[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]
Tuesday, December 12, 1995
.1214 
[English]
The Chair: We have two or three items to deal with. I know we had not dealt with the reply correspondence from the Solicitor General advising that he would not provide an unexpurgated version of the ministerial direction on human sources. I think we should deal with that. ThenMs Meredith had an item that was related to our review of the Heritage Front matter.
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Ms Meredith (Surrey - White Rock - South Langley): There were a couple of points of correspondence I would like an update on.
The Chair: Yes. Then there was the possibility that we might want to target an item of business.
Mr. Gallaway, you're reading The Toronto Star again. Have you something in there you want us...?
Mr. Gallaway (Sarnia - Lambton): No.
The Chair: Oddly enough, colleagues, yesterday I was reading Erskine May and the issue of reading newspapers at committees was right in front of me.
In any event, we may want to consider items of future business for when we return in the new year. There may be some changes here and there in the committee, but it might be helpful to staff to focus on preparing for something in the new year.
That having been said, your chair has taken the decision that we will not continue today with the draft of the Heritage Front report. We can put it over to the new year, presumably, if members are so advised as to want to take the matter up.
Mr. Knutson (Elgin - Norfolk): That's fine with me.
Mr. Gagnon (Bonaventure - Îles-de-la-Madeleine): Mr. Chair, in the absence of Mr. Langlois -
The Chair: Mr. Langlois will be here momentarily.
Mr. Gagnon: - I would suggest we conduct this meeting first thing Friday, in the presence of Ms Cohen, with the report, as promised. That would probably suit your needs as well as those of the committee.
The Chair: There's a suggestion that we meet Friday. Maybe we could take that up near the end of the meeting.
Mr. Gagnon: With all due respect, Mr. Chairman, Ms Cohen has put considerable time and effort into this report. She has legitimate reasons for not being here today. I suggest that instead of waiting until after the holidays we entertain that report first thing Friday morning.
The Chair: That's not an unreasonable suggestion, but perhaps we should wait forMr. Langlois, to make sure we can get enough people here on Friday. I believe the parliamentary agenda for Friday is the second day of a debate, with no voting, and there may well be a shortage of MPs.
Mr. Gagnon: If I'm not mistaken, last year we did meet after the House had adjourned. There's no reason why we could not do so.
The Chair: No. My only thought, Mr. Gagnon, was that we have enough members to get a reasonable quorum here to do this.
Mr. Gagnon: Mr. Gallaway, Ms Cohen and I are in agreement to be here on Friday morning.
The Chair: Well, I haven't been consulted -
Mr. Gagnon: I'm respectfully bringing this to your attention.
The Chair: If we wait for Mr. Langlois to be here, the time of our adjournment can perhaps be taken up at the very end of this.
Ms Meredith.
Ms Meredith: My understanding was that we had business we were going to attend to other than the report itself today. I would suggest we get on and deal with this issue.
The Chair: Yes, that's a reasonable use of our time here, since we have set the time aside.
Ms Meredith, would you like to remind us of the item you had mentioned to me just before the meeting?
Ms Meredith: My understanding was that we were going to ask for clarification of some documents that were received by us from CSIS, and I haven't heard anything more about it. I was just wondering whether those letters went out, asking for clarification. If they went out, has there been a response?
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The Chair: Mr. Clerk.
The Clerk of the Committee: I don't know.
The Chair: Mr. Rosen.
Mr. P. Rosen (Committee Researcher): Mr. Chairman, I'm sure you haven't forgotten, but I'll remind you that there was a letter - the one I assume Ms Meredith is asking about - that went to the director of CSIS. It posed some of the questions in relation to what is commonly referred to as the Preston Manning file. A letter went out over your signature on November 9 or thereabouts, and I am not aware of a response.
The Chair: That was a month ago. You're quite right. We had made an inquiry to both the Solicitor General and the director of CSIS. So, Mr. Clerk, we haven't had a reply from CSIS yet.
The Clerk: No, but I'm going to check into that.
The Chair: So we don't have replies yet, although we do -
Ms Meredith: A month is long enough. We should be putting some pressure on them to respond.
The Chair: The other item that came up at the last meeting was the reply of the Solicitor General. He had decided he would not be in a position to provide the complete ministerial direction on human sources - the newly revised direction - but he was prepared to provide those portions of it that would be releasable under access to information. That has not been the standard adhered to by the justice committee or the subcommittee in the last parliament or this parliament up to date, so I'm inviting members to....
Perhaps Mr. Gagnon, as the parliamentary secretary for the Solicitor General, could comment on why the Solicitor General has chosen to take such a view at this point, given the subject of our current inquiry.
Mr. Gagnon: I would respectfully ask the chairman to pursue his privileged discussions with the minister's entourage. Maybe you would be in a better position to give us an answer why it has not come to this.
The Chair: The letter was generally explanatory. It didn't give a lot of reasons but it indicated that.... Let me read it to you. Colleagues, this letter from the Solicitor General was dated December 5. He says:
- There are areas where disclosure of certain matters would jeopardize the integrity of security
operations. Given the nature of the security information in portions of the ministerial direction
on human sources, I regret that full disclosure to the Sub-Committee is not possible.
For the record, let me indicate that in the last parliament the members of the committee - and that included me - -reviewing CSIS were given access to the whole book of ministerial directions, with none removed. I am curious as to why, about five years later, that has changed.
If I have the members' support on this, perhaps I should bring that to the attention of the Solicitor General.
Mr. Gagnon: You may, in my opinion, Mr. Chair. However, could you cite us a number of examples where complete divulgation of documents occurred? We rookies of this parliament are unaware of what was going on in the previous one.
The Chair: That's a fair question.
The committee reviewing CSIS in the last parliament was composed of, I believe, eight members of Parliament. It reviewed the complete book of ministerial directions in the office of the deputy solicitor general. It's about five years ago. I don't remember the date, but it would be recorded in the proceedings of that committee.
.1225
As a result of that, there was not another point in the last parliament when it was necessary to go back to the ministerial directions. This is the first point in this parliament where there seems to be a change in the views of the Solicitor General. So there is a precedent.
Mr. Rosen, do you recollect the...?
Ms Meredith: We did it here, Mr. Chair. We had an unexpurgated copy from the inspector general, who sat with us and went through it. Maybe Mr. Gagnon was not at that meeting, but it was at the request of this committee to see the unexpurgated copy the inspector general shared with us - the unexpurgated copy.
The Chair: That was the ministerial direction on human sources?
Ms Meredith: No, but it was a report that had not before that been a public document and that is not a public document now. We started out with an expurgated copy and we requested we receive the unexpurgated copy. It was made available to us by the Solicitor General through his inspector general this term, I assume with the committee members attending.
Perhaps Mr. Gagnon was not at that meeting. I can't recall.
Mr. Gagnon: You seem to recall quite fondly these privileged meetings you had with the previous Solicitor General, Mr. Chair. If you were given such information, why were you not able to deduce that something was going on vis-à-vis the Heritage Front and what not? All this occurred under a previous government. It did not happen under us.
I'm just trying to make a relationship between what you've done in the previous parliament and what we're looking at today, and what we've been looking at for the past year in the Heritage Front affair.
The Chair: I'm not too sure of the question. What are you asking?
Mr. Gagnon: I'm asking you a question. During your visits...and the privileged information you had access to with the then Solicitor General of the then government, did you not notice that some things did not necessarily satisfy your curiosity?
The Chair: No. We reviewed the ministerial directions, Mr. Gagnon. That was five years ago.
I don't know what you're saying. Are you asking if the committee made any recommendations to alter the ministerial directions? Our report had 117 recommendations. It was about 5 years ago and I'm a little.... Perhaps Mr. Rosen recalls.
I don't know how relevant that is to the current discussions.
Ms Meredith: Mr. Chair, the important thing that seems to be missing from some of my colleagues here is that this ministerial directive that was established in August of this year directly relates to this report we've been working on for over a year. It directly relates to what this committee is doing. It seems to me to be absurd that a Solicitor General would withhold from us information that directly involves a report we've been working on. It's not some other ministerial directive. It is a result of what is happening through this report and through this committee's work. To be denied access to it to me is just absurd.
Mr. Gallaway: Having regard to the rather bland, if I could refer to it as being that, reply of the Solicitor General, I'm wondering if you as chair - and this may not be a fair suggestion - might have a meeting with the Solicitor General and see if you can obtain further particulars - I'm not certain I understand the reply, quite frankly - and then subsequently advise the committee of the expanded reason.
The Chair: I guess that's what I was soliciting from members: some authority from you to go back to the Solicitor General, indicate the previous experience of this subcommittee and the justice committee with access to ministerial direction, and then ask him to reconsider. If that's okay, I'll do that through the clerk.
Mr. Gallaway: That's fine.
The Chair: Does anyone wish to put forward for consideration a possible first item of business in the new year? Mr. Knutson is not going to -
Mr. Knutson: No.
The Chair: But Mr. Gallaway or Mr. Gagnon....
.1230
Mr. Gallaway: I wonder, Mr. Chair, if we could review the list one more time. I'm sorry, I didn't bring mine.
The Chair: The list?
Mr. Gallaway: I have a list of what you had suggested.
The Chair: Ms Meredith, I have a list at the top of my head, but - -
Ms Meredith: One of the items was the Official Secrets Act. Since it's over 50 years old, I think we had talked about looking at it, redoing it, and seeing if it needed to be brought up to date, modernized, with the changes in technology, etc.
The Chair: Yes, that was one.
Here is the list. There are eight or nine. They're not listed in priority. In effect some of them might even be non-starters, but this is the list that has been out there developing.
The transition from the RCMP to the armed forces of the special emergency response team based at Dwyer Hill. The last committee took note of that, and so did the review-of-CSIS committee. That is really just a one-meeting item to ensure that the transition out of the Solicitor General into the armed forces has been completed.
Secondly, review of the Official Secrets Act - I regard that as a huge undertaking. At the moment I don't think we're properly resourced to do that, but it is there as an item of business.
A review of the relationship between organized crime and national security. That would be an undertaking of modest proportions, but probably within our resources.
Estimates for SIRC and CSIS - I think the estimates are tabled at the end of February. February 28 is definitely the end. So they are there for the March and April period.
There is a linkage between the Communications Security Establishment and foreign intelligence functions. Foreign intelligence functions are not directly part of the Solicitor General's mandate or this committee's mandate, but our committee's mandate includes agencies with whom CSIS has an MOU. Therefore CSE and Foreign Affairs and the Interdepartmental Committee on Security and Intelligence are all generally in that second tier of agencies. That would be more of an educational experience, a review of it not pursuing any particular political point.
Another item still out there, dangling, is the Air India issue. It's one that is very much in the hands of the government. The government will comment on it from time to time. From the point of view of the justice committee and this subcommittee there is clearly some unfinished public business in relation to that unfortunate incident, that tragedy. I believe the government has a desire to deal with it and wrap it up in its own way in due course, hopefully sooner rather than later.
.1235
Last but not least - and we've already touched on it here earlier today - is the issue of disclosure of government to Parliament. That matter is out there at definitely more than one committee and I think it needs some regularization. I think it needs a bit of a work over here in Parliament.
Those are the several issues I have listed. The easiest one would be to take a look at and wrap up SERT, the Special Emergency Response Team, from the perspective of the RCMP and the perspective of the Department of National Defence. We could do that in conjunction with estimates, but.... That would be one easy one we could take on in the new year.
When will the Solicitor General make the annual report to Parliament?
Mr. Rosen: Usually that would be shortly after estimates, at the beginning of March. He does two things: he makes a statement on national security and he tables the public report of CSIS.
The Chair: And I forgot the big one, the SIRC annual report. That's already been published. We haven't taken that up yet.
I think the subcommittee should get into either one or both of the SIRC annual reports, which I think is one meeting, and the transition of SIRC, which is one meeting. Do you have any comments or preferences, Ms Meredith, Mr. Gagnon or Mr. Gallaway?
Mr. Gagnon: The SIRC annual report came out a few weeks ago, so....
Ms Meredith: No, I think that with estimates coming up so quickly, by the time you do the SIRC report you're right into estimates and it will probably take us into May.
The Chair: Okay. Can staff line up witnesses for the SERT or SIRC annual report at a convenient meeting time when we come back in February?
We'll do the usual checks to make sure we're....
Mr. Gagnon: Is there a timetable? For instance, we know the timetable of the inspector general's report. When is that coming in?
The Chair: The inspector general's certificate isn't actually made public. That's correct. He simply sort of....
Mr. Gagnon: He gives it to the Solicitor General who then decides.
The Chair: That may or may not come up in the SIRC report to Parliament or in the annual statement by the Solicitor General. Those are two items we can work on.
So coming out of today's meaty agenda we have dealt with a couple of the procedural items on the Heritage Front.
Mr. Langlois indicated to us that he would be here at 12:15 p.m. He was occupied at the procedure and House affairs subcommittee. I'm kind of reluctant to deal with the Friday morning issue without him being here.
Ms Meredith: Could somebody make a phone call and see if he's on his way?
The Chair: Can we go off the record? There's no need to have a transcript at this point.
Mr. Clerk, can we go off the record and adjourn for three or four minutes? It's just so our ramblings don't have to be recorded.
[Proceedings continue in camera]
.1241
The Chair: We're now back in session.
Mr. Langlois (Bellechasse): Mr. Chair, I apologize, because I was at the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs and it just adjourned a few minutes ago.
The Chair: That's quite all right.
Mr. Langlois, we have been reviewing some possible future business. Colleagues have selected two items that we may deal with in February. We have also discussed the inconclusive or non-replies to two requests that the committee made, one to the Solicitor General and one to the director of CSIS, for further information. As you were unavoidably detained at the other committee, we've been waiting for you in order to deal with the date on which the committee will come back in session to deal with the Heritage Front matter, if so advised. Do you have comments on any of that for our benefit?
Mr. Langlois: I just have one question. We have no answer from CSIS on our letter, do we? It's pending for another month.
The Chair: That's correct.
Mr. Langlois: I have had the privilege of reading the answer from the Solicitor General. That is one of the reasons why I think the work of this committee is now over.
The Chair: Our colleagues have consensually authorized me to contact the Solicitor General to explain that committee members and members of the justice committee have previously been given access to all of the ministerial directions. It's just an attempt to facilitate a possible and broader disclosure of the ministerial directions we were looking for. So I will do that.
[Translation]
Mr. Langlois: Could the Solicitor General's parliamentary secretary tell us whether there have been any developments in this area? I find this is a fairly hard and fast policy.
Mr. Gagnon: I don't know all the details, but I share the view of the committee and the Chairman, and I think he should be asked to get more information from the Solicitor General in order to obtain the answers to these questions.
[English]
The Chair: The next issue - the big, remaining one - is that the colleagues to my right had suggested this committee reconvene this Friday morning to deal with further consideration of the Heritage Front draft report, including the document that was to have been provided by Ms Cohen here today - Ms Cohen is ill, so she is unable to be here - as well as her draft. We wanted to wait for you to be here before we discussed that issue.
Mr. Langlois: If you foresee a quorum for Friday morning, good luck. I don't think I will be here.
The Chair: Your chair had actually planned not to be here unless required. I'm in your hands.
Mr. Gallaway.
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Mr. Gallaway: As it turns out, I'm going to be here this Friday. I understand that people are anxious to leave and I certainly appreciate that, but the alternative is to kick it over to February. I know there are concerns about the House proroguing and I appreciate that also, but I would offer the suggestion that the EI bill is in fact not going to pass by Friday. I therefore don't think the House is going to prorogue during the break, unless somebody knows something that I don't know. There are a couple of pieces of legislation that I don't think they're going to allow to die on the Order Paper. That's just my opinion, and no, I don't have any insider information.
Certainly, if we reconvene during the first week of February to consider it at that point, we then solve the problem of Friday. I suppose we do run the risk of the House proroguing, but I quite frankly don't believe Bill C-111 is going to die on the Order Paper.
Mr. Knutson: Do you mean the first week we're back?
Mr. Gallaway: Yes, the first week we're back.
The Chair: Ms Meredith.
Ms Meredith: I wish I had the same confidence that you have, but I must admit - and I'll be honest and forthright in this - the behaviour and attitude of the government members on this committee do not give me any reason to feel confident in any assurance that the House will not be proroguing and that this committee will be addressing the issue in the new year. This adjournment today is just one more example of what we have been experiencing over the last few months. Unless you want to put up a resignation of your seat as a definite commitment, I have absolutely no reason to believe in what you're proposing.
Mr. Gallaway: That's fine. I appreciate your acts and leaps of faith here this morning. If you want, we'll meet Friday morning. That's not a problem.
Ms Meredith: It may not be a problem for you, but I came here today to address this issue, to get it over with before the adjournment. I don't know if I'm available Friday morning. I have some other commitments that I'm going to have to look at in order to see if I can make arrangements to get somebody else to cover my place.
This is news to me. I thought we were meeting today to address this issue to bring it to a final conclusion. As I said, this isn't the first time this has happened; it's probably the fourth or fifth time. Frankly, I'm starting to wonder why.
Mr. Gallaway: You can appreciate that sometimes people are ill, and you can appreciate that sometimes people don't plan to be ill.
Ms Meredith: You'll find that if I'm expected, I generally show up whether I'm ill or not.
Mr. Gallaway: Maybe you'd like to propose that we have doctor's certificates when people are absent.
Ms Meredith: That might not be a bad idea.
The Chair: All right. We're getting out of line.
Mr. Gallaway: At the same time, we're confronted with this situation. We're offering Friday. I can appreciate your displeasure, because nobody wants to be here on Friday. We've offered you February, but you don't want to take a leap of faith on that. That's fine too. I can understand that, and I have no problem with it. We still are confronted, however, with making a choice here. If you don't want to make that choice, perhaps we can make a motion to adjourn to Friday morning.
The Chair: May I comment from the chair. Even if we had further consideration of this matter of the report on Friday morning, based on our experience here over the last four months it is extremely unlikely that we would have an agreed-upon report. I'm just not willing to believe that.
None of us have seen what is being drafted; ordinarily, one would have an advance copy of something like that to read through and to consider. If it's not ready now, it isn't going to be translated. I wouldn't think of asking us to consider a matter that wasn't translated into both languages. That being the case, we cannot conclude on Friday. We would have to put the matter over to the new year.
But there are two sleepers out there. On the guess of your chair, it won't be prorogation. It will be death by a thousand cuts.
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What will happen is that there will surely be some committee changes and a significant attrition of corporate memory. As MPs move around.... I know Ms Meredith has been with us because her leader has permitted her to remain, although her critic area has been transferred to another area and I'm sure her colleague is anxious to get to work in replacing her on this committee.
So I think we should recognize that we've been unable, over an extended period, to reach agreement easily on a report. If it's not to be the draft we have meticulously drafted here over the last three and four months, then it'll have to be some other creature that is meticulously drafted and discussed. I don't think we're going to get a chance to do that or to get it to the justice committee until the new year, for sure.
So I am rather inclined to accept that our deliberations be put over to February. If members on this committee as it is constituted at that time wish to proceed, then it can happen. If they don't, then it won't. I think at this juncture your chair should advise the justice committee that this is the status and then simply let the chips fall where they may - with great regret, because we have invested a lot of time on this.
Those are my suggestions.
Ms Meredith: Mr. Chair, why don't you just tell the justice committee we are unable to reach a conclusion and there will be no report coming from the subcommittee? I personally don't see any change in attitude that is going to make the new year any more successful than the last four or five months have been. I don't know why anybody would want to put themselves through the kind of crap we've been putting ourselves through for the last four or five months. Why don't we just admit we're not going to come to a conclusion and there will be no report from this subcommittee after a year and half of working?
The Chair: The best I can do today, Ms Meredith, is to say there won't be a report today. I wouldn't want to preclude members from taking up an issue and reaching a conclusion at a later date. But I'm inclined to agree that would be a pretty different environment from the one we have here now.
Mr. Gallaway: Mr. Chairman, I was just thinking that despite the protestation of a long-suffering member opposite, if we assume we could compile a report today that in some way was agreeable to the committee, in terms of having it translated, in terms of your tabling it in the House, it would be very improbable that it would occur this week in any event.
The Chair: Definitely.
Mr. Gallaway: That being the case, if we accept Ms Meredith's hypothesis and the House does prorogue - and we're willing to take that big leap of faith - then you would not be authorized to table it when the House resumed, because of her theory that the House is proroguing. So in any event it's a catch-22; it's an impossible situation.
We are offering to the member opposite a February slot. If she wants to throw in the towel, then that's fine.
Ms Meredith: Mr. Chair, in defence -
The Chair: Please permit me to recognize, before we jump in, that a very congenial discussion about future dates is going on here.
Ms Meredith: I take exception to the fact that they're pointing the finger at the Reform Party as not being in cooperation here. I think it should be noted that we're on the fourth draft and it's the government members who are refusing to acknowledge the work that we have put in to reach draft number 4. So don't start pointing fingers at somebody not being cooperative at this point.
The Chair: Okay, let the record show the committee and its members have worked very hard on the issue up to today.
Mr. Langlois, did you have something to say?
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[Translation]
Mr. Langlois: Mr. Dupuis told me a moment ago that we were sitting publicly today. We sit in camera one day and in public the next. I wonder how that decision was made. We were sitting in camera so that we could speak more informally, and now something else is being imposed on us. It's not up to me to question a decision made before I arrived here, but I don't agree and I frankly don't feel like continuing. I have a rough idea of what I'll put in my report and I'm ready to begin working on it. If the House is prorogued, I won't table it, and if it is not, I will table it. I won't cancel my other activities for this and I'm going to avoid those adrenaline rushes that could be harmful to my health and those around me. I'm doing my work and I believe everyone is doing his in his own way. I respect my colleagues' work methods. I am prepared to work on a draft report.
We had agreed to meet today following Ms Cohen's address to see where we stand. That is the only purpose of today's meeting. It is not to vote on a report, but to see where we stand. I understand the proposal of Ms Meredith and Mr. Gallaway. I'll tell you where I stand. I have information that probably comes from one of the reports that Mr. Rosen worked on and the letter that I sent toMr. Dupuis on September 12 last. These are the questions that I'm going to raise.
Before starting, however, I would like to see what the political agenda is. It isn't impossible that, after two years of its mandate, the government might want to make a Throne Speech and change its political approach.
[English]
The Chair: Just to firm up, you're not available on Friday?
[Translation]
Mr. Langlois: No. If the idea is to rehash where I'll be... Friday, I will be three days further ahead, nothing more. I can tell you that right away. There's no point in adjourning till Friday. In any case, I am prepared to force myself to come on Friday. If everyone agrees to be here, I'll agree as well.
[English]
The Chair: Mr. Gallaway.
Mr. Gallaway: Maybe we can end this kind of duelling pistols here. I'll propose a motion that we adjourn till the first week we're back in February, whatever the date is.
The Chair: We could certainly do that. If that is in effect what's going to happen, I would suggest that we simply adjourn to the call of the chair.
Staff will be targeting dates in February for the two matters we discussed earlier. We'll simply have to discuss among ourselves the status of the Heritage Front report and Ms Cohen's draft, which I assume she will circulate.
Mr. Gallaway: She has already.
The Chair: Then I think I will report to the chair of the justice committee that at this time there is not a report.
Mr. Gagnon.
Mr. Gagnon: You say there is not a report at this time, but we will reconvene on December 15 to pursue this matter.
The Chair: We will reconvene as a subcommittee, certainly, to do the business. Is it the desire to actually convene on a specific date as well for the Heritage Front?
Mr. Gagnon: Yes. It would be our first item of business.
The Chair: Okay, so we'll have something to work with.
As long as that's all right with members, we will come back to those three items in February.
Mr. Gagnon: The first one being Heritage?
The Chair: Yes, as long as it's ready to go in February. If it's not, you wouldn't want to postpone all of the others.
Mr. Gallaway: No, no.
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The Chair: So we're going to the first week we come back, then.
Ms Meredith: That gives them six weeks to read the report so they know what it's all about.
The Chair: There's an excellent suggestion. Mr. Gallaway has indicated that Ms Cohen has triggered the distribution of her draft.
Mr. Gallaway: That was for discussion among us, because we're collectively writing this.
The Chair: Oh, okay.
Ms Meredith: I was suggesting that they read the Heritage Front report so that they know what this is all about.
Mr. Gagnon: Under the palm trees or on skis, they can do so.
The Chair: All right. It would be most appropriate for the draft to be provided to the clerk when it is completed and then translated and circulated for all members of the subcommittee as it is constituted, as far in advance of the first week of February as possible. We don't know for sure where Ms Meredith or Mr. Wappel will be, who have been with us from the beginning, but hopefully, if needed, they'll still be around.
If there's no further business, I will adjourn.