Information & Ethics Committee on March 4th, 2009

[Robert Marleau]

The cost per request completed is listed at $1,425.04. The total cost of operations for 2007-08 is $43.9 million, minus $404,000 in fees recovered. Divide that by the 31,000 requests and you come up to your $1,400 per request.

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

Thank you. So it's not net.

Mr. Siksay.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Thank you, Chair.

Just so I'm clear, Mr. Marleau, you said that you hadn't seen a frivolous or vexatious request and that only one of your colleagues across the country could identify one. Was it requests or complaints that you were talking about?

[Robert Marleau]

The complaint is about it being vexatious or frivolous. I know of only one case in Alberta where the commissioner found it so. It's difficult. Beauty's in the eye of the beholder. It depends on what side of the fence you're on. But also, there's the concept of abuse.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

I want to go back to your statement from Thursday where you were talking about the systemic issues. We've talked about a number of them this afternoon. You talked about the major information management crisis, in that there was “no universal and horizontal approach to managing or accessing information within government”. Could you just say a little bit more about what you mean by that or what the change there might look like?

[Robert Marleau]

I think the government has to invest horizontally in information management. There's no one common platform. We got rid of the good old secretary who used to do the filing and now nobody's doing any filing. It just gets electronically stored somewhere. People are not trained appropriately in information management. Some institutions are just trying to delegate it to whoever is available to do it.

I think there has to be a real leadership approach from the centre, with investment in infrastructure and in technology, to bring it up to date. We're all crumbling under the weight of e-mail and we're not managing it properly.

I'll just give you a brief example. In one department, if you ask about a particular contract activity, they have to send out 1,200 e-mails in order to get the responding documents. The next time they ask the same question about a similar document, the first 1,200 e-mails pop up and have to be looked at. It's just growing exponentially and government is crumbling under the weight of this crisis.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

You also say that some institutions don't even know exactly what information they're holding. Is that the same issue of there not being responsible folks, who know what's there, doing that work any more ?

[Robert Marleau]

Yes. In large part it's a resource issue, both technological and human. It often gets done as an afterthought whenever we get around to it.

One of the witnesses, since you asked me that question, who you might want to have a discussion with about this is Ian Wilson, the head of Library and Archives Canada, whose mandate is ultimately to archive and preserve. He is of the view, also, that the duty to create a record should be under his statute. It shouldn't be under mine. I'm an oversight ombudsman, but ultimately he ends up with the mess and he has to file it.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

You also mentioned there was an increasing number of consultations between institutions that was a cause of delays. Could you say a bit more about that?

[Robert Marleau]

The legislation does require consultation with third parties. Also, there are policy guidelines from Treasury Board mandating all institutions to consult with the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade on issues of foreign affairs and security, with Department of Justice on solicitor-client privilege issues, and with the Privy Council Office on cabinet confidences, but there is no incentive in the legislation to do this in a timely fashion.

So what we find is government serving government, and consultation spin. Consequently, if I'm in the Canada Border Services Agency and I have to consult PCO, my reflex is to take a 120-day extension, because I know it's not going to come out of PCO within that time and I'm going to be accused of not meeting my timeline. So these consultations have a pervasive impact.

What I said is that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, for instance, should be given dedicated resources to deal with consultations, and then deal with its own ATIP request independently. One gets hostage to the other, in many institutions.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

You also mentioned there aren't enough qualified personnel to handle access to information operations, and there is no plan for increasing that capacity. Could you maybe say a bit more about that too?

[Robert Marleau]

I can't say there's no plan for increasing that capacity. There is the Treasury Board Secretariat's response to that recommendation. I find it somewhat tepid, to be honest.

This is a fundamental issue. After the sponsorship issue arose in the Government of Canada, they promulgated an internal audit policy, with external members serving on the audit. They certified auditors and did a recruitment campaign. They built competencies around that, as an accountability and governance regime.

The same thing has to apply, in my view, to ATIP coordinators. A deputy minister should get a recommendation on disclosure with the same confidence that he or she gets from an internal audit. Right now, in some institutions, the quality and the competency are not there.

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

Thank you, Mr. Siksay.

Colleagues, the bells are going to ring momentarily for a vote, and I know people are going to scurry away.

On page 5 of the document that was circulated by the commissioner, you will find the 12 recommendations that we're going to consider on Monday. I've also asked the clerk to circulate to all honourable members all of former commissioner Reid's recommendations, so you will have them readily available and have an appreciation of the context in which these are being made.

Now, because we are so close to the end, members who have to leave for whatever reason, please feel free to do so. But I understand from Madam Simson and Mr. Hiebert that they still have a couple more questions. I think we're going to proceed as quickly as we can.

[Michelle Simson, Liberal, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

Actually, I'll narrow these down to one quick question.

Mr. Marleau, you were saying with respect to the users and requesters that the media outlets, despite what we might think, weren't the highest users, but represented the highest number of complainants. Is that correct?

[Robert Marleau]

No, that's incorrect.

I would say they're about 10% or 12% of the user community at large, and in this list I provided you, one of them is in the top ten users. He or she—I'm not sure which gender they are—ranks number eight.

And among the overall complainants—

[Michelle Simson, Liberal, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

Yes.

[Robert Marleau]

—they rank eight, nine, and ten, at less than 2%, and 1% of my volume.

My conclusion is that the media complainer is not an issue for me. In terms of managing the total volume, with the proper triage in place, I can provide better service to any category, and better service to the media user and complainer.

[Michelle Simson, Liberal, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

Mr. Hiebert.

[Russ Hiebert, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC]

I'm just doing some quick calculations. The top three users pay roughly between $4,000 and $10,000 for their requests and generate over $1.2 million in fees to the government for access to the information they're asking for. It would seem to me that there's certainly a basis for looking at an escalating fee.

But my question actually relates to a number that you threw out there. I didn't fully understand it. You said something with respect to $43 million. What was that number? What does it relate to?

[Robert Marleau]

The total cost of operations for the access to information and privacy program for 2008 reported by the Treasury Board Secretariat is $43.9 million.

[Russ Hiebert, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC]

That was the cost to administer the act.

[Robert Marleau]

Every department must file a report with Parliament giving statistics on use and an estimate of their resource investment at the centre. This is the roll-up of those costs.

[Russ Hiebert, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC]

When we talked earlier about your budget being $8 million or $9 million and the top ten users generating 50% of the work, roughly taking $3 million to $4 million of your budget, that did not include all the other departments. If we included all the other departments, their roughly 50% of requests would be more in the order of $20 million.

[Robert Marleau]

I cannot conclude that my top ten complainers are the top ten users, and I think it would be statistically unwise to do so. You must keep a distinction between the weight I carry and the weight the entire system carries.