Evidence of meeting #49 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 request.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Jim Peterson Liberal Willowdale, ON
Will you explain to me under what section of the act you felt that references to torture must be exempted from disclosure?
Director, Access to Information and Privacy Protection Division, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade
Again, I must say to you that my office made recommendations to me, and I looked at the information and I feel and I believe, with the experience that I have, that this information merits exemption.
Liberal
Jim Peterson Liberal Willowdale, ON
I'm asking you--because you've had the ultimate authority, you're the expert--which section of the act entitled you to exempt the word “torture” from disclosure?
Director, Access to Information and Privacy Protection Division, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade
We invoked sections 15, 13, 17, and 21 on this particular file, and the stamp of the exemption is in the—
Liberal
Jim Peterson Liberal Willowdale, ON
I just asked you what section, that's all; I don't mean to cut you off.
Under section 13, was this information obtained from the government of a foreign state? Is that what you felt? Afghans had told Canada that they were using extrajudicial measures and torture?
Director, Access to Information and Privacy Protection Division, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade
I'd have to go back to look at the rationale. I believe the committee has asked for the rationale.
Liberal
Jim Peterson Liberal Willowdale, ON
Under subsection 15(1), how could the disclosure of torture be injurious to the conduct of international affairs, unless our government sanctions torture, which it doesn't? So how could this be injurious to the conduct of our international affairs? You're the expert. Tell me how.
Director, Access to Information and Privacy Protection Division, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade
I make those decisions, and we did make the decision. I will provide the committee with the rationale.
Liberal
Jim Peterson Liberal Willowdale, ON
I'm sure you remember. This was made only a short time ago. I'm sure you know the answer. You're the expert. You've been doing this for so long, and you've served me so well.
Director, Access to Information and Privacy Protection Division, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade
We do review line by line, and I can't talk about just words; we have to talk about the whole of the information, the context in which this information is--
Liberal
Jim Peterson Liberal Willowdale, ON
The context was the fact that the government was saying it had no idea that any torture was going on in Afghanistan, in terms of detainees who were transferred to the Afghans.
Director, Access to Information and Privacy Protection Division, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade
I don't speak for the government. I can only speak to the--
Liberal
Jim Peterson Liberal Willowdale, ON
You knew that. You knew that the government had denied that it had any knowledge of torture or extrajudicial killings.
Director, Access to Information and Privacy Protection Division, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade
I am very buried in my files, and I look at the information for its value in the context of what's in front of me. I do a line-by-line review and use the legal framework to make decisions.
Liberal
Jim Peterson Liberal Willowdale, ON
But you said you do look at the context. Does that mean you never watch question period, never read the newspapers, never watch television?
Director, Access to Information and Privacy Protection Division, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade
Well, again, I think Mr. Wappel mentioned the fact that addressing specific redactions, which obviously you might have knowledge of, in itself might reveal the specifics of the information. I feel I'm not at liberty to speak about that.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Tom Wappel
Madame Sabourin, I flipped through the document. I can't find any reference to section 17 as a justification for taking it out. I have found one reference to section 13, and I do see subsection 15(1) and I do see section 21. I can't see section 17 anywhere. If you know that you used section 17, could you advise the committee at some point what paragraph or paragraphs it was used for?
Director, Access to Information and Privacy Protection Division, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade
Are we just speaking about the 2006 Afghan report?
Director, Access to Information and Privacy Protection Division, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade
Well, that particular request was from Mr. Attaran. There were 105 pages of Afghan reports from 2001 or 2002 and on, so I was talking about this collection.
Conservative
David Tilson Conservative Dufferin—Caledon, ON
Ms. Thomsen, in your introductory comments, which I appreciate, you indicated that as of today the division is processing over 500 access case files, representing over 63,000 pages of information to be reviewed, as well as 200 other files, including requests under the Privacy Act.
My question is whether you would say the quantity of applications is on the increase or remaining the same, from your past experience.
Director General, Executive Services Bureau, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade
Jocelyne is better placed to give more specifics, but no, there are two areas of growth. One is in the sheer number of files and the applications, the requests under the act, and the other is in the complexity and the range of the requests being made, particularly under the Access to Information Act. So there's an increase in the volume, and also, when the documents within individual files are collected, there are many more of them. This is a simple byproduct of the growth of electronic technology and the ability to produce a lot of documents.
Conservative
David Tilson Conservative Dufferin—Caledon, ON
The reason I ask that question is that if one is slow in responding to an application--whoever it is, whichever official it is--because it is perhaps very difficult to analyze whether an issue fits into such and such exclusion, or because the number of applications has increased, if that's a problem, then this committee should look at that.
Director General, Executive Services Bureau, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade
It's both. For example, when we take an extension on a file, there's a standard phrase in the letter that goes to the client: that it's disruptive to the operations of the department.
For example, we have a task force in Afghanistan. I consider I work long hours, but I don't work anywhere near as long, nor am I under the same stresses, as our Afghan task force is.
If you look at the lists of requests the department gets on topics of international issues, they tend to be the issues that are on the front pages of the newspapers. So it's Darfur, so it's Afghanistan, so it's Haiti. There is a direct correlation. It's the same subject-matter experts who are being tapped over and over again.
So as Ms. Sabourin pointed out, there are capacity issues, and there's a very significant increase in volume and complexity of the files.