Opposition MPs got some answers Tuesday out of the aide to then-Public Works minister Christian Paradis who ordered bureaucrats to “unrelease” a sensitive report on the government’s real estate portfolio that was about to be made public under Access to Information legislation in February.
But the members of the Commons ethics Committee, which is studying government interference on Access to Information requests, were clearly left scratching their heads after the testimony of Sebastien Tognieri.
The Tory staffer repeatedly delayed his response to what seemed like basic questions.
When Bloc MP Carole Freeman asked who it was who took control of the document that was intercepted by Mr. Tognieri and cut to 30 pages from more than 130, he replied that “I made a mistake in judgment.”
When Ms. Freeman pressed for a name, he replied: “I don’t know.” The document, he explained, did not come back to the minister’s office.
So let’s get this straight, said an incredulous NDP MP Bill Siksay, “You felt that it was your job somehow to intercept that document, but you had no interest in what happened to it after you intercepted it?”
Again Mr. Tognieri admitted his error. Then he explained that he was told by an information officer that people who handle ATI files can work with the requesters to ensure they get exactly what they are looking for an do not waste money paying for documents they don’t want.
“I said, well, that can be done, maybe it would save the requester money,” Mr. Tognieri told the committee.
When Frank Valeriote, a Liberal MP, asked how many other times Mr. Tognieri had intervened in the release of a document, Mr. Tognieri took several minutes before replying: “My... this incident, I... it wasn’t my intention to delay or obstruct, again I was wrong, and the fact that I do not understand the law fully and I thought that I was...”
Mr. Valeriote pressed further demanding to know if it was the only time he had intervened. After another lengthy delay, Mr. Toglieri said “in my... yes it’s the only time that I... this was, you know, a mistake I made.”
Eventually, after Mr. Valeriote said the ministerial aided was taking up a lot of time, Mr. Tognieri consulted with his lawyer and replied, “I wanted to give exactly what the [requester] wanted and, yes, in my mind, it was the only time I intervened.”
Greg Rickford, a Conservative MP, took committee chair Paul Szabo to task for the general tone of the hearing, which Mr. Rickford said had been “politicized.” Then he mentioned the money that went missing a decade ago in the Liberal sponsorship scandal.
Dmitri Soudas, the communications director for Prime Minister Stephen Harper, was supposed to testify at noon but the fire alarm went off and the committee was suspended. As a result, Mr. Soudas’s testimony pushed back to another day.
