Evidence of meeting #44 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 million.
A recording is available from Parliament.
9:20 a.m.
Bloc
Robert Vincent Bloc Shefford, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Will the renewed budgets allow you to continue to operate adequately or, on the contrary, would you need supplementary funding to, among other things, address the arrival of new employees? Do you have any comments for us in this regard?
9:20 a.m.
Privacy Commissioner, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
We are extremely pleased with the funding we have been allocated.
9:20 a.m.
Privacy Commissioner, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
No, because we do have new responsibilities.
9:20 a.m.
Bloc
Robert Vincent Bloc Shefford, QC
I apologize for interrupting you, but I thought I had understood that your responsibilities had increased. In what regard?
9:20 a.m.
Privacy Commissioner, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
Like a number of other government organizations, we must now comply with access to information obligations, in accordance with Bill C-2. As a result, we had to create an access to information unit. This led to expenditures that had not been contemplated when Parliament approved our budget.
9:20 a.m.
Bloc
Robert Vincent Bloc Shefford, QC
What else will be you be doing in terms of access to information? Could you give me some more details in this regard?
9:20 a.m.
Privacy Commissioner, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
Yes, of course. Access to information is referenced in the Federal Accountability Act and applies to a number of organizations. Personally, I feel that it is important for government organizations to be transparent, even officers of Parliament responsible for privacy. For several years, we have voluntarily cooperated with individuals requesting access to our files. We now have official obligations in this regard; that is why we expect to receive more such requests.
In accordance with this statute, we must also assign an individual to the access to information unit. I believe that the average complaint is expected to take 30 days to process. Four or five people will be required. There are already three or four. We will reserve our opinions and our forecasts in this regard. Should the number of access to information requests increase significantly over the course of the year and we need to assign 10 people to process such requests, so as to do so within the required time period, we would appear before you. We do not anticipate that this will be the case. For now and for the coming months, we think that we will be able to operate as expected.
Our second new responsibility is to conduct reviews of measures taken by FINTRAC, the organization responsible for monitoring money laundering activities. We were given this additional responsibility in December 2006. Since we have yet to conduct a single review of FINTRAC, it's too early to know how many additional people we will need. Should this number exceed the resources at our disposal, we reserve the right to come and request additional resources from you.
9:25 a.m.
Bloc
Robert Vincent Bloc Shefford, QC
Can you tell me why you have been made responsible for conducting reviews of FINTRAC. Why did you inherent this new mission?
9:25 a.m.
Privacy Commissioner, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
Under the Privacy Act, we have the power to conduct audits of all Canadian government agencies and departments. We felt that this was an important power. That's why I asked for resources to bolster such efforts. I mentioned that we were going from four to eight audits this year. The processing of personal information by FINTRAC is central to privacy in Canada.
9:25 a.m.
Privacy Commissioner, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
Yes. If you transfer or deposit $10,000 or more into your bank account, a report on you is sent to this organization, which monitors for money laundering. The agency processes the report and verifies whether the funds you deposited were obtained as a result of illegal activities or in order to finance a terrorist network.
The creation of this agency gave rise to much debate with regard to civil liberties. It has far-reaching powers, and can examine the financial transactions of all Canadians. I believe that it was the people at FINTRAC themselves who wanted us to audit their organization every two years, but solely with regard to privacy protection. We do not have the power to examine anything else.
9:25 a.m.
Bloc
Robert Vincent Bloc Shefford, QC
Under what circumstances was this mandate regarding money laundering given to you? How was it that you were given this mandate rather than someone else? Is it in accordance with a new bill? Was the decision made to create a new organization or service to investigate individuals depositing $10,000 or more in their bank account? I think this is a violation of privacy. Your mandate is specifically to protect privacy, but you are investigating when deposits of over $10,000 are made to a bank account. I find this contradictory.
9:25 a.m.
Privacy Commissioner, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
We are not the ones investigating such deposits. Last December, changes were made to this agency, which was created in 1998 if I remember correctly. These changes were passed by the House of Commons.
Last fall, we were informed that, under the Privacy Act, we would be responsible—and this is a statutory responsibility, not a discretionary one—for reviewing the management of personal information within this organization. We agreed with this mandate. In fact, for many years now we have felt that it is important, with regard to such sensitive transactions, to ensure proper management of personal information. I appeared before a Senate committee on this matter.
9:30 a.m.
NDP
Pat Martin NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Commissioner.
I don't have a lot of questions. Does your budget have any kind of automatic escalator for cost-of-living allowance increases or for a rise in the CPI index or anything along those lines?
9:30 a.m.
Privacy Commissioner, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
I don't think so, honourable member, but perhaps the director general could respond.
May 3rd, 2007 / 9:30 a.m.
Tom Pulcine Director General, Chief Financial Officer, Corporate Services Branch, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
There's a small nuance to that. In terms of a regular increase, no. In the case of a contract signed for the employees, yes. So if there's a contract signed for employees, we automatically get the increase associated with that contract for a classification group.
9:30 a.m.
NDP
Pat Martin NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB
I see. So there's no overall escalator to help you meet a cost-of-living increase, yet you do say you find the current budget adequate and you're not approaching us with any kind of request for expanding or increasing your budget.
9:30 a.m.
Privacy Commissioner, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
No, not at this time. I'm very grateful for our budgets. You remember the all-party parliamentary review panel that was instituted last year. I'm very happy with the amounts they have given us. I asked for those amounts, I was granted those amounts, and I'm going to try to spend them wisely. I'm not asking for any more at this time.
9:30 a.m.
NDP
Pat Martin NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB
Looking back over the last number of years, even at the previous administration of your office, rounding it off to the nearest million, can you tell us what the budget has been? Has it increased since the days of the previous commissioner? I don't have the figures here, but just as a ballpark figure, did it go from $5 million to $6 million to $7 million? How did it rise?
9:30 a.m.
Privacy Commissioner, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
There were basically three phases, and I'll ask the director general, who has a better grasp of figures than I do, to also respond. It was a small budget of I think around $5 million before 2000, because the Privacy Commissioner of Canada only had the responsibility for the one law, the Privacy Act. When PIPEDA came in, the office was then granted a supplementary budget for a period of three years with a possibility of carry-over. It then jumped from $5 million to about $10 million, I think, and then there was a kind of period of uncertainty, as you know, and we carried on at that level. Then we went before the parliamentary panel and got another significant increase to the levels you see in this graph, honourable member.
