NCC defends record, vows more transparency after Citizen story
Top officials at the National Capital Commission defended their record of openness Wednesday, but acknowledged they could do more in response to the new Liberal government’s desire for greater transparency.
“We’re completely on board with the desire of this government to be as open and transparent as possible,” said Russell Mills, chair of the board of directors.
“I’ve spent all my life trying to make organizations open and transparent,” said Mills, a former Citizen editor and publisher. “You can’t turn the ship around in a week, but we can do more in the future.”
Mills and Mark Kristmanson, the NCC’s chief executive, were asked last week by the new Canadian Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly to develop recommendations for increasing the Crown corporation’s openness.
Kristmanson said the NCC’s governance committee discussed a number of ways of accomplishing that at a meeting Tuesday. Some of those ideas will be presented to Joly “whenever we can get our next briefing,” he said.
The comments by Mills and Kristmanson were sparked by board member Aditya Jha, who was angered by a Citizen story Wednesday outlining the NCC board’s extensive use of in camera meetings. Jha said the NCC should rebut the article’s “sensational” headline, because otherwise “innocent people” will assume it is true.
“I’m passionate about it because it reflects on each of us,” Jha said. “Because one person, one pen and a big piece of paper creates this kind of bad impression of a professional group of people.”
Jha agreed the NCC board should do as much business as possible in public. But, he added, “This whole cock fight kind of scenario, where you have open meetings, then you will say something and I’ll shout at you … I don’t think that’s what we should aspire to.”
Mills said the NCC, which holds four public meetings a year, is “far ahead in openness,” compared with other institutions in Joly’s portfolio. “There’s no other one that has regular (public) meetings like this.”
Kristmanson echoed those sentiments, saying the NCC exceeds Treasury Board guidelines on openness and transparency.
“We’re actually very proud of our record of openness and transparency, but we’re really looking forward to this opportunity to work with the minister and our colleagues to expand this,” he said.
When it comes to open meetings, the NCC often gets compared to municipalities, Mills said. But they operate under different rules than the NCC.
“Sometimes when we make a decision here, we’re providing advice to a minister, advice to cabinet, and that, by its nature, has to be confidential,” Mills said. Some things the NCC votes on require approval from cabinet or Treasury Board, he added. “So we can’t really make those things public.”
Those sorts of constraints “will be on the agenda” the next time the NCC meets with Joly, Mills said, adding that some procedural changes may be necessary to allow the NCC to operate more openly.
Kristmanson said all federal departments and agencies are trying to adjust to the “culture change” towards openness signalled by last week’s release of the mandate letters for federal cabinet ministers.
“One of the positive byproducts for us is that some of our federal partners who bring submissions to us and who ask to be in the in camera session might, in future, be more open to bringing it into the public session,” Kristmanson said.
“But I would want the public to understand that we do bring everything into the public that we feel we can under our rules under the Treasury Board.”
One option in future, Mills said, might be to deal only with “truly confidential numbers and things like that” in camera and address broader issues in public meetings.