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Results: 1 - 15 of 425
View Jim Abbott Profile
CPC (BC)
Okay.
Certainly from this side of the table we really respect the fact that you have taken this stand and come before us, dealing in a very forthright way with this issue.
If I may ask you a personal question, I'd like to know how it must feel for you to know that I had actually tabled a motion--that was not accepted for technical reasons--wherein the chair of this committee was actually accused of doing something very similar, and, by a strange twist of fate, the MP that your document went to, who shed the light on your mistake, had an employee, Erica Bullwinkle, commit the same kind of offence.
How does it make you feel to be held to this level of accountability when you don't see...?
I beg your pardon?
View Jim Abbott Profile
CPC (BC)
Thank you very much.
I guess, as they say, if we're going to be having accountability, which I think all Canadians deserve--we don't question that--you have stepped up, and you are holding yourself in a totally transparent way in being accountable.
My question, if you'll permit me, is a very personal question. How does it make you feel to be on the spot when other people in the system supposedly administering the accountability don't seem to be taking the same stand?
View Jim Abbott Profile
CPC (BC)
Okay. I'll save it for the next round. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
View Jim Abbott Profile
CPC (BC)
My friends in the opposition seem to be hung up on so-called working hours. In other words, if things happen between nine and five, then everything is fine. But if I understand your testimony correctly, at 90 hours a week, you were working 14 hours a day, seven days a week, which seems unusual. But it's not unusual for a person as dedicated to democracy and this great country as you are.
In the 14 hours a day that you would be working, at 7 o'clock, 8 o'clock, 9 o'clock, or 10 o'clock at night, would you be doing work for which you were directly remunerated, work for the minister and for the ministry?
View Jim Abbott Profile
CPC (BC)
My point is, for the benefit of the opposition, that in working 14 hours a day on average--and I'm totally prepared to believe your testimony that you were doing that--at some times after the so-called normal working hours of 9 to 5, you would be taking care of the 37.5-hour work week that the Treasury Board guidelines were giving you. In other words, whether you were doing the work explicitly for the Conservative Party between 9 and 10 a.m. was irrelevant to the fact that you were putting your 40 or 50 or 60 hours a week in to meet Treasury Board guidelines during that 90-hour week. That's the point I'm trying to make.
View Jim Abbott Profile
CPC (BC)
Mr. Lacroix, I think you would agree with me that you're comparing your ability to get the job done in terms of news gathering and news reporting. Being an institution funded by $1.2 billion of taxpayers' money, you're comparing that with an institution like the Sun chain, which doesn't have $1.1 billion and that kind of support.
It strikes me that some of your answers, with the greatest respect, have been that you should be treated on the same level, as far as access to information is concerned. In other words, you're saying “Why should we, in spite of this $1.1 billion, not be seen as a news-gathering and news-reporting institution, exactly the same as any commercial enterprise?”
View Jim Abbott Profile
CPC (BC)
What I'm trying to say is you are a news-gathering and news-reporting institution. They are a news-gathering and news-reporting institution, and yet you have access to a pretty gigantic pot of money. For example, if I take a look at a report they did on March 24 last year, it points out that in the testimony of Mr. Rabinovitch they had asked for the briefing material for Mr. Rabinovitch, and fundamentally received a blank page.
You may be aware that the briefing books of cabinet ministers can't offer blank pages. Why do you think the ability of going through access to information with a cabinet minister should reveal a heck of a lot more than the CBC was prepared to reveal? You're telling us your executives are fair game. Apparently they're not, because they're not treated the same as a cabinet minister. And yet your institution is claiming to be a crown corporation and therefore it should be treated differently under this access law. I'm finding this very confusing.
View Jim Abbott Profile
CPC (BC)
How are briefing notes covered by that? In other words, if a cabinet minister sitting in the same place as you has to reveal the information in his or her briefing notes, and you're coming to us saying you are a crown corporation, I don't understand. Apparently, according to what was written here, the proposed answers to a list of possible questions you might face at committee were held back as “advice or recommendations developed by or for a government institution or a minister of the crown”. Apparently your actions would say you have more privilege to withhold information than Jim Flaherty or Peter Kent or any of the other cabinet ministers. I don't understand that.
View Jim Abbott Profile
CPC (BC)
Good evening, gentlemen.
To set the table here, a member of the opposition, Ms. Bennett, and I are going to be travelling with two senators to Wales next week, and we're going to be speaking with some of the legislators there.
How does your legislation that covers the national government cover something like the Welsh Parliament? Or is it a legislature? I can't remember which is the designation.
View Jim Abbott Profile
CPC (BC)
I'm just repeating to make sure that I'm clear: you have the same regulator between Westminster and Wales but not the same regulator as far as Scotland is concerned.
View Jim Abbott Profile
CPC (BC)
I'm trying to drive to the issue of bilingualism, which is something we have to work with here in the Parliament of Canada and in our nation, being an officially bilingual country. Are there any practical issues on the Canadian or Welsh freedom of information laws that are impacted with their use of a second language?
View Jim Abbott Profile
CPC (BC)
We have a little bit more of a challenge here because of our parliamentary convention or practice or rules. For example, if information comes before this committee, in either of the official languages, but is not translated, then it cannot be used by the committee until it is in the translated form.
There's a bit of a question in my mind, which I've been raising through these hearings, as to which comes first. If information was held by the government in one of the languages, should it be available in both languages before it's released, or is it more urgent—particularly if it was a great volume of information—that it be released in whatever language it happens to be in?
Are either of you aware of this as being an issue in Wales?
View Jim Abbott Profile
CPC (BC)
They have quite a number of languages in India, of course.
View Jim Abbott Profile
CPC (BC)
We are looking forward to being in Wales. Do you have any weather tips for us?
Sorry, gentlemen, I'm just being facetious.
View Jim Abbott Profile
CPC (BC)
Mr. Chair, if I may interject, as a courtesy to our friend in Australia it is only right and proper that we have our time with him. The other witnesses--and their testimony will be very, very, valuable--are based here in Ottawa, and should we run into a problem it would be relatively easy to reschedule. As a courtesy to our friend in Australia, we should go ahead with Mr. Easter's suggestion.
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