Information & Ethics Committee on Dec. 4th, 2014

[Suzanne Legault]

That answer is, it's correct. I cannot review cabinet confidences. Do I believe that it's a hindrance to independent oversight of government decisions on disclosure of information? Yes.

[Ted Hsu, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Thank you.

Are there any other methods that your office would like to implement that Parliament could assist you with to reduce delays in reviewing redactions?

[Suzanne Legault]

Well, we are in the process of finalizing our recommendations that we will table in Parliament, which will be extremely comprehensive because we have done a very extensive review of international jurisdictions and national norms. We will table that in January when the House resumes, and it will be very comprehensive.

[Ted Hsu, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Perhaps I can ask the question in a different way.

If your budget were not increased—and we've heard about the pressures on your budget—what might you have to cut in terms of services to Canadians?

[Suzanne Legault]

I provide one service. I do investigations on complaints from people who are not satisfied with the government decisions on disclosure. What will happen is this. I now have a delay of about six to seven months, and that delay, before I can assign a file to an investigator, will increase because the number of investigators will decrease.

[Ted Hsu, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Okay, thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

Thank you, Mr. Hsu, very good.

We'll go back to the Conservatives and Joan Crockatt again.

You have five minutes, please, Joan.

[Joan Crockatt, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Thank you very much.

This has been quite interesting. Thank you so much for your patience and for giving us your perspectives on these things.

I wanted to go back again to the fee recovery issue because I think we are just starting to explore that side of the equation. I wanted to ask you if there is anything that you have come across in the act that specifically says the purpose of the fee when it was originally instituted was for a nuisance fee as opposed to cost recovery, or is that your personal interpretation of that?

[Suzanne Legault]

It's what people say in the system. It's what coordinators will say. It's what people say in the system. It's not what I believe, and it's not in the act, and it's not appropriate. It shouldn't be considered to be that at all, but that's what—

[Joan Crockatt, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

That is in your opinion, though, right?

[Suzanne Legault]

It's not my opinion that it is that. It's what people in the access to information system and what coordinators tell us. That's what they view it as. We have seen it in files. We have seen it before in documents. That's what people actually consider it to be.

[Joan Crockatt, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

You've said it's not in the act. Is that correct?

[Suzanne Legault]

It's not in the act that it is the reason why a five-dollar fee is charged.

[Joan Crockatt, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Okay, I just want to shift you a little bit in the comfortable pew here just for a moment. You said that if a server breaks then you will have to close the shop. These sound like very dramatic decisions that you are thinking you are going to need to potentially take. In another instance you said, “Unless my budget is increased, I have only one option going into the next fiscal year to keep within my appropriations: to cut the program”.

I just want to challenge you that maybe we have the solution here in plain sight, which we haven't perhaps included, and that's why I'm asking you to look at the other side of the equation. We all know that every department would like a lot of increases in funding and that it's always a balance in government between how much you can tax taxpayers and then you dole it out among health care transfers, old age security, and environmental protection. It isn't an unlimited pit and we have to make our case, and make our case strongly, and then provide some kind of a balance.

It does look to me like you have a garden growing outside your window right now and a lot of people, particularly in business, as you've testified before us today, are anxious to receive the information you have and right now are paying five dollars, and they are multimillion-dollar businesses, which, in every other facet of the world, including the world I came from in newspapers, they are paying for information, and a great deal, and as you've said, that five dollars, however you look at it, is a very small sum.

I'm wondering if I might encourage you to just look at that as a possible answer to your questions rather than this very difficult process of trying to think about this passion that you love, being the Information Commissioner, and wanting to make this information available and looking at having to make cuts. You can look at cuts, or you can grow your pie.

[Suzanne Legault]

Well, Madame, I think that if the government were to actually decide to increase fees to make access requests and use the funding of my office as an excuse for doing so, it would be extraordinary—

[Joan Crockatt, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

I'm going to interrupt you because I don't think that's in any way what I've suggested here. I think we heard the testimony that the five-dollar fee was instituted in 1983. I can't think of a single service probably in this entire country that any of us use that hasn't changed in price.

We've said this isn't a cost recovery. It costs $1,000 or something. This is a very small fee that's being assessed here.

[Suzanne Legault]

Then my question to you would be, do you need to charge $10 for every geospatial dataset that has been published in the past year? Why give that for free and charge more money for Canadians who exercise their quasi-constitutional right? It is not supportable to me.

[Joan Crockatt, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

I don't sense we're going to agree here. I just wanted to leave it with you, but I did want to leave you with kudos here. It is really worth all of us congratulating you. I've been looking at these percentages of requests closed within 30 days, and it really is very much to be commended. I see since 2005-06 you've gone from 59% of the requests closed within 30 days to 65% now, which is a 6% increase and I want to thank you very much for that.

[Suzanne Legault]

I think you should thank the government for that, because that's the performance of the government. It's not my performance.

As they say, give to Caesar what is Caesar's.

That was an improvement in the performance of the government in 2011-12.

[An hon. member]

[Inaudible--Editor]...the taxes.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

We want to stop that Caesar analogy right there, before it goes any further.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

That concludes another round of questioning.

I don't think I've ever been this far down the list before, so thank you, Madame Legault, for taking so many questions.

It's the NDP's turn, so you have five minutes, Mathieu Ravignat.

[Mathieu Ravignat, NDP, Pontiac, QC]

Essentially what we're saying here, or what the other side is saying here, is that for something as fundamental as a quasi-constitutional right, we can't work in our budget the necessary resources for you to ensure a healthy democracy, and that somehow we're going to pick that up with user fees. It seems to me bizarre to have to pay for a quasi-constitutional right. But that's my comment. You've commented quite a bit on this issue.

I'm concerned about this letter that you've prepared in order to get more resources. There seems to be a lack of clarity as to where this letter has to go. Where does that lack of clarity come from?

[Suzanne Legault]

Since the panel on the funding and oversight of officers of Parliament has not been reinstated, there really has been not a very clear process for agents of Parliament to seek funding.

As I said before, as part of the deficit reduction action plan, my office was cut by 5% at that time, and—