Evidence of meeting #9 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 requests.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Deputy Chief Information Officer, Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat
We are, but as individual public servants, whether it's on this or whether it's on any other management policy or legislation that public servants are sworn to uphold, they have recourses that they can go to in each department.
Deputy Chief Information Officer, Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat
The recourse is generally to deal with the values and ethics person in each organization. That's a very confidential process that can be done. I know who it is within Treasury Board Secretariat. You can go to that person very anonymously and say you're being pressured to do something you're not comfortable doing, and that you don't think it's right—
NDP
Pat Martin NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB
Isn't that a career-ender? I'm talking about the minister's special assistant who comes barging into your office. You're an ATIP coordinator, and the special assistant says, “Who was asking about those CSIS spy planes? Who wants it?”
Deputy Chief Information Officer, Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat
You have a deputy minister there who generally, usually, in all of my experience, has been extremely strong in backing up departmental officials on this. There's no question that there are.... I mean, one hears of—
Deputy Chief Information Officer, Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat
I don't think it is widespread. We're not getting any indications that it is widespread.
NDP
Pat Martin NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB
But without whistle-blowing legislation, who's going to come forward? Who would even go to their deputy and jeopardize their career path?
Deputy Chief Information Officer, Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat
We're not even hearing the “quiet conversations”, I'll call them, through the back channels on there being a whole bunch of information like this going out. Any investigations that are carried out, done through the Privacy Commissioner and so on.... I mean, there are investigations under way, like the one currently under way, and if the information on that is released, then we can take action on it.
We don't believe there are systemic issues like this, but if we get a hint of systemic issues, then we'll look at what we can do to make sure public servants are supported, to make sure they know what their rights are and what their obligations are under this legislation. Like this committee, we take the administration of this legislation extremely seriously.
NDP
Pat Martin NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB
Perhaps I could ask about costs. I heard grousing around my own table earlier today, at our caucus meeting, that they tried to file an access to information request and couldn't come up with the $1,200 to get the information, so they dropped it.
Who sets the prices? When you say it's $5 to make the application, how does somebody end up getting told it's going to be as high as, in some ridiculous cases, $26,000?
Executive Director, Information, Privacy and Security Policy, Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat
The $5 is an application fee.
Executive Director, Information, Privacy and Security Policy, Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat
Yes, to initiate the process.
Executive Director, Information, Privacy and Security Policy, Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat
No, absolutely not. I believe it's $15 an hour per search. There is some search and preparation time required. It depends too on the amount of the records that have to be reviewed.
So again, it depends on the magnitude of the access request. I don't know the specifics of the one you're referring to, but typically, if you look at the costs of requests, for the most part they tend to be small. In certain cases there is a provision to even waive the costs of requests.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Tom Wappel
I'd like two clarifications, please, on Mr. Martin's line of questioning.
Just so we know what's rare and what isn't, name release is rare, correct? Is that your evidence? And what about amber lighting itself?
Deputy Chief Information Officer, Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat
We've seen that term, “amber lighting”, in the press, but it's not one that we use, from a policy centre, whatsoever.
What does happen, in dealings with the Information Commissioner...and I think in the Information Commissioner's, or deputy's, testimony in various spots, it's been made very clear that at the same time as an information request is going forward, if there are communications issues involved with this particular information request, we will involve our communications organization within an individual department. We do this because we see under the legislation not only the right of Canadians to receive the information but also the duty of government to inform in terms of the whole context that is there.
So at the same time as there would be an access to information request being processed, there would likely be, in some cases, some information or communications materials being prepared that would be ready to go forward. I'd really like to emphasize, though, that those are going on in parallel. The ATIP coordinator is the one who's responsible for upholding the timelines, the release, and so on. The fact that there is communications material being prepared in parallel is not something that is ever supposed to be slowing down the release of that information under the legislation.
Conservative
Bruce Stanton Conservative Simcoe North, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Through you, I'd like to thank our witnesses for attending this afternoon.
You mentioned in your opening remarks, and I wonder if you could just expand on it a little bit, the size and scope of the ATIP “operation”, if I can call it that, across government. You mentioned some 180 organizations.
What we have here is an allegation, essentially an incident, that is now the subject of investigation under the Privacy Act. Just give us some idea of the context in terms of the volume of activity that's going on here.
Deputy Chief Information Officer, Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat
I can start on some of that, and Donald will likely be able to come in on it as well.
If we look at the period from April 2004 to March 2005--that fiscal year--we had 25,000 requests that were received during that reporting period. We would track the number where all the information was disclosed, where it was disclosed in part, or where some of the information was excluded, and so on.
We'd also track the source of the requests, and I think Donald indicated that about half of the requests actually came from businesses.
We'd also look at which institutions did the bulk of the work. And it's interesting to note that well over one-third of all of the requests received in 2004-05 were processed by one organization--that being Citizenship and Immigration Canada. That was 35.8% of it.
Very clearly, the size of the access to information community within Citizenship and Immigration would be very substantial, even compared to the next largest, which was Canada Revenue Agency at only 7.4%. That would also indicate that regarding the nature of who was doing the access to information processing, where the ATIP staff were, it would probably be quite distributed among various sectors within something like Citizenship and Immigration, as opposed to some of the small organizations that would receive only one or two or three in a year.
We also have a sense as to the time required to complete requests, and close to two-thirds of them are done within zero to 30 days--61.7% are done within that timeframe.
In terms of the community itself, generally individuals would come into the community at a lower officer level, possibly even clerical, within an organization, working in that area. Then through a series of on-the-job training, experience, and the training courses that we offer or that are offered through other institutions like the Canada School, they would develop their competency and their experience and would, through a series of competitions, possibly end up as the ATIP coordinator for an institution. It's generally a pretty tight community.
And as you indicated, Mr. Chair, it's getting increasingly complex, so we're very much looking at the community management overall to make sure that as the complexity increases, as we consider adding more institutions that are subject to access to information, there's actually a cadre of well-trained professionals who can discharge their obligations under this.
Conservative
Bruce Stanton Conservative Simcoe North, ON
Just to put it in context, what we have here are literally thousands upon thousands of requests. In our last meeting of this committee we heard of a couple of incidents that were specifically reported in the Information Commissioner's report, I believe in 1999, and another one in 2000.
But in context, out of all of that activity, what would be the incidence of revelation of the requester's name?
Deputy Chief Information Officer, Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat
If we look at a handful, which is what we're getting an indication of, a handful out of 25,000, if I do the math it's a fraction of a percentage of those that have issues with them.
That being said, there's still an individual who is involved who has put in an access request in a case like that, and the fact that even one is subject to that is an issue we take really seriously. But we don't see it as a systemic issue; we would see it as a point issue that needs to be addressed here, needs to be addressed there, to figure out what's going wrong in a case like that where the procedures, the legislation, the regulations haven't been followed.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.