Information & Ethics committee  In Alberta, under all three of the statutes that I have oversight for, there are offences and penalties. Under the FOIP Act the offences tend to be wilful contraventions of the legislation and not just a negligent human error type of incident—which is the sort of thing we mediate and make recommendations around—but wilfully not complying with the legislation, or for example destroying records that are subject to the act, or directing someone else to do that with the intent of evading an access request.

Information & Ethics committee  I think in the interest of time, I'll just say that I agree with my colleagues. In particular, Commissioner Beamish has given some good examples of where you need to do that balancing. It's worked well for us.

Information & Ethics committee  It's a very similar scenario in Alberta. I can initiate an investigation on my own motion, if I am made aware of something that looks like, for example, there might be personal information that has been disclosed in contravention of the legislation. In many cases, of course, we respond to complaints made by individuals to the office.

Information & Ethics committee  Similar to the comments we've already heard from Quebec and Ontario, certainly some of the recommendations made in the “Striking the Right Balance” report don't apply in our context. For example, regarding recommendations for order-making power, we already have that. I think it is important to remember some of the jurisdictional differences.

Information & Ethics committee  Certainly we've seen open government movements internationally, across Canada, and at various levels of government within provinces. I think there's generally a desire and a trend to make more government information available to the citizenry. An informed citizenry is able to participate better in democratic processes and hold government to account, so I am in favour of putting information out there.

Information & Ethics committee  We have a similar provision in our legislation. A public body can apply to me for authorization to disregard an access request if it is repetitious or systematic and would unreasonably interfere with the operations of the public body, or if it's frivolous or vexatious. The onus is on the public body to come with the argument and persuade me that the test has been met.

Information & Ethics committee  I was just going to say that we had seven of those requests last year from public bodies, which was a significant increase. Usually there's one or two a year.

Information & Ethics committee  Yes.

Information & Ethics committee  Yes. I will also just mention that one of the exclusions under our legislation applies to officers of legislation when they're engaged in performing their operational functions. With respect to the member's question concerning the Ethics Commissioner, in Alberta, for example, the operational records that are associated with the ethics commissioner's investigation are not subject to the FOIP Act.

Information & Ethics committee  No. If I understand your question correctly, our job is to review the records to see whether or not the exception under the legislation has been applied correctly. We're not making a determination of whether there is a conflict of interest or not. That would be the purview of the ethics commissioner in one of her investigations, and records related to her investigation are excluded from our legislation.

Information & Ethics committee  In addition to what I mentioned in my opening remarks, in Alberta the phasing in of the FOIP act was a staged process, eventually covering what we'll call, in order to summarize, the MUSH sector, which is municipalities, universities, schools, and hospitals, and also provincial government departments.

Information & Ethics committee  In Alberta there's a $25 fee for general access, or access to general records. There are no fees for access to personal information. There's a fee schedule that sets out a maximum charge for processing certain parts of requests for access. An applicant who is charged a fee can come to the office and ask us to review that fee, and in some cases we have the power to order a public body to reduce the fee.

Information & Ethics committee  I will speak first on that, if that's all right.

Information & Ethics committee  No, there is no legal duty to document in Alberta's legislation, and yes, I believe there should be. That was part of the recommendations made to the government's review of the FOIP Act in 2013. Like the others, we did sign on to the joint resolution, issued by all information commissioners across Canada, calling for a duty to document.

Information & Ethics committee  I think it's tremendously important. I think this is what gives citizens the reassurance that information is not being hidden from them. What is of tremendous challenge is when there are exceptions to access that may be applied, but if, as the oversight body, you're not able to see those records or to obtain information to verify that the exception applies, then it's very difficult to do that job and to provide that reassurance to a citizen who's applied for access.