department there.

In 1965 Mr. Benidickson went to the Senate. I went home and ran for and won the nomination. At that time I was the youngest person elected to Parliament in the last 20 years. One of the things I fought for was a lowering of the voting age. That happened in time for the next election. Then there were three who came in at 20 and wiped out my record: Lorne Nystrom, still in the House of Commons, Sean O'Sullivan, and Claude-André Lachance.

I became interested in Parliament as an institution, and I became a member of the procedure committee at a very early age. I sat on basically all procedure committees, I sat on the elections committee, and I also sat on a whole range of committees of interest to my constituency—Indian affairs, transportation and what not.

I became fascinated by the information problem because at that time we were beginning to get information that said that 50% of all Canadians in the middle sixties were now working in the information business. I came from a natural resources constituency where basically everybody worked in the mines, the tourist industry, lumber, pulp and paper. I could see that this was going to have very significant alterations in the way in which my constituency carried on its business.

In 1972 I was appointed parliamentary secretary to the president of the Privy Council. I became immersed in government information at that time because my responsibilities included ensuring that all the documents requested by members, all the written questions, all the starred questions asked by members, were responded to. What I discovered was that there were no benchmarks anybody involved in the business had to meet.

So the first action I did was to write out a set of guidelines as to how this information was to be provided, what the time lines were for the information to be provided, and I had that passed as an order in council by the cabinet to give me some clout to make sure we were able to carry on the business. That was my first introduction.

The second introduction I had was to deal with the question of getting information out. What I discovered was that in those days there was almost no document keeping, no record keeping, and nobody basically knew what happened to documents because we didn't have computers. Xerox machines were just coming into the system at that point. So we began to work on some kind of documentation system through the Privy Council office to make sure that departments would have a facility to be able to extract information.

This had two thrusts. One was driven by me, which was to ensure that members of Parliament had the information they required. The second was for the government to know what information it actually had. This was communicated to me by Bud Drury particularly, and by Eugene Whelan, who used to say that one of the things they found about the questions was that they learned a great deal about their own operations because the questions were interesting and the documentation provided them with an insight into what was going on.

• 0915

After my period of time came to a conclusion as parliamentary secretary, I was asked by Mitchell Sharp, the then House leader, to go to Sweden, Denmark, and Finland in company with Jed Baldwin. Mr. Baldwin was a Conservative but his crusade was for freedom of information legislation.

I think if anybody can be said to be the father of the current legislation it would be Mr. Baldwin. He and I had cooperated when I was parliamentary secretary, and Mr. Sharp agreed to find the money out of the Privy Council budget. So he and I and a civil servant named Richard French, who later went on to Quebec and became an MNA and then a minister in the cabinet, were sent off to Sweden, Denmark, and Finland, which at that time had the reputation of having the most open system.

We came back with a report. A committee was subsequently formed on which I sat. Both Mr. Baldwin and I went off to the statutory instruments committee, which was approaching government control by other ways. Following that we were able to work with departmental officials to do a number of drafts. Mr. Baldwin did his own draft at the time, as I recall.

When the government was defeated in 1979, Walter Baker, the then House leader for the Conservatives, brought forward a bill, but it died in that short-lived Parliament. It was brought back by Francis Fox as Solicitor General in the following Parliament. I sat on the committees that dealt with that. We eventually got the bill that is in place now.

The act passed in about 1982 or 1983, so it's been in place for 15 to 17 years. It has been looked at, and I know there's been a 10-year review of the act published by the current information commissioner.

In my political career I had the reputation of being somewhat of a maverick. I was told by some of my cabinet colleagues that I would be a great parliamentarian if I would only be as nasty to the opposition as I was to the government ministers. This certainly caused me a certain amount of difficulty because my reputation among my colleagues was always rather coloured by the fact that I was as prepared to take on them as I was to take on everybody else.

I was certainly a partisan in the sense that one has to be a partisan to be elected to the House of Commons, but I was also a partisan for my own ideas. I was prepared to vote against the government, and I did a number of times in my career. In fact, I was told at one point that in the modern parliamentary era, I had probably voted against the government more than any other member. But I also had the ability to work very well with members across the way. I chaired a number of committees in my parliamentary career and we never had any difficulties.

I have probably the current record for having passed private members' bills through the House of Commons. These are substantive matters. The last one, on the last day of my time in the House of Commons, was a bill to open the secret wartime committee files that the House of Commons had under lock and key since 1945.

When I was putting this bill through, the only person we could think of who might have had some knowledge as to what was in the files was the Hon. Jack Pickersgill. So a call was put through to him, at my request, as to whether we should proceed with this private member's bill. He said under no circumstances should we do so. The question was posed “Do you recall what is in there?” “No, but I'm sure it must be dangerous.”

So on that basis we went ahead with it and the bill was passed on the last day of the Parliament elected in 1980. I have a clipping if the clerk would like to circulate it.

The other thing is that in my work in the procedure committee, we were always able to work very cooperatively, and a number of my ideas and a number of things you still live under are things that I accomplished in my time. For example, the infamous block system, which regulates the way committees meet and which I recognize as a problem for your committee, I originated back in 1972-73.

• 0920

I had a large hand in writing the way the cameras focus on speakers in the House of Commons and the whole regulations, how that was done.

After I was defeated in the election of 1984, the McGrath commission discovered in its research an old speech I had made in the mid-seventies calling for the establishment of a former parliamentarians association. Mr. McGrath was a member of Parliament from St. John's and he headed the procedure committee at that time. After discussions with the committee and discussions with the Speakers of the House and the Senate, I went ahead and put one together, working with all the political parties, the Social Credit, the Liberals, the Conservatives, to put together an organization that is now well under way. It is strong, has annual meetings, and I think it's doing an awful lot of things that we envisaged it would do.

One of the centrepieces is the education foundation designed to send ex-members of Parliament out to talk to universities and high schools about the Canadian political system, its structures, and how it works.

I think I've had a good working relationship with members from all sides of the House of Commons.

I think, Mr. Chairman, that's enough to start members off. I would be delighted to answer questions.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Reid.

I think you missed probably the most important thing, that I'm from northern Ontario and you're from northern Ontario. I think that's probably the most important fact of all. You have done us proud as a leading Canadian citizen.

Mr. Randy White (Langley—Abbotsford, Ref.): Welcome, Mr. Reid. You are one of a number of people this committee will be talking to as far as the job for information commissioner is concerned. I guess as the first individual we get to kind of practice up on the questions we will ask.

Did you submit an application for this job or were you approached by government? How did you get here in the first place?

Mr. John Reid: That's a very good question, and I'm not clear in my own mind. As I understand it, and subject to correction, my name was raised by the NDP and by the Conservatives as a possibility. I do not think that given my reputation with the Liberals they would ever seek to nominate me for a position like this. I think they might acquiesce but not nominate. So my nomination comes from the opposition side of the House.

Mr. Randy White: That in itself is very commendable.

Is it true that you are still a privy councillor and as such have been subject to various secrets that you must maintain and could be still— What is the status of that? I guess part of the thing I don't understand is exactly what a privy councillor is as far as the things they are knowledgeable of and the things they cannot provide the public.

Mr. John Reid: The status of Privy Council comes to you when you are sworn in. Normally in Canada it is by being a member of the federal cabinet that one gets sworn into the Privy Council. That has been extended from time to time by various prime ministers to people who are felt to be deserving. For example, provincial premiers are often sworn in to the Privy Council.

The Privy Council is divided up into a subcommittee. The subcommittee that has the secrets is known as the cabinet. When one ceases to be in the cabinet, one ceases to have any access to secrets. I have probably knowledge of things that were “secret” back in the 1970s, but I have no knowledge of any secrets of cabinet since 1979.

• 0925

My status would be the same as a provincial premier who was sworn into the Privy Council. They have no secrets either, unless they are deliberately given to them.

Mr. Randy White: So you would not think that would impede you as an information commissioner.

Mr. John Reid: In point of fact, one can argue it would help because I still have taken the oath of a privy councillor. The Privy Council would be able to show me information, technically, it could not show to anybody who was not a privy councillor. So it does expand one's ability to do things.

Mr. Randy White: There is also information that you cannot disclose.

Mr. John Reid: If you accept information on the basis of a Privy Council oath, that's correct.

On the other hand, it allows you to look at things and make a judgment as to whether they are confidential, secret, whatever.

Mr. Randy White: Were you a part of a committee at one time that opposed the expansion of the Information Act into crown corporations?

Mr. John Reid: I cannot say. I certainly was on a lot of committees. But I think the restriction that was imposed on crown corporations had to do with their commercial activities. These would be the same restrictions that would be imposed on any kind of partnership that the Government of Canada is in with a private corporation.

Mr. Randy White: How would you feel about open access to crown corporations such as AECL and CBC?

Mr. John Reid: My own judgment is that information should be made available from all government agencies. I think information should be available from a crown corporation on the same basis as any other private organization with which it competes.

Taking the CBC as an example, should it be required to provide proprietary information where its opponents, Global, CTV, do not have to? Clearly if that information has to be provided, you give an advantage to the competitors. You have to maintain a level playing field there. But having said that, I think everything else should be open.

Mr. Randy White: I want to go back to your days in the cabinet and the information you once had.

A lot of the information that is asked today of information commissioners is not necessarily current. It does go back into areas where you could have been involved. Can you give me any idea of some areas where you have been involved that we would not be able to get appropriate access to?

Mr. John Reid: There are none. The portfolio I held was federal-provincial relations. I had access to a great amount of information that at the time was secret in terms of the relationships between the federal government and the various provinces and federal strategies in terms of a number of issues. That is all obsolete at this time.

Mr. Randy White: Would you agree that this process of selection of an information commissioner should be open, accessible to any individual in Canada, advertised as though it were a regular job?

Mr. John Reid: I don't have any problems with however the committee or the people who have the job want to fill it. That's a choice for them. As a potential candidate, I would obviously be happy to go through that kind of process.

This process in itself is unique, and I believe it's the first time in the House of Commons that this process has been undertaken.

Mr. Randy White: Yes, it is, and I think it's a good process, actually. You are providing some very good answers.

The Chairman: There is an agreement by the government side to give the opposition members almost as much floor time as they would like.

• 0930

[Translation]

Ms. Jocelyne Girard-Bujold (Jonquière, BQ): Good morning, Mr. Reid. I am very glad to be able to talk to you directly today. The position you are seeking is of major importance for the Bloc Québécois as we believe that the Information Commissioner is the protector of democracy. It is very important today, in 1998, to talk about protecting our democracy.

As you will know, there are a great number of complaints. We have often found it hard to obtain access to documents under the Access to Information Act. As a candidate for this position, have you thought of any changes you would like to make to the current legislation? You said that you have always been in favour of having an effective piece of legislation. The set was passed 15 years ago; what would you like to change after that time? Would you have any constructive suggestions to make to the Privy Council for the Access to Information Act to become an essential tool for the opposition and for the survival of democracy?

[English]

Mr. John Reid: First of all, I have not spent much time studying the existing law. I have read the last three reports of the information commissioner. There is a 10-year report by the information commissioner that recommends significant changes to the law to improve the openness of the system and to provide additional powers to the information commissioner.

That report is in the hands of Parliament at the present time. The law also provides that there is a permanent committee to look at issues raised by the information commissioner. I think that is unique in Canadian law. I would want to push the changes for the law because I believe that after 15 years any law has to be amended and has to be changed. Any time you bring forward a law, it changes people's behaviour so that sometimes they conform to the law but they also find ways to avoid the law that were not thought of before.

I think you have to continually go back to make sure the principle of the law, the free flow of information to all citizens of Canada, is enhanced and improved and that amendments we bring forward have that in mind.

We live in what is called an information society, but the heartblood of an information society is content, information, and you have to get that kind of material out. We not only have to deal with the information that governments hold, but we also have to begin to focus on information held by private sector corporations, which also affects us. But I think the first priority has to be to focus on our existing laws and to expand them if possible.

While I was a member of Parliament, I spent a lot of time dealing with information. I found that if I could get the information, no cabinet minister could take me on because I would be better prepared than he would be and I could be better prepared than his officials. So I understand precisely your point. I agree with it.

[Translation]

Ms. Jocelyne Girard-Bujold: Mr. Reid, I did not know you before coming to ask you these questions. When we learned that your name had been submitted to the committee as a candidate for the position of information commissioner, I started to look for information about you. Some little things caused me some concern and I would like to ask you some questions. I think that we are here to have a frank discussion.

• 0935

You are certainly aware that past actions can influence the present. We should look at everything to ease whatever concerns we might have. It is important for me to tell you all this. I am wondering about the scandal you were involved with as a parliamentary secretary in the Liberal federal government in 1974. What lesson did you learn from the scandal in which you were accused?

[English]

Mr. John Reid: Yes, the so-called scandal was an accusation levelled against me by the newspaper, the Montreal Gazette.

The accusation was that I had stolen budget secrets from Mr. Turner's budget. As a result of that, the question was referred to the Standing Committee on Privileges and Elections, and that committee held hearings for about six months. It probably cost me an opportunity to go into cabinet at that time.

At the conclusion of the hearings, after hearing from everybody there was to hear from, the committee concluded that there was no evidence that I had had access to cabinet secrets and they felt the Montreal Gazette, if memory serves me correctly, had not operated as a newspaper should, and that disposed of the issue.

So there was an accusation. I was tried by my peers in a parliamentary committee. There was no evidence that anything had happened, and the question was dealt with in that way.

[Translation]

Ms. Jocelyne Girard-Bujold: As you have held political offices, including some very important ones when you were directly affiliated with the Privy Council—and what is more private than the Privy Council?—what would you do as Information Commissioner to make the Privy Council less private and more democratic?

[English]

Mr. John Reid: I think the point of the Privy Council is that you have to look at it as the secretariat of the Prime Minister. That is basically its function.

Look at it as the office of the Prime Minister and look upon it as the nerve centre of government bureaucracy.

I think one of the objects when you pass legislation is to change people's approach to things. The idea of legislation is to make a change, and I think what we have to do is change the public service so that they have the idea that what they write should be made available immediately to people.

One of the good things that has happened in terms of dissemination of information has been the development of the worldwide web. I have spent some time going through the Government of Canada website, and there is an astonishing variety of information that is now being made available that in my time was not available, but the technology has changed.

We know there is a human tendency to keep information to ourselves. It is a human tendency. It is also an organizational tendency, and I think one of the jobs of the information commissioner and one of the jobs of parliamentary committees is to keep battering away against this human desire for exclusivity of information and to insist that any information they have, if it doesn't come into conflict with the privacy commissioner, should be made available on demand to citizens.

In many cases a lot of things should be published automatically on the web, just to make sure there is no feeling of secrecy.

There are a lot of things governments can do in that way to give information that citizens want and need. I believe there is an opportunity here to expand in a large way, because we have reached the point where you will have a new information commissioner, you have a very good report from the outgoing information commissioner, and you have parliamentary committees that are charged with the responsibility.

• 0940

I think the opportunity now is to make a push with the rest of this Parliament to update those laws and to put them into place for the new government coming in after the next election. I think that would be a major contribution this Parliament could make.

The Chairman: Thank you Mr. Reid. Thank you, Jocelyne. We can come back to you, if time permits, and I am sure there will be some time.

We are going to go to Miss Grey. I know Jerry will let me know if they have any questions.

Deborah, please proceed.

Miss Deborah Grey: Thank you very much, Brent. I am looking forward to the series of questions from the government side.

I also would like to welcome you, on behalf of the official opposition. I assume and certainly hope that there is a long list of people who will be interviewed. As you know, this is an enormous job and I know there are some applications.

I might ask you, Mr. Chairman, how many applications have you received for this position?

The Chairman: Actually, it is not in my capacity to receive applications. All I have done is received requests from the House leader. I am in the House leader's hands on this matter.

Miss Deborah Grey: All right.

John, you were referring to this so-called leak—and leak was the word you used—back in the 1970s. We all know how sometimes things get out of hand when we hear rumours and read newspaper stories. You said you were tried by your peers in the committee because there was an accusation against you and because there was “no evidence, everything was dropped”. Is that correct?

Mr. John Reid: Yes, there was no evidence. I didn't do it.

The actual accusation, by the way, was that there was a proposal to increase taxes on outboard motors. Coming from Kenora—Rainy River, where there was a large tourist industry and where everybody had an outboard motor, I was supposed to have leaked this information to my constituents.

Miss Deborah Grey: Of course we are all subject to that, but you did not take the cabinet documents.

Mr. John Reid: No, there were no cabinet documents. It was a budget. It came out of Mr. Turner's budget.

Miss Deborah Grey: Yes.

Mr. John Reid: Nobody in the cabinet gets to see the budget documents.

Miss Deborah Grey: Of course history would tell you that the Doug Small affair in the budget of 1989—

Mr. John Reid: Well, that was—

Miss Deborah Grey: That was, of course, after that. But to say that budgets don't get leaked would be pure fiction.

It is getting awfully close to the turn of the century. It does happen. It can happen, obviously.

Mr. John Reid: One should look at it from the point of view that very often budgets are leaked by ministers.

Miss Deborah Grey: Yes.

Mr. John Reid: That seems to be acceptable, but they can't be leaked by anybody else.

Miss Deborah Grey: There we are.

So you did not leak it.

Mr. John Reid: I did not.

Miss Deborah Grey: There we are.

I was also interested in the fact that you said it was the NDP and the Tories who suggested your name for this position. I think that is good too. I think it is great to work in a non-partisan atmosphere.

I guess my question to you is, why did you come? Do you have a burning desire to be the information commissioner?

Mr. John Reid: Yes.

Miss Deborah Grey: If that is the case, and I admire you for that, why didn't you apply? You have seen the newspapers vis-à-vis the leaving of one commissioner, the recommendation of another, who, for all kinds of reasons, didn't end up in the job. If that is a burning desire that means so much to you, and I can see by your curriculum vitae that it is, why didn't you apply?

Mr. John Reid: I didn't think it would be possible for me to become information commissioner. Quite frankly, I never had an idea that the job was open in the way in which it has turned out to be open. Quite frankly, when I received a call from one of the parties that told me they had put my name in the hopper, so to speak, I kind of laughed, because with my reputation within the Liberal party I didn't think there was any possible way that my name could come forward.

It was not anything I conceived, but it was a job that I had sort of wanted because I was there at the birthing. I pride myself as being one of the parents of the Access to Information Act. I certainly put 10 years' effort into trying to get it to move forward. And there is a certain amount of my writing that is in the existing act.

So you always want to go back to see how it turned out and you would like to participate in making it a success.

Miss Deborah Grey: Yes.

Now, I understand this is a five-year term.

The Chairman: I believe so.

• 0945

Miss Deborah Grey: They are always subject to review and extension.

I notice here that you were born in 1937. Do you have a larger desire to go golfing or to have some fun with family, other than tying yourself down? You know this is not a part-time job. Are you prepared for the rigours, the hassles, and the fights you obviously would get involved in with people who do not want to give information to you?

Mr. John Reid: I have never walked away from a good fight. I have always found them quite invigorating. I don't have any great desire to retire. I am in very good health.

You can see from my CV that I spent a year in Bosnia and Herzegovina organizing elections. I spent another four or five months with the United Nations. I was offered an opportunity to spend nine months in Cambodia running enforcement for the election process. I turned that down because of family reasons.

I would be looking at going elsewhere. I am a person who likes to work and I get a great deal of enjoyment from my work. I must say that I have workaholic habits, but I think I acquired them after I became a member of Parliament. If you are not a workaholic, you won't survive.

Miss Deborah Grey: I see from your resume, as well, that you reside in Ottawa, so your family is close by.

Mr. John Reid: My family is here, yes.

Miss Deborah Grey: That is always a bit of a shock for anyone, that they might have to spend some of their time in Ottawa. So it is good if you have that one worked out already.

Mr. John Reid: Yes.

Miss Deborah Grey: I have one last question, Mr. Chairman.

I see also from your CV that from 1990 to 1995 you were the president of the Canadian Nuclear Association. As the previous head of that nuclear association—and I will just ask for a yes or no—do you support the sale of CANDU reactors?

Mr. John Reid: Yes.

Miss Deborah Grey: You can understand the situation in which we find ourselves now with some of the things that have been happening with respect to the sale of CANDU reactors. We have access to information requests on this and we have not been able to get the information we are requesting. It has been very slow in coming.

If you were to be hired in this position, would you find yourself in a bit of a conflict of interest situation there?

Mr. John Reid: No. When I was in charge of the Canadian Nuclear Association my primary duties were to run an information program about nuclear energy, because the industry recognized that there was uncertainty in society about nuclear energy and how it works. We ran an information program and it was really quite successful.

Within the industry there is a belief that a lot of this material has to come out. I don't know what the requests are that you have made on nuclear energy, but I don't see any conflict. Most of the technology is open. Everybody knows what it is. You can pick it all off the Internet, so they can't be technological problems. They must obviously have to do with business dealings, in which case, again, my view is that they should be made as open as possible, so long as they don't interfere with the commercial competitiveness of your Canadian companies.

Miss Deborah Grey: Do you find it passing strange that it was the NDP who recommended you for this job with their views on environmental activism?

Mr. John Reid: No. I go back to what I said before about my reputation as a maverick and my difficulties within my own party. I had difficulties with other parties too, of course, but I always fought in an honourable way. I always respected my opponents and we always got along. As I said, I have done a great many things with members of all political parties to make sure things took place.

No, I am not surprised. The members of Parliament who were around when I was there would have remembered that I was very active in this particular dossier and that I was very vocal in terms of trying to get it out. I found in my own life as a backbencher, and I spent most of my time on the back bench, that information was power. It was how I was able to accomplish the things I wished to accomplish. So I am well aware of the importance of it.

Miss Deborah Grey: Good, thanks.

The Chairman: Thank you, Miss Grey.

We will proceed with Mr. Gilles Bernier and then Angela Vautour is next.

Mr. Gilles Bernier (Tobique—Mactaquac, PC): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

• 0950

Thank you for coming here today to answer our questions. So far, a lot of good questions have been asked, and I respect your answers.

I have only two simple questions. You know and I know that as information commissioner you would be an officer of Parliament. Are there any unique aspects to this office that a parliamentarian is able to bring to this office?

Mr. John Reid: Yes, there are.

As an officer of Parliament it really helps if one knows the political system, if one knows how politicians act, if one knows what parliamentarians' needs are, and I think I bring a unique perspective to serving the House of Commons.

The idea behind making this position a parliamentary commissioner was to insulate as much as possible the position from the civil service to give it independence, and particularly to give it power. If an information commissioner uses the power of the members of Parliament and the power of the committees correctly, that can make him much more effective in getting information out of the system. That is a very important aspect of it.

As one who spent 20 years in the House of Commons, 21 years on the Hill, I would be honoured with such a position. It would be a culmination of a parliamentary career, and I did spend a great deal of my time serving Parliament in all of the technical aspects, in terms of making it work in the procedural committees, the privileges and elections committee and what not.

Mr. Gilles Bernier: That is why my party proposed your name. It was one of the reasons. That shows that our party plays in a non-partisan way, being that we are Conservatives and you are a Liberal.

Having said that, the current information law was passed before the age of computers. What impact has that had, and how does the law need to be changed? Today there are almost no paper files.

Mr. John Reid: That's right. When we were creating the act, and this is from memory now, we did put something in about machine-readable files. One would have to go back and look at that definition to see whether or not it has expanded enough or can be expanded to take into account all of the electronic messaging that now goes on.

In the olden days it used to be that debate within the system was largely carried on by the exchange of memoranda between departments, individuals, and what not. But now, increasingly, a lot of it is done by e-mail and a lot is done by just moving it over networks.

I think one of the things one would want to do is to go back and take a look at that aspect, because it has altered the way in which content is moved about through the system.

Mr. Gilles Bernier: This is my last question, Mr. Chairman, and it is very brief.

If you are selected to become the information commissioner, would you try to speed up the process so that it would take less time for a member of Parliament to get the information, which is sometimes required very quickly?

Mr. John Reid: Mr. Chairman, my answer is that things should have speeded up significantly because of computerization.

Mr. Gilles Bernier: But they have not.

Mr. John Reid: The fact is that once a department goes to a proper indexation system, for its documentation and for its information, and once the documents are in electronic form, then the process of being able to get information out ought to be much more speedy. Secondly, it ought to be cost effective. It ought to be cheaper than it was before.

I think there is a very significant plus side to the technology.

Mr. Gilles Bernier: Thank you very much.

The Chairman: Thank you, Gilles. Thank you, Mr. Reid.

We are going to go to Angela, but we will go to Randy White first, as he has to leave.

Mr. Randy White: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I apologize, Mr. Reid. I have to go to another meeting, but I must say that I have interviewed several hundred people in my day, and we have had a very good interview here. I think the other candidates who will come before us will have a job a head of them. Thank you very much.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. White.

Ms. Vautour, please.

Ms. Angela Vautour (Beauséjour—Petitcodiac, NDP): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Reid.

I also have to be out of here in about three minutes, so I will have to do this quickly. I have a feeling that I am going to sit with Bill and he is going to give me an earful, because he speaks very highly of you.

• 0955

We had a lot of questions, but they have all been asked, so I have added another one.

How would you go about bringing changes? I know you mentioned different reports, but how would you really go about making changes with all the difficulties we are seeing in different departments?

I have to add that I actually worked with access to information also, during my time with Veterans Affairs, giving information to relatives. I think it went fairly smoothly at that time, but I have encountered difficulties, especially if you are talking about Revenue Canada, taxation, appeals for insurability on unemployment insurance. Employees can't get their whole file, although they have to go before the court, and the government has the whole file. I can't imagine what is in an EI file, a personnel file, that is so delicate that the employee can't get it in order to prepare for a taxation court hearing. That is just one example of many, I am sure.

How would you go about making sure it goes down the line? I think there is a need for review, not only to say we have a report and we are going to try to implement it, but how are you going to implement it?

Mr. John Reid: I think what we have to do is to take the list of non-performing departments and start really putting pressure on them. I think the information commissioner, using the committees of the House of Commons, because he has a special relationship with them, can really start doing things.

One of the things I would undertake to do would be, when the estimates of a department go before the relevant parliamentary committee, to provide that committee with a series of questions on that department's behaviour in terms of providing information.

I think the strongest weapon we have is to use the House of Commons and to use the committees to attack the ministers, to ensure that these requirements of the act are met.

The information commissioner does have the ability to go to court, and you can do that, but it is far better if we can attack them from the court and attack them from the political side. That is one way that I would like to go after them.

I haven't really given much thought to many of these things, but that is my instinctive reaction, to take advantage of the fact that the information commissioner is an officer of Parliament.

The other thing is that in a court of law, if I am accused, the prosecution has to tell me what they have. It is odd that in administrative law, when it comes to taxation and a whole range of things, governments don't have to obey this fundamental requirement of the criminal law. I think that is something we should look at, ensuring changes in the law.

Ms. Angela Vautour: Yes, it goes to the point that if the file is already transferred to Ottawa before you make the request, you are not going to get a copy of it all.

Mr. John Reid: But the fact of the matter is that most of that material is in electronic form, it can be scanned in, and it can be sent out to you at very little cost.

Ms. Angela Vautour: I guess that is what I was getting at. There is a need to really go right down the line and do a lot of fine tuning. The timing also needs to be considered.

Mr. John Reid: The timing is very important.

Ms. Angela Vautour: There are certainly a lot of problems with the turnaround time. It is a serious problem.

Mr. John Reid: Yes.

Ms. Angela Vautour: I have to run. The bell is ringing. I want to thank you again for your presentation.

Mr. John Reid: Thank you.

The Chairman: Thank you, Angela. Thank you, Mr. Reid.

We are going to move to Mr. Epp and then I am going to go back to Jocelyne.

Mr. Ken Epp (Elk Island, Ref.): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am rather intrigued by the fact that government members have no questions. You would think they would be most interested in making sure—

The Chairman: We want to give you lots of time.

Mr. Gerry Byrne (Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, Lib.): A point of order, Mr. Chairman. I have a lot of questions. I would be happy to take your time.

Mr. Ken Epp: All right. I thought they hadn't asked.

The Chairman: I think they were trying to be accommodating.

Mr. Ken Epp: That's great. I appreciate that.

Mr. Reid, I would also like to thank you for coming here. I think this is a good process and I hope it will set the tone for the future, as my colleagues have already said.

The order of the day for this committee is sort of a euphemism for a job interview. I will read it. It says “Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), an examination of the role of the Information Commissioner as it relates to the operations of Government”.

• 1000

So what we are supposed to do is ask you how your role as a potential information commissioner would affect the operations of government, and of course we are very interested in that.

I would like to ask you a couple of questions. First of all, you were a member of Parliament for how many years in total?

Mr. John Reid: I was elected in 1965 and defeated in 1984.

Mr. Ken Epp: And you won every election in between?

Mr. John Reid: I did.

Mr. Ken Epp: How many was that in a row?

Mr. John Reid: Six.

Mr. Ken Epp: Six in a row. That's commendable.

During that time did you ever serve in opposition?

Mr. John Reid: Yes.

Mr. Ken Epp: What was that like, compared to being in government?

Mr. John Reid: I didn't find that there was actually much difference. There were cabinet ministers I could fight with and there were my colleagues I could fight with.

I found that in opposition what one was working on were policy issues. That is what politics in many ways is all about: policy issues, content issues.

I found that when you were advocating a cause you needed a certain amount of information, but there is quite a dissemination of information in terms of issues.

What I found in opposition was that we were more structured in many ways than we were on the government side. Question period, which was the point of contact, was highly choreographed by the House leaders.

We thought when we got to opposition that we were going to be in there and we were going to have a lot of flexibility and freedom and what not, and it turned out that in many ways we were more disciplined than when we were on the other side. Having said that, I enjoyed my experience in my opposition.

Mr. Ken Epp: I want to ask about your experience in opposition. Do you recall having any disappointments, challenges, with respect to getting information vis-à-vis government operations at that time?

Mr. John Reid: We always had frustration in terms of that. Even if you were on the government side you couldn't get information on a whole range of things.

We learned very quickly how to use the parliamentary committees to cause enormous amounts of embarrassment. At one time we used to get the estimates for about three months. We would get them about March 1 to about the end of June. We made a number of changes in the standing orders to give us more power.

One of them was that the government knew that at a certain date the axe came down, so all it had to do was tough it out and not give us anything, stonewall us, and it was free. We then changed the standing orders so that the estimates could actually be called at any time of the year. That gave us much more flexibility to cause agony to ministers and to departments. And it still works.

That is when we invented the idea, which came from Jed Baldwin, of opposition days. We stacked them all up in May and June to put the maximum heat on the government so that we could use those days to attract attention to the issues that we were dealing with, both in terms of substance and in terms of getting information.

Mr. Ken Epp: From your present knowledge of the act and also the commissioner's role, what one part would have the highest priority for change for you?

Mr. John Reid: There are two issues that have struck me, and I say this without having done any deep study at all. I have been struck by the idea that government documents have been destroyed. I think there should be significant penalties for anybody who destroys government documents because those documents don't belong to the individuals; they belong to all of us as citizens of Canada. I think that is very, very important.

The other thing that I look at are the tremendous costs to the citizens when the information commissioner goes to court to get documents, because the taxpayer is paying the costs of the information commissioner—

Mr. Ken Epp: Both sides.

Mr. John Reid: —and he is paying the costs of the department to defend it. In many cases I suspect that we are not dealing with issues of high principle.

I think a significant change would be to give additional powers to the information commissioner to determine what documents should be released, unless there is a case of principle, in which case it should go before the courts.

Mr. Ken Epp: Let's talk about a few principles. I would ask for your response to some explicit examples.

• 1005

Let's say a minister of the crown uses a credit card for private purchases, claiming that because they are private purchases they are now private information and therefore not subject to disclosure. Would you as a commissioner rule against that and say putting it on a public credit card makes it public information and now we are going to publicize it?

Mr. John Reid: I think that just as the members of Parliament have to disclose all their travel expenses and all expenses they incur under their various allowances, that should apply to everybody else as well.

Mr. Ken Epp: But my question specifically was this. Say an individual used the credit card for personal things and then whited it out on an access to information. Having made the personal purchase, the person claimed that now it was exempt because it was personal, whereas the other argument is that it's public because it's on a public credit card. How would you rule?

Mr. John Reid: I have not considered that and I can't give you a ruling unless I think about it, but the Privacy Act protects individuals from privacy. I have done this before in my private life when I made a private purchase on a corporate credit card. As long as I was reimbursed, it was then an individual issue. If it had not been reimbursed, then I think it should be disclosed.

Mr. Ken Epp: Okay. But having put it on a public credit card, should not both the credit card statements and the record of reimbursement be made public for accountability purposes?

Mr. John Reid: My accountant certainly has caused me a lot of problems from time to time. He's basically said you should not mix the two. And maybe it's a good discipline. But that would be a question to be worked out. I have no problem with making any expenditures of any government official available for perusement. That's the way it should be. I think if we said that, nobody would make private purchases on a public credit card. You would end the problem.

Mr. Ken Epp: Okay. By the present rules crown corporations are generally not subject to access to information. I'm thinking specifically of organizations like the wheat board. As a person who is ready now to be a commissioner for openness and accountability, would you favour pressing for changes so that information on these crown corporations would also be accessible? For example, there is some sensitive material, commercial sensitivity, which I suppose we would want to keep secret maybe for four or five years, but when it comes to things like remuneration for board members who are politically appointed, should that be made available to the public?

Mr. John Reid: I would say that anything not sensitive to the competitive position of a crown corporation should be made public.

Mr. Ken Epp: You would agree with that.

Mr. John Reid: This is a general principle that should be applied, because even private corporations disclose what board members get in terms of remuneration, and I don't understand why a crown corporation can't follow normal corporate practice.

Mr. Ken Epp: I'm going to put you on an accountability spot right now.

If you look at the sign here, this is being broadcast and it means it's on the public record. In the event that you are successful in the application of all the applicants seeking this job, now this is going to be on your record and we will hold you accountable for two, three, four years from now. You have very strong Liberal connections. It's quite obvious. You were a Liberal MP, a Liberal cabinet minister, and all these things, notwithstanding that the claim is made here that some of the opposition parties have suggested your name.

How will you keep your partisanship and your almost built-in reaction to protect your colleagues out of your position as impartial commissioner for privacy information?

Mr. John Reid: If I am made information commissioner, my boss will be the House of Commons and the Senate. My operating manual will be the acts of Parliament that apply, and you can be sure that I will enforce those to the best of my ability.

• 1010

Given the very rapid turnover of politicians in the House of Commons, 40% per election, I don't think there are more than ten in the House of Commons on all sides from when I was last here in 1994. There's been a significant shift and I don't have what one might call the emotional relationships that were there. Again, if you go back, my relationships with my party, with the government, were pretty stormy because I had my own ideas as to what should be done and I was prepared to fight for them.

Mr. Ken Epp: But John Reid Consultants, is that not a lobby firm that deals with the government?

Mr. John Reid: It deals with the government and with others.

Mr. Ken Epp: So you have kept some pretty close relationships?

Mr. John Reid: No. Most of the work I do is with civil servants. Some work is done with members of Parliament.

Mr. Ken Epp: I suppose we could let you off the hook in terms of protecting the Liberals in the sense that you may be defending their right to access to information while they are in opposition. That could happen too.

Mr. John Reid: Remember that sometimes the most frustrated people are cabinet ministers who can't get the information they want from their officials. From the point of view of running an organization, getting accurate information out of your employees is very difficult, privately, corporately, and in governments as well.

Mr. Ken Epp: This is more rhetorical than anything, but I'm amazed that you want the job, because as a longstanding MP, I presume you have a cost-indexed MP pension, which you will be required to give up in order to take this job. I would think you are probably taking some sort of financial hit to do it, so I'm really surprised that you want the job. I don't expect you to comment on that if you don't want to.

Mr. John Reid: Let me give you a rhetorical answer. What I really want to do in my life is things that are interesting, challenging, and that stretch me, and this meets those criteria.

[Translation]

Ms. Jocelyne Girard-Bujold: Mr. Reid, I think that you must have been a good parliamentarian, because the voters in your riding elected you six times. You have a very impressive curriculum vitae. However, I want to go a bit beyond that. The more we listen to you speak, the more we get to know you, and I would like to know more about you.

I do not know whether or not you are bilingual. However, I must know whether you feel it is important that the information commissioner be knowledgeable in both Canada's official languages. If you are not bilingual, do you think that this could interfere with your contacts with the members of Parliament who ask you for information under the Access to Information Act?

Mr. John Reid: My children, who are bilingual, tell me that I really mangle the French language. This question is very important. Under the Act, it is the office which is bilingual and not necessarily the officials. The Office of the Information Commissioner is made up of bilingual employees. For myself, I have some knowledge of the French language, but I don't claim to speak well. I admit that it is a problem, but I have taken many French courses and I am still taking lessons.

Ms. Jocelyne Girard-Bujold: Earlier, you did not give a complete answer to my first and third questions. You said that members of the opposition had phoned to tell you that they had suggested your name for the position of Information Commissioner. I believe that this is a good thing because these people know you. You also said that you did not know that you could have submitted your own candidacy.

In addition to all that, I would like to know, since you did not answer me, what changes you would like to make, why you want to obtain this position, what your purpose is and what you will do to make information more easily available. As you are aware, members of Parliament find it very hard to obtain information.

• 1015

I want to be sure that you have some ideas and that you will do what is necessary for parliamentarians to have all the information they need. As you say, competition can be an issue and I respect that, but in all other cases, what will you do? Even if you tell me that technological changes— As you know, there is more than technological change involved. We need access to the information we are entitled to have to do our job properly.

[English]

Mr. John Reid: I think there are three things that are concrete. First, I know there is a series of recommendations that have been made by the outgoing commissioner to improve the act. Those are now before a parliamentary committee by law. I will certainly undertake to ensure those are proceeded with in so far as I can convince the relevant parliamentary committees to proceed with them as much as possible.

I think an act that has been around as long as this one, 15 years, has to be renewed. I have confidence in the previous administration that it made recommendations that would strengthen the act and strengthen the position of the information commissioner.

The first thing I want to do is make sure that happens. A more powerful act gives more power to parliamentarians. It gives power to the information commissioner to give more information from the government to citizens. That's the first thing I would do.

The second thing I would do is deal as constructively as I can with all those departments that are on the existing list as not performing. In other words, there are about six or seven departments that are not very good at providing information. I think one has to focus the energies of the information commissioner's office on those departments to ensure as best as possible their performance comes up to the norm. I think that's very important.

The third thing I want to do, and it will be more of a long term, is look at the culture of the public service. In many ways the law is designed to change the culture, and I knew what it was back in 1970 when I started on my journey into information. We will have to look at that culture in the public service and the culture as it exists now and see what other changes we can negotiate and enforce to make sure it becomes a matter of course within the public service to make information readily available.

I have an immediate goal, which is to ensure we move forward with the existing recommendations. I have an intermediate goal to ensure we go after the departments that are not working. I have a long-range goal to try to work on changing the culture of the government—long range and a very tough.

Ms. Jocelyne Girard-Bujold: That's a big job for you.

Mr. Gerry Byrne: Thank you, Mr. Reid, for appearing before this committee.

You have demonstrated that you have strong opinions about the performance of the enactment of the Access to Information Act and the Privacy Act. You have outlined to the committee specific areas where you would like to see performance improved. You have also expressed to the committee that you have certain strong opinions about weaknesses within the system as it exists today. You also mentioned that you have read the previous three reports of the information commissioner.

It would stem from that that you have an opinion about the performance of the previous information commissioner. Would you be able to critique his performance and provide analysis to the committee of why you feel that way?

Mr. John Reid: That's very difficult for me to do because I have not made a large study of this. It goes back to the question that was asked by the previous questioner of how I was nominated. Quite frankly, I didn't know I was nominated until I got a call from the privy council office to ask me to come to this meeting today. That was only two days ago.

• 1020

I knew that my name was in play and I knew it had been put in by the Conservatives and the NDP, but I had no idea whether that would fly politically because I don't have very many connections with the Liberal Party in terms of this kind of thing. So I did not go into any depth.

I think Mr. Grace did a formidable job in organizing the office. I think he used the weapons in his hands very well. In an anecdotal way I had been told by individuals that they had been able to get information out of the government that they did not expect to get. For example, a friend of mine who has an interest in security asked for some security documents. He was refused. Mr. Grace's office took up the issue. He said he got about 85% of the stuff he was looking for, including some stuff that perhaps he should not have received. So I put that down as a win system and an acknowledgement that the system can work.

The criticism I have is that we have not yet been able to move the public service to a period of cooperation so that information is made readily available. With the techniques we have available, the indexing systems, the electronic systems, it ought to be able to improve performance dramatically.

Mr. Gerry Byrne: Thank you very much. You mentioned moments ago that an individual received information he should probably not have received.

Mr. John Reid: That was his opinion.

Mr. Gerry Byrne: As an elected representative for Kenora—Rainy River, your function was to serve the best interests of your constituents, which I'm sure was a significant factor in why you were not always 100% in tune or in sync with the governments or the party position at that time. The information commissioner is an officer of Parliament and the function is not to serve a particular constituency but to enact legislation and the will of Parliament.

It strikes me that one of the things you focused on during our discussions is that you see inadequacies within the act as it exists currently. This act was instituted by Parliament. How do you balance the requirement to serve Parliament with what some may view as a cause or as a crusade to change the system that you would be sworn to serve?

Mr. John Reid: I think as an officer of Parliament I have two constituencies. The first constituency would be of course members of Parliament. The second constituency are the citizens of Canada. The citizens of Canada own the Government of Canada and should have a right to the information the Government of Canada has.

Members of Parliament represent those citizens and they should have a right to the information that government has.

The act goes on to say that these are the exceptions. Within those exceptions that information ought to flow freely.

One of the things Parliament will want to do is look at those exceptions. The act is actually old now, 15 years old. We have to look at that act in terms of what changes should be made to bring it into the future and we have to look from a second point of view. A good starting place would be the recommendations of the previous commissioner.

Mr. Gerry Byrne: In the effort to change the act and to change legislation and get Parliament to rescind or amend the legislation, the old acts, the Privacy Act and the Access to Information Act, would still be in force. Would you see it as your role to strictly enforce the content of the existing Access to Information Act and the Privacy Act or would you see your role more to be interpretive?

• 1025

Mr. John Reid: I think it's my role to enforce the act as it is. It is up to the courts to interpret. There are powers given to the information commissioner to take issues where he feels the government is not providing information to court to seek a final interpretation of what the act does. That gives you how far you can expand the words in the act.

The job is clearly to enforce the act that Parliament has given to the information commissioner. Where there is doubt, one goes to the court. Where one feels there should be changes, one returns to Parliament to seek legislative changes.

Mr. Gerry Byrne: How useful is the use of precedent in terms of any information commissioner's decision to go to court, to seek a judgment on a particular interpretative matter, in terms of past information commissioners?

Mr. John Reid: It is the way to keep legislation somewhat current, the use of precedent. But precedent will only take you so far. It allows for certain kinds of expansion of various aspects of the act. If you want to make a breakthrough, you have to go back and look at the act itself. You have to also look not only at the restrictions within the information commissioner's act, the Freedom of Information Act, but at the relationship of that act with the Privacy Act and with other acts that come within the ambient as well. Those are the questions you have to look at.

I think we do have a good working document that comes from the current information commissioner, his 10-year report with his recommendations as to what changes should be made.

Mr. Gerry Byrne: Could you describe for this committee in your view the balance between the Privacy Act and the Access to Information Act and your thoughts on how the two mix?

Mr. John Reid: There should be a tension between the two acts. There is a whole range of information that should remain private and confidential. For example, why should you see my correspondence with my government? It's between the government and me. But there is public correspondence that should be released, and there is a point in the middle perhaps where there is a conflict and tension. So there will always be the conflict between the rights of individuals, the rights of organizations, and the rights of us all to have information.

The example given by the representative of the NDP was what happens to personnel files, what happens to my unemployment insurance file. Surely there should be privacy for that. But at the same time there can be a conflict when that file may have some relevance to some other issue. These are questions of judgment, and that's why there is a privacy commissioner as well as an information commissioner, because there is a tension, and I think there's an appropriate tension between the two.

Mr. Gerry Byrne: Thank you very much.

Mr. Jerry Pickard (Kent—Essex, Lib.): Mr. Reid, I thank you for coming to the committee. I believe it's been a very interesting exercise this morning.

I noted that you have more of an adversarial view of your job in certain respects, and certainly you focused very much on the bureaucracy and movement of information through the bureaucracy as a major concern.

You have been a member of Parliament and have seen how the system operates internally. You obviously have clearly studied the acts involved with regard to the commissioner's job. From your statements you very strongly suggest the commissioner should be more empowered than presently exists. We have kind of skirted around a lot of suggestions that the commissioner needs more power, does not need to go to courts on challenges, the types of things that are there, but that seems to be the only recourse.

What would you do to change the role of the commissioner or recommend changes to the role of the commissioner at this point with respect to the act and with respect to your function within the act?

• 1030

Mr. John Reid: I want to make crystal clear that I have not done a study of the act and I have not done a great study of the documents involved. So it's very difficult for me to give categoric answers.

One of the battles you have to deal with is the natural battle that people, individuals, and organizations have to get information and to hold it to themselves. Knowledge is power. People feel that if they have to share their knowledge or give their knowledge they will lose power and influence. You can see this taking place all through the civil service where you have departments discussing issues from a very adversarial point of view.

When I was running federal-provincial relations, the relationships we had with the provinces were much better than the relationships that existed between many departments. It was all over this question of information being power.

So to be successful in this job you have to be prepared to enter into argument and discussion, you have to do it in a reasonable and sensible way, and you have to use what tools Parliament has given you.

I'm very keen on the idea of a cultural change within the public service. There is a certain transformation going on now under the direction of the clerk of the Privy Council. I would like to be able to add this issue to those changes going through.

I think we have to also recognize there are areas where the act is out of date and there are areas where we have to examine the powers of the commissioner and the restrictions on the powers of the commissioner, because those were written when the act was put into place for the first time. When you do an act for the first time you are very cautious in how you structure it and you are very cautious in the powers you provide. You tend to be overly cautious in the restrictions you impose on the system.

To make a change in an act that strikes at the heart of modern information society means you have to be prepared to be aggressive and to do battle. I'm prepared to do those things because I recognize that one is dealing with a very human desire to maintain control over information and flows of information. It will not be given up easily.

Mr. Jerry Pickard: It appears you are discussing a point of attitude within the operation of our civil service. Is there anything in your mind outside of strengthening the power of somebody to come in and drop a hammer? Is there anything that you can see from your point of view that would improve the attitude of exchanging information, of sharing concepts between departments?

I noted earlier that you suggested even ministers get frustrated when department people will not share full information with them. I guess at that very point we have to ask, why the attitude, and what can be done to change it. You will be in a position of examining that very carefully as a commissioner.

Mr. John Reid: I don't want anything I've said about this human desire to maintain control over information to be exclusively charged against the civil service. That's not true. It applies throughout all knowledge industries, into all organizations. It's a human desire. The civil service has it as much as anybody else. In the end you have to change the norms of an organization so that it becomes the thing to do. You don't hide it, you expose it. You don't keep it, you give it away. By giving it away you become more powerful; you become more authoritative.

• 1035

The norms of most organizations work the other way. What I am saying you can find in any treatise in management from anywhere. This is a disease that affects all of us and it affects all organizations.

You have to be able to work with the people involved to make those changes in the systems. You have to be able to work, at the same time, to make sure that the flow of information continues. You have to use what tools you have in place.

As long as information is not free flowing, it is not coming out the way it should. Then the commissioner has to be very aggressive to make sure that happens. He has to work, on the one hand, as hard as he can to use the tools and the power he has. At the same time he has to be out there trying to convince people to change their behaviour. It is a fascinating challenge.

Mr. Jerry Pickard: Thank you very much.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Pickard.

We are going to go overtime a bit, in the interest of information. Miss Grey, and then Ovid has a question.

Miss Deborah Grey: Apparently there is a government motion on the floor to move to Orders of the Day, so there will be a 30-minute bell. Perhaps you will be saved by the bell.

We have really enjoyed having you here today.

Gerry Byrne had an excellent question about the offices of the privacy versus the information commissioner, and you said there should be a good, healthy tension there, which is also excellent.

Could you tell me if you think it is wise to combine those two offices?

Mr. John Reid: No. I think it would put whoever held those two offices in considerable tension, under conflict of interest, and I think it is healthy for the system to have this constant debate.

Miss Deborah Grey: Are you aware that there is a movement afoot to combine these two offices? It could affect your career, sir.

Mr. John Reid: It could indeed.

I would be opposed on the grounds that I have given.

I can recall when we were having these debates that we recognized at the time, when we were in committee, that you could not have an information commissioner without having a privacy commissioner. The two, simply, were both wings of the same airplane. You needed both to fly, but again, there had to be a certain tension.

Miss Deborah Grey: Yes, there certainly is a danger, and I am sure there is real concern. I think it would be foolish. I happen to agree with you that if you are going to have a wingless plane, or both of them on one side of the aircraft, it is simply not going to fly. I appreciate that balance that you mention.

You were in Parliament for a long, long time. Of course in the early 1970s the government brought in the Official Languages Act. Could you tell me how you voted on that? Was that one of your maverick moments?

Mr. John Reid: No. I was a keen supporter. Before that came into being I had organized to put my children into the French school system, and my children are all highly bilingual. I myself was one of the best students, attending all of the classes that were offered.

When I grew up we were taught by the school system to read French. I didn't hear spoken French until I went to university. In those days we had to take two or three years of French. The professor that I had was a man by the name of Armand Laflèche. My first year at university I got 51 in French. The second year I got 52 in French. I appeared at his class for third-year French and he looked at me and said:

[Translation]

"Reid, what are you doing here?" I answered: "I am taking French lessons." He told me:

[English]

“Out of here”.

Miss Deborah Grey: You mentioned earlier in your remarks, John, that cabinet ministers were every bit as frustrated as backbenchers in terms of getting information.

As far as we know, there aren't any requests for information from cabinet ministers. I could be out a bit on that, but as far as we know the place is not being swamped with requests from cabinet ministers.

• 1040

Recently a practice has been occurring, as far as we know in most departments, if not all, where cabinet ministers themselves have the final signing authority for any of these access requests. As you know, the act does not provide for this. Would you be willing to abolish that practice?

Mr. John Reid: The practice always was for ministers to sign all of the documents, all of the questions that went to members of Parliament. These were official motions on the Order Paper, so they signed them all. I don't understand why ministers would want to be bothered signing these papers, quite frankly. It is just another burden. If the information is to be provided under the law, it is not a question of ministerial responsibility.

Miss Deborah Grey: Again, I would like to thank you.

I would like to finish up by moving a motion in committee, seconded by my colleague for Elk Island.

I move that for every other candidate who may be in the running for this position we would have a very open process and an excellent question and answer period—for every candidate who may be considered for the job.

The Chairman: Just like today.

Mr. Jerry Pickard: We don't have a quorum, but I think Deborah's comment is dead on and I think we would endorse that without any question.

The Chairman: We don't even need a motion.

Miss Deborah Grey: Super. Perfect. That's great. You've been very helpful.

The Chairman: In that vein, we will give Ovid his time in this forum.

Mr. Ovid L. Jackson (Bruce—Grey, Lib.): I just have a couple of quick questions, Mr. Chairman.

I didn't get a chance to read the act, but one of the things that I know as a person who has been in public life is that when you hire a person for a job, the credentials and so on look quite good, but the proof of the pudding is in the eating.

Is there a probationary contract? I would suspect that your job would be similar to a judge's, so we could only remove you for cause, if you stole $1 million or something like that. Could you walk me through the process?

I think it is important. It doesn't matter who comes in and how we scrutinize them or what we say about them. It is how they act when they have the job. I wondered if there was a probationary period. That was my main question.

Mr. John Reid: I have no idea. My understanding is that the position is filled by a resolution of the House of Commons and a resolution of the Senate.

Mr. Ovid Jackson: And the only way we can remove you then is for cause, not performance.

Mr. John Reid: For cause. Lack of performance would also be cause, I would think.

The Chairman: Gerry Byrne.

Mr. Gerry Byrne: I would like to go on the record to point out something. We are conducting what many would consider a job interview. Mr. Reid is our first interviewee. He is doing so and exposing, I guess, his testimony to this committee and to others who will be appearing before the committee. It is not my intent to move in camera because I think that would be contrary to what it is we are trying to accomplish here. But I guess I would like to point out on the record that in fairness, both to Mr. Reid and to the last interviewee, that as a committee we should balance our questions and interpret the answers of future candidates in that regard.

Miss Deborah Grey: Good point.

The Chairman: On that point it might be appropriate to research the transcripts and make a list of today's questions, which could be made available in both languages. Should there be other sessions with other persons, all members would have those questions maybe to achieve that balance.

Mr. Gerry Byrne: With respect to the research, a précis would be fair. I don't think they would have to be written out verbatim.

The Chairman: Yes.

Seeing that there are no more questions, on behalf of all my colleagues, Mr. Reid, I thank you for coming today. I think it was a most stimulating discussion. Thank you for your forthrightness.

With that, we are adjourned.