Information & Ethics Committee on Nov. 6th, 2006

[Jean-Yves Roy, Bloc, Haute-Gaspésie—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

During recent years, did you observe increases higher than 10%?

[J. Alan Leadbeater]

Last year, we did not have an increase of 10%. We had a stable incoming load.

[Jean-Yves Roy, Bloc, Haute-Gaspésie—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

Okay, thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you.

Mr. Van Kesteren.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for coming.

I have just a couple of questions. Most of my questions have been answered. I just want to understand something, and then I want to split my time with Mr. Wallace, who has another question.

On this increase—I'm almost afraid to ask you this question for freedom of information—do you have specific areas where they're coming from?

[J. Alan Leadbeater]

Do you mean budget heads we've allocated the amounts to?

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

No. Where is the increase in the numbers coming from?

[J. Alan Leadbeater]

Okay. I thought you meant the increase in the budget.

Where are the increased complaints coming from?

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

Yes.

[J. Alan Leadbeater]

We try to publish those figures each year in the annual report, so I'll be giving you figures that are one year stale: 30% that come in the door have to do with government institutions that have just applied exemptions and the individuals think there's too much secrecy; 24% are delays, so it's a very high percentage, and if we can get delays down across the system, we hope that will reduce the number of complaints; 30% are about time extensions, government institutions that don't meet the 30 days and they notify the person that they're claiming an extension of time for another year, and those people will complain; then we have about 4% that relate to cabinet confidences, complaints around the decision by the Privy Council Office to refuse disclosure based on cabinet confidences; then fees are 3%; and then we have miscellaneous around 7%. Miscellaneous can be translation, refusal to translate by government institutions, failure to keep up with Info Source, and different complaints like that.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

What about departments? Can you target certain departments that are more delinquent than others? Have you done that?

I was thinking of a business setting. The first thing you would do when you try to reduce these numbers is look at the one end to see if they can be reduced by a different procedure. On the other hand, if there are certain organizations or certain levels of government that are delinquent, then we can maybe address those areas.

[J. Alan Leadbeater]

We do what we call report cards on government institutions. We did twelve report cards last year on twelve institutions. We try to do those on an objective basis so that our subjective judgments about their quality don't come in. We look at the percentage of requests they receive that are not answered within timeframes and we give them a grade based on that percentage. If you have zero to 5%, you get an A; if you have 5% to 10%, it's a B, and so forth.

Once we're in there and looking at that, then we will see processes that need work, education and training that needs work. Maybe they need additional resources in their access to information group. We'll make recommendations to the government institution that are designed to get them back on track and hopefully reduce the complaints.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

That answers my next question. It isn't an antagonistic viewpoint or approach that you take; there's cooperation. You say, “Listen, in order to speed this up, we've had difficulty with such and such”, and that's done on an ongoing basis.

[J. Alan Leadbeater]

That's right.

If I could just congratulate this committee, last year you called before the committee the institutions that received Fs on their report cards. That process was very helpful in putting the incentive into the senior management of those organizations to have plans and resources in place to try to get themselves out of the F. I hope you'll keep that up.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

Will we get a report card soon?

[J. Alan Leadbeater]

We publish our report cards at the same time as the annual report, and the annual report comes out usually in June of each fiscal year. We start our report card work now, and the report cards themselves will be finished probably by the end of February. They then get fed into the annual report process.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you. I recall we also asked the PAs to come, too.

Mr. Martin.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Leadbeater, Senate amendment 119, which they are proposing to Bill C-2, is the one that says that the five foundations—the Asia Pacific Foundation, the Canada Foundation for Innovation, the Millennium Scholarship, the Trudeau Foundation, and the five officers of Parliament—would start having to release information from date of royal assent on, with nothing retroactive now. Ms. Stronach asked why perhaps that would be.

A lot of us feel those foundations were places where the Liberal government squirrelled away billions and billions of dollars, almost as off-balance-sheet financing out of the perusal of the public accounts committee or the Auditor General. Perhaps that's not a question so much as a statement.

Senate amendment 117 is one that I'd ask you to comment on. It's the one that talks about how draft audit reports and related audit working papers should be subject to access to information. I think there's a disagreement between you and the Auditor General or your office and that of the Auditor General on this. She cites the problem that if they had to release draft audit documents, the people she relates to and relies on to be forthcoming and cooperative may be less likely to be that, or there may be a lack of candour in their cooperation.

Can you tell us why you think the draft audits should in fact be subject to access to information?

[J. Alan Leadbeater]

One of the positive features of Bill C-2 is that draft audits are included and made subject to access to information.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

They add related audit working papers as well through the Senate.

[J. Alan Leadbeater]

Yes, and the Senate amendments have now made sure that working papers also are subject to right of access after the audits are complete.

It has just been our experience that both the quality of audit work and the accountability of institutions are improved when those are accessible to access requesters over time. That view was a view taken by Justice Gomery in his report, even though the audit community is concerned about this. I think the audit community's concern can best be addressed by ensuring that government employees are required to create the records to leave an audit trail.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

So that sort of builds on the obligation of duty to document as well. Would you see that as being complementary or related?

[J. Alan Leadbeater]

To the extent that auditors have refrained from putting information in audit reports or that government institutions have refrained from leaving a paper trail, I don't think the answer is to give them secrecy. To the extent that it is a problem, I think the answer is to make it a requirement that they create the record.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Now Senate amendment 121 says that the Canada Elections Act goes under schedule II of the ATIA.

Do you have any comments? Some reservations have been raised by the government-side members, I believe, that ballots may be analyzed, etc., or that there may be some confidentiality issues. Have you given any thought to that amendment?

[J. Alan Leadbeater]

Ballot papers that are protected by the Canada Elections Act would still be protected by the Access to Information Act insofar as the personal identifiers are concerned.

Under the proposal that came from the House to the Senate, technically it would be possible for an individual to request access to the ballots, as happened in Florida in the dangling chad case. The Senate decided it did not want that level of openness to exist with respect to ballot papers. I'm not sure of the rationale, because if someone wants to pay 20¢ a page for every ballot paper to have access to them, then be my guest. But it would not infringe upon the confidentiality required to run an election.