This is meeting number 13 of the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics. It is being televised, as requested, with the orders of the day, pursuant to Standing Order 108(3)(h)(vi), being a study on allegations of interference in access to information requests.
We have two panels of witnesses this morning.
Our first witness is Mr. Sébastien Togneri, former parliamentary affairs director, Department of Public Works and Government Services, and he is accompanied by his lawyer, Mr. Jean-François Lecours. As we discussed earlier, Mr. Lecours is here to be able to advise his client, but he may not address the committee.
Welcome, gentlemen.
Before commencing, I want to confirm to the committee that I have a written opinion from the law clerk that I referred to and I'd like to read from it:
Simply put, no proceeding elsewhere prevents anyone--a Member, a Minister or a private citizen--from appearing before a parliamentary committee. Whether the sub judice rule should apply depends on the circumstances and the nature of other proceedings and on the willingness of the committee or committee members to apply the rule. Arguably, the sub judice rule applies only to matters before the courts.
This matter is not before the courts, and I would not believe that sub judice will be an issue, so we are free to proceed.
Also, colleagues, this morning I had a conversation with the Information Commissioner, who had indicated to Mr. Togneri...and we had received correspondence from his counsel a concern about appearing here. She has indicated to me that she's not aware of any questions at this time that should not be asked or that she would have some concern about—
:
—when I'm finished what I'm doing right now, okay?
She understands fully and appreciates and agrees with the position or the opinion advised to us by the law clerk, and she would be prepared to appear before the committee, should the committee wish so, to discuss this matter further.
Given that, I think committee members are also aware that there is another proceeding going on, and we don't want to frustrate it, but it's very clear that the committee's priorities and its ability to do the job cannot and should not be interrupted by any other proceedings.
Now, Mr. Poilievre, on a point of order.
:
All right. Thank you. I appreciate that.
Mr. Poilievre and colleagues, we received a copy of this communication from Mr. Lecours that was raised at our last meeting. I undertook to get an opinion from the law clerk. I gave it verbally, but I have it in writing now.
The law clerk has clearly stated that, notwithstanding the Information Commissioner's communication, the committee's rights to hear a witness cannot be overridden by any other proceeding--any other proceeding. The commissioner called yesterday and asked to speak with me--actually, at 9 o'clock this morning. There were two matters. The first was not relevant to this committee, but she did want to offer with regard to the matter you have just raised... She confirmed to me verbally there was no concern from the Information Commissioner's office with regard to Mr. Togneri's appearance before this committee today.
Having said that, I appreciate the information, but we are going to proceed with this witness now.
:
The order of today is the Easter motion, which says that the committee “study regarding allegations of systemic political interference by Ministers' offices to block, delay, or obstruct the release of information to the public regarding the operations of government departments and that the committee call” witnesses, one of which is Mr. Togneri.
It is my ruling, Mr. Bezan, that this is not a matter of sensitive, secretive information. This is, in fact, a study of a committee seeking to get the facts as to what the operations are as they relate to the matter of access to information requests. This is not a specific allegation against anyone. It is simply a study of this committee.
Accordingly, I will rule that we are going to proceed with the witness.
Mr. Togneri, I would just indicate to you that refusal to answer a question is not an option. However, should you believe that there is a substantive reason why you cannot, I would request that you give that reason to the chair, and I'll make a ruling. Okay?
Let's proceed. Thank you.
Hon. Wayne Easter: On a point of order--
The Chair: Is it necessary?
Hon. Wayne Easter: Yes, I do want to... I'm suggesting--
The Chair: All right. Mr. Easter, on a point of order, are you saying...?
:
Mr. Chair, thank you for allowing me to make these opening remarks.
First, allow me to state my complete respect for Parliament and its committees. Prior to joining a minister's office, I was the lobby assistant and worked closely with all parties with respect to the running of the House of Commons. In that role, I learned a lot about parliamentary procedure and developed a deep appreciation for this institution and those who serve it. I fully respect the powers of the committees to examine all matters that fall under their mandates and the motions they adopt to study those matters.
If you will allow me, I will take a moment to expose the chronology of the events that led me to appear before you today.
[Translation]
The Information Commissioner of Canada, who is an officer of Parliament, is currently conducting an investigation into a complaint pursuant to the Access to Information Act against the head of Public Works and Government Services Canada.
As part of that investigation, I testified at the Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada on March 23, 2010. During that examination, I received the following confidentiality order pursuant to sections 34, 35, 36 and 64 of the Access to Information Act.
IN RE a complaint under the Access to Information Act [...] against the head of Public Works and Government Services Canada;
AND IN RE an investigation by the Information Commissioner into this complaint, carried out in private and ex parte, in the absence of any person, including the head of the government institution, the Attorney General of Canada and the complainant under the Act.
Pursuant to sections 34, 35, 36 and 64 of the Access to Information Act and by the powers vested in her of a superior court of record, the Assistant Information Commissioner orders as follows:
Mr. Sébastien Togneri shall not communicate either the questions put to him, or his answers to those questions, or the exhibits used during his questioning under oath by the lawyer representing the Office of the Information Commissioner, on March 23, 2010, in any way or to any person, until such time as the investigation by the Office of the Information Commissioner has been completed, with the exception of his lawyer, Jean-François Lecours.
It is signed by Andrea G. Neill, Assistant Commissioner, Complaints Resolution and Compliance.
With your permission, Mr. Chair, I would like to submit the order.
[English]
On Thursday, April 1, about a week after I received the order from the Information Commissioner that I just read and tabled, your committee, the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics, adopted the following motion:
That the committee conduct a study regarding allegations of systematic political interference by Ministers' offices to block, delay or obstruct the release of information to the public regarding the operations of government departments and that the committee call before it...
Then it lists all the names, including mine: Sébastien Togneri, former parliamentary affairs director, Public Works Canada.
When I received this motion asking me to appear before you, I asked myself the following question: does this committee's motion go against the order I received from the Information Commissioner, who herself is an officer of Parliament, and if so, should I decline the request to appear?
I have to admit that I didn't intuitively have an answer to this question, not being a lawyer myself. Because of my respect for this institution, I decided to agree to this request. That's why, on Friday, April 9, I sent an e-mail to the clerk of this committee, agreeing to come before you on April 15.
I have to admit to you that immediately after having agreed to your request, I started having doubts. I wondered if I had acted appropriately in accepting the request. While I was reflecting on this, the clerk answered by e-mail, indicated that the committee couldn't hear me on April 15, and suggested another date in May.
Before accepting this new date, I decided to consult my lawyer, who reviewed the order from the Information Commissioner and your motion requesting that I appear. He advised me that I should decline your request, as it goes against an order from an officer of Parliament conducting an investigation. A letter to that effect from my lawyer was sent to the clerk of this committee on Wednesday of last week, April 28.
Last Tuesday, May 4, I received a summons signed by you, Mr. Chair, indicating that I was required to appear here today. The summons indicated, and I quote: “Failure to appear may lead to proceedings against you for contempt of Parliament”.
[Translation]
If I may, Mr. Chair, for the benefit of the committee, I will reread this paragraph of your summons in French: “Failure to appear may lead to proceedings against you for contempt of Parliament.”
[English]
Not wanting to be in contempt of Parliament, Mr. Chair, I agreed to come before you today.
That said, you and this committee must understand that I am bound by the order from the Information Commissioner that I tabled and read today. I apologize in advance to this committee if I am forced to refer to that order instead of answering in detail the questions that this committee will pose to me today.
[Translation]
The Information Commissioner of Canada was very clear when she wrote that I could not discuss the investigation “in any way or to any person, until such time as the investigation by the Office of the Information Commissioner has been completed”.
[English]
Let me read that in English, Mr. Chair. The Information Commissioner clearly instructed me to not disclose anything regarding the investigation, and I quote, “in any manner to anyone until the Information Commissioner's investigation is complete...”.
[Translation]
There, Mr. Chair.
:
Thank you, Mr. Togneri.
As I had indicated to the committee at the last meeting, and again today, the opinion of the law clerk of Parliament, which, incidentally, mirrors the decision of the Speaker of the House with regard to the Afghan detainee documents, reaffirms the full authority of Parliament to call for persons, papers, or records, and that that authority of Parliament and of the House of Commons has been delegated to all standing committees, including this one.
We have the full authority. That is the opinion of the clerk. Also, as I had indicated to the committee, I have spoken directly to the Information Commissioner. Your words about any matter on anything is not exactly what it says here. It says with regard to the questions or the answers that you gave.
We don't know what those questions or answers are. What we do know is that the proceeding will take months, maybe years, before it's finished, and it would be unreasonable to deal with that. So I've made a ruling on that, and I thank you for your input, but we're going to proceed. As I had indicated, I encourage you to answer the questions.
Mr. Easter, please, for seven minutes.
:
Yes, I'm just trying to reference it here now.
Here's the concern I have. You're talking about the law clerk's letter, and I agree that as committees and as members we have the power to investigate things that are substantive, that we feel are important to standing committees, but as standing committees, we're still governed by the House.
We have decided that we are masters of our own domain under procedure, but essentially we are created by the House and we are responsible to the House, and we need to make sure that we respect the rulings from the House. So we want to make sure that when we are questioning a witness, we are making sure that the rights they are granted under O'Brien and Bosc, as I stated earlier, on page 1,068.... As a public servant, he doesn't have to answer all questions put to him, especially if they affect the study and the inquiry that's being conducted by the Information Commissioner.
I would just ask that as questions are being asked, you consider that in terms of what you call admissible and inadmissible. I'm just asking you to use your--
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Because it seems to me what we're seeing from the and from Mr. Bezan are collusion and coaching from the government to a witness who's before this committee and who we're trying to find out information from relative to the Access to Information Act. That concerns me greatly.
We seem to be seeing more and more of deny, delay, and cover-up from the government, and the performance of government members in this committee just can't lead me to any other conclusion.
To go to my question, welcome, Mr. Togneri. It is kind of too bad that we had to basically present an order to bring you here, but in any event, thank you for coming.
I want to background the issue, where the issue really, to a certain extent, started, just so we all know what we're talking about. From a CP story by Dean Beeby of February 7, I quote:
A federal cabinet minister's aide killed the release of a sensitive report requested under freedom-of-information in a case eerily similar to a notorious incident in the sponsorship scandal.
A bureaucrat had to make a mad dash to the department's mailroom last July to retrieve the report at the last minute under orders from a senior aide to then-Public Works minister Christian Paradis.
The order was issued by Sebastien Togneri, Paradis' parliamentary affairs director, in a terse email after he had been told the file was already on its way to The Canadian Press, which had requested it.
“Well unrelease it,” Togneri said in a July 27 email to a senior official in the department's Access to Information section.
That's basically the background to why, in part, we're here today.
So my question to you is, are you aware that your interference in the access to information process is an offence under the Access to Information Act?
:
My point of order is Standing Order 117, very specific to committee, which states:
The Chair of a standing, special, or legislative committee shall maintain order in the committee, deciding all questions of order subject to an appeal of the committee; but disorder in a committee can only be censured by the House, on receiving a report thereof.
I refer to your powers as chair, under “Procedural Responsibilities”, on page 1,030 of O'Brien and Bosc, in chapter 20, which says that:
They ensure that any rules established by the committee, including those on the apportioning of speaking time, are respected. They are responsible for maintaining order and decorum in committee proceedings, and--
This is referring to your work.
--rule on any procedural matter that arises, subject to an appeal to the committee....
Furthermore, the Chair....
But anyway, what I am getting at, Mr. Chair, is that you have to recognize points of order and that if any member is raising a point of order based upon any of the questioning here, you have to hear those points of order, as outlined in Standing Order 117. If you feel that things are getting out of control, Mr. Chair, you can report this back to the House if the committee agrees to it. I just wanted to raise that with you.
:
It is, “Usual Order of Business for Committee Study Leading to a Substantive Report”. Decisions to study.... We have here in this figure a list of steps that are involved in carrying out a study of the kind in which we are now engaged. What I have learned by looking at this figure is that the way in which you are carrying out this meeting is in violation of that order of business.
The steps are as follows. A decision to conduct a study is made. The drafting of a work plan, schedule, and witness list is established. Briefings to committee members are provided. Hearings of witnesses and gathering of advice and opinions are produced. There are proceedings relating to the draft report, which will come later. There are review, revision, and adoption of the draft report, and presentation of the report to the House of Commons. Finally, there is the government response if the standing or special committee has requested one.
Now, the most important step of all in this is the second-last one, which is the presentation of the report to Parliament. That is because this committee is an arm of the House of Commons and it works for the House of Commons.
The House of Commons has established an Information Commissioner through legislation, through statute, through law. That Information Commissioner has issued an order. That order has been provided to the witness in writing.
To counter that, you have produced a rough regurgitation of a conversation that you claim to have had this morning at 9 a.m. You have not produced any documentation to support either the existence of that conversation or its contents.
Right now,you are in the process of demanding that the witness violate an order provided to him by an officer created through statute of the House of Commons, and if that House is supreme, then so too are its laws, and we as a committee cannot instruct the violation of those laws.
So I would ask that in the interests of the rule of law, you advise members to cease all questions that would violate a written order from an officer of Parliament whose powers are laid out in statute adopted not only by the House, but by Parliament itself. That is my point.
:
The chair is going to rule on this.
Mr. Poilievre has referred to O'Brien and Bosc, specifically the matter of the “Usual Order of Business for Committee Study Leading to a Substantive Report”, and he specifically talked to the step, “Presentation of the report to the House”, which we haven't done yet--and if we keep going like this, I don't think it ever will happen.
What I object to, Mr. Poilievre, is the use of that point of order, which is obviously not applicable at this time, to go back to challenge the chair's ruling on the ability of this committee to deal with this witness. I could also indicate to you that the committee approved the motion, the witnesses, and the summons I issued to bring Mr. Togneri here, notwithstanding that we had the letter from his lawyer and a copy of the ruling from the Information Commissioner's office.
I made that ruling. I made that decision that we are to proceed because we have the right, the authority, and the duty to discharge these responsibilities the committee has adopted, is proceeding with, and is in the middle of. Mr. Togneri is one of the last witnesses.
So I don't want to hear any more arguments about whether or not this committee has the right to do what it's doing. The committee approved it. The chair is following the instructions of the committee and has called the witnesses. I issued a summons with the authority and approval of the committee. The witness is here.
I would suggest to the witness, as well, that to invoke the letter from the Office of the Information Commissioner is no longer a valid reason, because the opinion of the law clerk of the House of Commons is that our work supersedes the investigation and the matters before the Information Commissioner. That is the opinion from the clerk. That is the opinion and the decision that I have taken.
I am now going to go back to questions from Mr. Easter, who still has a couple of minutes left.
I encourage you, sir, not to invoke the matter of the Office of the Information Commissioner. That has been superseded. We are proceeding under the authority of the Parliament of Canada and the members have the right and the delegated authority to do this.
First of all, I'm going to ask all honourable members not to go back over that other ground. To repeat what I said: the decision has been taken. The chair has affirmed more than once today that the opinion of the law clerk and my decision stand. If the committee members believe that the chair is in error in its decision, your option is not to raise a second point of order on the same matter. It is to challenge the decision of the chair.
So if everybody understands clearly, I'm going to go back to Mr. Easter.
Mr. Easter, you still have a couple of minutes.
:
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just wanted to note because we have a witness who definitely has some difficulty answering the questions, the committee has.... As described in chapter 20 at page 1,068 of O'Brien and Bosc's
House of Commons Procedure and Practice, “The actions of a witness who refuses to answer questions may be reported to the House”. So we always have the power to do that, and I think it wouldn't be a bad thing to do, to report it back.
I also want to reference page 994, where it states: “Committees are bound by their orders of reference or instructions and may not undertake studies or present recommendations to the House that exceed the limits established by the House”.
You and the law clerk are suggesting we have more powers than the House. I think we need to have that clarified since the House has a public office-holder, that being the Information Commissioner, who definitely reports to the House and to the Speaker, so we need to keep that in mind.
I also want to keep in mind, too, for Mr. Togneri's sake, that, as cited on page 1,047 of O'Brien and Bosc:
The idea that committees are “masters of their proceedings” or “masters of their procedures” is frequently evoked in committee debates or the House. The concept refers to the freedom committees normally have to organize their work as they see fit and the option they have of defining, on their own, certain rules of procedure that facilitate their proceedings.
It continues on page 1,048:
These freedoms are not, however, total or absolute. First, it is useful to bear in mind that committees are creatures of the House.
:
You do not have to admit that....
The Access to Information Act says that no person shall hinder, block, destroy or alter a document. The fact that you blocked the release of a document as you did contravenes the act, more specifically, section 67.1 of the Access to Information Act, a contravention that has consequences of a criminal nature.
Did you or did you not contravene the act or block the information in question? If you did, did you receive a directive to do so? There are two possibilities: either you did it on your own initiative, directly contravening the act, and you are responsible, or you received a directive to do so.
What I want to know is whether you received a directive. Is there a procedure that was not part of your mandate but that you were subject to, or did you do it on your own initiative? That is what I want to know.
:
My point of order deals with relevance. I refer you to page 32, chapter 1, under “Parliamentary Institutions”. The title is “Responsible Government and Ministerial Responsibility”:
Responsible government has long been considered an essential element of government based on the Westminster model. Despite its wide acceptance as being a cornerstone of the Canadian system of government, there are different meanings attached to the term “responsible government”. In a general sense, responsible government means that a government must be responsive to its citizens, that it must operate responsibly (that is, be well organized in developing and implementing policy) and that its Ministers--
I repeat: “its Ministers”.
--must be accountable or responsible to Parliament. Whereas the first two meanings may be regarded as the ends of responsible government, the latter meaning—the accountability of Ministers—may be regarded as the device for achieving it.
The reason this relates directly to the relevance of the questioning is that, for the questioning to be relevant, it has to be posed to the relevant authority, and the relevant authority in this case is a minister of the crown.
We have in this country something called ministerial responsibility. We didn't invent it; it was handed to us from the birthplace of the parliamentary system. It goes back hundreds of years. Neither you, nor this committee, nor anyone else can rewrite that history. As such, it is appropriate that ministers respond on behalf of their departments and on behalf of their ministries.
That is why we had the Honourable appear before us in her capacity as the Minister of Human Resources just last meeting. She fielded questions about the subject of costs for an advertising campaign and was held accountable for exceeding the standards of transparency that exist for advertising.
Today, we have questions about the conduct of a given ministry, but we do not have a minister here to answer those questions. Instead, we have here before us someone who has been instructed by the Information Commissioner that he cannot comment.
So in the interest of respecting ministerial responsibility and its description on page 32, under “Parliamentary Institutions”, I would ask that the committee allow the minister to be responsible for the conduct of the department and the ministry, and that it operate on that guiding principle here. That's my point.
:
That's your point. I just wanted to see how long you were going to go.
Respectfully, colleagues, it is not helpful to the committee to raise points of order on one matter and to go back to arguing the initial decision of the chair that the Information Commissioner's communication does not supersede the authority and the work of this committee. As approved by this committee, the calling of this witness was made by the committee, the committee's decision.
As to the argument that somehow a minister must respond on behalf of his or her staff, Mr. Poilievre, I submit to you that, as you know, ministers cannot be ordered to come before committees. In fact, just recently, Minister and Minister refused to go to the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates. Ministers cannot respond if they refuse to appear.
The committee did not ask for the minister, and if the member would like to guarantee that the relevant minister will appear before this committee to answer these questions, that would be very helpful. I hope the member will make that inquiry.
That said—
:
Just a moment. That's a rhetorical question, because I know what the answer is.
Mr. Poilievre, the other point that you raised was this idea that this witness cannot answer questions because it's the ministerial responsibility. Well, with regard to Minister , we have called a witness: Mr. Ryan Sparrow. She is aware of that. Her chief of staff is aware of that. We've had some conversations.
Mr. Sparrow has agreed to appear before this committee on May 13 of his own volition, without me having to issue a summons. He's coming voluntarily to answer questions. Therefore, his decision, with the full knowledge of the minister, would tend to refute the argument you've made.
So I'm going to rule against your point of order, and I am going to have to move now to Mr. Siksay for his seven minutes.
Madame, your seven minutes was up.
:
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I would like to thank the witness for appearing.
I know that you've been put in a very difficult position because you have an officer of Parliament, created by statute, by law passed by the House and Senate, telling you not to speak about matters related to this investigation, and you have that order in writing, and then you have a chairman of a committee telling you that he has had a conversation with that same commissioner saying the exact opposite.
It must be difficult for you to know what you are being asked to do when an arm of Parliament is telling you not to speak about the matter, and then a chair of a parliamentary committee is telling you that you must speak to the same matter. The whole matter must be further complicated by the fact that this chairman has not provided any written confirmation of the conversation he claims to have had this morning with the Information Commissioner.
So I will pose my questions in recognition of the fact that the chairman's conduct has put you in some state of--
From time to time, members don't like what others are saying during their questions, but members have the right to ask their questions, make their statements, and use their time as they wish. I get a little concerned when people start to characterize what I have said or what I have done or what I haven't done. I can defend myself, though, because we have a remedy for this, and I will propose it to the committee at the end of the meeting.
But having said that, I did stop the clock. That is not a point of order. I understand your frustration, Mr. Easter, but we have to respect the member's right to use his time in a manner that he feels is fit.
So I have just a little over a minute and a half used up, so you still have five and a half minutes, sir. Please proceed.
:
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Togneri, for being here today. I recognize, as my colleague has, that having you come here has put you in a difficult situation in terms of the directive from the Interim Information Commissioner and what we have heard from our chair today.
We have been having this ongoing study on access to information. There have been communications and open letters that have talked about the ability for an information commissioner to release information in terms of any kind of investigation that is going on. We know full well when we look at the Access to Information Act and the Lobbying Act that those things cannot be released until an investigation is complete. I recognize that there is an investigation going on, and we know this because the acting Information Commissioner has announced that it is happening.
Today we learned that the member for had a private telephone conversation with the commissioner, in the midst of an ongoing investigation, about that investigation. I'm assuming that when he came forward to the committee today and said she had assured him that no questions we might ask today would hinder her ability to conduct her investigation unimpeded.... I guess I can't imagine what questions he might have known that any of us would ask, to have sort of vetted those through the Information Commissioner to ensure they would not be problematic, either for you or for her. I just think it was highly improper to have a private conversation and then not provide us with any information to indicate she had in fact given our chair that information.
No member has the right to interfere in an ongoing investigation. That has been made very clear in other matters. No member should engage in a private conversation with the commissioner, in the midst of an ongoing investigation, about that investigation. There were no witnesses and we don't know what attempt was made to not influence the investigation. We don't know whether pressure was brought to bear. The Liberals appear to have a hard time recognizing this.
The commissioner is responsible to Parliament collectively. She does not work for any individual member, and no individual member should try to give her direction.
I do have a question for you in regard to perhaps your understanding of the work that you do. I just want to ask this one question: do you believe it is important to be open and transparent in the work that you do?
Thank you to the witnesses and your legal counsel for coming today.
I have some questions for you, Mr. Togneri, but I do have a bit of a preamble that I hope will not be interfered with. This is a key theme that has occurred today.
I'm a little disappointed, if I could speak frankly, because I had a thoughtful conversation with the chair yesterday. And since we're introducing conversations, it seems relevant to say that I took away a great appreciation of some of the finer points of participating in committee with him, only to come here today to find out, with some great disappointment, that we seem to be in the business of trampling on more than a century of parliamentary custom and in fact laws--custom is related.
We've seen an introduction of a conflict of laws, and it has been brought in a rather curious way: with a telephone call. We don't know whether the chair requested this conversation or whether the commissioner requested it. We also don't know whether the commissioner was aware that this conversation might in fact pose serious, substantive concerns, at least from my perspective. In that regard, I will put it out there that I am a lawyer and have thought through all different kinds of scenarios with respect to this fact pattern and whether the commissioner's response to an order by her office would seriously compromise that document and your ability to give thoughtful and effective testimony today to guide this committee in its work.
I'm confused, because I thought the chair was in a position to provide guidance in a non-partisan kind of way, and I, in my own observation, saw enthusiastic partisanship that I think has really put this investigation of the office of this particular commissioner in serious jeopardy.
That said, I have no doubt that you have found yourself in a situation today where you may indeed feel uncomfortable having given any testimony dealing with an ongoing investigation. A simple yes or no: do you feel that way?
Colleagues, there is another committee meeting that I must attend on behalf of the liaison committee to approve travel budgets for committees. I must be there. There are important votes. We have to terminate this meeting shortly.
I want to indicate, first of all, that I'm sorry members thought to make some assumptions about what happened this morning with the Information Commissioner. I think members may want to rethink their logic when they understand that it was the Information Commissioner who called me.
An hon. member: [Inaudible--Editor]
The Chair: No. She called yesterday to ask to speak with me at nine o'clock this morning. I was in my office at nine o'clock this morning. The Information Commissioner called and I took her call. That's how it happened.
:
We will deal with this later.
Mr. Togneri, the Assistant Information Commissioner's statement to you has put you in a situation where you have not answered a number of questions, or only partially answered some questions. As a consequence, I think it's only fair, to clear this up, that I will be undertaking to get in writing from the Information Commissioner a clear assessment and statement of the obligations you have under that communication you had received and to provide it to be circulated in both official languages to the committee before the next meeting.
Because, sir, the summons indicates that you will remain in attendance until discharged, and I think under the circumstances, sir, it would be inappropriate for me to discharge you from appearing before the committee. Accordingly, I'm indicating to you that this summons remains in force, and I expect you to be here on Tuesday, May 11, at 11 a.m. in this room, unless otherwise advised of those details. Do you understand that order, sir?