Demand for Senate documents draws blanks

OTTAWA - The Privy Council Office is refusing to release documents about the four senators embroiled in the ongoing Senate expense scandal — but apparently they have plenty of blank paper to go around.

Despite a complaint to the federal information commissioner, PCO — the central bureaucracy that serves the prime minister and cabinet — still refuses to disclose any of the contents on a number of pages related to the Senate controversy.

The Canadian Press filed an access-to-information request to PCO in August asking for any records created since late March relating to senators Mike Duffy, Mac Harb, Patrick Brazeau or Pamela Wallin.

Information commissioner probing why PCO failed to disclose Wright-Duffy emails

The federal Information Commissioner has assigned an investigator to probe why the Privy Council Office, which reports to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, failed to disclose thousands of emails involving the deal for Nigel Wright to pay Sen. Mike Duffy’s ineligible expenses.

Liberal MP Ralph Goodale had filed an access request for all emails in June, but the PCO replied that no such emails existed.

NDP MP wants House Access Committee to probe government-wide email preservation systems, calls recent PCO email deletion lapse ‘appalling’

PARLIAMENT HILL—Government information policies that allowed the Privy Council Office to delete email accounts containing information about a $90,000 payment from former PMO chief of staff Nigel Wright to Sen. Mike Duffy are “appalling,” NDP MP Pat Martin says.

Mr. Martin (Winnipeg Centre, Man.) told The Hill Times he wants a government oversight panel he chairs in the House of Commons, the Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics Committee, to investigate government-wide information preservation systems after the RCMP initially failed to obtain the email records Mr. Harper’s (Calgary Southwest, Alta.) former PMO legal counsel, Benjamin Perrin, because the Privy Council Office allowed Mr. Perrin to delete the records when he left the PMO last April.

NDP MP slams feds’ use of PCO letterhead touting more tough-on-crime bills in works

PARLIAMENT HILL—The government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper has gone too far politicizing messages from the public service with a recent news release on Privy Council Office letterhead touting yet more tough-on-crime bills in the works and the “Harper government’s” top priority of creating jobs, says NDP MP Pat Martin.

The PCO news release quoting Government House Leader Peter Van Loan (York-Simcoe, Ont.) and Veterans Affairs Steven Blaney (Lévis-Bellechasse, Que.), who often assists with French-language commentary for unilingual Cabinet ministers, was issued on Marketwire.com when the House of Commons resumed sitting Monday.

PCO, Treasury Board won’t say if they advised departments not to cooperate with PBO

The Privy Council Office and the Treasury Board Secretariat won’t say if they advised deputy ministers not to cooperate with Canada’s Parliamentary budget officer who is in a high-profile fight to get information for Parliament on the departments’ plans to achieve $5.2-billion in spending cuts.

“What we can say is that the Treasury Board Secretariat provides ongoing guidance to departments and agencies to assist them in fulfilling their reporting obligations to Parliament and Canadians in a comprehensive, consistent, and coordinated manner,” said Treasury Board Secretariat spokesperson Theresa Knowles.

PBO still waits for PCO’s response on feds’ $5.2-billion budget cuts

Canada’s Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page, who has sparked a high-profile war with the federal government by publishing a legal opinion pressuring the government to release details on its $5.2-billion in budget cuts, is still waiting for a response from PCO Clerk Wayne Wouters and says he’s prepared to wait weeks and months before taking the matter to court.

Mr. Page said he isn’t surprised he hasn’t heard from Mr. Wouters yet on the legal opinion the PBO sent him four weeks ago underscoring his right to information on government cuts.

Privy Council Office to cut $17.6-million in budget, 139 employees

The Privy Council Office, the powerful non-partisan bureaucratic machinery behind the political Prime Minister’s Office, could cut 139 employees and $17.6-million in its budget this year.

“At the PCO, our spending is nearly all on salaries. We don’t administer programs so it’s not complicated for us to provide an overall picture. It’s about staffing cuts,” Bill Pentney, deputy secretary to the Cabinet for plans and consultations told the Government Operations Committee on April 30.

In March, the PCO, which spent $159.931-million in 2010-2011, employed the equivalent of 1,017 full-time workers. By April 1, that number had decreased to 987, according to the PCO.  On April 11, PCO management told 139 people that their jobs could be cut. Those people will find out between June and November if their jobs will be eliminated, said Michelle Doucet, assistant deputy minister of corporate services.