Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.
The Ombud's ninth recommendation proposes to remove potential barriers to investigating complaints where written consent to disclose personal information is required under other legislation.
The Ombud highlights the wording in Saskatchewan's Ombudsman Act as an example of what could address this potential barrier. The Law Clerk advised that the Saskatchewan act gives their Ombud extremely broad powers to compel information and would allow Child and Family Services information to be released without consent.
The committee has concerns about information being released without consent and is not prepared to make a recommendation at this time. The committee invites the Ombud to provide additional information in the next annual report for consideration on this issue.
The next recommendation of the Ombud deals with public servants providing information to the Ombud voluntarily. The Ombud states: Section 30 of the act provides that no person is liable for prosecution for an offence for complying with a requirement of the Ombud. While this protects authorities and public servants who are required to provide information in the course of an investigation, it would not protect authorities and public servants who are requested to provide information in the course of an early resolution process.
The Ombud flags that on a few occasions a formal investigation was started where an informal process may have resolved the issue to ensure that Section 30 applied.
The committee asked the Law Clerk for advice. The legal advice provided to committee indicates that Section 30 is not limited to formal investigations. Section 15.4 of the act says the Ombud may try to resolve any problem raised in a complaint through the use of negotiation, conciliation, mediation, or any non-adversarial approaches. Section 30 protects public servants from liability when complying with any requirement of the Ombud under this act.
The committee interprets this to mean any formal or informal process as initiated by the Ombud. The committee invites the Ombud to report in this area again if the early resolution process is being hindered by the public servants being reluctant to comply with requests for information prior to the formal investigation stage. Mr. Speaker, I will now turn this over to MLA Semmler. Mahsi.