:
Mr. Chairman, good morning. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.
I am appearing before you today on your study of the access to information requests for the department's internal report entitled “Afghanistan 2006: Good Governance, Democratic Development and Human Rights”.
I am accompanied by a number of officials from the department who were more directly involved in the subject of your study. They will be meeting with the committee at a later stage this morning to provide you with more details.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs is responsible and accountable to Parliament for all aspects of the department. As deputy minister, I have delegated responsibility for public servants in the department and I am accountable to the minister for their work.
The minister has asked that my officials and I cooperate fully in providing the factual information to the committee that you are requesting and in answering your questions fully and frankly, consistent with our responsibilities not to disclose confidential information and guided by the Access to Information Act, the Privacy Act, and our oath as public servants.
[Translation]
I am here to set the general context for the department's work in the areas of human rights and Access to Information, and, as befits a deputy minister, to offer the departmental officials also appearing today my support for the work they are doing in the public service of Canada and to demonstrate my full confidence in their ability to carry out their responsibilities.
[English]
I would like to stress at the outset, Mr. Chairman, that I have the highest respect for the committees of Parliament and the work they do, including this committee. As a public servant and a deputy minister for many years, I have had many opportunities to appear before parliamentary committees and to work closely with parliamentarians inside and outside the House, and I have always valued the principles of openness, transparency, and cooperation that have characterized these relations and the relations generally between the public service and Parliament.
With respect to the department's work in the area of human rights, let me say a few words about the human rights reports that have been the object of so much attention of late, both in the media and in this and other committees of the House. Like many other countries with a strong tradition of promoting human rights, Canada has, through its Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, developed a practice of preparing various annual human rights reports on specific countries. These reports are internal working documents of the department that are used in the preparation, as needed, of policy advice to the minister on specific human rights issues or on Canada's relations with individual countries or in developing the instructions for Canadian delegations to various international fora, such as the Third Committee of the United Nations or the Human Rights Council, particularly before voting on resolutions.
The reports themselves are prepared by the staff at the Canadian mission in those countries for which a human rights report has been requested by headquarters. They are the assessment of that mission. They are expected to be full and frank in their content and, reporting as clearly as possible the observations of these staff members on information gleaned from various sources, they serve the government in the formulation of policy. They are prepared annually, normally towards the end of the calendar year, and forwarded to Ottawa early in the following year.
Last year, the department requested 111 such country-specific reports. Unlike some countries, Canada does not prepare a single global report, nor, given the use to which these reports are put in providing policy advice and instructions to Canadian delegations, are they intended for public release. Ms. Kutz can provide you with more detail on these reports and their use later.
With respect to the Access to Information Act, I am the senior delegated authority in the department, Mr. Chairman. Ms. Thomsen and Ms. Sabourin, whom you met with on May 29, are also delegated authorities under the act, and Ms. Sabourin, as you are aware from her testimony, is the ATIP coordinator for the department.
The department handles a very heavy load of access to information and privacy requests, as well as a growing volume of access consultation requests from other government departments and agencies. Last year the department received a total of 2,263 requests, of which 648 were requests under the Access to Information Act; 202 requests under the Privacy Act; 766 requests for consultation under both acts; and 464 privacy requests from investigative bodies, principally police forces conducting criminal investigations. All told, a total of 173,635 pages were processed by the department's access to information and privacy protection division in 2006.
I give you those statistics just as context to the discussion we're going to have.
[Translation]
The volume of access to information requests has increased 10% annually on average over the past five years, but in this past fiscal year there was a significant 31% increase. In addition, the files are becoming, not surprisingly in an environment of information technology, increasingly voluminous and complex. The requirement for trained ATIP personnel is growing commensurately in the labour market as is, at the same time, the shortage of qualified and interested personnel.
[English]
The department processes requests under the Access to Information Act under a process that Ms. Thomsen described in her remarks on May 29 and that I will not repeat here. I would like to emphasize two points, however.
First, recommendations as to redactions to be made in any text are the initial and primary responsibility of the office of principal interest. The ATIP analyst is responsible for exercising a challenge function, when necessary, and for identifying the sections of the act that may be used in claiming an exemption or an exclusion. So you have the two points in the department that deal with it: the office of principal interest that looks at the text initially, and then the ATIP analysis that exercises a challenge function on the suggested redactions and provides the sections of the act under which such exemptions can be justified.
The processes in place at the department are in keeping with those used in other government departments and agencies and in keeping with the policies and guidelines developed by the Treasury Board, which has the general responsibility for overseeing the government's implementation of the provisions of the act, and with that, of course, you are very familiar. With respect to section 15 of the act, which has been the subject of much discussion in this committee, under section 15 the department can exempt from disclosure information that would impair Canada's ability to effectively conduct international relations now and in the future.
Secondly, I can assure members of the committee that the procedures followed by my department do not allow for any political engagement in the redaction of documents, and I can state categorically that in my many years as a public servant, which span the full period since the act was adopted in 1983, I have never seen evidence of inappropriate ministerial involvement in the release of information, nor has any such involvement been brought to my attention.
[Translation]
In conclusion, I would just like to say a few words about the four specific access requests which the committee is studying. I will leave the discussion of their specific involvement in these files to Ms. Nixon, Ms. Archambault, and Mr. Switzer respectively.
[English]
I would simply wish to state the following. As you are aware, one of these requests from Professor Attaran has been the object of two formal complaints to the Information Commissioner. We have now received a copy of the Information Commissioner's response to one of the complaints filed by Professor Attaran. In his letter to the professor, copies of which I can provide to the committee today in both official languages, Mr. Marleau finds that the department was late in responding to the professor's request. This is clear. In her testimony before this committee, Ms. Sabourin acknowledged this tardiness and apologized to the committee publicly for it, as she had earlier apologized to Professor Attaran in a letter.
Mr. Marleau concludes his letter to the professor with the following statement:
DFAIT responded to your request on April 23, 2007, resolving the delay complaint. It is my view that DFAIT's general handling of your request was done neither maliciously nor intentionally to prevent you from obtaining access to the records you requested. That said, I will record your complaint as resolved. In your representations to my investigator, you allege that DFAIT concealed records, an obstruction of a right of access under paragraph 67.1.(1)(c) of the Act. Our investigation determined that there was no evidence to support that allegation against DFAIT with respect to your particular request.
Mr. Chairman, those are my comments, my opening statement. I understand that later this morning other members of my department will be appearing before the committee. So I will conclude at this point. Thank you very much.
:
I'm asking the minister for copies of those reports. It's pretty simple: either there are or there aren't.
Now someone just whispered in my ear that they apparently were faxed to the office, and it appears as if we haven't had them. I thought it might be of some interest to the committee to read what the minister said in the House of Commons. I wouldn't quote the Globe and Mail if my life depended on it. I'm asking about reports that were tabled in the House of Commons—not what the Globe and Mail says, but whether reports were tabled, and if so, whether we can get them.
I'll leave it at that. The deputy minister will do the best he can, but obviously since they refer specifically to what we're talking about, it would be helpful if we had them.
Having said that, Deputy Minister, the reason you're there and you don't have your officials with you--and I want everybody to understand this, including the officials who are there—is that in your letter to me responding to the committee's request to hear certain people, and obviously, that request by the committee to hear certain people was declined by the department, you said, and I quote:
After careful consideration, I have come to the conclusion that if the Committee wishes to hear from other officials of DFAIT, I would be best placed to appear. The officials whom you have asked to appear before you do not have delegated authority under the Act and are therefore not well placed to provide the Committee with insights into the administration of the Access to Information Act by DFAIT.
That's why you are here--because you said you were the person whom we should ask the questions of. That's why I've asked you to be here, and I guess the committee will test your statement as to whether or not you are in fact the person we want to hear from.
I should advise everybody that there is no guarantee that the committee will want to hear from anyone else, depending on what your answers are. However, given the way this thing has transpired, the committee had no choice but to summon the witnesses and have them available should it transpire that the committee is of the view that your answers are not sufficient.
But I don't want people to think there is an automatic presumption at this point, notwithstanding what's on the agenda, that we will hear from people. If we do hear from people, I don't want there to be an automatic presumption that some or all of that evidence will be in public.
Okay, we'll call the first round, which is for seven minutes. We'll go first with Mr. Dhaliwal suivi par Madame Lavallée.
:
First of all, Mr. Edwards, thank you for coming here. It is really very nice of you to join us. Last week, 33 people were waiting on you. Following that meeting, a Canadian Press wire reported —these are not my words or those of any committee member—that committee members had been “brushed off by Leonard Edwards”. I am not exactly sure of what “brushed off” means here, but I am fairly certain that it is not very good. CP also reported that some committee members likened the experience to “a slap in the face”. I know what that means. I was not the one who made these comments last week. The fact remains, however, that this is what is written in a CP wire story. I have not checked to see if these comments were published. The reporter goes on to say that you apparently said the decision to appear or not before the committee was yours to make. I was rather surprised to read this wire story.
As I said, 33 people were waiting for you to put in an appearance last week. Many felt that your absence showed a lack of courtesy. When I receive a letter from the minister—a letter that the chairman makes an effort to read to us—advising us to be nice to the people he is sending to appear before us, I have to believe that he is projecting his feelings . Do you know what projection is in psychology? It means accusing someone else of actions that oneself is guilty of. That said, as you know, not only did the main witness who testified on May 27 fail to bring along documents, she had not prepared her testimony either. Rather, it seemed she was prepared to tell us that she had nothing to say. Moreover, she has already promised— and I refer you to t pages 14 to 16 of the transcripts of the May 27 meeting—to explain why the word “torture” was censored. I am waiting for a written explanation. I just want you to know that I have yet to receive one. I have checked with the chairman and an explanation has not been provided yet.
In your opening statement, you indicated that last year the department had received a total of 648 requests under the Access to Information Act. According to page 29 of the Information Commissioner's 2006-2007 report, 600 is not an excessively high number of requests. He mentions a relatively low number of requests for consultation, fewer than 600 per year. He also noted that decision-makers are not inclined to really show transparency and that too much discussion within offices delays the processing of the requests.
If we look at the chronology of events associated with Professor Attaran's request as set out by Ms. Sabourin, we see that on April 17, the release package was forwarded to Alain Latulippe in the Minister's office for review before April 20, 2007. On April 23, a full six days later, a response was provided to the requester. That means that the Minister's office had six days to examine the file. In French, the word “examiner” can mean criticize or discuss. What I am saying here is that one could indeed be inclined to think that there was some kind of political interference. You can contrast my statement with that of Ms. Lilian Thomsen who testified to the committee that the Minister's office was informed at the very end of the process. I do not think that six days before providing a response qualifies as the end of the process.
My question for you, sir— because you are the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs— is as follows: did you read, or see the report drafted by a certain Mr. Bloodworth before it became public? This report contained references to torture. We read in the Globe and Mail how Afghan prisoners were treated. On closer examination, one might be inclined to think that Canada was violating the Geneva Convention. Did you set eyes on this document before it was released to the public?
First of all, I'd just like to perhaps frame things, Mr. Edwards. You were asked to come here today. Well, actually, you weren't asked to come here, but people working for you were asked to come here originally. You made up our minds for us that we didn't need to hear from them; we needed to hear from you. I don't like that, personally, and I'll state that for the record. When we call witnesses, you don't get to decide if they have something valuable to share with us. We'll decide that.
Having said that, you're called here today to talk about the administration of and the compliance with the Access to Information Act by DFAIT. Essentially that's what we called you here for.
I hardly know where to start. Let me begin by saying, Mr. Chairman, that it should be common knowledge that day after day after day in the House of Commons opposition party members would ask the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Minister of National Defence if they had any knowledge of or were aware of any mistreatment of Afghan detainees. In various forms and combinations that question must have been asked 25 times.
Now, your testimony and others' testimony to this committee is or has been, first of all, that no such information exists. That was the original answer given to that question by your department. I have a letter here—actually, testimony of this committee—signed by Jocelyne Sabourin, March 22, to say that “no such report on human rights performance in other countries exists”. Yet another access to information request to the NDP's defence critic, Dawn Black, says clearly that in 2006, DFAIT requested human rights reports from 111 countries. It goes on further to say:
The human rights reports are not normally copied to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, nor is the Minister briefed on their content....
I guess my first question to you then is this. If your minister has been asked 10, 12, 15 times in the House of Commons about the human rights situation of the detainees in Afghanistan, would it not be your job, or somebody in your department, to make him aware of these human rights reports that you've been getting for the last five years? Even if it's not common practice to make him aware of these annual human rights reports citing specific torture of detainees, isn't it your job to make him aware so that he can stand up in the House of Commons and be forthright and honest about what Canada knows?
:
Mr. Chairman, I'm interested in two issues, which I've expressed in the past. One is with respect to improving the system, and the other is the topic of discretion of officials.
This whole thing started because of allegations that records were being concealed, there was obstruction of access, political interference—and there's no evidence of that. There's no evidence of that in this committee, and that's been confirmed by you, sir, by Ms. Sabourin, and other officials, and finally, it's been confirmed by Commissioner Marleau.
So I'm on to something else. The opposition is having a lot of fun trying to suggest bad things, but I'm interested in a couple of issues.
Ms. Sabourin has acknowledged, and, as you've said, indeed she apologized for, the delay to two of the witnesses. She explained that this is complicated stuff. You have to have trained officials. I think she used a signal as to how thick the regulations were. You have to have people who are knowledgeable to understand those regulations, or guidelines, I guess they are.
Having received that acknowledgement, my question to you is, have you got any advice for this committee as to recommendations it can make to Parliament as to how this delay issue can be dealt with?
Let me get back to this idea that we've had users of the access to information system cite a chill, that they sense a noticeable chill in terms of accessing information. That's of primary concern to this committee. We're all about freedom of information and knocking down the barriers to freedom of information.
In 2002, the following language was not censored from the annual reports on Afghanistan: “Arbitrary detention, beatings and the use of torture to extract confessions of guilt continue to be wide spread.” That was not redacted or censored.
In 2003, this was not censored: If you don't give up your house...“don't insist other wise you will be jailed and tortured”. This is from the AIHRC report, your report of 2003 that came to your office.
In 2004, this language was not censored or redacted:
The monitoring reports of AIHRC state that torture continues to take place as a routine part of...procedure, particularly at the investigation stage.... [In one example is a man named] Qajkol, arrested...following the abduction of three UN workers.... [He] died while in...custody. AIHRC investigated and concluded that Qajkol died as a result of...torture, [even though his death was] cited as “death due to natural causes”. [His] five year old son...[when interviewed] following Qajkol's death in custody said, “Somebody had taken out my father's finger nails”.
That was in 2004, in the annual reports that your office gets, and it was not censored at all.
But the 2005 report, which came to your office on January 31, 2006, after the federal election.... This is from an access to information request from your office. You've given me the dates that you received these reports, so you received your 2005 report on January 31, 2006. Now, in that report—I have it right here—all references to torture are censored. I know they're censored because they're only greyed out; they're not blacked out. That's the document everybody is saying shouldn't exist. It does exist. It's in the public domain.
In the 2006 report, which was received in your office January 17, 2007, all references to torture are censored and blacked out.
Jump forward to March 22, 2007. You're telling people that no such reports even exist. Is that not a prima facie case of a chill or a demonstrable difference in the administration of access to information from DFAIT from the previous Liberal administration to the current Conservative administration?
Do you see the point I'm making here?
:
I see your point, and I don't disagree with the fact that when you have reports that are done for public consumption from the outset, and reports that are done for confidential purposes and the use of governments, you're going to get two different kinds of reports. That is simply a fact.
The reports that are prepared for government use, we want to ensure are as frank as possible, that we use the best possible sources and so forth, so that we make sure our government has the best possible advice from its public servants on the basis of confidential reporting. I'm not just talking about the current government. I'm talking about any government, because this is the way we work in the international world, in foreign affairs and international trade.
If that reporting were to become public, or to be known to become public, automatically our sources would dry up. We would have extreme difficulty getting information. I can state this categorically: where there were serious problems in terms of human rights, we would find our ability to speak to those governments—and therefore our effectiveness—of the unpleasantness of their behaviours circumscribed.
There really are two different purposes that drive these two reports, Mr. Dhaliwal. While it is a question of transparency—and I understand that completely—and while the Canadian public deserves transparency, our duty to the public is also to provide good government and good advice to the government of the day. For a public servant, this is always an extremely difficult balance.
That's why, in this particular case, we have the legislation that allows the Information Commissioner to be someone to whom requesters can go after they receive that information to have it tested. The crafters of that legislation certainly saw that. Eventually a court is also a final tribunal to which requesters can go.
I'd like to return to the area I was questioning you on earlier.
You've had a number of different positions as a deputy minister—I think you mentioned six years—and that makes you experienced. You may not like to think like that, but that makes you experienced.
In your statement, the area that gives me the greatest concern is where you say that annually information requests have increased 10%. You said in this past year there's been a 31% increase. You've also said the files are becoming more voluminous, more complex. Finally, you said there's a shortage of qualified and interested personnel—that one paragraph that you've put in writing to us in which you say that gives you the greatest concern.
Now, this committee, of course, is interested in improving the information legislation, and we will deal with that in due course.
My question to you is, and I tried to get into it during the last time I had, whether at this time you have any recommendations—you as the deputy or through discussions with your staff—to improve the legislation, to improve the guidelines, to improve the process. Obviously, one alternative is to hire more staff, if you can find them, and the other is to improve the legislation to make the system move smoother.
Can you give the committee any advice?
I'd like to go through Mr. Esau's request, ending in 605. I'm troubled by the amount of time the committee has taken up on what I think could have been dealt with interdepartmentally, Mr. Edwards. I'd like to walk you through it.
I think we can both agree that the request by Mr. Esau is extremely broad. He's asking for an annual or semi-annual report on human rights in countries around the world. He makes that request on March 13. It goes to the office of principal interest, GHH, and the office of principal interest replies on March 22 that Canada does not produce an annual human rights report analogous to the reports produced by, for example, the U.S. or the United Kingdom. By the way, I note that neither of those countries was mentioned in the request. Therefore, no such report on human rights performance in other countries exists.
You said today in your opening remarks that annually there are many reports like this on individual countries, and indeed last year there were 111 country-specific reports.
You then go to the access to information manual that is produced by Treasury Board. At tab 2-4, on page 2, we read the following. This is, by the way, guidance for your officials:
Often the request is expressed in broad terms because of a lack of knowledge about government operations. An employee of the institution experienced in the area of access should contact the requester to clarify the nature of the request or help the requester to understand any difficulties which may be encountered in processing.... Well handled requests may reduce the incidence of complaints.
I want to underscore that, Mr. Deputy Minister: “Well handled requests may reduce the incidence of complaints.”
When the GHH advised, I'm curious as to how they could give advice that no such human rights report on other countries exists when they know in their own division that last year there were 111 country-specific reports. It would have seemed to me the simplest matter in the world to pick up the phone--I'm an old guy, so I pick up the phone, but I suppose the new way is to e-mail the requester--and say, “Gee, that was a broad request. Do you have anything specific you're looking for?” I would presume that Mr. Esau would have said, “Yes, I'm looking for Afghanistan.”
Since by your own testimony we know there were 111 country-specific reports, somebody at GHH could have said, “Yes, we have one for Afghanistan for 2006. Is that what the requester wants?” The answer would have been yes, the document would have been provided--never mind the redaction issues--and we wouldn't be going through all this. That's how I see it. I sure hope you see it that way, because that would have obviated an awful lot of hassle for everybody.
What really bothers me after that is the note you have in your chronology of April 10, 2007. Gwyn Kutz, director of GHH, talks about different things, and I quote:
The Division does produce reports following certain situations that may develop in individual countries (i.e. Afghanistan or Haiti). If Requester wants Division to search for each report, it would take 'hundreds' of hours to locate all the reports.
I find that absolute baloney. We already know there are country-specific reports per year. They have to be filed alphabetically; otherwise how would you ever find them? Afghanistan is at the beginning of the alphabet. I don't understand how this person could have reported that it would take hundreds of hours to find a specific report on Afghanistan when you yourself have said that the GHH knows perfectly well that 111 country-specific reports were produced in the last year. That answer was then provided to Mr. Esau, because he gave the committee testimony that he was shocked that he would be required to pay for hundreds of hours of searching.
All of this inquiry on this aspect--not the blacking out at all--could have been obviated by a simple question: “Hey, Mr. Esau, what are you looking for? Afghanistan? Which year do you want? Here it is.”
Now, on the issue of what was blacked out and what was not blacked out, that's fair enough; that's between the department and the requester, and if the requester doesn't like it, he goes to the Information Commissioner. But we've been spending an awful lot of Parliament's time on something your department could have dealt with in two simple questions, and I don't understand why they didn't do it.
:
So then, you were appointed on March 19, or thereabouts. According to the chronology of events, the initial access to information requests were made on January 29, that is one and a half months before you took over your new duties. Is that correct?
You said that you were the best person to answer questions. There is something I do not understand, but it is only a minor point, nothing serious. DFAIT received the report on January 17. I learned this fact from a Justice Department document which states that officials submitted this report to the department on January 17, 2006.
The Globe and Mail reported in its April 26 edition that the following portions of paragraph 14 had been censored. I will read what it says to you in English, even though my English is not that good.
[English]
Military intelligence and police forces have been accused of involvement in arbitrary arrest, kidnapping, extortion, torture and extra judicial killing of criminal suspects.
[Translation]
Mr. Deputy Minister, unless you are denying that this is actually in the report...This was published one and a half months ago, and so far, no one has denied that this is in fact what the report says. Had the facts reported been false, I am certain the minister himself would have gladly issued a press release saying that the Globe and Mail report was inaccurate.
That said, since no one has denied the Globe and Mail report, I have to believe that it is the truth. My intelligence and my logical mind lead me to believe that is the case.
DFAIT received a report on January 17 describing instances of kidnappings, extortion, torture and summary executions. By your account, someone then shelved this report. I believe what you are saying. You claim that neither you nor the minister saw the report. I also believe you are telling the truth about this.
What guidelines are being followed? You are the new deputy minister. You approve and review guidelines. Which guidelines were mainly followed and which will be followed in the future in the case of a report such as this, which violates the Geneva Convention? Earlier, I forgot about the International Convention Against Torture. An eminent professor from the University of British Columbia, Mr. Byers, even said that with this report, Canada demonstrated that it was guilty of war crimes. That is no small thing! Yet, no one from DFAIT called the then deputy minister or contacted the minister's office. Are you telling us that no one took it upon himself to do that?
:
Could you stop the clock, please?
Mr. Edwards, I think this is a perfect example. Members of Parliament, of course, do not work in the public service. They have no way of knowing, really, by way of experience, how a department works, what a chain of command is, what kind of information goes to whom and when. I think the question here is one of frustration, of trying to understand the process of how information flows. So let's take the minister out of it for the moment, because I think we can all agree that what advice is provided to the minister, well, that's advice for the minister.
But I think Madame Lavallée was also inquiring about what information flows to you so that you are aware of what's happening in your department. And of course floating around in all of this is the word “torture” and the allegations of torture, and we have the difficulty of a report apparently being leaked in a non-redacted form. No one, of course, can confirm or deny whether that's the report in its non-redacted form without, of course, commenting on the report. Nonetheless, as Madame Lavallée pointed out, it's in the paper, it hasn't been denied, so there's an air of credibility, an air of believability about it, that there were reports to us—us being Canadians—about torture of people in Afghanistan who, at one time, were under our control.
On a hypothetical basis, so that we can understand, I think Madame Lavallée was asking, what is the flow of that type of information, and does it get to you?
:
Hypothetically. Mr. Chairman, I want to be helpful. Please don't get me wrong. I'm prepared to take the approach you're suggesting, although it does not seem that we're now talking about the Access to Information Act request and how we dealt with these particular requests we're discussing.
By and large, what happens in the process is that this information comes into the department. It will come, usually, to the director level or below, and it usually comes in the form of telegrams or e-mails and classified and non-classified material. So we collect this information, and at some point someone makes a judgment call that this is worth telling their boss about, and that might be the director general. Then that person will look at it and say they think this is sensitive enough that it needs to go farther up the line.
So it can either be a specific piece of information or it could be something that rolls into a broader analytical piece that they're doing in terms of developing a policy toward a particular country or an issue, and so on.
All along the line judgment calls are made that determine how a piece of information is going to be used. Sometimes it ends up on my desk and doesn't go any further, because I say the minister doesn't need to know this. Sometimes it comes to my desk, and I say they're to do another note to the minister. Sometimes I don't get it at all. An ADM might say it doesn't have to go any further.
That's how the system works. Is it a perfect system? As I said before, no system is perfect. We try to make sure we make the right judgments here and there and everywhere, but sometimes we don't.
:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will be brief.
That overview was helpful, Mr. Edwards, but I just can't get past this point that on some things you make a judgment call that the minister should be made aware of. If your minister were standing in the House of Commons being battered with questions demanding to know the state of detainees in Afghanistan, surely the deputy minister or somebody underneath you would say they'd better make the minister aware of this; he's getting the crap kicked out of him day after day in question period.
Let me summarize what we think went wrong here. When the original requests were made, your office tried its best to deny the existence. Mr. Esau went back. When you say the question was a little too global, too vague, let me tell you, Mr. Esau went back and said, and this is a quote from his e-mail:
If the records do exist but I failed to use the precise title of the reports, please let me know. I'm hearing from other sources that DFAIT does in fact produce human rights reports and I just want to confirm DFAIT's position on this, that human rights reports DO NOT exist and that my request was not interpreted with undue narrowness...
In other words, he did his best to negotiate with the ATIP officer to say that if he didn't use quite the right language, could he please be helped to phrase it in a way that he might use the right language. That was pretty serious. She got back and said she'd do some digging and get back to him. But then she said they felt they'd answered the letter of request.
So he got jerked around two or even three times by not using the magic words. This is where we used the Rumpelstiltskin reference. What does it take, some magic word before the information starts to flow? It's not supposed to be like that. The chairman read Treasury Board guidelines that they're supposed to err on the side of the applicant, not on the side of a minister who's trying to preserve himself from being embarrassed.
Then, when you had to admit these reports do exist, they started to get censored like crazy, in a way they were never censored before. This is what really concerns me.
The only question I have is a specific one. Who directed the censorship of the 2005 report, which was released in 2006, and the 2006 report, which was released in 2007? Who directed the blacking out of all reference to torture in those two documents?
It has been stated here earlier that in spite of the difficulties we've had, overall the thing seems to be working. I would like to say that depends on who you ask. If you were to ask a detainee, I don't think the system is working. If you were to ask a Canadian soldier in Afghanistan, many of whom I have talked to who have come back home, who worry that some of the people they turned over might have had the kind of treatment we as a country would not have wanted them to receive, I would suggest to you, sir, that this system might not be working as well as we think.
The access to information, it seems to me, is for us as a committee...our responsibility is to make sure that sometimes when government moves along and it does its thing, people get information they need to help keep us accountable.
I totally agree with what you said. I look at them all here. There are public servants in this room, many of them, who 100% want to serve the Canadian interest. I understand that and I accept that. But I think it's also true that sometimes the human element gets lost in the process of this.
I would like to suggest, sir, that being here—and I'm the most recent member of this committee—I don't have a lot of confidence in what has resulted from the last number of interviews we have had. I'm not talking about political interference; I'm not talking about any of that stuff. I simply think that obviously a request was made and somebody was told—it started that way—that no such document existed, and from that point on it got worse.
My question, sir, because I don't have much time, is that for the sake of these other people, including the soldiers and the detainees as well as people who are trying to advocate for them, all of you, as public servants, need to come forward with these recommendations as to how we can help you to do better. But you also have to be conscious of the fact that we can't screw around with this. There are lives at stake here and serious issues.
So I would ask you, sir, to come forward as fast as you can, through working with your department and all the people who are here--and I mean this--with these recommendations so that we as a committee can help you get the stuff you need to move this process along further. I would also ask that you and your people do due diligence about this, sir, because it's really important; it does involve the lives of others.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
:
Thank you, Mr. Vincent.
As chair of the committee, it's my responsibility, to the extent I can, to keep order and to determine what questions are relevant and whether there's repetition.
In my judgment, the question of asking the deputy minister what advice he gave to the minister is not an appropriate question. In any event, he's already indicated that he would not give such testimony. You asked a series of other questions, most of which, I believe, have been answered, including a statement, both in writing and orally, by the deputy minister that there was no political interference. That question was asked subsequently by at least two members. Again, the deputy minister specifically stated there was no political interference in this matter.
You then went on, in your address to me, to talk a little bit about Madame Sabourin, and that's a different question. So in the remaining time that you have, if you have a specific question with respect to Madame Sabourin and her authority, or anything of that nature, please direct it to the witness.
Deputy Minister, thank you very much for appearing. Thank you for staying beyond the allotted time. We appreciate that.
Committee members, we have the four witnesses we have summoned, but I would like to take a five-minute suspension, first of all, for our staff. Second, I would then like to come back in camera to discuss which of those witnesses—if any or all—we wish to hear, and in what manner, that is to say, in public or in camera. Then we can proceed. I don't want to take a lot of time doing that, but I want to be fair to the discussions we had last week.
So I would ask those witnesses who have been summoned to appear to remain here. No one else has to remain here, but you're welcome to, as it's a public meeting at this point until I declare it in camera. Actually, I'll hold it in camera as soon as we come back. So why don't you come back here after we're in public again, once the adjournment is over. But Ms. Kutz, Ms. Nixon, Madame Archambault, and Mr. Switzer have to remain within the confines of this room—not outside this room, basically—until we're ready for them.
Once again, Deputy Minister, thank you very much.
The meeting is suspended for five minutes.
[Proceedings continue in camera]
[Public proceedings resume]
:
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to our witnesses.
I have a couple of specific questions. First to Mr. Switzer and perhaps to Madame Archambault, but we'll start with Mr. Switzer.
In the outline, the timeline that involved the request 605, which I understand was the general request put forward by Mr. Esau, Mr. Switzer, it indicates in here that you reviewed the approach to certain exemptions in that report on or about the middle of March and that you undertook, in fact you requested, to review these exemptions, if I can call them that. “Redaction” is another word that has been used. You got a copy of the unmarked document to go through that review, and ultimately you finished that review on or about April 13, so almost a month's time went by in the course of this review where you're essentially looking at a document, reviewing the exemptions that took place.
Could you describe what sort of dialogue went on between you and, in this case, Mr. Bryan from GHH to go through the process of giving yourself, as the reviewing officer, the comfort level you needed that the redactions were consistent and proper and in accordance with the act?
:
First of all, I'd like to make the record clear. We got this bullying letter from the minister today, so his caucus members should pay due respect to it.
Second, we should act very professionally. I come from a professional background, and when members on the other side speak, you will never hear me intervening. I would like the same respect to be given by the other side so we can show our witnesses that we are serious about this matter.
This is a very serious matter where Canada's reputation is at stake. It's a situation with human rights where there are departures happening--so alleges the corrupt Karzai government in Afghanistan. So we should be very serious.
To Ms. Kutz again, you said when you applied subsection 15(1).... I'm not very clear about this. When you said there were risks to the source, what did you figure out were the risks for blacking out those...?
Before I go there, I would like to show you a piece of paper I have from the Globe and Mail from April 26, 2007. There was a story on the cover-up. There were some sections that were shown in this story that were blacked out in that report.
What was the situation like in your office on that day when you first read this story in the paper?