44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 19, 2023
- 05:19:05 p.m.
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Mr. Johns, I really appreciate where you're trying to go with this amendment. Unfortunately, I have two important concerns with it, and I think you would agree with me. It's not what you brought up, which I think was important. It's a matter of confidentiality.
Mr. Johns, as you know, there are people's health records, especially in the case of some people who might have faced reprisals, and they might have had some mental health issues caused by the reprisals. This is something that you don't want to have tracked. How can you secure the confidentiality of that information?
Then there are larger issues. These are cases that the commissioner at PSIC has seen or that have been brought to his attention. I'm sort of offering the opposite side of this, but what about the cases that have been resolved internally without PSIC's involvement?
On one hand, I understand what you're trying to get at, but I think you're opening up a whole can of worms regarding people's health records, the safety of how we pull those records and how we dispose of them after three years in a way that doesn't cause any problems to the people who are involved.
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- 05:20:54 p.m.
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I apologize. I was looking at NDP-16.
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- 05:21:07 p.m.
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I agree with Mr. Johns' amendment NDP-15 completely.
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- 05:22:08 p.m.
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I won't repeat myself, sir, but what I pointed out before is my objection to this one. I'm hoping that people understand the importance of people's health records and the safekeeping of that confidentiality so that it doesn't follow them, track them or, unfortunately, get leaked.
(Amendment negatived: nays 8; yeas 2 [See Minutes of Proceedings])
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- 05:25:00 p.m.
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Reasons similar to those for NDP-16 also apply to amendment NDP-17, in ensuring that there is consent from the whistle-blowers to be able to provide that private information. The second thing, again, is that this also covers a case where you're dealing with complaints that have gone to the commissioner, as opposed to ones that have been resolved internally or that the complainant has decided to pursue internally.
This will effectively require an annual survey to be conducted by PSIC. Again, we're very concerned about how we might run the risk of releasing people's confidential situations and their current status, so the same reasons that we opposed NDP-16 apply to amendment NDP-17.
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- 05:28:11 p.m.
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I really disagree with my colleague on his statement that this would have no additional costs. In fact, this will have a significant additional cost. This is providing another survey of public servants, which is similar to the public service employment survey that is done every year.
In digging deep on this, we found that each piece of PSES, the employment survey, costs well in excess of a million dollars a year. The entire budget for PSIC is just over a million dollars a year. To run the survey alone would increase the cost of the commissioner's office by 100%. This would be in addition to having a new function and responsibility for the commissioner, who doesn't do this. They would have to make sure they have new authorization to spend this money to conduct this survey.
To let you know, the public service employment survey is only done biennially, every two years, for the purposes of finding out what we do, where public servants are at, how they are feeling, the status of their jobs. To have PSIC double this work will create additional costs and significant additional costs.
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- 05:43:14 p.m.
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I have no comment, sir.
(Subamendment agreed to)
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- 05:43:36 p.m.
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Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I do have difficulty with this. I would like to thank Mrs. Kusie for making the change and removing some of the confidentiality parts of it. However, in regard to NDP-18 as a whole, as you can see at the very beginning, it says, “(2.01) The Commissioner must conduct an annual survey to determine”, and then it goes on for now three provisions.
That annual survey has to happen. I mentioned that to survey all public servants in relation to the way they feel disclosures are managed under this act would be analogous to the public service employment survey, which does cost a considerable amount of money, probably in excess of the entire budget for the commissioner's office as it stands now. That is a significant expense.
There you go, Mr. Chair. I think it would be better off for this amendment not to happen to Bill C-290.
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- 05:46:37 p.m.
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I am sincere. Perhaps I could riff off of Ms. Kusie's suggestion. By folding it into the PSES with the appropriate questions and then removing the requirement for it to be an annual survey, that would really work, but if you make it annual, you're just doubling the cost of the PSES.
I will leave it to you to do so, to making sure that it captures....
May I make a suggestion that you might withdraw it, but then maybe the committee can make it clear in its report that we would expect that the PSES would include questions that would....
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- 05:49:56 p.m.
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Mr. Johns, I'll speak to NDP-19, NDP-20 and NDP-21.
In regard to NDP-19, I do think it's a little bizarre that you would bring in someone who has no experience with the public service to try to understand what happens in the public service and to better understand where the complainant might be coming from. It just seems that would be like asking a judge not to be a lawyer first.
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- 05:50:30 p.m.
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I'll stick to NDP-19. This is where I'm going on this one.
It just doesn't really add up. I'm not certain where the conflict of interest happens. The person is no longer holding a job in the public service when they're appointed commissioner. That is their job. They're not double dipping, so I'm not certain where this comes from at all.
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- 05:53:46 p.m.
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Just because this candidate is not a Canadian public servant doesn't mean that no candidate should ever be a public servant. We're neutral on that concept, and Harriet Solloway's appointment simply proves that we're seeking the best possible candidate. However, this makes it impossible to appoint someone who's had a career in the Canadian public service. It's just a little strange.
I'd like to ask the witnesses whether this criterion creates a conflict of interest in the amendment.
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- 05:59:08 p.m.
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Very briefly, Mr. Chair, this is a consequential amendment to a vote that we took much earlier in our first meeting and was carried by the committee. This is just ensuring that we have the ability to refer this to more than one person, so that a complainant has more than one person to access to disclose their complaint to if they have a complaint to make.
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- 06:00:24 p.m.
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If the chair would seek it, I only have a couple of.... I have one clause that I'd like to negate. It would be clause 38. I'd be happy to speak to that if appropriate.
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- 06:01:00 p.m.
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Clause 38 is one where I think we have to ask a question. It proposes that the bill seek consent from individuals to disclose their involvement in an investigation. I can easily understand why the complainant wouldn't mind disclosing, but the person who's being complained about I doubt would give their consent. I'm just not certain of the utility of this provision of the act.
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- 06:02:09 p.m.
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If the consent of each person is required, I find it hard to see why a person involved in a reprisal complaint would have any interest in giving their consent to have their identity disclosed.
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- 06:02:50 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, I'd like to know if the officials can answer the question.
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- 06:10:10 p.m.
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I'm certain our legal experts will agree that we should—
The Chair: This is on clause 40?
Hon. Greg Fergus: This is on clause 40.
There are consequences to whether or not the debate that we skipped earlier on G-6 in clause 10, which we were going to get back to.... Depending on what we do there, it will have consequences for clause 40.
May I suggest that we move along and skip that as well until we get to that end part?
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- 06:11:31 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, we agree with that amendment.
(Amendment agreed to on division [See Minutes of Proceedings])
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- 06:12:18 p.m.
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There are two amendments that are coming before committee, G-11 and G-12. In G-11. We're looking for this coming into force by a Governor in Council change, and of course, in G-12, we're looking for coming into force two years after this receives royal assent.
I don't know if you want to have a debate together or if you want to have it one by one.
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