Thank you for inviting me to speak to you this morning.
I am pleased to report that my office had another record year in 2022-23. During the last fiscal year, my team closed 8,089 complaints. Since the beginning of my mandate in 2018, the annual number of complaints closed by my office has increased by 310%.
This is good news, but it's only a part of the story.
We also saw a record influx of 7,407 new complaints. This represents a 7% increase compared to the previous year. Through my team's extraordinary efforts, we have just managed to keep pace with the growing volume of incoming complaints.
Since these new complaints simply replace the previous complaints that we were able to close, our backlog is slowly decreasing. Despite all the measures taken to improve our efficiency, and considering the growing number of complaints registered, our backlog now stands at approximately 3,400 complaints.
Even if we manage to reduce the number of complaints in the backlog by a few hundred a year, we will not be able to completely eliminate it by the end of my mandate. A lot of the files are very complex. They sometimes involve tens of thousands of pages and numerous exceptions are invoked. At the current rate, it will take us several more years to close all of these files.
I still intend to try to secure temporary funding to tackle this inventory, in spite of the fact that the government turned down my recent request for more resources. This brings me to a topic I raised during previous appearances as well as in a letter I sent to the chair of this committee last week.
On more than one occasion, agents of Parliament have been obliged to submit requests for additional funding through a minister overseeing a department for which the agent has an oversight role. Such requests are currently required to include language on how this will contribute to the government's priorities or other considerations, which should not be the determining factors for granting such funding.
Whether or not these requests are granted is secondary to the real issue. The optics of needing to work through central agencies in order to secure funding may create the appearance of a potential or real conflict of interest in the conduct of my investigations.
One suggestion that I made in the letter I sent to your committee was that your report on the access to information system review include a recommendation specifically addressing the need for an independent funding mechanism for the Office of the Information Commissioner. For some years now, my fellow officers of Parliament and I have been calling for a different funding model in order to be accountable only to Parliament, not to the government of the day.
There is no reason this cannot be achieved. Several other bodies associated with Parliament operate effectively under alternate funding and accountability models. My colleagues would agree that this is not about money; this is a matter of independence and the credibility of our role in our democratic institutions.
We will continue to work together to press for a commitment by the government that it will implement an alternative model that reflects our accountability to Parliament.
Last month, the President of the Treasury Board told this committee that she supports the independence of the Information Commissioner. If the government truly cares about access to information and the independence of officers of Parliament, it should demonstrate it by taking this important step as soon as possible.
That concludes my remarks.