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March 22, 2023 HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY PROCEEDINGS Vol. L No. 21

The House met at 10 a.m.

SPEAKER (Bennett): Order, please!

Admit strangers.

Government Business

SPEAKER: The hon. the Government House Leader.

J. HOGAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Speaker, I call from the Order Paper, Motion 3.

SPEAKER: The hon. the Government House Leader.

J. HOGAN: I move, seconded by the Deputy Government House Leader, that notwithstanding Standing Order 63, this House shall not proceed with Private Members' Day on Wednesday, March 22, 2023, but shall instead meet at 2 p.m. on that day for Routine Proceedings and the conduct of Government Business and that, if not earlier adjourned, the Speaker shall then adjourn the House at midnight.

SPEAKER: Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

All those in favour, 'aye.'

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye.

SPEAKER: All those against, 'nay.'

Motion carried.

The hon. the Government House Leader.

J. HOGAN: Thank you, Speaker.

I call from the Order Paper, second reading, Order 5,

An Act to Amend the Management of Information Act and the House of Assembly Accountability, Integrity and Administration Act, Bill 22.

SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Digital Government and Service NL.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

S. STOODLEY: Thank you, Speaker.

I move, seconded by the Minister for Municipal and Provincial Affairs that Bill 22,

An Act to Amend the Management of Information Act and the House of Assembly Accountability, Integrity and Administration Act now be read a second time.

SPEAKER: It is moved and seconded that Bill 22,

An Act to Amend the Management of Information Act and the House of Assembly Accountability, Integrity and Administration Act, Bill 22, be now read a second time.

Motion, second reading of a bill, “

An Act to Amend the Management of Information Act and the House of Assembly Accountability, Integrity and Administration Act.” (Bill 22)

SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Digital Government and Service NL.

S. STOODLEY: Speaker, the Management of Information Act is the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador's internal administrative legislation governing its records, life cycle and information management and record-keeping practices for departments but also for 160 other public bodies, Speaker.

The Minister Responsible for the Office of the Chief Information Officer administers the act. Responsibility for the development and implementation of a records management system rests with the permanent head of a public body, the deputy minister in the case of a government department.

The Management of Information Act sets forth the roles and responsibilities the Office of the Chief Information Officer, Government Records Committee and heads of public bodies. The Management of Information Act applies to over 160 departments and public bodies across the province and includes a penalty for non-compliance. With the exception of a minor update in 2008, this act has not been substantially reviewed since its creation in 2005.

So we have separate housekeeping updates that are required to clarify roles and responsibilities and modernize the act. Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to say we're now introducing a duty-to-document requirement into law and will be only the second province in Canada to do so.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

S. STOODLEY: Thank you.

Speaker, in 2015 the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act or the ATIPPA Review Committee, chaired by Justice Clyde Wells, recommended that government introduce a duty-to-document provision informed in part by recommendations from the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner.

Duty to document is a requirement for a public body to create and maintain complete and accurate records of important decision. An important decision is one that has a significant or long-term impact on the high-value activities or direction taken by a public body in the fulfillment of its mandate. Again, Speaker, this will apply to over 160 public bodies.

The duty to create records for civil servants exists in common law today, as acknowledged by Justice Richard LeBlanc in his 2020 report on the Muskrat Falls inquiry. In the Management of Information Act there's always been a general expectation to create records for everything from purchasing to staffing, permits and licences to grants, as well as contributions to legislation and policy. However, it is the exceptional situation, such as those described by Justice LeBlanc in his report, that cause concern to all of us as taxpayers and ratepayers.

Under the act and its existing information management policy framework, the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador already has a requirement in law to create and maintain records. However, the duty-to-document decisions are not currently embedded in the legislation and its implementation was deferred for a number of reasons, including at the time of the Wells Committee recommendation, no Canadian jurisdiction had legislated a duty to document. We did take a significant amount of time to assess with the department and public body information management capacity to implement.

So, Speaker, we have 160 public bodies that this will apply to. We had to work with them to come up a duty to document that was not so onerous that they would have to increase the size of their body. So the spirit of this is that the people who are making these decisions and their teams will be able to do this within their existing roles and we do not anticipate needing to increase the size of the public service, for example, to accommodate this.

Departments and other public bodies need to improve their overall information management processes in preparation for this duty-to-document legislation. During this time, the Office of the Chief Information Officer developed additional policy supports and training to help improve governments overall information management maturity. So we have a suite of documents ready to help public bodies and training as well that will be available when the bill receives Royal Assent.

In 2020, Justice LeBlanc made a similar recommendation regarding duty to document. Also, informed by representation from the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner, government announced it would make changes to the Management of Information Act to introduce a duty-to-document provision. Justice Orsborn, who also received representation from the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner on this topic, made reference to the earlier recommendations from the Wells Committee and Justice LeBlanc in his 2020 review of ATIPPA.

So OCIO, we have a number of policy supports, education and awareness materials for departments and public bodies. It was also determined this would be a good time to modernize the act to keep step with current industry practices and modernize the language, processes, roles and responsibilities.

While we were working on this bill, Speaker, the OCIO consulted with departments and public bodies with most indicating that they could address the requirements. Obviously, there's still a bit of uncertainty with public bodies. I think there's hesitation to think okay, well, we can't do this with the people that we have. I guess the spirit of this is that that will be up to each head of the public body to make that decision, but we're not intending that this be a significant burden on public bodies. This should be just an additional step on top of the records management that they're already doing.

As information management is a core administrative responsibility, similar in that aspect to financial and human resources management, responsibility for duty to document is best placed with the OCIO with oversight resting with the minister responsible – with me. It was determined that oversight of duty to document and records management compliance for the Commission, House of Assembly Service and statutory offices will be placed under the House of Assembly Accountability, Integrity and Administration Act .

To ensure openness and transparency, the minister responsible will report annually to the House of Assembly on the duty-to-document compliance. In the case of the House of Assembly, the Clerk will report annually to the House on their duty-to-document compliance.

The approach we're taking, Speaker, is a principle-based, information management policy framework that we've created to support departments and other public bodies in their efforts to implement these changes. This policy framework is broad enough to allow departments and other public bodies flexibility to adapt to their organizational requirements while still complying with the legislation. I think this flexibility is very important as each department and public body offers unique programs and services and the policy framework will allow the head of the public body to figure out what's an important decision for their public body.

We have training materials for employees and managers – we have that developed – and OCIO will do awareness sessions with departments and all public bodies on these requirements. In supporting this initiative, government recognizes that a high degree of public trust comes with serving the people of the province and proper documentation is integral to decision making and supporting access and transparency.

Speaker, we did consult with the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner on this bill and full and fair consideration has been given to the Commissioner's recommendations as well as those identified in the reports from Justice Wells, LeBlanc and Orsborn.

I do want to note that the Privacy Commissioner currently oversees the ATIPPA and that's related to how the public accesses all government records. The Privacy Commissioner's role in that regard is not changing. Any new government record created by a public body or by core government related to a decision would still fall under the purview of the Privacy Commissioner in terms of how that is released and accessed by the public.

Speaker, I do want to let this House know the Privacy Commissioner did ask for extra responsibility in terms of selectively audit and oversee the implementation of duty to document. That kind of falls outside the scope of the ATIPPA legislation and is also under the overview of the Auditor General. At this point, we are not making changes to the Management of Information Act because the Privacy Commissioner already has oversight in terms of when those documents get released to the public. Also, we're reviewing the statutory offices, so we didn't feel it was necessary at this time.

Improvements were made to the legislation in light of feedback. We did make improvements, as per the Commissioner's feedback, in terms of the duty-to-document directive in the act, as well as to ensure the mandatory application to departments and other public bodies.

As I mentioned, the Privacy Commissioner has advocated for a role and the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner for itself in oversight of this. We determined that is best placed with government. In BC they have similar legislation, Speaker, and they also kind of self manage that. Like I mentioned, the Privacy Commissioner will still have oversight of how those documents are released to the public and the access to that information. The Privacy Commissioner continues to retain his full oversight in terms of the access to all information, including any new records created under this legislation.

This aligns with precedents in other jurisdictions and the mandate of OCIO under the act to provide the overall strategic and policy framework to assist departments and other public bodies in supporting their information management programs and meeting the requirements of the Management of Information Act .

The Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner have responsibilities to the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act and the Personal Health Information Act . This does not change any of their responsibilities.

As I mentioned, we're going to be the second jurisdiction in Canada to implement a duty to document in legislation; BC was the first. Our legislation compares favourably to BC's. Both place responsibility for oversight with the Executive Branch. In BC they have a chief records officer; here it will be our Chief Information Officer. We didn't feel like that was necessary for Newfoundland and Labrador. But ours will be broader than BC's. Theirs apply to just core government; ours will apply to all public bodies.

In addition, our legislation will have a mandatory annual reporting requirement specifically to duty to document and an offence provision for non-compliance. There is no offence provisions in BC's legislation.

To ensure consistency with the Executive Branch of government, the House of Assembly Accountability, Integrity and Administration Act will be amended to apply the duty to document to the House of Assembly. Modernizing the offence

section of the Management of Information Act aligns it with ATIPPA and provides more transparency in government's role in documenting important decisions. Along with ATIPPA, this province will be very progressive in its information management practices and it already is. I can confidently say, Speaker, that after Bill 22 we'll have the best duty-to-document legislation in Canada.

Just a few things to clarify for my colleagues. In terms of the legislation directives, the legislation provides the base around what is a decision, what is a record and then we have a series of directives which are kind of like regulations which are legally binding, which the public bodies also have to follow, kind of like a regulation equivalent. This is where we see the definition of important decisions and we have examples for the public bodies in terms of what this might look like for them. We have checklists. A lot of helpful content which we think will help public bodies figure out how do I apply this to my public body?

I guess one thing to elaborate on, Speaker, is it was really important, I think, that we don't slow down the business of government as a result of documenting these decisions. So that's why we wanted to focus on the element of an important decision, not every decision. Although, I do want to say that I could not think of any examples in my department where we wouldn't be already documenting decisions. So when I make a decision, there is a decision note and the public can request access to those decision notes and they do.

When my department hires a new person or we expand a role or create a new role, there's a request for staffing action that clearly outlines the rationale, the cost, do we have the money. All the necessary rigour around an important decision.

Mr. Speaker, the test for an important decision will be whether it is complete, comprehensive, accurate and timely. So those are the four criteria for recording an important decision and obviously that will change depending on the scope and scale of the public body.

So core government, I think, we will not have to make significant changes, but it will be a cause for the other public bodies to stop and think okay, well, is this an important decision? Am I taking the proper steps to make sure that this decision is recorded appropriately?

I guess it's also important to balance – I mentioned we don't want to slow everyone down. We don't want all of our public bodies to be significantly or even remotely more inefficient. We need to continue to make decisions even faster than we currently make them in my opinion. We didn't want to add a significant burden to the public service, but we do think that when people in departments and public bodies make important decisions, it is imperative that they do have an appropriate record of that decision.

Mr. Speaker, I'm very pleased to bring this forward today. I'm happy to answer lots of questions and I look forward to discussing it with my colleagues.

Thank you.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

SPEAKER: The hon. the Leader of the Official Opposition.

D. BRAZIL: Thank you, Speaker.

Again, it's an honour to stand in this House to debate and discuss legislation that comes forward. It's very important that legislation in this House is debated in an open and transparent manner. It is very important that the general public understand exactly what it is that's being debated and the impact it's going to have on those individuals.

So I just want to explain a little bit, for those who may be watching at home, the process that we use here. In a normal sitting, we could go through as many as 60 bills depending on the complexity and the length of them and the impact they're going to have on people. We can go as few as 10 or 12 in a shorter sitting, depending on, again, the impact that the bill is going to have and if there are other entities here that need to be engaged into it.

In a lot of cases, whether or not we, in the Opposition, feel that the piece of legislation has been thought out, has covered off all the issues necessary, has engaged the proper authorities for input and, at the end of the day, is going to be in the best interests of the people of Newfoundland and Labrador.

We don't, on this side, just oppose for the sake of opposing. We have valid questions. We may have concerns. We may say we really actually like a clause and we'd like for it to be enhanced more. We may say, can you tell us exactly who you consulted and what was their view on certain things? We even may delay in debate, giving everybody an opportunity here to speak so that we can also talk to those outside entities to get their view specifically around a certain clause or an impact it may have on their organization or the entity that they're responsible for or if it's a government department as part of that.

Now, sometimes there may be specific groups that don't necessarily see it as in the best interest of their agenda items, and that's unfortunate. But you have to look at the bigger picture here and what's done in the best interest of the masses and what will indeed secure proper legislation or proper programming, proper supports for people in our province.

What we have here is another piece of legislation that's coming through that has a lot of good parts to it, a lot of good moving components. It's modifying an existing bill here. We're talking about Bill 22, amending the Management of Information Act and the House of Assembly Accountability, Integrity and Administration Act . They are very important pieces of legislation. We've done amendments over the last number of years.

I remember having discussions around when it came into being and what it actually morphed from in some of the discussions that have been in the House of Assembly. Particularly the last seven or eight years, there have been some major changes and, as things evolve, people get a better understanding of what should be covered and what isn't.

Indeed, in some cases, if there are loopholes there that maybe, if taken advantage of, could be detrimental to the intent of the bill itself, and particularly to fulfilling what was intended here for the people of the province when it comes to the integrity of this House and the administration and accountability, they're the key components of this piece of legislation.

So I just want to make it clear on the process that will happen over the next period of time as we debate this particular piece of legislation. It's perhaps the most significant one outside of the financial ones that we will discuss in the spring sitting of the House. Normally, it's around our financial accountability through a budget process. There are some other ones that get put in play. We had that conversation yesterday and passed one on the Stephenville airport. Important nonetheless to the Stephenville area and to the whole of the province, but doesn't generate necessarily the running of the House of Assembly or the government itself from an entity as part of that.

This here is a little bit more in depth, as you can tell by the number of clauses that are in this. There are 14 clauses. When you have 14 clauses and a number of subclauses as part of that, that's a significant bill, particularly when you're changing nearly 15 or 16 of them. Then there has to be a fair bit of work put into that.

I do acknowledge the bureaucrats who, themselves, have done due diligence and research here to ensure that the reflection of the changes are necessary based on the changing times, the change in responsibilities, the input that they've had from agencies or organizations or the general public here that reflect exactly how you improve legislation.

The intent in this House, when we modify or change or adopt legislation, is to improve the operations of government and improve the general public's ability to have confidence in this House and understand exactly what legislation is here and what are the rules and regulations that not only we in the House of Assembly and the government must adhere to, but also the general public would simply know, when it's posted, exactly what would happen in any particular situation.

You may recall nearly a decade ago – and I'm one of the few people who were in the House at the time – Bill 29 and what the intent of that bill was. The intent was very honourable, that there would be access to information for individuals, but information that may be extremely sensitive, that may be detrimental to the operations of government or freedom of information that wouldn't normally have to be shared or should not be shared with the general public would be put in play so that everybody would understand what the parameters are.

Obviously you saw the backlash at the time from the general public, from the mainstream media and from the Opposition on this side. I was on that side of government at the time, on this side, and I do remember the premier of the day, Premier Ball, saying that this was the most important issue that he was to debate since he'd been in the House of Assembly. Good on him at the time. He was adamantly committed that this was going to be detrimental to the people of Newfoundland and Labrador. We had a very robust filibuster period of, I think, five days of filibustering, 24 hours a day on this debate and a lot of integral debate back and forth and sharing information. Disagreeing on the

interpretation is part of it, with the process that was happening here.

At the end of the day, there were outside entities who themselves, when they reviewed the legislation, said they have some concerns on specific parts of it. There were nuances there or clauses that can be interpreted differently than the intent that was meant. A lot of things when it comes to this process here is left to

interpretation. That's why in the debate process, it is very important, it's extremely important that clarification is given so that there's no mismanagement of the understanding or misinterpretation of what's being said.

It's better that five or six people on the government side would respond with the same message from questions that five or six people on the Opposition side may ask so that there's clarification. If it's said five or six times and people are adamant about what they're saying, and it's answering the questions that are asked over here, then we can be reassured that that indeed is the

interpretation of a particular clause.

We always know that things can be challenged from a legal point of view, depending on the

interpretation or depending on nuances of one particular word or the way the phrasing is put together. So it's very important in any piece of legislation, particularly legislation that has a bearing on access to information, privacy, sharing of information and the ability for a government to withhold information that they feel may be detrimental to whatever entity, if it's a business entity that they looking for or if it's a piece of information that may be necessary to keep because it may be detrimental to people's social, mental or physical health or financial health, then we need to understand where those parameters are.

We had this debate about the cyberattack only recently, around what pieces of information the general public should have been having access to, for a number of reasons. One, their apprehension. Because there were so many unknowns here: Who had information? What kind of information they had? How could it be used? Has the information been retrieved? Has it now been stopped that it can never happen again? If somebody's information was compromised, what does that mean for them? Are there some supports or mechanisms that they can then be reassured on what can be done?

The general public, by nature, are inquisitive. They want to know what's happening. We represent them. We're the people's representative in the House of Assembly no matter where your district is. People need to have an understanding that the discussion in here is open and transparent and very clear and distinct as to what the people of this province can expect.

When we talk about that in the House, that's why for the last number of weeks, in the media, and I know for the last number of days in the House of Assembly myself and my colleagues on this side, I know the Third Party has done it, the independents have done it, have asked about openness, transparency, sharing of information, having an open dialogue so that any recommendations or any pieces of information that could be beneficial to improving legislation or improving the operations of government would be taken into account, regardless of who they come from.

Most information we get here – I know from my perspective, I'd like to be able to say that I know a lot about a lot of things; I don't. I know a little bit about a lot of things, but what I do know a lot about comes from people who do know it, have that expertise. I'm open to learn and listen to them. When they come with something that's factual and something that makes sense and something that can be verified, then I think why would we not share that with government and hopefully that may then improve what they're doing.

In a lot of cases we've been fortunate enough that we've shared it and some of the information has been taken. We've even had the luxury for the first time in a lot of time to change some amendments to pieces of legislation to improve it. That's what it's about, to improve the legislation in a collaborative manner here. We've had friendly amendments. We've had legislation withdrawn and put to another mechanism, a party mechanism. We only did that only recently with the health bill.

So why would we not consider doing that continuously, particularly on major bills that impact people's lives and could be contentious, depending on what side of the fence that you sit on or what your interests may be? It's not just about the Opposition versus the government. I'm talking the bigger picture here. There are entities out there that are affected by everything we do in government, very much so.

This bill itself, while, again, I'll eventually go through a number of the clauses here, make minor changes in some of the clauses, propose serious changes in other ones or changing to the

interpretation that needs to be clarified and then there are ones that actually add new clauses as part of that.

So minor changes, not a problem. We've gone through it to look at it. Now, I should correct that. We've gone through it as efficiently and as detailed as we could, keeping in mind that less than 12 hours ago we've had a copy of this piece of legislation, which that, unfortunately, is perhaps the most unacceptable thing about this bill right now when it comes to this perspective. That's the problem there, the first conversation around this.

So I've implored over a period of time about being open and transparent, not rushing things and take faith in what we're saying. You want to sit down and have a discussion; we'll have an open, very mature discussion about legislation that improves things. Giving something in a moment's notice that's so detailed from a legal point of view and a logistical point of view, from an administrative operational thing and an impactive process for outside entities and asked us to come in and support and speak to it in a positive manner is asking a lot.

Now, again, I will say, I give credit to the legislation and to the minister and to her staff for putting together and going through the particular clauses and looking at ways of improving them, but there are a number of things here that have been changed dramatically. There are a number of new clauses here that do actually, from our perspective, bring up some red flags.

Now, maybe, at the end of the day, they're not red flags, but we don't know because we haven't had time enough to dive deep into it, to get our

interpretation, which then would go outside and have a conversation with those who might directly be impacted by it or legal entities who may know what the

interpretation may be so that we could come back and feel confident that if we're going to support something in this House of Assembly, it's going to be something that the people of this province can support because it's done in a manner that supports and protects them also.

So there are a number of issues here that we take with this. First and foremost is the expedient way that it's trying to be rushed through the House of Assembly, is our understanding here. I mean, I don't understand, I would have thought this week would have been more around the budget, because, I give credit, you've been doing a number of announcements so I figured that's what we would be doing all this week, and good on you. Those announcements, I'm very hopeful, will benefit the people of this province – very hopeful. I've said it here a dozen times, I'm optimistically hopeful that people's lives will improve with this budget and future budgets.

But to know that happens, we need to know what the details are and that's what we're scanty on when it comes to a lot of these announcements. What we're scanty on in this piece of legislation here in some of the major changes to the clauses and some of the new clauses is the detail itself and the impact it's going to have.

Again, we're not saying that it's done in any matter that isn't meant to be in the best interest of the people of the province, but we don't know right now. In 12 hours, for us to be able to interpret that and know that and get a view from 35,000 feet from people outside who would be impacted by this, to me, it's not fair to this legislation, it's not fair to the Opposition and it's not fair to the people of Newfoundland and Labrador, Mr. Speaker, 100 per cent.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

D. BRAZIL: That's not acceptable in this House of Assembly. I would have hoped we had broken new ground over the last number of years by being more collaborative, by sharing information a little bit in advance and being open to making amendments. In a number of cases, the government have even pulled a bill back and said you're right, let's go back, let's do a deeper dive, let's engage a few extra entities that we think we may have missed. Let's make sure that we've covered off all the issues that are relevant to passing legislation that's going to have a dramatic effect on people's lives and access to stuff.

So there are a few things here that we have some major concerns about that we'll debate. We'll have quite a conversation, I know, this morning and beyond about this piece of legislation, until we're comfortable that it is where it needs to go. I'm not quite sure why we're in a rush to do this right now. Unless there's some other reason that government can give us why this has to go through right away before it has been vetted through all the key entities that should have input, including the people of Newfoundland and Labrador, through the Opposition and the House of Assembly as part of that process.

So there's a lot of discussion that will get to take place. I'll still have a fair bit of discussion just in my conversation over the next 45 minutes or so. I know my colleagues here themselves will have the same opportunity to speak to that. So we're going to have a very robust discussion on what this means. There will be a multitude – and I mean a multitude – of questions asked for clarification. I would hope somewhere along the way there will be discussion on are we ready to implement this piece of legislation right now when there are still so many unknown questions that need to be asked and unknown views from people and the impact it's going to have?

There are a number of things here just in some of the clauses and I haven't even got into the integral working of some of the clauses and the impact they have, but some of the clauses here would have a direct impact on the other Officers of this Legislature. The Auditor General, what impact will this piece of legislation have on her ability to do her job? We have the Office of the Child and Youth Advocate, what impact will that have on that Officer's ability to do their job and their access to their information and the sharing of information as part of that?

You know, we've got the Seniors' Advocate, the Citizens' Representative and the Privacy Commissioner. We already know there's a full debate with the Privacy Commissioner now on access to information and the role that he would play in ensuring that the people of this province and the public are aware of what's happening out there as part of this whole process here. So there are a number of things in this piece of legislation that have an impact on those individuals. If it has an impact on them being able to perform their duties, it has an impact on every citizen in Newfoundland and Labrador.

So this piece of legislation, as minor as the government may think in putting it through, in thinking that there would be no debate, is not going to work that way because any piece of legislation that has an impact on every Newfoundlander and Labradorian has to be debated openly, transparently and fluently. It has to be done in a manner that best suits the people of this province.

So, Mr. Speaker, we will be very diligently outlining our concerns when it comes to this and asking for clarification. One thing about here now, there are no accusations that there's anything afoot on the other side here, that isn't in the best interest of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians. The issue becomes has it been rushed without it being thought through to a point where every issue is covered off? We need to know who's been engaged in this process and we need to know exactly how much authority and how much power is given in certain particular areas in some of these clauses.

I'll just note one particular clause here that gives authority back to Cabinet to make decisions on what information gets shared. Now, we've had a debate in this House for the last couple of years and the media brought it up and my colleagues on this side have discussed it, minutes in council, when a decision is made in council, it's been as much as a year or more before the general public knows the decision that's been made.

I get it, I sat in Cabinet, I understand Cabinet confidentiality and I understand the debate that goes on in a Cabinet room. I understand that not everybody agrees on a particular decision that's made, but once it's made, it's made, hopefully, in the interest of the people of the province.

Whatever decision you make has a bearing on the people, if it's their finances because you're supporting a program or a service, if it's you're entering into an agreement with some national or international entity, or if it means you're about to change legislation that has an impact on people's lives, that, in itself, dictates that the people of this province should be made aware of exactly what's happening when it comes to decisions within Cabinet.

Now there are clauses here that give Cabinet the authority to keep other information, not only their own decision stuff, but other information that may be relevant to operations of government or outside entities that, from our perspective, we're not sure if that's in the best interests of the people of this province because we have no idea – the devil is in the detail. What kind of information can be withheld? Who gets to scan that information to make those decisions? When is it withheld? Is it held for a period of time? Is it totally redacted? Is it hidden? What impact does it have? Is it only related to financial matters? Is it only related to contracts with outside entities?

So there's a lot of information here that's still missing for us to be comfortable on being able to sign off on major changes to a piece of legislation. Again, let's go back to Bill 29. To me, it was an example of how a piece of legislation was done in the right intent, the good intent to ensure everybody was protected from an information point of view and that government could still function in a domain where information that would be beneficial to them being able to do the functions and not jeopardize the viability of the company or the exposure of individuals and that who are engaged with operations in government would be done.

Then it was found that there were some clauses there that could be misinterpreted or that people could find loopholes here to take advantage of it. It was a very robust – and I talked about that. I mean, I sat for five days and nights, in and out of the House of Assembly, and the impact that had on slowing down other pieces of legislation and other things that were necessary to improve people's lives, what that meant. Because you know what? Maybe if we had done it the first time and really engaged and took our time and made sure all entities that should have been involved, maybe we could have avoided that.

But I do give credit. After that was done – and it passed; we had a majority government. So government could still pass what they want over there. I would hope, a decade later, we've evolved to the point that we're going to pass legislation in this House – government with a majority or not will pass legislation that everybody in this House would feel comfortable it's going to benefit the people of this province and still allows government to operate in the manner that is necessary, open, transparent and the best interests of the people of the province.

So we're not diluting that in any way. We're not trying to change the modem here that works, but we're trying to say let's build on what we've learned from the past. What we learned from the past in Bill 29, which is similar – it's about access to information. What we've learned from there was, at the end of the day, the premier of the day – Tom Marshall, I give credit – saw that there were a number of loopholes there that were dangerous to the people of this province. They were never meant to be out there but when things are done and if you don't get every perspective, there are times that things slip through or one person's

interpretation may be totally different than the other 50 people's

interpretation.

So, as the process there, he said we want to review Bill 29. He put together a very competent group of individuals from different perspectives, including a former Liberal premier, to oversee a rewrite or re-evaluation of Bill 29 to get it right. That's what things are about in this House. The cliché should be let's get it right. Sometimes we only get one kick at the cat; let's get it right.

In this case, because we see no evidence that this has to be rushed at this point and we do have a multitude of questions and we know once the general public start hearing about this, and the media, and some of the statutory Officers of this House of Assembly start hearing what's going on, they're going to have a multitude of questions also about what's happening with this piece of legislation.

So, right now, to rush this through the House of Assembly –

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible.)

D. BRAZIL: Well, it has been rushed. It was given to us in a few hours and put on the Order Paper now.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible.)

D. BRAZIL: Well, I'm glad to hear that because maybe we can have –

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

SPEAKER: Order, please!

Address the Chair.

The hon. the Leader of the Official Opposition.

D. BRAZIL: Thank you, Speaker.

I'm glad the Members on the other side are engaged in this and I'm glad they said there's no need to rush this.

Thank you.

AN HON. MEMBER: No, it hasn't been rushed.

D. BRAZIL: Oh, no, it has been rushed. When we're looking at a piece of legislation, 12 hours later, that the general public doesn't have, statutory Officers of this House don't have, and it's going to directly impact them. Nobody has been consulted on this. That, to me, is rushed.

I mean, as bad as certain things may have been handled in Bill 29 at the time, there was a lot of consultation, I guarantee that. There was a lot of discussion. We haven't had that now, so we're going to engage and we're going to hopefully get the co-operation on government side to have a robust conversation and discussion and hopefully have other entities be totally briefed, engaged, get their feedback and see what they think are some of the issues around this bill.

Maybe they'll come back and say they think it's perfect as it is. If they do that, if we hear from the masses that are directly impacted by this that this is a good piece of legislation, it's going to be hard for us to argue. I would know my caucus here won't be arguing for the sake of arguing. We may ask some questions for clarification. I'll make that very clear here, we have no qualms in asking questions for clarification so that if we get a constituent or an agency ask us what does this mean or can my organization do this or can I access this, we can say unequivocally yes, because the minister said this is what this means in clause 2(4), very much so.

So we're hoping to have those general, open discussions as we get to that part of that process. But again, the fact I'm hoping – and maybe I'm misinterpreting here, but the fact that there may be an intent here not to rush this, to figure out is there some other way that we can make sure this works in the best interest of everybody involved as part of this perspective. Again, when I look at 14 clauses some of them seem minor, and I've said that before and called housekeeping. Fair enough, let's have that debate, let's tick them off right away and get them done that we all agree they're done.

That way, it's easier to improve something if you've only got to deal with specific things and a smaller number. Because philosophically and mentally, the less you have to deal with the more focused you are on those specific issues. That's probably a way we could easily do that as we move forward.

What I'm worried about here, clause 7, it's not about Cabinet records; it's about something completely new. This is what clause 7 says: “Records created or received, explicitly or implicitly in confidence, respecting matters of provincial or national security shall be managed in the manner determined by Cabinet Secretariat.”

Now again, that's a dangerous road to go down, because now you have one entity that gets to decide what information gets to be shared. Again, there's a multitude of

interpretations here and nuances, and particularly, details that would need to be clarified for us have an understanding. What would be considered provincial or national security? That's one of the things that would need to be clarified as part of that. Is there a list of 10 or 12 things? I mean, I know for a fact that a lot of jurisdictions don't have this piece of legislation, so we don't have a lot to compare it to in comparison to this particular clause here.

We already know that there have been some issues around information from Cabinet and what has been shared and not shared. We've already had those debates here and it's already been known publicly about some of those challenges.

We're just going to be asking for clarification around what does that really mean and how is the decision-making process made in Cabinet when it comes to these types of things? They're explicit things. I don't think they're too outrageous to be asking in any way, shape or form. I think they're in the best interests of this House and government. The more they're clarified, the easier it is for us to support it and for the general public to understand exactly what's changed in this piece of legislation.

This is not, from our perspective, an attack on the minister or that government that this is not a good piece of legislation. What we're saying is we need time and clarification to determine if it is. We even need time and clarification with the Officers of the House and the general public to see, if this were implemented, how do you think it would affect you, and then get their feedback. As was done on the second kick at Bill 29 and got it right.

We haven't heard many issues around Bill 29 since a whole review panel went out, got input and came back with a new, revised Bill 29. It's working, so far. I know, and I'll be the one to admit, we could've handled it better at the time. Very much so. We could have saved a lot of money for the government, for the people of this province, a lot of headache for the Opposition, a lot of headache for other people and we could have also spent those five days dealing with other important issues in the House of Assembly.

So let's expedite what we do that's beneficial to the people. Maybe one of the ways to expedite this is take our time, let's figure it out, let's engage other people to make sure this is done right and let's have this open, robust and, as I keep saying, mature conversation about the impact this will have on people's lives in Newfoundland and Labrador.

You know, some of the things that we talk about when it comes to sharing information in Newfoundland and Labrador is about people's own access to what's happening here. I know government has to take actions that they feel are in the best interest. We know what we're debating now about the cyberattack. We know what we're debating now in the court situation there about access to information by the Privacy Commissioner.

So they're red flags here that may be things are not clarified. I am not saying government are wrong. I am not saying that the Privacy Commissioner is right. What I'm saying is both entities here need better clarification. We should not be at a point where government is in court with one of the statutory Officers of the House of Assembly because there's not clarification on who has what responsibilities here. So somewhere we've let this fall astray. Somewhere at the end of the day, there should be explicit clarification on roles, responsibilities of statutory Officers and of government.

Now, my understanding from the statutory Officers, they feel – and I've spoken to a number of them, only recently. It's pretty clear what their roles and responsibilities are. Government may interpret it differently. Government may have a different agenda, and maybe there's an agenda here that's not in the best interest of openness and transparency, I don't know that. But I'd like to know we can eliminate that by having all the discussions done, all clarifications on a number of the issues that are necessary, and then figure out what is the best way forward. That may mean also changing some of the roles and responsibilities of statutory Officers.

In this House of Assembly I've learned, if nothing else, over the last 13 years, this is a living entity here. It changes day to day. Society changes it, legislation changes it, because one piece of legislation that we change that we think is in the best interest, and it is, has an impact on other pieces of legislation because things are connected directly or indirectly.

Outside entities change that has an impact on what we do in the House of Assembly and legislation, as part of that process. Nationally and internationally, what happens, there has an impact on what we do. I mean there wasn't very much conversation two years ago about cyberattacks or access to our information even though, and I have to say, there were reports given at different levels of government that there was a risk of what could happen.

That's not a blame to any administration because I suspect that in the previous administration, somebody had given them some notice that there could be some challenges around access to information, or the vulnerability of that information being out to the general public or getting into the hands of people that we wouldn't want, like hackers, and that's happened.

So there are a lot of things here that need to be debated and discussed and taken into account when we look at changing a piece of legislation. Particularly a piece of legislation that changes directly the access that the general public and the representatives of the general public have to information that may be pertinent, directly or indirectly, to their livelihood, to the viability of our province and to the partnerships that we're developing. Maybe at the end of the day, the general public may not want us to develop a partnership with a specific province, country, entity, business entity. Who knows?

There may be all kinds of reasons at the end of it, but it's hard for people to voice their opinion if they're not fluent on what's happening because the information is being withheld for all kinds of specific reasons.

The unknowns here, if there were clauses here that specifically said here are the 10 things that Cabinet can withhold specifically, here are the 10 things that will be decided. There's a subcommittee of Cabinet that will review it with five statutory Officers of the House to get their views on whether or not it impacts their ability to perform their responsibilities, or here are the things that we feel directly do not affect the citizens of Newfoundland and Labrador. These are the things that we can withhold because they may jeopardize the integrity of a business venture or of something else relevant to the operations of government.

Fair enough, we'd have that debate then whether or not we think they fit neatly under those headings. We're not getting any clarification on a number of those situations here. So we're going to continue to ask questions. We're going to continue to direct and look at the clauses that are being changed. There are a number of clauses here that do have some continuing challenges for us because, again, I can say they're vague in a point that there's been a major change from what was already in play, so understanding why those changes were made. What was the challenge?

Was it just because they've been so old that times have changed? I don't know. Most of this legislation is fairly new, so I would have thought it would have been thought out prior to some of this that was being done there.

But some of the things that are being done here are totally changing, from our

interpretation, the intent. I say our

interpretation, and I'll qualify that again because we haven't had the timelines to really do a deep dive to get a real understanding of what these changes would mean. Maybe they're just changed; maybe the wording is such that it's the same approach, just done in a different matter. I don't know.

We've been trying to read this this morning. You want to see us scrambling and our staff scrambling to try to get our heads around it, and we've got some of the most intelligent people here who know legislation as good as anybody and have been around for decades and decades. Even they're scrambling now to try to get a better understanding or perspective of what's the intent here. We've reached out to a multitude of very learned individuals who would understand this type of piece of legislation and would understand the logistics of legislation as it comes through the House of Assembly to get some clarification and we are continuing to do that.

As I speak here and will speak through this morning and this afternoon, our staff are meeting with people, are having discussions, are trying to get an understanding so that we can have clear, precise questions to ask in Committee to the minister so that we can get clear, precise answers so that we can then clearly articulate that to the general public as to what this would mean to them, good or bad. And if it is bad, then it is up to them to say this is not acceptable, as was done with parts of Bill 29. If it is good, then it is up to them to give the nod to use to vote for this, move this legislation and move on to another piece of legislation that is important to changing people's lives.

I also want to note a few things here about what has been happening here around some of these issues. Issue around watchdog, we always need it. Most of our statutory Officers are watchdogs for the people of the province and are watchdogs for the House of Assembly. Fortunate enough, there are mechanisms here where entities of the House can actually have input into these statutory Officers.

If it is the Auditor General, the Public Accounts Committee works directly with the Auditor General and can refer specific investigations that they feel would be in the best interest of the people of this province from a financial point of view or an operational point of view as part of that. The Child and Youth Advocate's office, the same way. There are entities there; there is a collaborative approach as part of that process here.

Taking away or jeopardizing them having some access to particular information that would be in the best interest of them being able to perform their duties is a concern to us. I know it is a concern to some of the statutory Officers and I guarantee you that once the general public knows that this is some of the things that could potentially be jeopardized here then the general public are not going to be pleased that information can be withheld without knowing exactly what possibly could or could not be done here. If there are decisions in Cabinet to withhold a particular piece of information, they want to know based on what scenario as part of that.

They are simple questions. It is not an accusation of anybody. We're not saying it is done in any intent to be detrimental to the people of this province but we need clarification. It is unfortunate that we didn't have the opportunity over the last few weeks to go through this and get clarification. We may have come in here with some discussions in advance.

Our House Leader here could have spoke to the other House Leader and there may have had some friendly amendments, or there could have been some changes done in advance of coming here. But now we are coming where we are asking questions and some of these questions may be simply answered. Some of them may, to the minister and her staff, seem like this is common sense, how do you not know that? We don't know it because we have no understanding of exactly how one part of this bill fits with the changes to the other, because we haven't had that ability to really go through it and get as many questions asked in advance of having to come to the House of Assembly to do it.

We're going to continue to do that. We will have a discussion around where it goes. I will say clause 7 will be a contentious discussion because there's a lot of clarification that needs to be done there. I don't know if it's clear. I don't know if that's as part and parcel of what's been already put there as part of that process. I do know that there are other pieces of legislation that have an impact on Cabinet's responsibility as part of that. Even comparing those would be beneficial to us. We're going to need a bit of time to look at those types of issues here.

Some of the other things here that we want to look at are some of the red flags that are coming up. We're hearing this from a couple of entities who are saying we need to know if we can access specific pieces of information in advance of it going to Cabinet, because once it gets to Cabinet it can be held. That becomes the issue there of knowing what the clarification is on some of those entities there and the impact on some of the clauses as they change. So there's going to be a lot of questions.

Some clauses are changing from one particular clause that now carried over to another one. So we want to have some clarification on those. Again, don't get me wrong. I'm hoping the minister will have all those answers when we get to Committee, but I just want to sort of paint the picture for the general public out there as to why this will be an open, robust discussion because there's a lot of things here, a lot of things.

If you look at just my notes, this is a quick scan from our caucus and our staff. You'll note anything that's in yellow are major changes in our perspective; some, the minor ones, we didn't even note. If we've got that many tags, if we've got that many questions and we're still trying to dig in to what are some of the reports here – I mean, “The Clerk shall annually prepare a report regarding the compliance ….” What does that mean?

I think that can be easily explained but we need to have some more clarification as what that particularly means and what time frames, to what parameters that the Clerk would be responsible for. So there are a number of things there that will be discussed in the very near future that will be, I would hope, beneficial to either explaining to the general public what we're doing or improving the bill here.

I would hope the government themselves are open to an open dialogue, to potentially us making some recommendations on some changes to clauses, or if we get clarification there may be a multitude of ones that we may want to look at to change. There may be some friendly amendments that can be done in advance of it.

Maybe there might be an opportunity to say we're not it in a hurry to do this. Unless there's some reason that this has to be rushed through, let's hold this. Let's go back and do a clean sweep of what we're doing. Let's have an engaged process so that everybody who wants to be engaged in this process – outside entities, the statutory officers, all Members of the Opposition – can get a clear understanding of all the legislation when it comes to this and any changes to the clauses themselves, as part of that full process.

I'm hopeful we're going to have that discussion. I would think we'll get to that point and I would hope in the near future we'll do that.

With that being said, Mr. Speaker, I'm going to put forward an amendment. The amendment is from me as the Leader of the Official Opposition and the Member for Conception Bay East - Bell Island, moved and seconded by the Member for Conception Bay South: That the motion be amended by deleting all the words after the word “That” and substituting: “the bill be not now read a second time but that it be read a second time this day three months hence.”

SPEAKER: There's been an amendment proposed. This House will recess to review the proposed amendment.

Recess

SPEAKER: Are the House Leaders ready?

Order, please!

Upon review of the proposed amendment by the Opposition House Leader, I've ruled that the amendment is in order.

The hon. the Opposition House Leader.

D. BRAZIL: Thank you, Speaker.

Indeed, I'll reiterate this again. This is about all of us collectively working together to improve the piece of legislation. What we've proposed here is just let's pull it back; there's a great opportunity. We don't see an expedient need for this piece of legislation to be there now. It's not detrimental. There's still legislation there that covers off a number of the parts, as we've talked about. There are a number of ones that are just housekeeping, as part of the whole process.

But I do want to reiterate a number of other things here. I won't take a lot of my time here because I think I've outlined a lot of the issues previously. I'll let my colleagues here – and I would hope Members of the government – talk about this process and maybe there's a discussion around an ability to hold off and get it right or review it enough to make sure we get it right. But one of the things here – and I waited until after the amendment to see whether it was in order or not and if it wasn't, I just wanted to explain again.

The biggest part of this is about duty to document and that explicitly is fairly simple. It's about ensuring that any decisions that are made, that the documentation there is there to back it up so that there's no misinterpretation of what was decided, who decided it and what the intent was as part of that process. This is about trying to find ways to improve that process. And we know, we ran into it. We ran into it with Muskrat Falls, 100 per cent. Nobody over here will deny that process here.

Justice LeBlanc talked about duty to document, how important that is as part of it, and we 100 per cent support that. The issue here becomes the clause, particularly 5.4(1), that says Cabinet is exempt from duty to document. The fear that comes around that then is about decisions that are made. So if there's an ADM or a DM hired, what process was used for the selection process? The duty to document is exempt from that. If there's land given for wind-generating power, what process was used? What evaluation process was used as part of that?

If there are issues around changes to Nalcor or direct Nalcor operations, what happens here? But a big one for a lot us would be what's happening with 2041 negotiations?

The duty to document would give people an opportunity through ATIPP process, which is a good ATIPP process, for then the ATIPP coordinators to determine which is sensitive information that shouldn't be shared. But if Cabinet can, carte blanche, say none of this information is to be even shared with the ATIPP coordinators for them to assess what should be redacted or what should be shared, then we have a real problem here with openness, transparency and our ability to perform our duties collectively, no matter who you are.

As the minister noted, 160 entities would be directly or indirectly affected by that. That has a major impact here. The Privacy Commissioner himself – we've had a conversation – has some grave concerns about what's happening here. Not that they can't be rectified or discussed, but for clarification purposes. I mentioned it early in my discussion here that there are not a lot of other jurisdictions bringing in this piece of legislation. One that they based it on is BC, and even in BC the Privacy Commissioner has dramatic troubles and concerns about the piece of legislation.

We have to be cognizant of picking legislation that fit for the needs in Newfoundland and Labrador. Don't just base it on another jurisdiction, or if you do, don't just base it on what they write, also take into account some of the challenges they have in their own jurisdiction as part of that process.

These are things here that we're saying have to be reflective of getting a good piece of legislation. What we're simply asking, our amendment is pull it back, take the three-month process, engage the entities out there, the Officers of the House, some of the other entities can be directly involved or whatever process, the general public to see where it is. Get a better clarification on some of the clauses and the impact and the changes. Then come back, by then we'll all be briefed, we'll all have a better understanding of what it means. As a matter of fact if there are some concerns, they can already be shared with the minister and her staff and they can come back with clarification.

Or there may be modifications to the piece of legislation that can be done friendly and then we can come back, have an open discussion then, but a more informed discussion, particularly then, that would be in the best interests of everybody in this entity here to make this happen. We've only set out to do one simple thing in the sitting of this Legislature for the last two years, is to find a way to improve the lives of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians. In a lot of cases that's through legislation and through ensuring that people have proper access to programs and services.

To do that, we need to have laws and responsibilities here. But all the key players that protect our society have to also be brought into it. The only way you can buy into something, if you understand what it is, is because you've been engaged in it. If we're hearing from statutory Officers that they're not comfortable with this because there are too many unknowns, or they haven't been engaged in a process that they think would be in the best interest, or they feel it may have been a little too rushed, then we have a problem with what's happening here.

So, as we debate what's happening here, I'm hoping other Members on the Opposition side will support the ability to take this back and do further reflection, further review, and come back with a piece of legislation that's going to be in the best interests of everybody here. That we could all support and pass in the House of Assembly and ensure that protection for our citizens, protection for statutory Officers, protection for the operations of government and even protection for Cabinet. I'm not adverse to Cabinet having to have certain protections on certain, particularly sensitive, decision-making processes.

But the duty to document has been proven to be one of the downfalls of many administrations in this province about who made a decision. What was it based on? Was the information being shared with them accurate at the time? And if it's all documented, then it's fair to go.

I've been in Cabinet. I know sometimes you get briefings that are verbal briefings, so there's no information there. Sometimes it's just a deck presentation that there's not something there. But if a decision is made, the decision that's made is considered duty to document. You would then document exactly the discussion, the vote and the intent of the go-forward process. This is simple. It's the way it should be.

What we're saying is then that information could be made readily available to the ATIPP coordinator to determine what can be shared with the general public. So we're not saying every piece of information is necessarily in the best interests of sharing with the general public because there are sensitive things, but we are saying that, carte blanche, a Cabinet cannot say the next five-decision group, don't worry about it. We're going to use Cabinet exemption on this. They'll never be able to be challenged because there'll be no duty to document.

No information there that's of any interest that can be shared with the ATIPP coordinators to determine if the general public can have access to the information that has an impact on their lives, as part of that process. We've talked about that.

They're just a couple of quick clauses that we brought up. Now they're to us, in a quick review, two of the most serious ones that need to be reviewed and need to be discussed. There are probably a number of other ones that other entities may come back and have some concerns, and it might mean simple tweaking of words that are there or it might be a simple change of a clause or simple clarification of what's happening as part of that clause itself.

But again, we're asking. We're saying there are too many more important things – not that this is not important, but this right now will not change the outcome of people's lives in Newfoundland and Labrador like the economy will, like health care will, like education will, like moving the economy in the right direction will.

We can still get this right and use the time that we have in the House of Assembly over the next number of months to concentrate on other pieces of legislation, on the programs and services in the budget, how the budget can be rolled out, expedited so that people get access to the funding sources and the programs that they need. If it's core funding for not for profits, how do we get that money out the door so those important organizations can start providing the services that they've been doing for decades in Newfoundland and Labrador.

So in my humble opinion – and I would think my colleagues on this side – this is about taking our time to do something right, and using the time that we would probably spend arguing or debating without being informed to do other things that are in the best interests of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians. Then come back and have an informed debate after every part of our process has been vetted, open and transparent and inclusive to all those who want to be included in a piece of debate as part of that process.

I don't want to take up much more time because I know there are other Members here in the Opposition, and I hope government Members, who will get to speak to this, will consider the amendment. It's pretty simple. We think it's pretty precise and we think it would hit the end result, which would mean a piece of legislation. We're going to support the minister and the piece of legislation that works.

My colleague is right. It's a reasonable proposal because we've scanned it as quick as we can and we don't think that this legislation being delayed three months to get it right will have a detrimental effect on what we already have in play to protect the people of this province. Give all of our statutory officers an opportunity to have input so that we could show the engagement process and the values they have to ensure that they can perform their duties in the best interests of everybody in Newfoundland and Labrador.

I would hope, unless there's some outrageous reason why what we've proposed here is not going to work, then fair enough, share that with us and we'll have those discussions as part of that.

Also, we've talked about it and we know the debate – and I've mentioned that we've had a discussion with the Privacy Commissioner; he's already put out his concern. So they're out there publicly. If the Privacy Commissioner, one of the most important Officers of this House when it comes to representing the people of this province and the information that government has that should be shared with the people of the province, or in his case, don't forget there are certain pieces of information he feels shouldn't be shared because it's not in the best interest.

If he has concerns about what's being proposed here because there hasn't been enough dialogue or enough inclusive discussion, or there are some challenges in particular clauses, then if he has it, it's going to be hard for any of us here not to say that the rest of us should not take a step back, reflect on how we're going to do this and make this work.

Just some of the things that he's talked about here: “It exempts the entire Cabinet decision-making process ….” That's a concern of his. He wants clarification on how that works and why this is in the best interests of the people of this province. “… It has no independent oversight; and it does not actually create a mandatory duty to document due to the discretionary nature afforded to the Chief Information Officer.” So these are key components that the Chief Information Officer has in Newfoundland and Labrador, who would want either clarification or some additional clauses that would cover off some of these challenges that we have as part of this piece of legislation.

So I have a real concern. I know my caucus has a real concern and I would think that the general public will have a real concern when they hear that the Chief Information Officer is concerned about part of this – that the Chief Privacy Commissioner as part of this.

Some of the other things that he notes here and I want to read some of these: “The proposed Bill does not address these concerns. Given the importance of this subject to the mandate of the Information and Privacy Commissioner, we are sharing these concerns publicly to assist in the debate of the Bill within the House of Assembly.”

So when a statutory officer says that I want to do my part, because I represent the people of this province, to help the debate be open and transparent, here are my views, now he's obviously taking a step forward to even alienate himself with government. But he feels so strong that this is so important, that this represents what the people of this province need to have access to, that he's publicly putting it out there. When an officer has a press release on the same day we're debating a piece of legislation, that speaks volumes. So I think we should be listening to what they're saying and make sure we don't rush this.

“A legislative duty to document would be a requirement in law for government to adequately document its decisions in writing.” Not an unreasonable request, I wouldn't think. First, I would have thought we'd been doing it. When I found out we weren't doing it, I said shame on all of us. Shame on previous administrations and the previous administrations since then, and shame on us for not making this happen in the House of Assembly.

“It was recommended in 2015 by the Statutory Review Committee of the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act, (ATIPPA, 2015), led by former premier Clyde Wells. More recently it was recommended by Justice Richard LeBlanc when, in his 2020 report of the Inquiry into the Muskrat Falls Project, he found that decisions regarding the troubled project were not properly documented in both government and in its energy Crown corporation, Nalcor/NL Hydro. Former Justice David Orsborn commented on a duty to document in his 2021 report of the 2020 Statutory Review of ATIPPA, 2015 saying that 'enough time has passed,'” to do the right thing. I think we need to do the right thing here today.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

D. BRAZIL: He also outlines there has to be “respect for the role Cabinet Secretariat plays with respect to the management of the Cabinet decision-making process and agrees that a special role for it vis-à-vis Cabinet documents is warranted; however, Bill 22 excludes Cabinet documents (whether in the custody of Cabinet Secretariat or not) from the duty to document altogether.”

Now that's a dangerous, slippery slope to go down, with all due respect. I wouldn't care what administration was in play, we would have to really reflect on that. If I were sitting there and now realized that and said, well, I understand the role of Cabinet as a Member, at the end of the day that's very dangerous. That doesn't mean that we're not all honourable and every Cabinet minister is not honourable, but it does open up the door for information not to be shared in the proper manner.

“As it relates to independent oversight, Bill 22 would require the Minister to table an annual

summary of compliance in the House of Assembly prepared by the Chief Information Officer, a government executive who serves at the pleasure of the Premier and reports to the Minister … the Information and Privacy Commissioner, an independent statutory officer of the House, with authority for oversight of the duty to document. Many reports are tabled in the House of Assembly every year, often while it is closed, and receive little attention.”

That's also a dangerous thing here, Mr. Speaker. We have to have openness and transparency. The people of this province have said that to us. A former Liberal administration ran on openness and transparency and got elected very handsomely at the time. But I would think they would be thinking a second time now, if this is indeed how we're going to put legislation through the House of Assembly.

Finally, he outlines, “Bill 22 would require a duty to document to be implemented through a policy that the Chief Information Officer may develop, and could be amended – or discontinued – without even reference to Cabinet.” Again, challenges on what we're doing here. Very much a challenge of what's being done here.

“'A duty to document is critical to access to information – and ultimately transparent, accountable and democratic government,' said Commissioner Harvey, “'While every day the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner works to get citizens the access to government documents to which they are entitled under law, there is nothing we can do when decisions are not properly documented.” That's why it's important.

Duty-to-document guarantees – and that covers everybody. That's not just about the general public having access to it; it protects those who make those decisions. It would protect us as politicians, because we could then justify here was the rationale that the decision was made on, the information that people had given to us as part of that.

He notes, “I encourage legislators to address these concerns with Bill 22 as it is considered by the House of Assembly. By addressing these gaps we could continue to be the leaders in access to information in Canada.”

We took great steps. Bill 29 was a step forward. It hit a few road bumps, but then it got fixed. It got fixed to the point where people were brought in who could engage the process and then the House of Assembly adopted it. Since then, we haven't had any challenges with it. We've had only good responses and other jurisdictions are following our lead in this information process.

The Information and Privacy Commissioner is an independent statutory Officer of the House of Assembly appointed under the authority of Access of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, 2015. With additional authorities under the Personal Health Information Act , additional information, including how to contact the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner, can be found.

So I encourage the general public who are listening, go online, read what the Privacy Commissioner has said. That's not our words. That's his. Somebody who has the oversight, the expertise and the in-depth knowledge of what's being proposed here and sees it as a detriment unless we correct it, unless we fix it for the people of this province.

So, Mr. Speaker, I will take my seat now and do implore that government consider our amendment so that we can move on to the duties of representing the people in this House of Assembly and use the time in a collective manner to, over the next number of months, find the most engaging way to get this piece of legislation right so everybody engaged feels it's going to benefit the people of this province.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

SPEAKER (Trimper): Thank you.

I now call on the Minister of Digital Government and Service NL.

S. STOODLEY: Thank you, Speaker.

You know, I think the Member has raised some interesting points that I'm happy to discuss further. This is a very important issue. I would like to, I guess, let the general public know that we have been working on this for many years. I think it would be a fair criticism to say it's been taking too long.

We have done extensive consultations. We have worked with our government departments who have gone out to all of their agencies, boards and commissions and all the relevant public bodies on numerous occasions to get their feedback which has informed the legislation.

I do note that the Privacy Commissioner did just come out with a release and I'm happy to speak to that in detail, so thank you very much.

So my office first engaged with the Privacy Commissioner in January 2020, so three years ago. I guess if anything, I think, this has been too long coming. I do want to reiterate that.

We first engaged with the Privacy Commissioner in January 2020. In January 2020, we received correspondence from the Privacy Commissioner on this. The Privacy Commissioner –

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

SPEAKER: Order, please!

S. STOODLEY: The Privacy Commissioner, in 2020, requested that he be given very high-level access to selectively – as I quote from the letter – monitor and audit what we do under the Management of Information Act .

I have a lot of respect for the Privacy Commissioner. I think privacy is incredibly important. Mr. Speaker, what we're putting forward now will take us best in Canada. The best duty-to-document legislation in Canada.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

S. STOODLEY: I just want to reiterate that.

So the imperative to duty to document only currently exists in BC and we would be the second province, and what we're proposing is going to go farther, much farther than what BC has. I think that's really important for the public to understand.

When you look at the Privacy Commissioner, the Privacy Commissioner has a lot of responsibilities under the ATIPPA legislation, absolutely –

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

SPEAKER: Order, please!

S. STOODLEY: So any documents that are created by government, the Privacy Commissioner has the authority to kind of moderate those as they are released to the public through the ATIPPA requests. I think we all know that is an important part of how government works. There are government records. The public makes access to information requests. If there is an issue with those, the Privacy Commissioner says yes or no and makes a ruling and all of that would stay. There would be no change to that process. In fact, all of the new records created as a result of the duty to document, the Privacy Commissioner would fully oversee that, within their very appropriate role under ATIPPA.

I think in terms of oversight the Privacy Commissioner this morning just raised three concerns. The second would be no independent oversight but the Privacy Commissioner himself already has oversight over all of these decision records. He has oversight of that as they are released to the public through the powers that he has under the ATIPPA legislation, which is broad, Speaker.

We also have the Auditor General. The Auditor General overall has oversight of the implementation of policy. To say there is no independent oversight is simply incorrect. The Auditor General has oversight of all of this and I know the Public Accounts Committee – I used to be on the Public Accounts Committee – they can direct or ask the Auditor General to do performance audits of anything that they choose. There are means where people can direct or ask the Auditor General to investigate. We also gave the Office of the Auditor General more money; we expanded the scope, so this is very much in the purview of the Auditor General.

The other issue the Privacy Commissioner raised is Cabinet decisions and anyone connected with government, I think you can understand how there is a certain rigour around that, which I won't go into details; it is above my paygrade. We are not proposing any change to how that works.

The mandatory duty to document, I guess, I disagree. The permanent head of all public bodies will have a legislative duty to make sure that the important decisions within our public body are appropriately recorded. To record an important decision appropriately it needs to be, as per the directives which are ready to go, has to be complex, comprehensive, timely and accurate. Those are the criteria that these important decisions have to be made under.

We have a significant amount of documentation all ready to go that we have reviewed with many public bodies in advance to make sure we have examples for them to help them understand what is an important decision for a body like theirs. We have checklists, we have templates and we've got a whole suite of stuff ready to go on our website with Royal Assent to help public bodies.

So a few things the Leader of the Opposition raised, I do want to touch on. So there is a

section – and usually, I guess, for anyone watching the process, this is second reading so there's different people, we get to hear different opinions and perspectives and when we get to Committee is when we really go line by line and there's lots of time to ask as many detailed questions line by line as we want. So I'm expecting to do that in the Committee. I'm happy to do that now for any concerns that have been raised as well.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible.)

S. STOODLEY: Yeah, I've got lots and lots. I've got all the answers, so it's no problem.

So there is a new element of this legislation the Leader of the Opposition raised around provincial and national security. What happens is that we get, as a government, especially related to cybersecurity or recently we were informed of something relating to some of our systems which there was a patch and an update for, we get information that is classified a certain way by the federal government that is not appropriate for us to discuss.

Now, I don't get that information. Other people than me get that information. It's classified by the federal government in a certain way. This gives the permanent heads of the public bodies the ability to appropriately manage documents that have been deemed to have a certain official classification level. So this is not the whim of someone; these are official classification levels that would be applied to certain documents.

I think it's important to remember the Management of Information Act is currently in place and it oversees how all 106 public bodies interact and how they store government records, how they dispose of them, when or how they dispose of them and it outlines all of that. So I think that that is really important to understand and that requirement exists today.

So the layer that we're adding is imperative to document important decisions and we have consulted with public bodies about that. We've consulted them on numerous iterations of this, Speaker, because obviously there's a spectrum here. We want everyone to record important decisions. The more, the better. There's a lot of discussion here because no one wants to hear the answers to the questions that they've asked.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

SPEAKER: Just a little order, please. It's difficult to hear the Speaker.

Thank you.

S. STOODLEY: Thank you.

There's a spectrum here, so we've gone back to the public bodies numerous times to talk to them to make sure that we get this balance right because we don't want to cause them so much work that they can't do it with the staff that they have. Duty to document is very important, but we also don't want to expand the public sector by 20 per cent as a result of this. That would be a significant amount of taxpayers' money. We need to spend all of our money on health care so that there are lots of doctors.

It's very important; we have consulted with public bodies on numerous occasions for the last three years. I think it's a very fair criticism to say this is too long. I do not whatsoever accept the criticism that this has been rushed because it has not.

So there are lots of things that we could talk about here, Speaker. I do want to reiterate, I guess, my comments around the Privacy Commissioner. We first consulted with him in 2019 and he wrote my team about this, particularly January 5, 2020, before I was even minister. Then I recently heard from him again in October 2022.

I appreciate the Privacy Commissioner would like us to implement his recommendations in full. Of course, that's his job. The Privacy Commissioner is looking to expand his role into new acts and, at this point –

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible.)

S. STOODLEY: Well, he is looking to expand his role into the Management of Information Act. That's what he has asked for.

He has a very broad mandate.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible.)

S. STOODLEY: It is very fair to ask for that, no problem.

He has a very broad mandate in the ATIPPA legislation. I just want to reiterate that all new records created, all records of decisions that fall under the Management of Information Act , follow the same processes and the Privacy Commissioner will continue to have access to all of those.

So if someone says I want to see all the decisions Minister Stoodley makes, and people do do that, and then you'll get a list and you'll get all of the decision notes from me. Then if someone says oh no, we're not going to send those, the Privacy Commissioner has fully oversight of that.

The Privacy Commissioner does have a very broad oversight under his current very broad powers under ATIPPA, which will include all of these new government records and public body records created under these proposed changes to the Management of Information Act .

I just want to reiterate, the Privacy Commissioner has asked for the high-level ability to selectively monitor and audit. I guess that role is the Auditor General. That's why we have an Auditor General. For each of our pieces of legislation, we don't assign a different person to selectively audit and monitor. That is the role of the Auditor General and there are many means that all Members in this House and the general public have of requesting something of the Auditor General. The Public Accounts Committee can request something of the Auditor General. We do not need two statutory offices of the House of Assembly to independently provide oversight of this legislation.

I also want to reiterate that Minister Hogan has – the Minister of Justice and Public Safety –

SPEAKER: Order, please!

I remind the Member please do not reference by name; use their titles.

Thank you.

S. STOODLEY: Sorry, my mistake, I apologize.

So the Minister of Justice and Public Safety has commissioned a review of the statutory offices as well and their responsibilities. Obviously it doesn't make sense, in my opinion, while this review is going on to also now change the responsibilities of the statutory offices.

There's a lot to talk about here, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

SPEAKER: Order, please!

One conversation, please.

S. STOODLEY: I talked about the provincial affairs. I was listening as the Leader of the Opposition was speaking and I could not find many issues that they had. I think I've addressed most of them. Again, during Committee would be the time where we would do this and I'm happy to do this now; I'm happy to do it in Committee.

We have gone through this extensively. We have consulted with the public bodies. This will give the Auditor General more power, because there will be more documentation and there's a clear path here now to take action when decisions have not been documented properly, which has not always been done in the past, especially by some ministers sitting on the other side of the House, Speaker.

We know that recommendation 15 of the Muskrat Falls report does deal with duty to document and we believe that what we're doing today fulfills that, Speaker. I guess I just can't stress enough to anyone watching, I don't want to just talk for the sake of talking. I want to stress to the general public we have been working on this for three years. It has been too long. I accept that criticism. The criticism that this is too rushed is absolutely not the case. We have consulted, we have consulted, we have changed and we have consulted. I cannot stress that enough.

We have a fulsome repertoire of documents ready to assist public bodies in implementing this new requirement. The Office of the Chief Information Officer, we have a very educational, helpful role. I've only heard very positive feedback from the 160 public bodies around how helpful the Office of the Chief Information Officer team is in helping them when they have questions about their responsibilities under the Management of Information Act , when they have problems, when they have concerns. We take a very helpful, educational approach.

The reporting requirement to what we're proposing, Speaker, would come into effect next October. They would really have a while to fully understand and get their heads around it and then for the calendar year 2024, that's when the permanent head reports on the fact that they can vouch for the fact that their public body that they are the permanent head of, that they are fully implementing duty to document as is in the legislation and the directives that we will have ready.

I can't stress enough; this will be the strongest duty-to-document legislation in the country. Only us and BC.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

S. STOODLEY: Only us and BC. It is only BC that has duty-to-document legislation and this will go further. In BC they only have core government; this extends to all public bodies and not just core government.

I really think we are doing the right thing here. This is anything but rushed. We have consulted on this. This is anything but rushed and I am really happy to answer any questions. I have answered any questions that I have heard and I am happy to keep going.

Thank you, Speaker.

SPEAKER: Thank you.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

SPEAKER: The hon. the Leader of the Third Party.

J. DINN: Thank you, Speaker.

We'll be supporting this amendment.

Yogi Berra, I'll start with his words, “It's like déjà vu all over again.” Because it was only back in November that we were debating the health act and, lo and behold, we have a piece of legislation which is deeply flawed and, again, the concerns of the Privacy Commissioner were ignored.

In the four years that I have been here, I am starting to see a pattern on how we get changes. It is not necessarily by a democratic process sometimes as much as attrition, of wearing down, of being prepared to go until midnight or pushing it until it comes up against people's schedules to get back to their districts and so on and so forth. At that point, there is some attempt to reach a compromise.

My issue here with this is that back in November, we had it very clear with the health act, the same situation all over again. Recommendations were brought forward and they were ignored. What we did at that point is that a major part of the bill is going to be reconsidered. Well, that's what's being asked here at this point in time. Let's debate this fully and openly; otherwise, I guess we're going to be here until midnight all over again, or getting close to it.

I think what this amendment is asking is, if nothing else – another hoist amendment, like we did – to do what? To give time to address some of the issues. I'll talk about whether it is in Committee or not of whether issues are addressed in that process.

Now, the government will say, well, unlike health act, this is not rushed. We did remarkable consultation. Even the Privacy Commissioner says that he was consulted in the fall of 2022. The problem is that we didn't listen, that the concerns were not addressed. There is the issue. I guess it comes down to now we're left to filibuster, push the argument until we wear down government, if that's the case, and we get some sort of a compromise.

I think at this point if it's truly about it being in a democratic process, stop it now. We're not asking that the bill be defeated; we're asking that it be delayed by a month.

AN HON. MEMBER: Or three.

J. DINN: Or three months, or come back even in the next time we meet so we have some time to work it out, not while the House is sitting at this point and trying to make piecemeal amendments as we go, but to have some thoughtful conversation.

The duty to document, to me, is about transparency. I think if anything else, government is – and government Members, Opposition were held to a higher level of accountability than most. Now I have other concerns when it comes to the duty to document and about who is going to do this work, because that's going to be a large piece of it.

But the minister says that her department has consulted many public bodies. I will tell you as a one-time member, a stakeholder, I know what government consultation involves. President Dinn, we're introducing this legislation tomorrow. We just want to take an hour of your time to work through it. That was the consultation, both parties. It didn't make a row of beans. That was the consultation. Usually consultation was – regardless of who was in power – it comes down to a one-hour meeting, a consultation, and that's it. But consultation also doesn't mean that government was listening to the concerns.

It's interesting, I would get calls from Cabinet ministers if we were doing an initiative and we didn't tell them, then they'd be highly upset, the Education ministers. But consultation only works if you say: Okay, what are the issues? We're going to make the changes, we're going to reflect those changes and this makes sense. That didn't happen with Michael Harvey from what I can see.

So the best in Canada, great. But is this the best we can do? Great to say I have got the best thoroughbred dog if I'm competing against mongrels. We don't know the other legislation as to what the other legislation does or doesn't do. My point here is that, is this the best we can do? I would say that the Privacy Commissioner has offered three ways in which we can make this legislation better.

Now, the Privacy Commissioner already has oversight. Well, according to the Privacy Commissioner, it doesn't seem that the oversight he has is quite – the minister somehow indicates that he has sufficient oversight. He would respectfully disagree. We can direct the AG to do performance audits and investigate. Now let's think about that. I've been through this process, once you start investigating wetland capping or whatever else, think about the amount of time that passes, the procedure. It's long forgotten. If anything else, the whole idea, I would assume here, is that there's an attempt to keep that transparency up front.

Committee of the Whole – great, plenty of time to go through it line by line. I've been through enough Committee of the Wholes to know that, in the end, there are questions and there are responses. In the end, if we push through and get a few amendments done but, again, it comes down to how determined is the Opposition and how pressed for time would be government. But it's got to be more than that, Speaker.

To go through that process, I would like to see us work out the bugs beforehand and to address some of these concerns. This is the second time that we're in the middle of debate and a press release comes out from the Privacy Commissioner – twice. There's something terribly wrong about this that two pieces of legislation, major legislation, requires this response. Somehow I can't help but feeling that the government dropped the ball on this one, for sure, again.

I think we appoint the Privacy Commissioner as a watchdog over all of us. We have the court system, I guess, that watches over – if a decision is going to be appealed, it's going to be appealed in the court and to the Privacy Commissioner as well. So we have these independent bodies to make sure that what we're doing here in this House of Assembly is in the best interest of the public. I guess the non-partisan individual, an Officer of the House, would be the best person to hold us accountable.

My concern, too, is we don't want to expand the public service by 20 per cent. One of the things that come to mind when I'm looking at the legislation, the first question that came to me is: Well, how are we going to do this? Because a duty to document means someone is doing that documentation. Simple as that.

I look at the documents that come to my office, my constituency assistant documents, takes that information. It takes time. But I'm looking at who's going to do it, too, because I've sat through enough Estimates meetings here where we've seen vacancies and the public service is already overloaded. Who is going to do it? Because if you sign something, someone is going to have to do it. I'm just curious as to how we're going to manage it, or are we just going to further overload people in the system as it is? Even that question, I'd like answered.

I can think of my own role as a teacher, entering marks, making the comments in the report cards, sending out information to parents. My colleagues who were in administrative roles know the paperwork and the administrative work that goes with it. You don't have the support; someone has to do it. Even if it comes down to entering comments in 360, when it comes to discipline, the duty to document takes up a huge amount of time on an individual.

I would say that if we're going to make this work, then we're going to have to make sure that we have the personnel to do it. In many ways, I guess it's like the question: How many lifeboats do you need on a ship? Ten? Twenty? I think it comes down to the number of people who are on that ship. Here, it comes down to – I would not be able to say well, we don't want to grow the public service by 20 per cent. I would have to ask the question: How many people are we going to need to do this effectively, to make it more transparent? Can we do it now? Obviously, we wouldn't be bringing in this legislation if it was being done, if we already had this effective legislation.

So two things. There are a lot of unanswered questions here, a lot of unanswered questions that really won't be necessarily addressed in Committee. I think if anything else we can afford some time. I think we can afford to do what we agreed to do with the Health Act: delay it. You don't necessarily have to delay it until fall, but come back and have that fulsome discussion. Unless there's some immediate threat in the next three months that we need to address, but right now, let's do it right.

I'd be interested in certainly hearing more from Mr. Harvey about the concerns, and to go deeper into it and to have a time to respond to it properly; otherwise, we will support this. We have major concerns in terms of the personnel and how this is going to unfold. Do I support the idea of a duty to document? Yes. But I know that more than once when we've done an ATIPP, we've had the reply come back: sorry, there are no responsive records on this. That's a problem.

But if we could, let's look at this. Expansion of the Cabinet roles – well, that was certainly one of the main concerns of the Opposition as well. I can think of the Rothschild report, in terms of a report that's probably going to guiding, Speaker, our economic future, which no one can see. Cabinet confidentiality.

At some point before we start entrusting or expanding that role or the Cabinet Secretariat, I think we need to have a further discussion of what transparency looks like, especially when it comes to decisions that affect the public good.

Thank you.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

SPEAKER: Thank you.

I next call on the hon. Member for Mount Pearl - Southlands.

P. LANE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I want to say, first of all, I will be supporting the amendment to delay. When I first came in here this morning I was pretty excited, actually, because I saw that we were going to be bringing in legislation, duty to document. Certainly, in my view, a step in the right direction when it comes to democratic reform.

I know we had a lot of discussions in the Democratic Reform Committee that we did have in place before it was dissolved by the election, and indicated it would be put back in place some two years ago, Never happened, unfortunately. There were a number of issues on the table for discussion. I think the top one we were going to go with and we were about to launch public consultations was on campaign finance reform. Certainly, the issue of looking at things like conflict of interest, numbered companies and duty to document was one of the things that was on the list in improving our democratic process.

What I think really highlighted it for me, and for a lot of people throughout the province, I think was through the Muskrat Falls inquiry and testimonies that were given where there was actually no arguing when you talk about important decisions and high-level meetings discussing a multi-billion dollar project with top people in government and nobody took any notes. Or other people who were intimately involved and all their notebooks got lost and misplaced and all this kind of stuff. It was just like it hearkened back to the Hughes inquiry: I can't recall. I don't recall this. I don't recall that. Nobody seemed to know anything that went on.

I think it really highlighted for the province the need for duty-to-document legislation. Certainly, it was one of the recommendations brought forward by Justice LeBlanc. I don't think there's anyone who would disagree that it is a step in the right direction, something we need to do.

When I saw that this was coming forward, my first initial reaction was this is a good thing. This is a good thing. It's a positive thing. When the minister just announced the bill today, I was the first one to bawl out hear, hear, because I think it's a good thing to have.

But I just want to hearken it to like when you blow up a balloon. You have a balloon, it's a nice, big, happy face and it's a nice, bright-looking balloon and all of a sudden someone lets the air out and it fizzles out. That's kind of what happened when I was listening to the minister when she first stood up, because it was all good until she said, until she disclosed herself to the House, I'll give credit.

SPEAKER: Order, please!

Thank you.

P. LANE: She disclosed to the House that the Privacy Commissioner had concerns around oversight, but they felt that they weren't going to entertain that at this time. The minute that she said that, it was just like letting the air out of that nice, bright, happy-faced balloon for me. I said, oh my God, here we go again. Exactly, here we go again.

Of course, since that time, we've all received – all Members of the House – an email from the Privacy Commissioner. I also want to say we've received this from the Privacy Commissioner and I want to say I've been in this House of Assembly now, this is my 12th year, and there have been a lot of decisions made. I've voted with government, I've voted against government, I've voted with the Official Opposition, I've voted with the NDP, I've voted against the NDP and I've voted against the Official Opposition. I've made good decisions, I've made bad decisions, and that's just the way it is. It means you're human.

But I have to say, in good conscience, I can stand in this House and say one of the best decisions that I have made in this House in my 12 years was when I voted to put Michael Harvey is as our Privacy Commissioner, I have to say.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

P. LANE: I have to say – against the recommendation of the government. Credit where credit is due, the man is doing his job. I don't think anybody could legitimately ever question that man's integrity. It's not easy. I'm sure it's not easy for him to have to send this again today, like he had to do on the bill related to the changes to our health care system, to basically challenge government in a public manner. Not an easy thing to do. I'm sure in the back of his mind he might be saying I wonder will someone be coming after me. Certainly that's something that the Citizens' Rep would probably say. I can guarantee you that, which is unfortunate.

But credit to him for once again doing his job, showing integrity and letting us know in this House of Assembly and letting the people know of the concerns that the man has. I've got to be honest, and this is no offence to the minister, it's no offence to the government, but if I have to make a decision on what is the right thing to do here, am I going to base it on – no offence, Minister – what you're saying or what's been decided there or what this independent Officer of the House is going to say – a man who has shown he knows exactly what he's doing. This is what he's specializes is.

He's an expert in the field. He has integrity. If he has those concerns, I have those concerns. That's just it. That's just the reality.

E. JOYCE: He's the expert.

P. LANE: He is the expert as far as I'm concerned in this. He is the one who has no gain whatsoever. There's no politics. There are no hidden agendas. He has a job to do and he's doing it and if he's saying there's concerns here and putting it forward in a public way, then I believe him. I'm going to have to share in those concerns. I really am.

So when I look at the concerns – and I'm not going to read it all. Certainly, the Leader of the Official Opposition read some of it, but here's the one that really – there's three concerns he lists here. It exempts the entire Cabinet decision-making process, has no independent oversight and it does not, actually, create a mandatory duty to document due to the discretionary nature for the Chief Information Officer. I just want to read this one paragraph. It's the second last paragraph and this is the one that really kind of sticks out to me.

“'A duty to document is critical to access to information – and ultimately transparent, accountable, democratic government,' said Commissioner Harvey, 'While every day the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner works to get citizens the access to government documents to which they are entitled under law, there is nothing we can do when decisions are not properly documented. Bill 22 does not meet its potential as duty to document legislation. I encourage legislators to address these concerns with Bill 22 as it is considered by the House of Assembly. By addressing these gaps, we could continue to be the leaders in access to information in Canada.'”

When the minister was up talking about the fact that he already has involvement and oversight over this information, she is correct. She's nodding her head, yes, she does – of the documented information. He's got oversight of the documented information but the purpose of this legislation is not to talk about the documented information, stuff that's already documented. I'm concerned about what's not being documented. That's the part, you know, I want just emphasize with the minister. He's talking about stuff that's not being documented.

It's fine to say that he got oversight over stuff that is documented but if somebody is not documenting something properly, how can he have oversight over documents that don't exist? He cannot. He cannot have oversight over documents that do not exist.

So somebody needs to have that independent oversight to make sure that the documents indeed do exist, and that's why he's saying that he needs to have that auditing role. He needs to have that ability to say hey, maybe there's some big project or some major thing happening in the province in a particular department and I want to see your documentation. In the case of Muskrat Falls, I'll use as an example, because that's kind of where all this came from, when there were all these high-level meetings taking place and nobody is taking any notes.

Under the legislation, as he would see it, he would have had the ability to go on into Nalcor, whatever the case might be, and say you're having discussions now about Muskrat Falls, about Astaldi and the dome and whatever the case might be, show me your notes. Show me that you are documenting this.

He would have that ability to go in there and say, show me that you are documenting everything and that we have proper records on the decisions being made and what's taken place. But under what you're doing here today, he doesn't have that ability. Yes, he can oversee information that is documented already, that is being done. But if someone says ah shag that, I don't care what's in this legislation; we're not going to take notes. Whether it be because we're too busy, it's only foolishness, or political reasons. Political reasons, we can't have any notes, can't have any paper trail on this one, b'ys.

It's not like it's never happened – it's not like it's never happened, I can guarantee you that. I'm sure the Members who have been around here long enough would know about briefings in the past. Briefings taking place and ministers who say I want all my briefings verbal – verbal briefings. Don't make a note on anything. We don't want any briefing books that somebody can put an ATIPP on. Don't send me any emails on my government account. Don't make any phone calls to my government number. We've heard that come up before, too. Use a private phone and all this kind of stuff to avoid any tracing of any information. All the tricks, right?

This kind of stuff we know. I'm not accusing any one in particular. I'm just going back – this is not now necessarily. But things have happened and it's easy to abuse it. It's the easiest thing in the world to do, to say don't take notes. Let's have an off-the-record conversation. Let's have a chat outside the office. Don't put it on email. If we're having any discussions, put an app on our phone. Let's put some app on our phone so that if we have a conversation that it automatically deletes it after a couple of days so that nobody can find out what anybody is talking about. Let's do that. That's a good trick.

There are all kinds of things you can do to avoid sharing information. That's what this is meant to deal with. So that everything is being done in an open, transparent manner and if there are decisions being made that are affecting the province and affecting the people of Newfoundland and Labrador, important decisions according to the legislation, that it is all documented.

To suggest that the Privacy Commissioner not play an important role in that, that puts up a big red flag for me. Before I received this from Michael Harvey – the minute the minister made that statement when she started off reading that bill, a red flag immediately came up. What's this all about? Why would this be the case?

Why wouldn't you want him doing it? That's the question: Why wouldn't you want him to do it? If you're saying in legislation that you have to document and that's the expectation of government that everyone has to do it, why wouldn't you want someone coming in to make sure that everyone is doing it? That doesn't make sense. It makes no sense whatsoever.

So then it leaves you to become sceptical. There has got to be something else on the go. There has got to be some hidden agenda. There has to be a reason why this is being done. It is unfortunate but – the minister is nodding his head no. I really believe – this minister, in particular – that he wouldn't do that. I say that out of respect because I do respect this minister. I don't think he would do that. I don't, but it opens itself up for that kind of thing to happen. Don't say it wouldn't happen or couldn't happen because anything that could happen, I guarantee you, over the years has happened.

So if we're going to do it, let's do it right. I don't understand why we would not want to do it right.

I have to say, as well, that this feels – I know the Member for St. John's Centre talked about déjà vu all over again. Was it Yogi Berra he said who said it? Déjà vu all over again. I have to say that as someone who was here and admittedly on the wrong side of the Bill 29 debate – on the wrong side. I said to the Member for Humber - Bay of Islands when I was listening to the minister when she got up the second time in trying to defend this and everything else, I said, my God, this is déjà vu, it really is because a few years ago, that was me. I said a few years ago, that's how it felt, the same feeling, like I'm defending the indefensible. That's how it felt.

I've got a feeling this is not going to go down well with the public. It certainly doesn't add to public trust when we have the Privacy Commissioner and independent Officer of the House here, the Privacy Commissioner is saying that he has these concerns and we're just going to simply dismiss those concerns and say I'll move on anyway.

Of course, the argument will be well, we're better than all the other provinces; at least we're doing something. I agree. If the other provinces have nothing and we do something, then we're better than the other provinces. No doubt about it. It doesn't mean that what we're doing is great; it just means we're better than what someone else is doing. We're the best of the worst, you know, arguably. That's all that could mean, we're the best of the worst. They're doing nothing; we're doing something, so we're the best in the country because they're doing nothing.

But that doesn't mean that what we're doing, if it could be a 10 but it's a two, then why shouldn't it be a 10? Especially if the Privacy Commissioner is saying, b'ys, this is what you need to do. This is what we hired him for, this is his job, but he's saying these are the things that we need to do to make this right. I cannot understand for the life of me why we would want to go against that. It doesn't make sense to me why we would want to go against that.

Of course, there are other issues and they'll all come up as well, you know, about an important decision and what is considered an important decision. Now, the minister has said that she has got all of the directives, I think she called them. She didn't say regulations; I thought she said directives. She's got all the directives ready to go about how all this is going to work and how staff are going to be determining in terms of what is an important decision and when you apply this and all that.

So if she has all that ready to go, I'd like for her to table it here in the House of Assembly so that we can have a look at it. Maybe the minister can do that. Table all this information so that we understand exactly what is going to determine how this gets used. Let's see your directives.

Now, I will say that even if we do see the directives, I would like to see them, that in fairness we have to also make the point that a directive can be changed. That's the problem with regulations. So a directive could be great today and we vote it all in based on these directives and then, next week, we change the directives. Now I'm not saying that they would do that, I'm just saying that's just the reality.

AN HON. MEMBER: Like the helmets.

P. LANE: Like the helmets, yes.

But that's the reality, we can say one thing and then do another, but I would like to see those directives.

Anyway, Mr. Speaker, it's unfortunate because I will say once again for the record, I do support the concept of duty to document. If we could withdraw this for a period of time – I know the motion is 90 days; if it could be done quicker than that and done properly, then I'd have no problem with that either. I encourage the minister, sit down again with the Privacy Commissioner. He is the expert here. None of us are experts. None of us, not in everything, for sure.

Sit down with him and if we can incorporate his recommendations, recommendations that make all the sense in the world to me from a layman's point view, then I will gladly support it. I'll gladly stand up and say what a wonderful job you've done.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SPEAKER (Bennett): The hon. the Minister of Industry, Energy and Technology.

A. PARSONS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I wasn't going to get up during this particular motion. I know that the Opposition got up and had their say, Members of the Third Party; I believe the remaining independent Member is probably going to have something to say. What I want to do is ensure that anybody that is actually listening to this and perhaps even Members in this House, because the Member referenced something – and I won't get into the duties of the Commissioner. I might do that during the regular debate. I'm going to get into some comments that the Member made about this debate and this piece of legislation. I think he was referring to Bill 29.

The Membe