HANSARD

Printed and Published by Nova Scotia Hansard Reporting Services

Ms. Maureen MacDonald (Chair)

Mr. Chuck Porter (Vice-Chairman)

Mr. Keith Colwell

In Attendance:

Ms. Charlene Rice

Legislative Committee Clerk

Mr. Gordon Hebb

Chief Legislative Counsel

Ms. Evangeline Colman-Sadd

Assistant Auditor General

HALIFAX, WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 9, 2008

SUBCOMMITTEE ON PUBLIC ACCOUNTS

9:00 A.M.

CHAIR

Ms. Maureen MacDonald

MADAM CHAIR: Good morning, I'm going to call the subcommittee to order. Before we start I'm going to ask that we take a tour of the next room for a few seconds. The first item on our agenda is the management of documents with respect to the Provincial Nominee Program and what has happened is the clerk has laid the documents out over there for us to just get a sense of the extent to which there are documents. I think on some level we know because we've received the discs in our caucus offices, but the office has also provided for us, at our request, a number of hard copies, so they are next door. For this discussion I just want us to really understand the magnitude of what our staff in particular are dealing with. Let's just walk next door and have a look at those documents.

[9:05 a.m. The subcommittee recessed.]

[9:11 a.m. The subcommittee reconvened.]

MADAM CHAIR: So as you can see, we have a huge amount of documentation. The hard copies, to sort those into what we're going to release, to remove identifying information by hand in documents is really beyond the capacity of the staff that the committee has. We have one staff person, Charlene, who is not only our clerk, but clerk for a number of other standing committees. I've had discussions with Margaret in the Legislative Library and the library is providing a staff person to this committee, Sandy is here today, and we welcome her involvement.

The library staff are primarily going to be involved, as I understand it, in putting together packages of background information that we get, as we have depending on the topic and the witnesses, the binders that we get, so assistance in that way. They're not part of the process in terms of editing, blacking out names and doing all of that kind of stuff.

What I would like to propose to the committee is that because all of the documents reside in each caucus now on the discs is that members of the Public Accounts Committee, prior to our meeting, indicate to the clerk what documents they will be dealing with at the Public Accounts Committee, that they provide that information to the clerk. The clerk can prepare an index and binder with those documents and we, as a subcommittee, can then deal only with those documents in terms of taking off identifying information or removing any proprietary information. In that way, we will be able to manage the documents better.

The other thing that I said, if you remember, the Immigration officials have essentially organized those documents into four types: documents that they say there is no difficulty with releasing to the public, and then there are documents that they would like us to deal with in camera for three different reasons, either they have personal information, business proprietary information or federal-provincial relations with respect to the Immigration contract between the federal and provincial governments.

I also think that it would be possible to separate all of the documents that have not been embargoed in any way into a separate binder or number of binders and those could be released because they've already said that's not a problem for them, but then it would be the next bunch of documents, the ones that have some sensitive information, that we would have to pay some particular attention to without going through each and every thing.

So that's my proposal and the floor is open to hear from you what you think about that or if you have some alternative, I'd be happy to entertain it.

MR. CHUCK PORTER: It's so much paper and I guess I appreciate your proposal, Madam Chair, my only concern is again, here we are and if I understood you clearly, we'll indicate what we want to do and then we'll generate even more paper again to come back to the table, or are we just going to bring back our own copy?

MADAM CHAIR: I don't understand, what do you mean?

MR. PORTER: Let me just clarify that in case you didn't understand. You indicated that we would let the clerk know what we wanted to discuss, for example, in a meeting, of the documentation that we've reviewed. She's then going to pull that document up, print that off and supply it?

MADAM CHAIR: It's already printed. All of those documents that we have in hard copy are going to get organized in some fashion. One of the ways we can do that is, first of

all, we can take all of the documents that haven't been asked to be embargoed and separate them out and we all know what those are because we have the indexes and the members of the committee will know that.

But if a committee member, in preparation for the Public Accounts Committee meetings, identifies, here are a number of documents that I'm going to be making reference to or relying on that fall into those categories, then we can provide that information to the clerk and the subcommittee could meet and provide some direction to the clerk with respect to removing information. In fact, we've already provided that direction to the clerk in some ways because we've said, all personal information of the nominees, for example, we want no identifying information, no social insurance numbers, no bank account numbers, no driver's licences, those are the kinds of things that are there that we don't want to be releasing in proprietary information.

I have said that I think Immigration has thrown the net quite broadly, too broadly in fact, because they want all reference to Stephen Lockyer, for example, removed. Well, we've had contact with Mr. Lockyer and Mr. Lockyer has no difficulty with us using documentation where he is referred to and his business is referred to. We don't need to worry about that particular aspect and we can indicate this to members of the committee. The same thing is true, I think, with the federal government, the federal-provincial relations, the position that the department has taken is pretty much everywhere where there's communication between the federal government officials and themselves, that that should be embargoed. I think that probably goes too far in terms of what it is we're looking at. Mr. Colwell, do you have any comment?

MR. KEITH COLWELL: I would agree with that. I think if we're going to get to the bottom of this thing - you'll have to excuse me, I feel terrible today - we need to be very clear on what information we're going to get or try to get, as we went through this before and there was all kinds of information we didn't get, I think, that was relevant and we should have had. I don't know how we're going to tackle that, but I really think we should, even though we've got tons and tons of pages here, a lot of those pages you can go through pretty quickly, I would imagine, I know our researchers have been working on them, and I haven't had a chance to talk to them since I came back, but I think we have to get an efficient way to go through this.

I'm a little bit concerned about - I don't disagree with having a plan for how to go through this information, but as we talk to and question witnesses about this, if we get only a set of documents we can use, something might come out of their conversation that's not in those documents we have that day and that would concern me a bit. How we handle it past that, I don't know.

MADAM CHAIR: I think we could handle that. I want to be really clear, I don't in any way, shape or form want to prohibit a member from the full use of all of the documents,

that's not certainly my job or my approach as Chair. If something like that were to occur, I guess I would ask a member to indicate that they are going to go to a document that hasn't been - whatever and we have a number of options, we could go in camera for a few minutes, we could ask the member not to use any identifying information, for example, of a nominee if that was the question at hand. I think there are options that wouldn't prohibit the examination of that information and that wouldn't be my idea, that if you didn't provide in advance you would be prohibited from raising something, absolutely not. This is only about releasing documents.

MR. COLWELL: My only concern with that would be if there's a set of documents we're going to use that particular day or meeting and the witness indicates through the conversation that there's something else, which often happens, and we didn't have those documents there that day, we can't refer to that document and then proceed from there. I know that makes it almost impossible because we've got so much information.

I'd like to consider how we're going to handle this information before we make a decision and maybe we can have some informal discussions amongst ourselves to see how we can do that. I don't think your proposal is bad, don't get me wrong, but I'm not sure that maybe that's the total answer at this point. I may come back and change my mind and agree that it is. I like to think that we'd have a little bit more time to - I don't want to delay this but a bit more time to consider how we're going to handle all this.

MADAM CHAIR: Well, what I would say is, I mean we don't have a great deal of time. We have a bit because the committee meets next Wednesday and we have the wait times on. So the subcommittee could reconvene next week and to make some concluding decision about that. I would ask you to consider that that be the way we do it because I think that is manageable for the clerk, the staff of the Committees Office, first of all, and secondly - I mean if you look at the documents, a huge number of those documents are duplications. They're the first draft, they're the second draft, they're the third draft of a memo.

While it is a lot of documentation and it requires the manual removing of information from each subsequent draft or whatever, it's in some ways not as - once you make a decision on one document that a name needs to come off, it's pretty simple to figure out where else that needs to happen, in many of the documents, yes.

So we'll meet again as a subcommittee and if you have any other suggestions, then certainly I'm open to them. Okay, Mr. Porter.

MR. PORTER: Well maybe we should plan the next week after 11 a.m. to set aside an extra half-hour just for the three of us or whatever, to see if we've made any progress or where we're at with this, to come back after having an opportunity to look. I know that's only a week, we're certainly going to need more time than that, I'm sure, with all these documents

but just to have some idea maybe, after looking at it, if whether the process is somewhat simplified - or maybe it won't be as difficult . . .

MADAM CHAIR: Next week at 11 a.m.?

MR. PORTER: You know, for half an hour, something after that. I know we have caucus following and stuff, but would that be all right, maybe?

MR. COLWELL: That would be fine.

MADAM CHAIR: Okay, great. So that deals with that item.

The next one is witnesses for future meetings. As it now stands, at our last subcommittee we talked about bringing Paul Taylor and Chris Bryant, from Economic Development, as well as Brad Paisley, the federal - oh, Pascoe, I'm sorry. A country and western singer, I'm told, is Brad Paisley.

So first of all we have, in fact, lined up Mr. Taylor and Mr. Bryant for the 23^rd of January and in addition to that, they are bringing Carole Lee Reinhardt from their department who was at the first hearing we had on the Nominee Program and she has been involved for quite a long time. Mr. Taylor wrote me and suggested that she be included and I said absolutely. I mean it's really at their discretion, it is Economic Development that we've asked to come.

As well, Mr. Ron L'Esperance, who had been the deputy minister at the beginning, I think, of the Nominee Program, has left government and wrote me and asked for access to the documents during his period of time as deputy minister, so that he's able to prepare and be able to participate with full information. That has been sorted out and we're in the process of providing him with all of the documents that we have during his period of tenure. Charlene has been able to do this.

MR. PORTER: He's coming on the 23^rd as well?

MADAM CHAIR: I believe so, yes. So that's moving forward.

Now we have had correspondence from Mr. Pascoe, the federal official, and I'll just have those circulated to you. Oh, you have them, okay. So Mr. Pascoe has declined the request to appear as a witness and this is based on an opinion they've received that inter-jurisdictional immunity applies to this case and that a federal government official cannot be summoned to appear before a committee of the provincial Legislature.

We haven't actually issued a summons, we issued an invitation. However, perhaps our legal counsel might give us some advice on this. I'm not sure if it's fair to ask you cold, but Mr. Hebb.

MR. GORDON HEBB: My understanding of the law is that provided he is within the jurisdiction, that we have the power to summon, to compel the appearance of a federal official, if he or she is within Nova Scotia but only with respect to matters that are within our jurisdiction. In other words, we can't summons a federal official to inquire into the goings on in the federal government in Nova Scotia. That's my understanding of the law.

I don't believe there's a lot of case law on it. In fact the only case I'm aware of is a Prince Edward Island case which was only decided at the Supreme Court level. Although the federal people appealed the case, they abandoned the appeal, so it's not a very high level decision and, of course, if they were to pursue it in the courts again, it would be difficult to predict the answer but that's my understanding of the present state of the law.

MADAM CHAIR: He's actually a policy analyst in Ottawa.

MR. HEBB: I haven't heard this. If he's in Ottawa, he's out of Nova Scotia, we can't get him here unless he comes voluntarily.

I haven't heard this term used, inter-jurisdictional immunity. There certainly is immunity of federal elected officials, so we couldn't summons a Member of Parliament, even one in Nova Scotia, but as far as officials are concerned, as long as it's relevant, then that's my understanding of the present state of the law.

MADAM CHAIR: I think our interest in having Mr. Pascoe came from the documents because there's a fair amount of exchange between his office and the office here, expressing some concerns about the contract with Cornwallis, but I'm not sure - he obviously isn't in the province and we don't have the power to summons.

MR. HEBB: When he says inter-jurisdictional immunity, he may just be talking about the inability of Nova Scotia to summons somebody who is not within Nova Scotia, but certainly if he came here for whatever reason, because his plane was grounded here or as a tourist or whatever, we could grab him.

MADAM CHAIR: So this is what we have lined up so far; we have January 24^th scheduled and I think we should have a discussion about additional witnesses beyond the 24^th, not only on the Immigration file but more broadly but let's start with the Immigration file.

I had, when we last met, proposed that we consider doing something a little different, in terms of maybe having a half-day forum where we would - somewhat like the Law

Amendments Committee - invite former nominees to come and give them a 10 or 15 minute slot to present on their experience with the Nominee Program and that we then have a better idea of some of the experiences - the good, the bad, the ugly - from that, and that we proceed to look at maybe some of the ministerial responsibility with respect to this file. I don't know if you've had an opportunity to think further about that or what witnesses you want to bring forward, but now would be a good time to get a sense of that so the clerk can start scheduling people.

MR. COLWELL: Madam Chair, I think it would be a great idea after we do Economic Development and hear what they have to say because I think it's important to hear that first and anyone within the bureaucracy who has been involved in this case, I think it would be a good idea to have the half-day meeting before we call in any of the ministers or anybody at that level and bring people in who are nominees going through the process, see what their problems have been because then we'd have a better understanding and it would give us more time to go through the documents too, in the meantime, of exactly what has happened to people. We have seen a little bit of that at the Legislature during the last session where some people came in and were very upset about what had transpired in their cases. I think that would be very important.

My question is, how are people going to know that we want them to come in, that's an issue? We really can't use the documents with anyone's name in it to get them to come in because that's a breach of confidentiality, I would think. Do we run an ad in the paper? How do we do this?

MADAM CHAIR: I think we could have some advice from Communications Nova Scotia. I would have the clerk make contact with the Director of Communications Nova Scotia and find out if they would assist us in terms of promoting. If we had identified a date then we could probably run a few public service announcements and an ad or two in their general media runs that they do.

MR. COLWELL: Perhaps anyone in our caucuses who knows anyone who had a negative or positive experience with this could ask if those people would be interested in coming forward as well.

MADAM CHAIR: Certainly, yes.

MR. COLWELL: Any other thing that we can do that would bring people forward because I want to hear the whole story, I want to hear the negative, the positive, everything because I'm sure some of this has been positive as it has gone through, and find out where the thing has broken down for the people it hasn't been positive for, so that it won't happen again in Nova Scotia.

MADAM CHAIR: I also would like to suggest that we consider bringing back the officials we've already had in from Immigration. When we had the people from the Office of Immigration, we had received pretty much nothing compared to what we have now in terms of documentation. It seems to me we have a much fuller body of material to use as our background to ask questions about what occurred, although we still are missing some pieces of information. Certainly, it's a much fuller record than it was at the time they were here.

MR. COLWELL: Madam Chair, I think that's a good idea as well, but I think before we bring someone back I'd like to hear from the nominees because that will give us a different perspective too when we're asking questions back to the department of exactly what they had. Now Economic Development is different because we haven't heard from them yet and I really want to hear their story on this thing before we hear from nominees. I think our next step should be nominees past Economic Development, whenever we can schedule that. When, again, is the Auditor General's Report coming out?

MR. PORTER: February 20^th is what I have written.

MADAM CHAIR: Yes.

MR. COLWELL: So we have a significant amount of time between now and then. So I think we should start working on these nominees immediately and if we can't get enough for half a day, I suggest maybe we go to a regular two hour meeting and maybe have several of those until we get people lined up.

MADAM CHAIR: The other question I have is beyond nominees should we also have mentors as well? Mentors and nominees both, yes. I know that the Auditor General's Office is very interested in this as well, getting access and contact. Is there anything further around witnesses for future meetings on the Nominee Program at this stage?

MR. COLWELL: Not at this point. We want to call in some Cabinet Ministers when the time is appropriate, we're not prepared to do that right now.

MADAM CHAIR: Okay, also you have the potential witness list from each of the caucuses that was submitted back in October. I'm hoping that we can also agree on further witnesses from our lists so that we don't end up cancelling Public Accounts meetings because the Nominee Program is taking all of our time and the logistics of doing this don't work out for Wednesdays all of the time.

We had taken the first item from each of the caucus lists, so we've already had Atlantic Lottery Corporation, we've had the Superintendent of Pensions and, of course, we have the Immigration file so we can proceed to the next items on the list if you would like.

From the Liberal caucus it would be the Nova Scotia Association of Health Organizations and the Department of Health. I think we had also attempted to organize the Department of Justice, Public Prosecution Service and they were scheduled and they were postponed, so we can bring them back and that's from the NDP list. Mr. Porter, from your list, EMO?

MR. PORTER: Actually, I'd like to see the e-waste regulation one.

MADAM CHAIR: Okay, you want to move that ahead, that's fine. So, it would be the Department of Environment and Labour?

MR. PORTER: Yes.

MADAM CHAIR: If it's agreeable, we will have the clerk move forward with looking at scheduling the half day for the nominees and mentors and also, we will give her some latitude to assign some times for these other topics as well.

MR. COLWELL: We'd like to put in the Nova Scotia Association of Health Organizations as well. I'd like to put that in there on the list.

MADAM CHAIR: Yes. And the Department of Health?

MR. COLWELL: Yes.

MADAM CHAIR: Okay, is there any further business? I think that's pretty well our agenda for today.

We stand adjourned.

[The committee adjourned at 9:41 a.m.]