Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
It is a real pleasure for me to be here this morning to outline the priorities for my Office and hopefully assist the committee in setting its agenda of activities at the beginning of the second session of the Thirty-ninth Parliament.
I have distributed to you a document that will provide you with some background information for your review.
I apologize for not getting it to you any earlier, but my staff worked all weekend to put it together and translate it on time.
During my appearance last April on the consideration of the 2007-2008 Estimates, I indicated that we would not be asking for any money for that period to cover any specific changes with regard to the Federal Accountability Act. Now that we have more information, we are making a precise submission on our budgetary needs in order to comply with our obligations as well as the increase in our investigative workload. Our dialogue with the Treasury Board Secretariat on future funding requirements is positive.
A second area of improvement in priority is our service delivery. Although the office has maintained a consistent record of resolving almost all complaints without recourse through the courts, our record of timeliness in conducting our investigations is not as impressive.
In the 2006-07 fiscal year, the average turnaround time for investigations was about 12 months, as opposed to our standard of service of 30 days for administrative complaints and 120 days for denial of access complaints, and we have a significant backlog. At the end of the 2006-07 fiscal year, 1,030 investigations were in backlog status. We've devised a strategy and set challenging goals that are expected to be fully implemented during the fiscal year 2009-10.
Preliminary results of our complaints handling process review support the creation of a dedicated intake function and an early resolution function. This initial analysis also points to the need to review our service standards.
Since April 1, the number of complaints has doubled. It is too early to draw conclusions on the reasons for the increase, but, if the trend continues, as they say on election night, we need to re-evaluate our backlog strategy. We will provide you with an update in the spring of 2008, when our analysis is completed.
A third priority is continuing to monitor performance of federal institutions engaging in systemic and repeated breaches of the act. This is done through the report cards, where a federal institution can have a mark of A, for ideal compliance with statutory deadlines, down to an F, for alarming non-compliance. However, we've realized over the years that the current program may not have completely reflected or communicated ongoing efforts by institutions to improve compliance, or, on the flip side, it might not have clearly identified the reasons why specific institutions were consistently performing badly. This committee has played a crucial role in monitoring the results of the report cards by calling in poor performers before the committee to address their compliance record and propose a strategy for improvement.
We're currently reviewing our approach to increase the effectiveness of the report cards to ensure that contextual elements that may affect the overall performance of selected institutions are captured. We want Parliament, and more particularly this committee, to have a more complete institutional picture of their performance, if and when you decide to review them. We plan to table the result of this more comprehensive analysis in a special report on the fiscal year 2007-08 next fall.
Mr. Chairman, I will be sending you a letter explaining that process and its details following this meeting.
The concept of “duty to assist” is also a recent addition to the ATIA, which now requires the head of an institution to make every reasonable effort to assist the requester, to respond to the requester accurately and completely, and to provide access to the record in the format requested. This is called “duty to assist”. I believe that Parliament added those words to the statute for a reason. I believe that Parliament expects concrete and visible leadership. Heads of institutions should therefore lead by example in developing meaningful implementation of the new provision within their jurisdiction. For some it's an inherent part of the job; for others it will require a change in attitudes and culture. We will closely monitor developments relating to this new responsibility.
We will continue our efforts on the reform of the Access to Information Act. This is an ongoing priority of the Office. I am on record as stating that the Act is very robust. Any amendment to it should be approached with caution.
However, after 25 years of existence, there are many aspects of the legislation that either need to be fine-tuned or strengthened. Other aspects may not have been initially considered and their inclusion would greatly improve this service to Canadians. The Federal Accountability Act, adopted in 2006, was an initial stab at an update, but not an attempt to reform the Access to Information Act.
This committee has already clearly expressed its position to the government on reform of the ATIA. We have held informal discussions with Justice officials. We're trying to identify common ground on issues raised in the open government proposal. There is no indication, however, that reform is a short-term government priority.
Honourable members, I have provided you with a quick overview of the priorities of my office for the next few years. I have not listed them in any particular order of precedence. Legislative reform and report cards are two priorities that may intersect with those of the committee; the latter will only come up in the fall of 2008. Should you decide to pursue legislative reform, then it will become our first priority and we will do all that's required to assist the committee in its deliberations. You may wish to have further clarification on this.
Thank you for your attention, Mr. Chairman and committee members. I am ready to answer your questions.