PRHA Committee Meeting

STANDING COMMITTEE ON PROCEDURE AND HOUSE AFFAIRS

COMITÉ PERMANENT DE LA PROCÉDURE ET DES AFFAIRES DE LA CHAMBRE

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Thursday, February 18, 1999

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[English]

The Chairman (Mr. Peter Adams (Peterborough, Lib.)): Colleagues, I call the meeting to order. The order of the day is consideration of a request received pursuant to Standing Order 106(3) concerning the leak of committee reports prior to tabling in the House.

We have two witnesses today, and I'll welcome them formally in a moment. One is Jules Richer, who is the president of the Canadian Parliamentary Press Gallery, and the other is Doug Fisher, a distinguished journalist and former colleague.

Mr. Richer has advised me—and he can explain the exact reason, I imagine—that he has a very important appointment. Therefore, I would propose that even though we don't have a quorum, and this is quite legal under our rules in dealing with witnesses, that we ask Mr. Richer to make his remarks now and give us a little time for questions and answers. I've spoken to Doug Fisher and he is agreeable to this procedure.

Colleagues, is that okay? D'accord? Okay.

Jules, we welcome you to the committee. It's very good of you to come. If you could, briefly explain the circumstances and then proceed to whatever remarks you have.

[Translation]

Mr. Jules Richer (President, Canadian Parliamentary Press Gallery): I will start by briefly explaining that I will have to leave at 11:25 because the Canadian Press has an interview with the Minister of Finance, Paul Martin. As you know, post-budget updates are important. Allow me to begin my presentation with no further ado.

Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen of the committee, I would like to start by thanking you for having invited me to present the perspective of the Parliamentary Press Gallery.

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[English]

I would like to start with a few words about the Parliamentary Press Gallery. Founded in 1867, it represents the 400 journalists and technicians who work regularly on Parliament Hill. It is not a professional association and still less a union. Its mission is strictly to watch over the members' interests in the framework of the performance of their duties.

I do not intend to lecture you on the freedom of the press or drag you through an in-depth analysis of the way the media operates. I'll leave that to others.

I will go straight to the point. I do not think I will surprise anyone here in this committee room when I say that journalists are always happy to have information leaked to them. In fact, if you have anything to tell me after the meeting, I can assure you it will get wide coverage, confidentiality guaranteed.

[Translation]

I will also come right out and say that it is not the role and still less the mission of the Parliamentary Press Gallery to advise you on ways to reduce the number of leaks. I agree to speak to your committee for one reason and one reason only. I want to issue a warning. Any attempt to set up a system of sanctions against journalists who accept information leaked from parliamentary committees would be a resounding failure and would seriously undermine Parliament's credibility.

If a journalist were to be threatened with sanctions because he refused to reveal his sources following the leaking of a committee report, the controversy would be immense, and the harm to the institution would be just as immense.

There is no oath of office for journalists. Professional privilege has no legal basis in our trade. But I can tell you, protecting sources is precious to journalists. It is the cornerstone of their work.

To force a journalist to reveal his sources is a dangerous exercise that even the common law courts try to avoid. Judges rarely have journalists testify at trials, because they understand that in our society protecting sources is a crucial means of safeguarding the freedom of the press.

[English]

I venture to hope that the Speaker of the House, Gilbert Parent, did not think through his remarks when he raised the possibility in December of imposing controls on journalists. When read in Hansard, it seems clear that his comments were made in the heat of the moment and that he was simply thinking out loud. At any rate, this is how I interpret his remarks. Yet on Monday, the weekly Hill Times reported the comments of some MPs who seem favourable to the idea of imposing sanctions. This is very disturbing for the press gallery, and I hope my presentation will help clarify the matter.

As I said at the start of my remarks, the gallery has no intention of advising you on what to do about leaks. However, I will take the liberty of sharing with you a personal experience that, in my opinion, is very revealing about the reasons that induce MPs to leak documents to the media.

[Translation]

Before I became a parliamentary correspondent, I worked for several years as a journalist for Le Droit here in the National Capital Region. I covered provincial and municipal news, and my work involved frequent contact with provincial elected representatives. They were often my best sources. They told me with a great deal of accuracy what was happening in Quebec City and Toronto. Their in-depth knowledge of local issues also helped me on more than one occasion.

When, four years ago, Le Droit assigned me to Parliament, I tried to recreate what I had known at the provincial level, that is, to weave a solid network of contacts among the MPs. It did not take me long to realize that I was on the wrong track. MPs, I found, do not really know much about what is happening with current issues in Ottawa, presumably because they do not have an active role to play.

Quite often, their main contribution to political life is limited to their participation on parliamentary committees. Without wanting to criticize the federal dynamic in any detail, I think it is clear that committee proceedings and their results frequently pass unnoticed. And yet, there are many MPs who devote time and wholehearted effort to this activity.

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The temptation must therefore be strong among some of them to obtain more recognition for their work. Leaking information to journalists constitutes a good way of attracting attention to what their committee is doing.

So—and this is my personal conclusion—rather than contemplating shooting the messenger, your committee should extend its consideration to an enhancement of the importance of MPs' work. That, I think, is where you will find answers to your questions.

Thank you for your attention.

[English]

The Chairman: Jules, thank you very much.

Again, for colleagues who've just arrived, we started early because Mr. Richer has a very important appointment.

Stéphane Bergeron.

[Translation]

Mr. Stéphane Bergeron (Verchères—Les-Patriotes, BQ): Mr. Chairman, I sincerely thank the President of the Canadian Parliamentary Press Gallery for having accepted to appear before the committee to share his position with us. It would not be very useful to say that we knew from the outset that you were going to tell us that you weren't opposed to leaks and that you were going to warn us against the idea of imposing sanctions on the Press Gallery.

In light of your presentation, I want to clarify for you that, according to what I have heard here, there is no tendency, at this stage of the committee's proceedings, for committee members to want to eventually arrive at a process for sanctioning the media in the event of a leak. We must try to make the people who are responsible for the leaks accountable, if I can put it that way, and not, as you so clearly stated it, shoot the messenger.

If we called you here today, it was simply with a view to holding a very opened exchange on the implications for the media and your perception of these implications, for Parliament, of Standing Orders on leaks that would eventually be more restrictive, considering the fact that it has been established, according to parliamentary tradition, that a leak constitutes contempt of the House and that, consequently, contempt should theoretically be punished.

As Ms. Davidson, Mr. Walsh and Mr. Marleau clearly established when they appeared before our committee, the problem is that there is no investigative mechanism that will enable us to identify the source of the leak. Moreover, there is not really any jurisprudence with respect to the sanctions to be imposed in such a case. That is more or less what we are trying to examine.

The various possibilities include the option of fully opening up committee discussions and ensuring that there are no longer any in-camera sessions. We are however forced to take into account the fact that despite whatever happens committees will have to hold some sessions in camera.

I would like to know how you perceive the possibility of tightening up the standing orders so that we are in keeping with parliamentary jurisprudence, that states that a leak constitutes contempt of the House.

[English]

The Chairman: Jules, I have to say we're on your schedule. We would like to hear from other members, if you can keep it as tight as you can, please.

[Translation]

Mr. Jules Richer: Mr. Bergeron, I would like to start by saying that my presentation was clear, but necessary in order to establish the gallery's position. As for the means of achieving some kind of control, as I said in my presentation, the gallery is not here to suggest any means to you, because to some extent, the work of a journalist depends on these leaks. We will not tell you what to do to avoid them.

Mr. Stéphane Bergeron: [Editor's Note: Inaudible]

Mr. Jules Richer: But I am nevertheless going to tell you why there seems to be a new wave of leaks. In my opinion, one of the reasons is increased competition among the media on Parliament Hill. Following the arrival of the National Post, there was a push to obtain more of what we call "scoops". That is probably what happened, and it is perhaps a one-time occurrence. It may not happen again. However, as I said in my presentation, it did nevertheless hit a raw nerve among MPs, who saw it as a way of obtaining more recognition for their work.

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Should all committee proceedings be opened up? I cannot oppose that idea. I fully agree. I also understand that when you discuss some issues you will still need to sit in camera. This could be the case for issues relating to national security. So where should the line be drawn? What should be done? I will not make any suggestions. The only thing that I want to tell is that if you have any leaked information for me, well, I will take it, that is all.

[English]

The Chairman: Thank you.

It's Roy Bailey, then the chair, and then Randy White.

Mr. Roy Bailey (Souris—Moose Mountain, Ref.): First of all, Mr. Chairman, thank you, and thank you, Mr. Richer for your report. There's nothing in it that surprises me. I want to congratulate you on going right to the point in brevity. I appreciate that because sometimes we get a lot of words that don't mean anything, and your report just puts it the way it is.

You mention that first of all you are not a professional organization; that is, you're not a professional organization on paper as such. Is that what you mean? Yet together with all the other journalists, you have certain behaviour that makes you seen as a profession.

You also mentioned one of the principles you guard, and that is not divulging any information you get. I can understand that. But would you not agree—and I'm not accusing the press of it, and I'm certainly not accusing you, Mr. Richer—that in the competition to get news, for you as a reporter it would be very unprofessional to offer any type of a reward to the source of your information? The reason I ask that question is simply this. True or not, there is a growing concern among people that the reason this individual is getting this and this is because there is some type of a reward they're given so that they could be called a future source of information. I'd just like you to comment on that and clear the air on it.

Mr. Jules Richer: Okay. First of all, on the point of professional association, I was saying we're not a professional association because we don't have a code of ethics, as other associations do.

Mr. Chuck Strahl (Fraser Valley, Ref.): The federal cabinet doesn't have one either.

Mr. Jules Richer: Yes, I know.

Mr. John Richardson (Perth—Middlesex, Lib.): The Reform Party doesn't have one.

Mr. Jules Richer: But it's up to every organization that is a member of the gallery to have their own code of ethics. CBC has one. I know the Quebec association of journalists has a code of ethics.

We're here to manage only the business of the House.

On rewards, I just want to ask you a question. What kinds of rewards are you talking about?

Mr. Roy Bailey: Let's face it, politicians love to get press.

Mr. Lynn Myers (Waterloo—Wellington, Lib.): Good press.

Mr. Roy Bailey: And they want good press. What happens when politicians get press they like? You become a good reporter. If you report on something they don't like.... I'm saying that politicians are so hungry to get some press, particularly if they can get it at the provincial or, greater still, the national level, the reward they could receive is that they would be recognized the next time with another leak, which would be of great importance. That's the area I'm concerned about.

Mr. Jules Richer: Yes, but that's...how can I say this? That's part of covering any field. It could be a police beat. It could be anything. That's part of the game of sources and reporters. It's not particular to Parliament.

Of course, there are personal dealings when people give you leaks, but that's up to every reporter to do whatever they can, whatever they want. I won't comment on that subject because it's so different from reporters who report on some organizations.... I think even some big organizations like CBC have guidelines on that.

The Chairman: Thank you. Roy, thank you very much.

Jules, your presentation is more or less what I would have expected, and I suspect we all think the same. But you do have this experience in other jurisdictions, the provincial jurisdiction in particular. Was it normal there for committees, for example, to have in camera meetings?

Mr. Jules Richer: Of course.

The Chairman: For particular purposes such as producing reports?

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Mr. Jules Richer: Yes. But I don't disagree with in camera meetings, as I was saying, on national security matters, on...I don't know. If you have a case involving criminal law and minors—

The Chairman: But what about the development of the final stage of reports, which is the case we're discussing here? So whether it's a report in its draft stage.... Does that concern you, either as a person or as a journalist, that this might be reason for in camera meetings, in order that the committee be able to discuss the last stages?

Mr. Jules Richer: On my part, on that issue of the preparation of a report, I think for democracy it's good that everything be open as much as possible. But I won't issue a general opinion.

The Chairman: Okay, does the press gallery have any in camera meetings?

Mr. Jules Richer: Yes, we do, on legal matters.

The Chairman: Okay, thank you.

Randy White and then, by the way, Joe Fontana.

Mr. Randy White (Langley—Abbotsford, Ref.): Mr. Richer, I think I would disagree with you that the reason for the leaks is the competition on the Hill. I disagree with that. I think it's a flawed process that is the problem. And the process that's flawed is that far too many items in this day and age are considered in camera, and the members just plain don't think they should be. Therefore the leaks are occurring.

We've always had competition on the Hill. As for whether it's one more newspaper added, I'm not sure that makes such a difference.

For instance, we tracked the articles that were done recently on the budget, and the Globe and Mail, for some reason or another, accurately described five particular items out of Martin's budget within a week prior to his budget. So we know they were leaked. You just couldn't guess on that many.

The Chairman: But were they committee leaks?

Mr. Randy White: Well, leaks in this day and age are leaks, Mr. Chairman. And I think to that extent, in Mr. Martin's particular situation it is not a matter of.... According to Beauchesne's, it's an issue of contempt in the House of Commons because it came from a ministerial portfolio. I'm aware of that.

I maintain that if we had very few in camera meetings, we would not have leaks. In other words, it's as simple basically as keeping as much as you can out in front of the public and not being concerned about whether we're in camera or not.

I know we've tried a couple of times here already to get you to identify criteria, the items that would go in camera or not, and I think you're staying away from that.

I would like to then offer you this suggestion. For issues other than legal issues, or personal issues, which typically end up in the Board of Internal Economy or perhaps in procedure and House affairs, why not just make report making in committees a public event? Then we don't have the problem with leaks.

The Chairman: Mr. Richer.

Mr. Jules Richer: That's a possibility. But I will tell you why I'm staying away from criteria, because I'm just reflecting how reporters cover issues in general matters. The limits we have are very specific, as I was saying, when it's a question of people under 18 in criminal cases. Sometimes we also have our own guidelines, which are not written, not legal. For instance, in court coverage we won't identify a victim of sexual aggression. That's our own code of conduct. But otherwise, the rest is open. And of course we want more open meetings. We cannot disagree with that. But I'm not in a position to tell you more than that.

The Chairman: Okay. I'm going to go to Joe Fontana, and then Madeleine Dalphond-Guiral. We're on Mr. Richer's schedule, so, Joe, very quickly.

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Mr. Joe Fontana (London North Centre, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I think Randy is partially right. I think it's a little bit of both. The rule should be more openness and fewer in camera meetings, and I think that will be one area. But I would also agree that in some cases one needs to have some in camera meetings for national security reasons—budgetary, or whatever.

What intrigued me, Jules, is that since you've been here in Parliament, you seem to think MPs don't know anything and therefore we're not really a useful part of your stuff there. Based on your experience, municipally and provincially...you say we're only involved in some of the committee work we do. Not an awful lot of people in Canada know what committees are doing anyway, and that's why we're trying to change that system too. I was rather intrigued that you would think the federal members of Parliament really don't know what's going on.

Mr. Jules Richer: No, but I was disappointed—really disappointed—because working with MNAs in Quebec City, I could know what was happening in the cabinet.

Mr. Joe Fontana: You're talking to the wrong people then, Jules. I'll give you a list of people you might want to talk to about things that are going on in Ottawa.

The Chairman: In cabinet, though—is that what you mean?

Mr. Jules Richer: No. But what I felt is that MPs here have less of a role. And I remember sometimes some MPs said publicly that they felt the role of MP was not valued.

Mr. Joe Fontana: Well, maybe you can give us some insight, and that was my point. What was it, provincially and municipally, that made you think those elected people are really more plugged in and have something to say about what happens? I hear this all the time—

Mr. Jules Richer: Because I think the power is very centralized here in Ottawa.

Mr. Joe Fontana: Well, you know, one of—

[Translation]

The Chairman: Madeleine Dalphond-Guiral.

Ms. Madeleine Dalphond-Guiral (Laval-Centre, BQ): Mr. Richer, I have no trouble understanding your point of view and recognizing that, of course, leaks are very sexy and very interesting. If in camera sessions were to become the exception, based on your experience and your sense of how the situation would unfold, would the content of committee proceedings become clearly less attractive and less interesting for the press?

Mr. Jules Richer: Opening up committee proceedings and reducing in camera sittings, as was mentioned, would be a way of increasing interest. But there is also perhaps a basic problem in the case of committees: committee reports are often shelved. That is one reason why there is less coverage of committee work.

Ms. Madeleine Dalphond-Guiral: So you are in favour of keeping in camera sessions. That would keep things a little bit more juicy, because there would be more leaks.

Mr. Jules Richer: I am not here to tell you whether or not to keep in camera sessions.

Ms. Madeleine Dalphond-Guiral: No, no.

Mr. Jules Richer: That is your decision, and we will adjust to it, that's all.

[English]

The Chairman: Colleagues, at Jules' request we have to finish now.

We greatly appreciate the time you've taken, and it may well be, Jules, that we may invite you back. We understand this interview is very important for you, so we appreciate your taking the time. You can tell the members wanted to discuss it further, and we'll see how the thing develops.

[Translation]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Jules Richer: Thank you very much, sir.

[English]

The Chairman: Colleagues, I'm going to suspend for a few moments while Mr. Fisher gets in place. For the people who came in late, Jules has an interview very soon, and that's why I started early. We had members of a few parties here, but not all.

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The Chairman: On behalf of the committee, I truly want to welcome Doug Fisher. Doug, we greatly appreciate your coming here.

Doug was an MP who won four elections, which is a lesson for many of us. He has, as we all know, a very distinguished career, and at the moment he's the Ottawa-based columnist for Sun Newspapers—if that's the way to put it, Doug—and so we welcome him.

I think you've been following the proceedings. We've tried to provide you with the transcripts, and we'd be grateful for your thoughts.

Mr. Douglas Fisher (Individual Presentation): I have two generalities, to begin with.

First, I've never been a reporter or a journalist in the sense of working in a newsroom. There was a discussion just before I came here about the Parliamentary Press Gallery and the people and the competition. I can't speak to that any more than you can as outsiders who've been along the rim, so don't look for me to be an authority on reporting and journalism as it's practised by the networks and the newspapers.

Secondly, I could have written something, but I've been drafting stuff about parliamentary committees for over 40 years now. I've been to Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, France, Germany, a half a dozen times to England, and a number of times to Sacramento, California; Salem, Oregon; Albany, New York; and Washington. This was in various roles, particularly when Dalton Camp and I did the commission on the Ontario legislature back in the early 1970s. Dalton looked after what you might call the partisan stuff, and I did the noble stuff about making the legislature a better place and giving committees something to do.

Of the fourteen parliaments I've watched here, having been a part of four of them, eight have been majority, and six have been minority. I just wish some more of you had had a bit of experience with a minority government, because whenever there's a minority government, committees come alive. They really become important and significant.

When a government has a majority, the grip tends to come down, and it has been coming down increasingly in the last fifteen or twenty years as more and more the focus has come on the party leaders—not just the Prime Minister but the party leaders. The evolution, as I saw it happen with the NDP, took place under Ed Broadbent. Before that there was a great deal of freedom and, if you want, going your own for the MPs both in committees and generally. That was gradually switched out. A lot of this came as a result of the pooling of resources into staffs here.

I came here as a bit of a specialist; I was an archivist and a librarian, a reference research librarian, which very few people coming in are, and my specialty was government publications. I had been reorganizing the largest collection of government publications away from Ottawa, at Queen's University, for a time before I got here. So when I came here, I can tell you that one of the first things I set out to do was to get a better library.

At the time I came here, there were only two people who were reference librarians, and one of them was the assistant librarian. Today I think you have over 70 specialists, most of them with PhDs. So that influx has all come in.

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The same kind of thing happened when Tommy Douglas came down here to become the leader of the New Democrats. He had a staff of three and a half. By the time Ed Broadbent left, he had a staff at his disposal, both as the leader and through the caucus, of over 25 people. The resources have piled up with the leadership and the domination.

I couldn't get over, when I saw this happen so quickly to the Reform Party, how the leader's office and his advisers became so important. I can assure you that 25 or 30 years ago the Rick Andersons, the Elly Alboims, the Bill Foxes, the Pelletiers, and the Eddie Goldenbergs didn't have the run or the sway that they have now.

Why is that relevant? It means that the discipline of the party is in force more and more, and God knows, when you have four parties in opposition, two of them fighting just for survival, it becomes more and more significant and important. That's one of the reasons what you might call “the iron grip of partisanship” has to be considered in terms of what you're talking about.

My advice to you would be very simple: don't even bother amending; get rid of that thing in the standing orders about, until something has been reported to the House by a committee.... That's nonsense. But that's by the way.

I want to tell you three short anecdotes, two of which took place right in this very room.

I loved committees when I was an MP, and I got more joy out of them than anything else, certainly more than out of the House. But those were in the days when Parliament wasn't all focused around Question Period, and when debates, particularly debates in the evening, were quite important. You might get as many as a hundred MPs listening to a debate. That was fantastic. You don't have that sort of junk any more.

The stories are simply these, and the first has to do with the smartest man, probably with the exception of Stanley Knowles, I've ever met on the Hill, and that was Jack Pickersgill.

If you read Jack's book, The Road Backt, it is about how he led bringing the Liberals back from that tremendous swatter when John Diefenbaker wound up down here with 207 seats.

By the way, before that election there was very little committee work done. There weren't more than four or five committees active during a year, and I suppose the only one that was big and tended to make big news regularly was the transport committee, because every year they dealt with Air Canada and the CNR. The other one was the broadcasting committee, which dealt with the CBC.

That's another point you should stick in your minds. The big crown corporations have disappeared as big issues for committees.

The Diefenbaker government arrived, and they were determined to change the broadcasting system. The CBC not only ran the CBC; it ran broadcasting. So they were going to bring in a new regime, and they did. It was called the Board of Broadcast Governors. The Liberals fought it, and our party, which was then the CCF, was against it. But anyway, it was going to happen, and it happened. The Broadcasting Act was changed, and so we had the creation of this board, the Board of Broadcast Governors, which was really the ancestor of the CRTC.

That was after the big majority government of 1958. In 1959 they got that through, and then we were coming along. Then a movement developed in the Conservative Party, led in the west by a very marvellous-talking MP—his father had been an MP—Art Smith from Calgary. Anybody from the west will have known Art. He was silver-tongued. Art provided the persuasiveness, and another fellow—a bitter man from Swift Current, a Tory MP by the name of Jack McIntosh—provided what you might call the muscle, and they decided they were going to do something serious about the CBC and the cost of the CBC.

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They had the idea that CBC television should go out and get a lot of revenue from commercials. They brought it to the broadcasting committee, and they were determined to get a recommendation for it. You stop and think about that if you get tired of all those commercials on Hockey Night in Canada. Way back then, they didn't have that. CBC wasn't making any money, to speak of, out of television commercials.

Mr. Joe Fontana: They're still not.

Mr. Douglas Fisher: They make their share.

What happened was that this came to the committee and was argued, and we went through the whole budget. I always went out of my way to offer to write the report for the chairman and the committee clerk. Back then I don't think we had a committee clerk who could write a report. Their quality is much—

The Chairman: The times haven't changed much.

Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

Mr. Douglas Fisher: The quality, I think, has improved.

At any rate, I drafted the report.

The two people I dealt with in the committee were a couple of less eager Tories. The key man was a guy by the name of Dick Bell—Bell's Corners is named after his family—and the other one was Marcel Lambert, who later became a finance critic.

Working with those two, I drafted the thing very carefully to get around this point, and there was no recommendation about the CBC going out and making money. I took it around to Pickersgill. He was the only other opposition MP on the committee. The opposition was very small back then. Pickersgill seemed to agree with it. So I said, “Jack, we're going to meet in camera, and this is what we're going to talk about. I hope you can go with it.” He nodded his head. I said, “You see what it does. It gets us past this insistence by Smith and McIntosh that the CBC go out and make money.” Jack nodded his head, and as far as I was concerned, that was it, I had his approval.

We came into the in camera meeting and we barely got going when there was an opportunity for Jack to open his mouth, and he said something really snarky to McIntosh, who began to bridle. Then Bell, who was chairing the meeting, got me to start reading this draft report. I could see Smith and McIntosh beginning to get angry, and Smith said something. Right away Pickersgill cut him to ribbons. Within 30 seconds this in camera meeting was in an uproar. They were cursing back and forth at Jack, and Jack was cursing at them. Jack turned to me and said, “I don't know if you can stay here, but I can't stay here and see these stupid fellows carve up one of the greatest assets this nation has ever had. What they're going to do by this push is destroy the CBC, and they're going to destroy private broadcasters, too.” Then he started walking out the door. There was nothing in my draft to say that, but he just stormed out.

My report was ripped up right there, and they wrote a tough one. One of the reasons the CBC made this big change in policy and went out and began to get more involved in getting commercial revenue was as a result of that particular antic.

Of course, after the meeting was over and I had given up on trying to mollify the Tories over the insults they'd had from that bastard Pickersgill, I went up to Jack's office on the fourth floor and I said, “Jack, why did you do that? I thought we had an understanding.” He said, “I don't know what you understood.” I said, “I could punch you.” He said, “Look, Fisher, get something into your head. Politics is a form of warfare, particularly electoral politics, and as far as I'm concerned, this is a war. We have to defeat those bastards and get them out of here before they ruin this country and organizations like the CBC. Now, you can go with your compromises and think you're sort of fiddling.... Let the bastards do it, and then we'll hang them for it.”

That was an example of an in camera operation and the consequences.

Let me give you another one that in some ways is more interesting. Let me just add that one of the reasons Bell and Lambert didn't want to have trouble with the CBC was because Diefenbaker still burned from what they called the producers' strike. The radio producers struck not a year after Diefenbaker became Prime Minister. That caused a great song and dance, and he didn't want that embarrassment again.

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Now, the other thing is that as an MP I received a leak from a senior official in the port of Montreal saying, why don't you take a look at the books of the Jacques Cartier Bridge? It's a toll bridge that runs across the river in Montreal. So I got investigating and I went down, and the head of the Montreal Port Authority took me in and explained why they had this peculiar situation.

There seemed to be a lot of traffic and tolls were charged, but there never seemed to be any money getting into the pot to pay off the cost of the operations and, in particular, the cost of building it. Then this man showed me the original agreement whereby the Government of Quebec was supposed to pay something in the neighbourhood of, let's say, $15 million back to the federal government, which had paid all the costs of building the bridge, but it had never bothered to do so.

So I got interested in it. As I began to poke around, I got talking to a couple of reporters at the Montreal Gazette, and one of them floated a story too. The next thing we know the Jacques Cartier Bridge scandal broke. Of course, the scandal was that the people who were handling the tolls, both the supervisors and the people watching the people throw their coins in, had got on to how to skim it. As to how much they skimmed, the general assumption was that they regularly skimmed over 80% of the revenues that came in. Of course this caused an enormous uproar, as you can imagine, from the drivers in Montreal and on the south shore and so on, and there were cries for an investigation.

In the House I demanded an investigation by George Hees, who was the Minister of Transport, and George said, “Right, we're going to turn a parliamentary committee loose on it.” So the transport committee got it, and we called the people at the port.

By then the press in Montreal had uncovered all these tales of these people who had become wealthy through having these jobs, particularly the supervisors, and there were pictures in the paper of some of the lovely residences built as a result of this. Obviously this kind of thing had to stop.

But when it came to a defence by the chief official of the Jacques Cartier Bridge, he said that he had hired and promoted the people he was instructed to by the elected politicians. So I said, “Let's have the evidence of this.” Immediately there was an uproar, and they were saying, “Oh no, we mustn't destroy people's lives and careers.”

So it was decided that a subcommittee of the committee, three people, would take a look at these letters and then come back to the committee with recommendations as to whether they should be published or what else should be done.

I was one of the opposition guys. The other opposition guy was a former Minister of Transport who had helped make the original deal, Lionel Chevrier, and the third was a Tory, Louis-Joseph Pigeon. I remember the three of us met upstairs in a room, and we got the file. Well, it was a buster. A couple of people—Pierre Sevigny was one of them, and Alan MacNaughton, who was later a Speaker, was another—had written some of the most indiscreet letters you can imagine in relation to the appointment and promotion of people, etc. In other words, it showed that this was a little honey pot of patronage. There had been a tremendous battle amongst Liberal and then Conservative Montrealers and cabinet ministers as to who was going to have the finger on it.

I remember looking at it and saying, “Boy, Lionel, what the press won't do with this.” He said, “Doug, we can't let that out to the press”, and Pigeon said, “No, we can't show this to the press.” I said, “Come on!” Lionel said “I want to remind you, Douglas, this is in camera. This is privileged. This goes no further. We will report back and say there's a system of recommendations by political figures that has been regular and continuous and that we suggest should be ended.”

• 1150

There I was. I had this marvellous story, but I observed the secrecy. I think it was years later before somebody got to some of the letters. But those are two examples—Pickersgill and the CBC, and the Jacques Cartier Bridge—to show you the effect of secrecy and how in a way it muffles. If Pickersgill had pulled the stunt he did in camera in the open, well....

The third one I want to—

The Chairman: If we're going to get some questions in, as we have all the whips on our committee—

Mr. Douglas Fisher: Okay.

The Chairman: We have time, but I would just remind you.

Mr. Douglas Fisher: Okay.

I suppose the most climatic thing that ever happened in this committee that I was a witness to or read about was the time Gilles Grégoire of the Social Credit nailed Donald Gordon, president of the CNR, for the fact that his railway had 17 vice-presidents and not one was a bilingual French Canadian—

An hon member: Or a unilingual French Canadian.

Mr. Douglas Fisher: —or even a unilingual French Canadian. It happened right here. When Grégoire raised the point he was sitting right here and Gordon was up there. Gordon's assistant, Ralph Bonn, grabbed him, because Gordon was a big man, he had a very bad temper and almost came up snarling. Any goddamned vice-president of the CNR was going to be qualified, and so far they hadn't found a qualified French Canadian. Well, you can imagine.... That night the students from the University of Ottawa were rioting in the streets and burning Gordon in effigy. All of a sudden there was a crisis on their hands.

But my point about it is, this was something that took place in committee before the committee had any chance to make any recommendations about the whole question of vice-presidents. But the irony of it is that a year and a half earlier Gordon had been before the same committee and I had asked the very same question. I said to him—this was before the Social Credit people were in the mix—“It seems odd to me that here you are based in Montreal, I've been down to your headquarters and so on, and I know there are some French Canadians who work on the CNR there in your administration, but none of your executive people are.” He said, “Well, we'll get to that when we find the ones who have the talent.” Nothing happened; no newspaper picked it up.

About a year and half later, with the change in scenery with the Social Credit in—and they were a thundering surprise, particularly to the Liberals—wow, things altered and changed. There are about three morals you can draw from those various stories.

Mr. Joe Fontana: Just like the Bloc.

Mr. Stéphane Bergeron: Please don't compare us to the Social Credit.

The Chairman: Colleagues...okay, go ahead.

Mr. Douglas Fisher: If you want to ask any questions, I'll be glad to take a whirl at it.

The Chairman: Doug, we appreciate it, and we have a good list here. We're going to try, as I did before, to keep the questions and answers moving. We'll start with Chuck Strahl, then it's George Baker, Randy White, the chair and Joe Fontana.

Mr. Chuck Strahl: Thank you, Mr. Fisher. I just wonder if you hire out as an after-dinner speaker, because I need to hear some more of these stories. This is good stuff. I'm particularly intrigued about the discipline the Reform Party has been able to bring. As the whip, I didn't even know I brought in some of that. We'll talk about that later. I had no idea I was doing that. Anyway, I know what you're getting at there.

Mr. Douglas Fisher: There are just not too many loose cannons rolling around.

Mr. Chuck Strahl: I'm not shedding any tears over that.

On the issue we're dealing with here of Mr. White's argument that maybe we should just throw these committees open, and the stories you're telling about revealing the truth, maybe having the truth set you free is not such a bad idea.

Mr. Douglas Fisher: Of course.

Mr. Chuck Strahl: My second point is—I'd just like to get your opinion on it—we think one of the ways to do that is to allow television cameras to freely televise the committee hearings. In order words, depending on the interest, it can be not only open but there for all to see. Even in this committee, unless someone.... There are a few people here out of interest because it's a press-related subject, but let's face it, by and large they don't have the staff to cover 15 or 20 committees, so they don't go around and they never pick it up. Short of frying a minister on the plate, you can't get it covered.

• 1155

The Chairman: Mr. Fisher.

Mr. Douglas Fisher: I was very deeply involved in getting television into this place and also at Queen's Park. We got it into Queen's Park actually before it came in here, in 1977 I think it was. I think we had it in Queen's Park in about 1973 or 1974, but we got it on a basis at Queen's Park that might be better for you here than this whole apparatus you have that's run by CPAC. I'm not damning CPAC, but it's all very formal.

What we simply allowed, or we recommended and they bought, in Queen's Park was that there would be stations in the House and in committee rooms where cameramen or TV reporters could take their places, just as though they were sitting in the corner at the press bench. They could shoot or not shoot as they wanted.

One of the great worries up in Ottawa is that you have to keep providence because God knows what these TV people could do by cutting. This is why you fellows upstairs still go through the fake stuff, where somebody gets up to talk and half a dozen party members run and sit beside him. And you've insisted on the close-in shots. It's all part of the charade and the farce, as John Turner described it when he came back and discovered what had happened in his missing years.

Mr. Chuck Strahl: One of the other questions I have for you was actually brought up for the last witness, but in a sense here you're a good guy to ask because I know you're not part of that newsroom mentality. On the other hand—and I don't think you enter into this—what happened during our in camera report on the future of the nuclear issue in Canada is that the foreign affairs committee dealt with it and then it was leaked to the National Post, and then the Reform Party was raked royally over the coals for about a week or so about what a bunch of weak-kneed wusses we were because we didn't have anything to say about it. Of course, we were all treating it like a secret report so we weren't responding, which meant we were free targets.

During that time, when it first started to break, our foreign affairs critic was phoned up by a reporter who said, “Listen, I can get you two front section articles of at least a dozen column inches, with you prominently splashed throughout it, if you'll leak me that report.” My question to you is, should we just say c'est la vie, or is that unethical for anybody all around? Bob didn't do it, but—

Mr. Douglas Fisher: I think the person approached could have made something out of continuing an embarrassment to the person who did it and to the organization that he represented. But no, there are quid pro quos taking place all the time. Clark Davey, when he was the managing editor of the Globe and Mail, used to insist that he didn't want reporters staying on the Hill, in the Parliamentary Press Gallery, for longer than four or five years because they built up so many of these quid pro quos.

Anybody who has been writing or performing in the gallery—and I'm not going to do this for you, but I did it once to the meeting of the Canadian newspaper editors—on television or on radio, for more than five or six years, and anybody who has been following what they've done, knows their contacts. They know who has buttered up who. And of course, a couple of days ago in the budget lock-up, I spotted eight people who were former members of the press gallery and were helping the government and Paul Martin handle the budget.

• 1200

I was in Mr. Martin's office a few months ago, and when we were coming out, he was gentlemanly enough to take me to the door. We passed a fellow in the hall, and I said, “What the hell's he doing here?” He said, “He's helping me in my communications policy.” Of course, this is the guy who was considered for years as the top guru amongst the press and as being the ultimate spinner. He is the guy who said that it is our job in television to set the agenda in politics, not let the politicians do it.

The Chairman: Mr. Baker. By the way, then it's Randy White, then the chair, Joe Fontana, John Solomon and Lynn Myers. So it's a long list.

Mr. Baker.

Mr. George S. Baker (Gander—Grand Falls, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

First of all, Mr. Chairman, the witness is perhaps the ideal witness on this subject because during his term in the House of Commons as an MP, I imagine he spoke more than any other MP and grabbed the headlines more than any other MP—

Mr. Douglas Fisher: To my shame now.

Mr. George Baker: —and was a great proponent of the left in a lot of these issues. But he has here today, Mr. Chairman, I think, gone further than anybody else has gone in making a recommendation to this committee.

Mr. White has suggested that there be no such thing as an in camera meeting of committees, and Mr. Fisher agrees with that.

Mr. Douglas Fisher: No. I hope what he is recommending is that there should be nothing official in the books.

Mr. George Baker: But what you said before the committee was that he went a bit further.

We had the Clerk here before this committee and the Clerk recommended the adoption of a standing order. The standing orders in the British parliamentary system around the world, as we recognize it, say two things, that it's against the law to disclose and it's against the law to publish.

Mr. Fisher comes before the committee and he says the one thing we do have on the books now in the standing orders, which is not a standing order but a custom, is that it's against the procedures of the House and an infringement of the rights of Parliament if you leak a committee report. Mr. Fisher is suggesting that this be done away with.

Mr. Douglas Fisher: Yes.

Mr. George Baker: That's exactly what I heard. So the little thing that we do have now in custom...you're recommending that any leaking of a report not be held as a contempt of Parliament.

Mr. Douglas Fisher: It's a custom. You have the models from it. You have big-game people playing this in the Prime Minister's Office and the Minister of Finance's office and the leader of the opposition's office. What are you trying to protect? Get a sense of proportion about committees and committee work.

Let's take the two guys who I think are the most effective, influential lobbyists in Ottawa in the last few years, Cliff Chadderton and Tom d'Aquino. I've known Tom since he was—

Mr. George Baker: With the Prime Minister.

Mr. Douglas Fisher: —a Trudeaucrat, yes—he and Dennis Mills, a long time ago. They are very important now. Tom and Cliff would both come before committees—veterans committees and business committees and finance committees and so on—but that isn't the realm in which they deal. Neither is it for most journalists, particularly the ones with the Globe and Mail such as Eddie Greenspon and Jeffrey Simpson, who naturally take themselves with enormous seriousness because they're with the national newspaper. It is not really with MPs and committees that they are going to be...they have a luncheon schedule with people like that. Again, it is with a group that we haven't talked about here at all—I haven't heard any of you talk about it, and it hasn't been in any of the papers I've seen—and that's the bureaucrats.

You know, because you've been dealing with fisheries, how much spin doctoring there is with what's going on on Parliament Hill in committees by the senior bureaucrats. I have heard that one of the reasons we have a new Clerk of the Privy Council is that they wanted to get someone who was a little bit better at doing that.

• 1205

The Chairman: Go on, George.

Mr. George Baker: I have one final question, Mr. Fisher, and I think you highlighted this in your introduction to the committee.

Things have changed so dramatically since you were a member of Parliament.

As for the effect that an individual member of Parliament has, gone is the day when you can stand up in the House and filibuster. Gone is the day when you can deal with the estimates or supply in the House; that's delegated.

Mr. Douglas Fisher: That was one of the crucial changes that robbed the individual MP of his role.

Mr. George Baker: Now, here we are left with a watered-down influence by members of the House of Commons. As you said, when you were a member of Parliament you had two places to really effect some change. You could stand up and stop something when you were in the House of Commons—

Mr. Douglas Fisher: Yes.

Mr. George Baker: —and you said you enjoyed the work of committees. Well, now we're left with the work of committees. But our committees are not like the committees in Britain, or Australia, or any of these other places where there's a standing order, as the Clerk is suggesting, in that those committees have progressed to the point where they can originate their own terms of reference.

Mr. Douglas Fisher: Yes. I drafted a paper in 1982 to the McGrath committee for the Canadian Bar Association. Yves Fortier, Bob Stanfield, Angus MacLean and I drafted the thing. I wrote it and you can read it today. One of the recommendations we made in that report was that committee reports must be responded to. There must be a formal response, and absolutely, if any member of the committee wants it, they must be debated in the House. And so it goes.

Now, I may have left the impression that I think committee work is.... You have to realize that it is not only to give MPs something to do, it is a part of their learning process and it is one way a lot of them can come along very fast. Yet, it doesn't do to say that...well, I suppose there are exceptions. I'm thinking of Charles Caccia as a bit of an exception. But in the main, you no longer have the MP who is identified, just as a plain MP through the work he does in committee, with something big and major. I'm thinking of the late Stanley Knowles or Ged Baldwin—access to information for Baldwin, pensions for Knowles, and so on.

The shameful thing about it, if you're an MP and believe there shouldn't be an appointed Senate, is that the Senate and people in the Senate, from Roebuck through to Croll to that wonderful work Jack Marshall did with the veterans and so on, have been more successful.

Of course, one of the reasons they have been more successful...Kenny, for example, has been much more successful than I thought possible fiddling with that tobacco thing. He couldn't get away with that in the House. Senators can duck the discipline of the leader more readily than MPs can.

Mr. George Baker: That's a good point.

The Chairman: Randy White, followed by Joe Fontana. The chair has been bumped to the end.

Randy.

Mr. Randy White: Thank you. Doug, you're somewhat of an institution yourself around here, so it is a pleasure to talk to you.

Mr. Chuck Strahl: It's come to this.

Mr. Randy White: Yes, you're down to institutional status.

Mr. Douglas Fisher: Well, Jerry Grafstein said to me not long ago, “You get so goddamned mad at times, but there's no institutional memory around here.” When you bump into Jerry Yanover, or Joyce Fairbairn, or somebody who has been around for over 20 years, well, you begin to get the institutional memory going.

But, you see, we had those two slaughterhouses, where Mulroney came in with over 200, and then the Tories were almost wiped out and the NDP was just cut to ribbons. So what you wind up with is that the last Parliament and this one have not had a very long or rich folk memory.

The Chairman: That was a good answer to your question, Randy. Was that enough?

Mr. Randy White: I didn't get to the question.

Doug, I see this as a small part of a big change that's coming through the House of Commons. In this committee we dealt with private members' business, we're dealing with leaks, we're dealing with all of these things that are happening, and televised committee meetings. But the institution itself needs a major overhaul, in my opinion.

• 1210

When you look at debate in the House, if you read the record today, there's no debate in this House of Commons. I believe Question Period is a media sideshow. The committees are far too partisan. And the unanimous reports—even the ones from this committee—are basically ignored. We just had one from a televised committee, and that report has gone into a deep hole somewhere. Now I have to fight to get it resurrected. Even the trips today are more a case of getting out of the House free, rather than members being on a learning curve.

The position I've taken on this whole leaked report issue is that they be leaked to the public on the discretion of the necessary people. I didn't say we're going to leak everything, but I'm damned sure there's going to be a fair bit of information coming out of these committees. I really believe it has become a form of one-upmanship. All of these other issues I've talked about are just frustrating members, so somebody gets a hit at the cost of another 300 individuals.

You say politics is war. I agree, but one person or one party gets an advantage from a leaked report. With this kind of one-upmanship, the belief definitely is that politics is war, so let's go out and get it, and then we're ahead of them. More often, I think the reports today are leaked because, many times, much of what's in a report is useless information. At least on a national level, it's not considered by cabinet to be something that's within the sphere of where the cabinet wants to go.

These are just my humble opinions, but I am somewhat of a change artist. I like to see changes happen for the better.

I'd like to ask you where the hell this House of Commons is going on all of these issues. How far can this go without us, as members of Parliament, saying, look, I come here to represent the people back where I come from, and I'm nothing but a small piece of the environment in which cabinet does its thing, notwithstanding the government backbenchers and all the opposition.

The Chairman: Mr. Fisher.

Mr. Douglas Fisher: I'll give you another Jack Pickersgill story.

Mr. Pearson made a small cabinet shuffle, and he put an MP from Quebec into the cabinet, not in a major portfolio but in a portfolio nonetheless. I got the word because he had an office down the hall and there was an instant celebration, with everybody running to shake his hand. I phoned Jack and asked him how they could possibly have let that fellow into the cabinet. I asked why Pearson would do that.

At that time, there had been two great influxes of what I consider real talent—I'm talking as a talent scout—into the Liberal Party in 1963 and 1965. I could give you the names of a lot of that talent, from Joe Greene through to Trudeau, Marchand and so on. Later on, when Mulroney came in with his sweep, an awful lot of good talent came in then too.

Anyway, Pickersgill asked me what was wrong with the guy I mentioned. I said, “First of all, he's a lovely guy, but he is slow, uneducated, and he doesn't have any particular interests. I know he's loyal, but he couldn't contribute anything to a cabinet discussion that was worth while.” Jack said, “But that's why he's there. You have to realize that if you have over 20 people sitting at a cabinet table and most of them are sharp and good, you've got trouble. You have to have a lot of donkeys around.”

The Chairman: Very quickly, Randy, because you're running up to your ten minutes.

Mr. Stéphane Bergeron: So who are the donkeys?

Mr. Randy White: My question was where is this going? Where are we as individual MPs?

• 1215

Mr. Douglas Fisher: Where are the MPs who stand up and say that, for all the fault of the American system, the congressional system does give some power to the individual members? That power is one of moving motions and bills that spend money. I don't know whether you can do that without separating the executive from the House, the same way the Americans have.

Remember the fundamental fact...and you can go back to Walter Bagehot if you want to read The English Constitution, and Robert McGregor Dawson reinforces it in his The Government of Canada. The central fact, if you want, of the parliamentary system is secrecy and the protection of the government. The whole idea was that you had to have a government that was stable, and one of the ways to do that was to protect it. The bureaucracy is off-limits. In other words, the brains of Ottawa, if you want, the engineers of plans and so on, are off-limits to the elected politicians, and even to the back benches of the government.

How do you change things? To change things, you have to blow the system wide open. There have been pressures here with the Baldwin thing. We have information commissioners. We have privacy commissioners. Even now, we even have two commissioners with the Mounted Police as a kind of ombudsman thing. We have ombudsmen coming out our ears, but all of that is delegation away from Parliament and away from members of Parliament.

The Chairman: Joe Fontana and John Solomon, and then the chair.

Mr. Joe Fontana: Well, I won't deal with the donkey situation. I won't touch that.

Having sat both on the opposition side and the government side, obviously I have seen that there are two different dynamics that occur. I think you've given everybody that insight, Doug. My frustrations in opposition were the same as Randy's were, because, let's face it, when you're not in a position to.... Opposition can be very good. We were very good in opposition. In fact, we leaked an awful lot of documents in opposition to embarrass the government. I find it incredible that the Reform Party seems to think it's the government side leaking all these reports to make ourselves look good. I've never known a government to really look good because of some of these reports.

I'm not trying to justify the MO for leaking. Randy has essentially said that the system is not working because there is no respect for the system, either from one person or two people or the system; therefore, let's blow it apart.

As George has said, I would agree that the two equations are whether there should be sanctions on the disclosure side—meaning whoever leaks—and whether there should be sanctions on the publication side, based on other models, such as what Jules mentioned and, I think, what you said. In my opinion, though, there's nothing you can do on the publication side unless you want to bring down the big sledgehammer of the law and force—

Mr. Douglas Fisher: You're just making martyrs for the press.

Mr. Joe Fontana: Yes, so what it comes down to is the disclosure side. From my sense, the more open the system you have, the better it is for the public, and the better it is for those who want to impact public policy.

Some of the best work is done in committees. I enjoyed my committee work in opposition—especially most of it in transport and finance or what have you—in the past ten years. I agree that most MPs love the committee work because it's there that they are, believe it or not, in a position to be able to change certain things. The public never sees that, but we're trying to do it.

Ms. Marlene Catterall (Ottawa West—Nepean, Lib.): You get to use your mind.

Mr. Joe Fontana: I think we have to change the system.

On the disclosure side, yes, the rule ought to be openness. As you know, though, Doug, there needs to be an exception to everything. I'm sure there are exceptions, especially as matters relate to national security issues and perhaps even some important budgetary issues, even though that process is starting to open up.

This could also apply to the witnesses. Yesterday or the day before, we heard Bill Graham indicate that his committee wanted to talk to an ambassador of a particular country in relation to some pretty sensitive foreign affairs issues. The ambassador insisted on doing it in camera because of the sensitivity of the subject matter, but the committee wanted it to be open. The ambassador said no, so that good information was never had.

If we're going to structure something that will be respected by everyone, Randy, what standing order can we make to apply to privileged information? We can define what it is and make sure it is respected by everybody, with no political advantages given to most, it being the exception. How would you draft such a standing order on the exceptional cases to make sure that the—

• 1220

Mr. Douglas Fisher: Why not leave it to the initiative of the chairman of the committee to make the motion in the House ad hoc as each case comes along?

Mr. Joe Fontana: I agree. I think what we were also told by Derek Lee, who in fact is going to be a witness next week, is that in fact the powers of the committee chairs, in the standing orders or by virtue of convention, are immense, but that the committee chairs really don't know what those powers are. So as you said, there's an awful lot of non-history or history that is not known by virtue of having a whole new number of MPs who are just starting to learn the history of how this parliamentary system works or does not work.

So if you're suggesting that the chair of the committee and the committee itself—and this brings back a little more power to the committees themselves—determine their own destiny by saying right up front that this is going to be a matter of privilege, an in camera matter, a matter of national importance, and therefore everybody has to sign something, maybe at the beginning of the meeting, that says we're all going to respect this because it's so sensitive—

Mr. Douglas Fisher: Why not? We do that when we go into the budget lock-up. Journalists are familiar with that.

Basically, there are three kinds of committees. There are committees for scrutiny, and I suppose the prize one is the public accounts committee, which has the assistance of the Auditor General, which makes it, to me, the most effective of all the committees in its way. It's most effective at least in terms of getting its word out to the public.

Another kind is legislative committees. I recommended—and it hasn't been taken up here, although they moved a step towards it—the British system. What they do in the British Parliament is put someone from the opposition and an MP from the government, who put through a bill and respond to a bill. In other words, they don't have everybody on the committee taking part, but they have what you might call “House managers” on each side of the bill, sort of for the bill and for amendments to the bill, and they just run it through kind of a routine. There's no reason with legislation for any of this talk about in camera stuff or anything like that.

Then, of course, there is the third committee, which began to develop with Leon Balcer when he was Minister of Transport for Diefenbaker. He had this great big Railway Act, or transportation act, changed. He felt it was just too complex to throw it all in, that there would be an awful lot of changes, so he brought in the idea of sending the subject matter of this major change to a committee, and then, out of that, later on developed an additional idea, which became all the word in the early years of Trudeau—the task force idea.

We were going to have committees of task forces. Well, of course, as you know, each of the parties has been running wild with this. The NDP had a task force guy up reporting the other day on unemployment insurance, and you had the most famous of all the recent task forces, Tony's banking excursion, or odyssey, across the country—which, I have to add, I enjoyed, because he really did put presidents of the banks on the fire, and they aren't used to having to deal with mere MPs.

Those are the three kinds of committees, basically: scrutiny, legislation, and then sort of special projects. I think you probably need different rules for each one, or no rules for at least two of them.

The Chairman: Thanks, Doug and Joe.

John Solomon.

Mr. John Solomon (Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, NDP): Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, Mr. Fisher, for a very informative presentation.

I want to agree with a couple of points you raised with respect to the fact that there seems to be more competition not only among the journalists but among the parties. You described how there are two parties fighting for government and two or three that are fighting for survival. My sense is that this, along with the need to try to get more publicity, to try to get your name in the lights, is something that's going to preclude any kind of standing orders or regulations that will hinder that competitive environment to be effective.

There are a couple of points I want to make with respect to what Mr. Fontana said. He talked about all these secrecy commissions that are set up. As an elected official, I'm witnessing more of these commissions attached to secrecy, but it leads ultimately to less accountability by the government. I think the government is hiding behind these sorts of special standing orders on penalties for leaking information that should reflect on the government, that the government's accountable for and that they should be responding to and acting on accordingly.

• 1225

That is a trend I've seen more and more, provincially and federally—I've been in the provincial legislature as well. I think it's bad because it diminishes the role of the member of Parliament or the MLA.

Mr. Joe Fontana: I think Doug said that, John. Don't want to take credit for that great idea.

Mr. John Solomon: That's right. I think that's an issue many people in the public, and even journalists, don't report on accurately, or at least enough.

The other issue I want to raise is with respect to these leaking documents. I don't know how many of the documents that were leaked had minority reports, but there's that issue of competition again, and the minority reports usually have a distinguishing factor from the government reports.

Mr. Douglas Fisher: That is a point I should have made. When I was an MP there were no minority reports, so you would work harder to try to influence the report that did come out. Since the minority report—I think that in itself wiped out.... Why the hell should you complain about what the government guy has done with the information that's come up in the committee when you're going to have your own say with your minority report? If you're stewed about it you can leak it almost coincidental with his leak, particularly if you know the reporters who have been following the course of the committee, if there have been any. You can get in touch with them. They are as leaky a sail as you are.

Mr. John Solomon: Not me personally, Mr. Fisher.

Mr. Douglas Fisher: Of course not. But George here is different.

Mr. John Solomon: I understand—just for the record. The final comment I have pertains to distinguishing leaks. There are two kinds of leaks, in my view. There are the leaks from the government—the budget leaks for which there's a process in place. If the budget is leaked, as it has been recently, the process is clear. The minister should resign for having leaked some of these policy decisions that will affect or could affect the markets or someone making a profit, in advance of it being released, if taxes are levied or cut. So that's one process where it's clear.

The process that's not clear for us is what happens when we leak reports from committees. We're just making recommendations. They're not time sensitive; they are just policy recommendations as to what the government should consider down the road eventually in the next millennium, or whatever, maybe in the next week. We would like to have it done last year, but it's not going to happen.

I would like you to comment on the two distinguishing processes: government leaks versus committee leaks, and whether leaking a committee report has any impact.

Mr. Douglas Fisher: There's a third leak, the bureaucratic leak. Most of the most serious leaks have been bureaucratic leaks. You had that in fisheries. The environmentalists came swinging onto the Hill about 15 or 20 years ago, and they were very good. They even had one of their chief agents working for the Speaker up there for a while. They were on top of what was going on and sort of leaking.

Then, of course, there are the leaks by the lobbyists, the interest groups, the very powerful groups and associations, who let information be known after dealing with the ministry or the government. Collecting around almost every department and deputy minister and so on are a number of interest groups. They are interested in what is going on inside government and particularly in promoting something or, if it's something they don't like, getting it out and kicking the hell out of it before it has been announced.

So this question of leaking is a big, wide, diverse world.

I'll always remember Dick Jackson, a reporter with the Ottawa Journal. He's dead; I think he died happy and rich. One of the big bets he made—he took money from his colleagues—was back when Pearson was Prime Minister. The so-called most treasured of all secrecy is the weekly caucus meeting of the parties, and Dick bet that four weeks in a row he could produce, by evening of the Wednesday, the main topics and who had spoken at the Liberal caucus.

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Mr. Joe Fontana: His ghost must be still around.

Mr. John Solomon: It's the same with the NDP caucus.

Mr. Douglas Fisher: Just a few days ago they opened up the documents from way back then, and there's a story about Pearson complaining about the leaks. I know that at one of them George Bain and I and Peter Newman were the subjects of a cabinet discussion. Forgetting the leaks, Newman had so many people wired. Bain and I were subjects of discussion not for having occasional leaks but, more than that, for being consistently antagonistic to the Liberal government, you see. So even at the highest level there is this kind of concern about the press.

The Chairman: Okay, John?

Mr. John Solomon: Thank you.

The Chairman: In the standing orders, along with this question of committees holding meetings in camera, there are other things like:

(a) wages, salaries and other employee benefits;

(b) contract negotiations;

(c) other labour relations;

(d) other personnel matters

—and, by the way, the national interest, which is not mentioned. But there are things like that, which is a particular circumstance, and there is reason for privacy. But then it goes on, and this is what we're really considering. It says:

(e) consideration of any draft agenda; and/or

(f) consideration of any draft report of the committee.

And it seems to me this draft part is different from the others.

Perhaps I could try to give you the two sides of it. The idea is that perhaps it's better that the antagonistic members of the committee can get together in private at the final stages of producing a report. They might well then produce some consensus, or nowadays, as you've just explained, they might then in private decide there's going to be a minority report and a majority report.

The idea is that it is advantageous for the committee—I'm not talking about anyone else but for the committee members—because it gives them a chance to produce one report or two reports that are really worth while. We've heard an argument that this process gives even more power to the government, not to the committee but even more power to the government.

Now, the other way around would be this. It's completely open, and let's say it's clear there are going to be two reports. So you can imagine that at the final meeting the parties will come in, the government side will bring in a report, the opposition side or sides will bring in their minority report, and they'll just vote on it. Is the second not giving more power to the government than the first?

Mr. Douglas Fisher: I would think so, yes.

The Chairman: Finally, you mentioned that two of the opposition parties are struggling for survival. Which two are they?

Mr. Joe Fontana: After this weekend there's only going to be one.

Mr. Douglas Fisher: All I can say is that my wisdom is to never count a party out.

Mr. Joe Fontana: I agree.

Mr. Douglas Fisher: I wouldn't even be surprised to see the Créditistes coming back from the wilds of Quebec one of these days. You never know, they come and go.

The Chairman: Yes.

Mr. Douglas Fisher: I can remember when the Liberals were down to 49 and it just seemed hopeless; they're gone. Then I remember when they were down that way again. I will always remember one of my fellow sages, Richard Gwyn, forecasting that the Liberal Party would probably disappear within the next decade.

The Chairman: Doug, I think you can tell we've learned a lot and we've enjoyed learning. We greatly appreciate your taking the time, particularly on such short notice, to participate in this, and we'll see that you continue to be kept informed with the transcripts—

Mr. George Baker: Hear, hear!

Mr. Chuck Strahl: And whatever leaked documents you wish.

The Chairman: I'm the puppet, and my ventriloquist here, as he said, will leak all the stuff to you.

Joe Fontana.

Mr. Joe Fontana: One thing for the record, and perhaps you and I could discuss this. As the chair of national caucus for I can't remember how many years now, I have never ever had the chief of staff call me up and tell me what caucus should do. He might want to tell the ministers and the deputy ministers, and all that sort of stuff, what they need to do...and I don't know how it works in other parties.

But for the record, maybe one day, Doug, you and I will talk about that caucus stuff. It really is the most misunderstood institution in Parliament. Canadians don't even understand what caucuses are all about, which is where some of the finest work is done, in addition to the committees.

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The Chairman: Thanks, Joe.

Doug, again, thanks.

Colleagues, I have one more item of business, if I might, and this does not have to do with the present topic. What I'll do is read the order of reference so it's known that we received it.

This is from the Journals of the House of Commons, Wednesday, February 17, 1999, an order of reference:

(Saskatoon—Humboldt), the Speaker ruled that there was a prima facie case of privilege.

Whereupon, Mr. Pankiw (Saskatoon—Humboldt), seconded by Mr. Breitkreuz (Yorkton—Melville), moved,—That the matter of the molestation of the honourable Member for Saskatoon—Humboldt earlier this day be referred to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs.

The question was put on the motion and it was agreed to.

As all colleagues know, there are three outstanding questions upon which the Speaker has to rule. I would suggest, colleagues, that instead of continuing with the question of leaked reports when we return, the first Tuesday meeting be devoted to a steering committee meeting in which we will discuss this matter, this order of reference.

Mr. Joe Fontana: Will it be in public or in private?

The Chairman: Then, colleagues, we will continue with these hearings on the Thursday. But I have had agreement from Stéphane Bergeron on this. We did not want two witnesses to be together, but in fact on that Thursday we will have approximately 45 minutes from Joseph Maingot and, separately, approximately 45 minutes with Derek Lee, who appeared with our committee on the last occasion.

So it will be a steering committee on the first Tuesday back, and on Thursday we will continue this event with two witnesses, but hearing them separately.

John.

Mr. John Solomon: I have no problem with your proceeding with the steering committee on Tuesday. I won't be here, so whatever you decide, just let me know. Keep my office posted on it.

The Chairman: I appreciate it. Thank you very much.

Colleagues, I close the meeting.

Mr. Fisher, thank you very much indeed.