Information & Ethics Committee on April 26th, 2007

[Robert Marleau]

No, it's my salary plus some operating costs in my office.

[The Chair, Liberal, Tom Wappel]

Does it include a full-time equivalent employee? What does that “1 FTE” mean?

[Robert Marleau]

I am the one FTE, sir. It's my salary, plus travel and operating costs directly attributable to my responsibility centre.

[The Chair, Liberal, Tom Wappel]

Well, I've never seen anything so detailed so far. I want to congratulate you for coming forward. I'm not even going to ask any further questions. That's enough for me for this year.

It was very helpful--to me, anyway--that you identified five specific things under “What Do We Do?” We've been talking about this, because in the blue books here, on page 3, you talk about striving to reduce the number of access to information requests and say that you're going to do this in three ways, including educating managers in the federal government.

On page 3 you also mention trying to develop an informed and well-trained federal workforce. I think that's a very good thing, because people who are properly educated as to the Access to Information Act will, we hope, make consistent and statutorily correct decisions when they're making their decisions as to what should or should not be blocked out.

This brings me to what's been questioned by Mr. Van Kesteren, this program you're involved in. I'm going around this the long way. You indicated that you really have no education mandate, yet you're in effect undertaking an education mandate, whether you have it or not.

Then back to Monsieur Vincent. When you got to Mr. Van Kesteren, you more or less suggested to us that if we're studying access to information, it might be a good idea for us to consider recommending that you have an education mandate, and obviously that would clearly require further funds, etc. Am I right in thinking that's where you'd like to see us go, and that's where you think the Office of the Information Commissioner should go, in terms of educating the ATIP officers around town?

[Robert Marleau]

I would not want, Mr. Chairman, the responsibility for actually training and educating the ATIP coordinators. They are employees of the federal government, and Treasury Board has that mandate. We do some education through our reviews. We do two kinds of investigations, one following complaints, and then initiated reviews; and through that process, when we assess the department's performance, there's a lot of educating, if you like, going on, and we're going to continue doing that.

If the act were to be opened up, it would be one of my recommendations that we be given an education mandate on the advocacy side of education. We've done, I think, quite a bit in collaboration with the Privacy Commissioner and the University of Alberta with existing resources, with very minor investments on our part--mostly intellectual--on top of the duties my officers have.

If I can just make a parallel here with internal audit, the Government of Canada, Treasury Board, has set standards for recruitment of internal auditors. They set standards for recruitment of financial officers, and certification is required. I believe the same thing should apply to ATI coordinators, so that a deputy minister who gets a report from his coordinator's office that says “This has to be divulged” can look at that report with the same kind of confidence as if he were getting it from an SFO or from an internal auditor.

[The Chair, Liberal, Tom Wappel]

Not to beat it to death, but in your remarks today you said it might be a better investment of resources to advise, train, and educate than to incrementally increase the investigative budget. I certainly agree with that. So a possible recommendation we might consider in the future would be that Treasury Board ensure that it sets up this kind of set-up that you're suggesting, or some set-up whereby the ATIP officers would take some courses or refresher courses or continuing education, whatever the case may be.

[Robert Marleau]

I've already met with the President of the Treasury Board, Mr. Toews, and I've given him the prospectus of the University of Alberta. He was very receptive in a conversation. I've subsequently met with the Secretary of the Treasury Board, who has also agreed to follow up on this.

[The Chair, Liberal, Tom Wappel]

Thank you. My time is up on this round.

Mr. Stanton.

[Bruce Stanton, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the team here today from the Office of the Information Commissioner.

I just have one question, because all the questions I had noted have come out from other members, and they've been answered quite well.

I have to say, in regard to the progress you've made this last year, that the team in your office has done a tremendous job in dealing with a high volume of investigations and whittling down the backlog, getting out in front of this in terms of education. So I really hand it to you, and I wish you well in the year ahead as you continue to pursue these important objectives.

I'd also say that it gives me great confidence in your abilities--all your team--in the sense that you faced some pretty pointed questions here this morning and answered them with great professionalism. So I take some confidence in the fact that you're on top of this and you understand well and execute the objective role of this office of Parliament in keeping with those important tenets of both access to information and privacy, for the right reasons, in the execution of your work.

Now to my question. As the chairman also mentioned, the report you submitted here was, I thought, very well done. One of the items I came across, though, was in respect to your role. I was a bit surprised--I think it was a bit towards the end of the summer--when we received a special report to Parliament from the Office of the Information Commissioner. It was a rather comprehensive précis on the proposed amendments to the Federal Accountability Act, a very thorough document, set out at a time when the office was backlogged and going through some administrative pressures.

How does producing a document and a study like that fit into the mandate? Presumably this was an offer of advice and suggestion to Parliament. I don't know, I can't say what its origins were. Is that something that your office would just decide to do? Where does that fit into the mandate of the office, without being asked to jump into providing this kind of commentary?

[Robert Marleau]

The statute provides for the commissioner to report to Parliament on an annual basis on section 38. Section 39 also provides for the commissioner to choose to report on a matter that he or she deems to be urgent or of great importance that Parliament should be seized of.

Obviously I'm not in a position to comment on the origins and the rationale. The report is there. I believe my predecessor explained in the preface why he was doing it. But that was initiated under the provisions of section 39.

[Bruce Stanton, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

If I could summarize then, it's really much in the same vein as the report to Parliament that's done annually, but because of the timing, this was almost like an addendum to that reporting responsibility.

[Robert Marleau]

Yes. If I remember from reading the report, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, the former commissioner said he was reporting in late May/June because of the likelihood of Bill C-2 being passed before this summer. So I think probably, in his perspective and the timeline, that's why he chose that particular timing.

[Bruce Stanton, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

That's all I have, Mr. Chair. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Tom Wappel]

Thank you, Mr. Stanton.

Mr. Dhaliwal, followed by Mr. Wallace.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I have just a brief comment on what Mr. Martin said. I can tell you about the Canadian reputation. When I chose to be Canadian, by choice, pogrom was happening in India in those days, with torture and manslaughter. So I can see how important these Canadian values are. And in fact, this was a very important issue that the opposition members didn't want to listen to.

But back to the commissioner here....

[David Tilson, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

You're the opposition, we're the government. I just wanted to remind you of that.

[Jim Peterson, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

Well, you're in opposition to all that is right and proper and just. That's what he meant.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Okay.

Anyway, Mr. Commissioner, when I look at three months in the office, it's a tremendous leap; you're doing a good job. In fact, contrary to the Conservative government, when people are feeling too tired and they're still claiming to be the new government, well....

Anyway, you have said there is a backlog of about 1,000 in your office. Is it true?

[The Chair, Liberal, Tom Wappel]

This document here says 1,059 investigations are in backlog status.

[J. Alan Leadbeater]

These figures are changing every day, but it's 1,057 at the moment.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Newton—North Delta, BC]

You also mentioned you have taken care of about 290 backlog complaints.

[Robert Marleau]

Yes, 241.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Newton—North Delta, BC]

What kind of additional resources will it take to clean up this backlog, or do you think it's not possible to clean up the backlog?

[Robert Marleau]

We will not be asking for any more resources than those that were approved by Parliament last year. We've hired five, we've approved 18, and we have 13 for which we have open competitions now. We hope to house them by August.

I would like to say that we can make up the lost time. My team would probably not agree with me, but we will strive to make up the lost time. And I should add that at the end of the three years, these were conditional increases for the backlog only. Eight of those investigators will be released.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Are there any employees you see leaving the department for some reason, or is it pretty well stable right now?