Information & Ethics Committee on April 26th, 2007

[Robert Marleau]

We received a second complaint about the same subject. Is it exactly the same as the one referred to in today's newspapers? We are not sure, we would have to check. Given that a complaint is already being examined, I do not imagine that the second one would be identical to the first. An investigation is already under way, and now, there's a request in connection with a document, albeit a censored one, that has been made public by the government. I imagine that we're probably dealing with two different requests.

[Carole Lavallée, Bloc, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Last fall, our committee looked into a case where it appeared that the Prime Minister's Office had flouted the Access to Information Act. The name of an applicant who had filed a request under the access to information program was made public. The committee conducted an investigation into this matter, at the same time as your office was doing its own investigation. However, when we were ready to report our findings, we decided it would be best to wait for your report.

That said, how do you feel about a committee such as ours carrying out a parallel investigation into a matter that you are investigating as a result of having received a formal complaint?

[Robert Marleau]

The case in question was referred for investigation before I became Commissioner, although, even then, I kept abreast of current affairs. I believe it is the Privacy Commissioner's Office, and not my Office, that is investigating the matter.

However, by way of a general answer to your question, allow me to say that I am fully cognizant of the parliamentary powers of committees. It is not for a commissioner to comment on the merits of a committee decision to investigate a given matter. When a committee chooses to carry out an investigation in parallel with an investigation led by my Office, we act pursuant to our statutory mandate and the committee follows a course of action that it deems appropriate.

Obviously, the media interest surrounding a parliamentary inquiry could hamper or clash with our investigation, but it is not for the Commissioner to comment unless he is invited to do so. The committee is master of its own destiny.

[Carole Lavallée, Bloc, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Nevertheless, we are talking about two parallel investigations, which, as you rightly said, have different objectives and different modus operandi. You are right in saying that the media interest could perhaps hamper down certain aspects of your inquiry; however, it could also speed it up.

[Robert Marleau]

When I spoke about a clash, I did not necessarily mean that this was undesirable. It is more that we are subject to strict statutory obligations with regard to confidentiality, for example. Certain information could be disclosed in the course of a parliamentary inquiry, information that we would not even be allowed to comment on because of the statutory restrictions with which we must comply.

[Carole Lavallée, Bloc, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

We again find ourselves in a tricky situation because the Access to Information Act has still not been modernized.

Do you not think that the case featured in the Globe and Mail today should spur the minister into getting his famous draft bill ready and bringing it to committee as quickly as possible, as we asked him to do?

Furthermore, I would like to take a moment to refresh everybody's memory, although not yours, as it is excellent. We asked him to table an updated and stronger Access to Information Act by December 16, 2006, not 2007. As you can see, the minister is very behind with his homework.

Would you not agree that the case featured in today's newspapers is a further sign of the pressing need for the minister to draft a new act.

[Robert Marleau]

Without having seen the details, I do not know whether I could say that the case reported in today's, or yesterday's, newspaper serves to underscore the necessity of updating the act. It is possible that it was appropriate to censor the sections in question and that it was not an over-zealous application of the act. It is also possible that the opposite is true. I cannot comment without being apprised of the details.

To return to your question on the Access to Information Act, I cannot confirm whether the government intends to undertake a substantive review of the act. I can however tell you that my first move as Commissioner was to meet with the justice minister and offer him our full support in reviewing the act and preparing the groundwork before tabling a draft with the committee. The Deputy Minister of Justice and I agreed to review both the bill that my predecessor tabled and the discussion paper the minister tabled last April in order to establish areas of agreement: we set up a task force, which began work last week. We also want to evaluate whether Bill C-2 has resolved certain issues, as well as try to fill in some of the missing pieces, regarding matters that were addressed neither by my predecessor nor by the minister's discussion paper.

We hope to produce a discussion paper that will help both parties and will perhaps result in the committee being asked to study a draft bill. From our point of view, it is also a way of initiating a dialogue on administrative matters with the Department of Justice so that we have a better awareness of one another's situation when we have to take a public stance on issues.

[The Chair, Liberal, Tom Wappel]

Merci.

Mr. Wallace.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I see my colleagues from across the way.... Today's meeting was to deal with estimates, but they've gotten sidetracked a little bit.

Just for my understanding, before I ask you about the estimates, each department--and I think the Honourable Mr. Peterson would know this--has employees who deal with the access to information issues, and they make the decisions on what meets those criteria or not. Is that an accurate statement?

[Robert Marleau]

Yes. They're called access to information and privacy coordinators.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Right. Are they trained by you, by your department, or do you provide them information on what is...?

[Robert Marleau]

No, they're employees of the individual departments or agencies that they work for, and so they're not trained by us. There may be some osmosis training by--

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

But their sole responsibility is to decide whether they meet those criteria or not. Is that correct?

[Robert Marleau]

That's correct.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Okay. Thank you.

Back to the estimates, which is why we're here today. If I did the math right, and you can tell me if I'm wrong here, 2007-08 and then 2008-09--I'm doing it from your estimates book that you provided us with, through the blue books--we're going down in actual fact over time, and in actual fact we're going down in human resources from 90 to 82 over the next number of years. Is that because you think you'll be able to catch up on the backlog, or why is the number going down?

[Robert Marleau]

The reason the number is going down this year is that we were given, in the previous year, a one-time funding to cover some IT security and office one-time-cost set-up, as well as some professional service money that was attached to the information technology project.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Okay. You also mentioned...and I know we had a discussion about this last year, and I know you weren't here. But the commissioner was not able to move on hiring staff and getting locations for people. You indicated in your opening, I think, that this has been resolved. Is that an accurate statement? Have those people started to be hired?

[Robert Marleau]

The statement was accurate. We have obtained, through the usual applications to Public Works, space on the seventh floor in the same building in order to house all of the new recruits. We did hire five special backlog investigators last year. That's all we could house, and now the competition process is under way to hire the balance.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

On the backlog piece, it looks like it's going down some, which I think is good. And there are guidelines--90 days for some, 30 days for administrative ones. What's the longest one that's behind? Where are we on that piece?

[Robert Marleau]

We've made some progress. Because of the five new recruits, we're down almost 250--I think 241 is the figure--of catch-up backlog cases. You were also told last year that the investigative workload for one investigator is approximately 45 investigations per year, so if you multiply 5 by 45, the 250 figure is pretty close to the performance standard that we have set. And so we're making some gains in the backlog.

As to what kinds of cases and how far behind they are, I'm really not able to answer that directly, so I'll ask Mr. Dupuis to comment.

[J. Dupuis]

If your question is whether we have cases past 90 days, the answer is yes. Do we have cases one year old? The answer is yes. And the oldest is probably a year and a half.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Okay. I appreciate that.

You did mention to the chair that you're not planning on any supplementary requests, but on page 10 of this report under “other items”, it says “as a result, planned expenditures for 2007-08 do not cover any specific changes with regard to the Federal Accountability Act”. But I think we've doubled in the Accountability Act the number of people, the number of organizations, covered by.... Isn't that going to drive your costs up? I don't understand how you can say on one hand things are going down, and then we add workload and nothing is changing.

[Robert Marleau]

We still don't have a handle on what the impact is going to be of five foundations, the officers of Parliament and some 150--yes, that's us, officers of Parliament--extra crown corporations and subsidiaries. It's very hard to know where that will go.

We've been given numbers by Treasury Board. They've looked across government in terms of the application of the FAA, and if you look at page 8 in part III of the estimates, in table 1 you'll see under “Other”, $1.582 million. This is kind of an action plan on the FAA that was given to us by Treasury Board. This is a Treasury Board estimate of what we might need going forward. What we're saying is that for 2007-08 we don't plan to use any of that money. We may be back as part of the mains next year when we have a little more data, or maybe some kind of curve on the impact that would be broadening--

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

I appreciate that.

I have one more question. I think I am entitled to one more. This performance report here, which I found interesting, is dated March 31, 2006. It was submitted in March 2006 and then dated by the deputy commissioner on October 12, 2006, and I am seeing it and we're dealing with it now.

I find this information old. Is there a way of making it more relevant by getting it to us sooner?

[Robert Marleau]

The answer to that, sir, is that what you're getting at this time on the supply cycle is part II and part III of the estimates. The performance report that you just referred to actually gets tabled in the House in the early fall. So there's no way we can get it to you any earlier.