Evidence of meeting #10 for Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics in the 39th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was requests.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Vice-President, Public Affairs, Canadian Newspaper Association
I'd submit that it's a “need to know” principle: who needs to know in order to fulfill this request?
Liberal
Jim Peterson Liberal Willowdale, ON
To see whether the provisions of the law allow exclusion of certain information as well requires some type of judgment to be made by somebody, I guess.
Lawyer, As an Individual
In the example I'm alluding to, that of a legal adviser, there will be occasion—I'm saying “on occasion”—when I will be requesting information under the Access to Information Act, and that may include the personal information of the requester. The legal adviser would have to know that the requester in fact is person X, and this information will have to be released to him.
Liberal
Jim Peterson Liberal Willowdale, ON
Mr. Drapeau and Mr. Rubin, what percentage of your requests are met on time?
As an Individual
I complain selectively, but of course the Information Commissioner has his own lack of resources and takes a lot of time. There's more than one way of complaining under the system: you can complain to ministers, you can complain to the press, you can complain to MPs. One of the things your committee should consider doing—because you're dealing with one specific access problem here right now, and it's good, as I started off by saying, that you're around—is spending an in-depth session on delays, excessive exemptions, increasing types of exclusions under the act, and many other related problems. I think you would find some startling facts.
Liberal
Jim Peterson Liberal Willowdale, ON
Mr. Rubin, you have a number of recommendations for us. Could we hear them, please?
As an Individual
Sure.
Number one is to make access a constitutional right, and not just a statutory privilege to be tampered with.
Two is to make access a fully documented proactive disclosure service, with a designated public authority and a responsible minister. The Bill C-2 clause on access services is just too weak and double-faced.
Three is to outlaw practices such as systemic amber lighting in systems and profiling, and spell out obligations of access integrity officers; do away with access officials having dual roles, such as contributing to amber tracking and working on security-classified department records; and ensure that those processing, reviewing, and deciding on access requests are identifiable.
Four, add as a ground for appeal the secrecy practices of tracking and profiling access users.
Five, give the Information Commissioner binding order powers, including the power to review agencies engaged in tracking and profiling access users.
Six, make tracking and profiling access users an offence subject to penalties and jail terms, and substantially reduce existing exemptions and any catch-all blanket exemptions, and prevent delays that go hand-in-hand with watching and tracking access users.
Finally, amend the Privacy Act to tighten up which third parties have access to personal information, and provide better privacy protection and make use and disclosure codes subject to independent review.
October 16th, 2006 / 4:35 p.m.
Conservative
Mike Wallace Conservative Burlington, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you to the panel for coming.
I have a couple of questions, and anybody can answer. First, let's start with Mr. Gollob. The report I have in front of me, which I was able to briefly read through one time, was provided in 2005 when the Liberal government was in charge. Is that correct?
Vice-President, Public Affairs, Canadian Newspaper Association
That is correct.
Conservative
Mike Wallace Conservative Burlington, ON
Were you surprised when some of my friends across the way were shocked that there were some delays and so on? This has been happening for a number of years, then. Is that an accurate statement?
Vice-President, Public Affairs, Canadian Newspaper Association
Which of your statements are you referring to?
Conservative
Conservative
Mike Wallace Conservative Burlington, ON
--that he was shocked that there were these long delays in getting your reports back.
I want to know if that's since we took over on January 23, or if it's something that's been happening for years and years.
Vice-President, Public Affairs, Canadian Newspaper Association
This has been the subject of increasing concern to information commissioners, and it's been expressed in their annual reports, going back to Commissioner Grace, in fact--
Vice-President, Public Affairs, Canadian Newspaper Association
--who, I think, was the second commissioner.
The matter of delays is widely known in the journalistic community, the delays of journalistic requests to the extent that many journalists have been discouraged from using this tool because of the expectation that the information would no longer be of use or benefit.
Conservative
Mike Wallace Conservative Burlington, ON
Unfortunately, I was unable to be here the last week that the committee was meeting. I was with the finance committee on a tour.
I'd like to quote you something that Mr. Leadbeater, the deputy information commissioner, said. If you could comment on it, that would be fantastic. He said:
We have no objection to government communications functions or ministerial staff knowing what information is going to be released under the access to information so that they can be prepared with house cards and Q and As and so forth, as long as the process of doing that does not prejudice the requester by either delaying the answer going out or by changing the amount of censoring that's in the document and so forth. That process, I think, can flow without there being any exchange of identities--and some departments do it very well. So no, as long as timeframes are met under the statute and it is properly applied, we don't have any problem with the “sensitive requests” being routed through the communications function of a department.
This came from the deputy information commissioner, and I want to know what you three think of the comment.
Vice-President, Public Affairs, Canadian Newspaper Association
I would say we have no problem with the government developing, in parallel--as I believe it is supposed to function--a communications strategy to explain why a decision was taken when the background to that decision is going to be released in public, as long as it does not interfere with the process and as long as statutory response times are complied with, and--as Mr. Leadbeater said--as long as it does not lead to additional censoring or requests for the alteration or obstruction of records, as we saw in the Gomery inquiry.
This was, in fact, part of the to and fro. It was described in great detail how an access to information request from a journalist went through the coordinator, up to the political office, back down to the department, back and forth as they debated about what the requester actually asked for and what they could leave out, in terms of...and this whole process took weeks and weeks.
So our issue is with delays and with this process interfering and causing those delays.
