HANSARD

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Ms. Maureen MacDonald (Chair)

Mr. Chuck Porter (Vice-Chairman)

Mr. Keith Colwell

In Attendance:

Ms. Charlene Rice

Legislative Committee Clerk

Mr. Jacques Lapointe

Auditor General

Ms. Evangeline Colman-Sadd

Assistant Auditor General

Mr. Gordon Hebb

Chief Legislative Counsel

HALIFAX, WEDNESDAY, MARCH 26, 2008

SUBCOMMITTEE ON PUBLIC ACCOUNTS

11:00 A.M.

CHAIR

Ms. Maureen MacDonald

MADAM CHAIR: Okay, let's call the subcommittee to order. We are going to discuss the Office of Immigration and the documentation that we still do not have. Also, we wanted to talk about getting additional witnesses. Mr. Colwell, if I remember, you had basically tied those two sort of things together, that until we had clarity around the documentation that was yet to come you were reluctant to see us schedule additional witnesses. So perhaps just to get the clerk to clarify where we are on the final documentation that we had requested that the department had told us we would have. Do we have it now?

MS. CHARLENE RICE (Legislative Committee Clerk): Yes, we have everything.

MADAM CHAIR: So we have all of the documentation that they say they have that they were working on releasing to us. Mr. Colwell.

MR. KEITH COLWELL: Now that we have all the information, how are we going to go through this? That's a question we're here to talk about today. I know our staff have had the opportunity to read through the information we have, except for the information that was classified as client privilege or Cabinet confidentiality, or whatever other excuse they want to use. Those documents - I would like to see the department come in like we did before, one at a time, to justify why they're not letting this one out and go through them.

I know it's going to take a lot of time for the subcommittee, but I think it's important that we do that so that we can better understand where they're coming from. Hopefully they'll change their mind on some of them and maybe we'll need to request some of them that they've denied and go from there. That's what I'd like to see happen on those documents.

The rest of them our staff have seen, we can sort through those and work with the same system we did before, pick out the ones we're going to use for a particular hearing and go from there. But I'd like to go through that process. I really don't want to sit there for hours and hours and do this, but I think it's important that we do it.

MADAM CHAIR: Okay. I think what you're suggesting makes good sense, although it's going to take a bit of time. It means that all of the documents we've received without an embargo we don't have to concern ourselves with.

MR. COLWELL: No, our staff has had a chance to look at all of those.

MADAM CHAIR: That's right. But the documents that have been rated by the department, either because of client/solicitor privilege - no, we didn't receive those anyway - that have been rated through their freedom of information process because they contain confidential information that's personal, business or proprietary, and inter-provincial government relations, those were pretty much the three categories that they were assigning to various documents.

MS. RICE: Are you referring to the complete list of documents?

MADAM CHAIR: We're talking about documents they've given us but they've asked us not to release for those basic three reasons, those are the documents that we're talking about. What that means is bringing the officials from the department in and having them walk us through each one of those documents, with their explanation for why it is they think that a particular document should not be released, and then this subcommittee will either accept their explanation or reject their explanation. At the end of that process, we then go back to the Public Accounts Committee as a whole and we report to them what we would recommend, but it's up to the Public Accounts Committee to either accept our recommendation or reject our recommendation. It's at that stage that documents then will be dealt with in a manner that's consistent with what the members of the committee want.

MS. RICE: This means that we would have to go back to the very beginning. Each set of documents that they sent us, I have them in piles over at the Committees Office and there were reasons, they were either federal-provincial or solicitor/client, et cetera. So we would have to go through each stack of those documents and that's a lot of documents.

MADAM CHAIR: I think we'll have to schedule more than a half day to get through that process. We really need to consider setting aside a day, possibly. We may not need the full day but if we started at 9:00 a.m. and we just roll through them, then we should be able to get through it, but we're talking a massive amount of documents. Mr. Colwell.

MR. COLWELL: I would agree with that, a day's process to go through these and maybe start a little bit earlier than 9:00 a.m., if it's convenient for the subcommittee

members, so we can get through it hopefully in one day, or most of it in one day and then we can go from there. I would agree with that.

MADAM CHAIR: Mr. Porter.

MR. CHUCK PORTER: We spent a lot of time on this file. Take all the time you need.

MADAM CHAIR: Okay. I would say that we'll ask the clerk to speak with the department people and schedule a time as soon as we can do that for the subcommittee, something that will fit in with the agenda of the various committees you have to coordinate, in the next little while. If we could do this in the next week or two weeks, that would be excellent. Mr. Colwell.

MR. COLWELL: Just for convenience sake, I know Mr. Porter has a long way to travel to get to these meetings. If it was more convenient for him to go, if he's here for a committee meeting already, if we wanted to work a half-day in case we can't get a full day, I'd be in favour of that too just to make sure he doesn't have to do extra travelling to get here.

MADAM CHAIR: Sure, I have no difficulty with that. We will leave the scheduling with the clerk and proceed in that way.

With respect to the approval of additional witnesses, can we agree to bring back the Office of Immigration and report back to the full committee the next time we meet with that recommendation so that the clerk can then go forward with scheduling it? I'm thinking that we can't make the decision to bring in Immigration, we report back to the committee. The next time the committee meets is on April 2^nd and because there is an interest in having additional witnesses and bringing this to a conclusion, if we make that recommendation and then the clerk has the ability to schedule after April 16^th, by that time we should have the documents dealt with. Mr. Colwell.

MR. COLWELL: The question is, are we going to meet during the session of the Legislature or not?

MADAM CHAIR: We always do.

MR. COLWELL: Okay. Again, with the Office of Immigration, I don't want to delay this because I want this to move forward but again, I'd like to have a chance to go through all of these documents so we have everything before we go back again, even their explanation, even if we don't get any more additional information, at least we'll go through the process as a subcommittee and see. I think I'd like to have them in sooner than later but again, we have to go through this information and until we have all the information that we

can refer to, it's going to be difficult to go in and ask all the questions we should be asking about the process.

MADAM CHAIR: All I'm looking for is agreement to recommend back to the Public Accounts Committee that we're going to have the Office of Immigration come forward as a witness. The clerk can schedule it after April 16^th, however, we always have the ability to postpone or move that around. I'm concerned that if we don't make that recommendation until April 16^th, we won't have an opportunity to have the Public Accounts Committee adopt it until April 16^th, if we don't do that today. That potentially puts off having witnesses from the department much longer. You have to take into consideration that today the committee passed our report that has four topics on it.

MR. COLWELL: It has four topics and potentially five. The only problem I have with that is I still want to see all that information and we can bring it back to the committee with the recommendation that as soon as we go through the process with the department, that we've had a chance to look at this non-released information, whatever comes out of that, immediately after that we can set an agenda to have the office in again. That's the only problem I have. I want to see them back as bad as anyone, but we can't do that without having at least an explanation on all this information they've withheld.

[11:15 a.m.]

MADAM CHAIR: I totally agree with you but I'm thinking about where we are right now. We're in the last Wednesday in March. This committee, generally speaking, has witnesses until the end of May, possibly the first week in June, but generally speaking the Public Accounts Committee doesn't meet over the summer months and we generally conclude our work by the end of May or certainly, at the very latest that I can remember, the first week in June.

I think we all want to have this particular topic dealt with. I'm just worried that if we don't get the approval from the full Public Accounts Committee that this particular department come back before we adjourn at the end of our working year, then we won't have an opportunity to deal with this until the Fall. Even if the clerk set something up tentatively, it can always be postponed if we don't have all of the information we need.

MR. COLWELL: There's no sense setting it up, I don't think, unless we have the information. If we don't have the information, we're wasting our time again, and we'll probably inevitably have to have them back again. I just want to see this information.

We may be able to schedule something and get it through so we can have it in April or May or even early June, and then back, which would be my preference. So let's see how we can schedule the sessions with them to go through this topic as a subcommittee, before we set this forward.

I'm not prepared to propose that this come forward until we have a chance to look at all of this information. I just won't support that.

MADAM CHAIR: Well, I disagree with you. I think we should recommend to the Public Accounts Committee that we schedule the Office of Immigration on the Nominee Program as soon as the subcommittee has had an opportunity to look at the documentation and to report back to the Public Accounts Committee on the documentation.

So if you want to defeat that motion then that's fine, but I would move that. Mr. Porter.

MR. PORTER: Thank you. I agree with Mr. Colwell simply because it takes no time - I don't know of any time in the past when we've called on the Department of Immigration to come before us that they said no, we can't show up for six weeks. I think we need to go through it - it may not even be relevant to bring them back. He makes a good point and I'll support that. It's as simple as that.

MADAM CHAIR: Okay, well, I've made a motion and I'd like a vote on it.

Would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye. Contrary minded, Nay.

The motion is defeated.

In that case we have no further business on our agenda. We have asked the clerk to schedule a time to deal with the documentation and we have a subcommittee meeting scheduled for the first Wednesday, but I don't know that we'll necessarily need that meeting if we are going to be doing a documentation review with the department. Okay, any further business?

We stand adjourned.

[The subcommittee adjourned at 11:19 a.m.]