Information & Ethics Committee on May 4th, 2009

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar, SK]

Given Mr. Marleau's recommendations, and given the actions taken by this government in just over three years--and I'm speaking to the recommendation that he made to review the ATI every five years--would it not be fair to say that we are already following this recommendation in practice?

[Carolyn Kobernick]

It's an interesting approach. Yes, it is, and certainly you as a government are looking at the Access to Information Act. Yes, you are.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar, SK]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

Thank you.

I have a couple of points. I talked to you briefly, earlier, at the beginning of the meeting about the questions of the researchers that have come up. I think we have touched on a number of them. I actually spoke to the minister about it as well. He has agreed that if we would forward those that have not had a response to them, efforts will be made to provide written responses to some of the researchers' questions. Will we be writing directly to the minister, or would you suggest one of you?

[Carolyn Kobernick]

Directly to the minister, I think; they'll be passed on to us for response.

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

Okay. It will be coming from the clerk.

Before you leave, the justice department and the report card: it is extraordinary to go from an F to an A in a very short period of time. Congratulations. I'm not sure I understand how that happened. I can speculate. I can speculate that somebody said, “Boy, F is not good enough”, and the riot act was read, and all of a sudden, as I think was indicated by Ms. Kobernick, it's expected of all departments. Expecting is one thing, delivering is something different. The justice department did deliver.

What changed between the F and the A in terms of the activities in the justice department? What changed?

[Carolyn Kobernick]

I think, as Denis Kratchanov indicated in one of his earlier responses, the deputy minister mandated and required all of us in the department to pay attention. He also was prepared to devote additional resources, because it does require significant additional resources.

I think we need both attention and resources. One cannot underestimate the cost of the attention.

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

What has been the department's experience in terms of human resources turnover, or shortfall, or vacancy rate?

[Carolyn Kobernick]

A lot of my information is not.... It's pretty general.

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

I'm not going to quote you. Just generally, do you have an HR problem?

[Carolyn Kobernick]

Generally an HR problem? You mean on the access side.

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

Yes.

[Carolyn Kobernick]

I don't know if we do in the department. I have heard it is an issue that there are not enough trained individuals able to work with the access act. Obviously, we seem to have enough if we've been able to go from the F to the A, but that was not without significant efforts on the part of other officials in the department.

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

Okay.

With regard to this act, other than expanding its scope of application, this is still the same nuts and bolts legislation--other than section 67.1, I think, which was a private member's item that amended it.

I guess what I'm saying is that there has been some evolution in information in terms of how it's communicated, where it's located, the rules of the game, the accessibility. I think someone mentioned that when this act was brought in, the big computer was a Commodore 64. That kind of gives you a benchmark for what's happened in the world. It doesn't mean that a good bill, good legislation, can't operate even when you get significant improvements in technology.

The Minister of Justice is responsible for this piece of legislation. Is there a body within the justice department that has been monitoring international changes in approach to access to information legislation?

[Carolyn Kobernick]

Approaches to access in terms of how we manage the information, or the actual legislation?

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

In terms of updating legislation, for instance. What are they doing, and why?

[Carolyn Kobernick]

Joan, do you want to speak to that?

[Joan Remsu]

My section, the public law policy section, does try to keep abreast of what the trends are internationally, what other countries are bringing forward. That includes the Commonwealth Secretariat, which in 2002 did a draft model bill that was taken up by a number of countries seeking to implement freedom of information regimes.

I think you had Mr. Tromp before you at one point. Of course we've read his report. Recently an Australian author--I forget the name--was speaking about a new approach in Australia, about the importance of taking into account how technology is affecting knowledge management and what kind of impact that would have on freedom of information and access to information regimes.

So yes, we are doing as best we can to keep abreast of what is going on internationally and to factor that into our work.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

So it wouldn't be a surprise for you to maybe get some of the recommendations that might come before this committee. Maybe some work has been done as opposed to just becoming aware.

Has there been any assessment of the effectiveness of certain trends or changes that might have occurred internationally or are being discussed and may be desirable to consider with regard to our own legislation?

[Joan Remsu]

You raise an interesting point, because we can only go so far in trying to assess how effective or useful another country's reforms have been. I'll tell you quite personally that at times I've had to resist picking up the phone and calling the United Kingdom and saying “How does this really work? How do you operationalize this? What are the resource implications? What kinds of time delays are there? And what kinds of conflicts have you had in implementing your new exemption schemes?”

So we have done our best to assess what the impact is and what the value of reforms is, but imagining it from our perspective here in Ottawa and finding out how the departments have actually implemented it are two different things.

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

I appreciate that, and it is going to be helpful, because you know that our work is somewhat limited to the 12 areas, the so-called quick fixes, that the commissioner has raised with us.

Finally, when the minister was here he talked about items 4 and 11. I just want to clarify something here. Some of the discussion we've had with other witnesses and among members of the committee had to do with backlogs various and sundry, and one of the issues was frivolous and vexatious matters. Also, we discussed the recommendation about the commissioner's role and whether or not he can do an almost triage process whereby he's not going to follow first-in, first-out, but he's going to prioritize. This is kind of bending the rules a little bit, but it's helping to get the job done a little bit better.

I'm not sure if the minister thought of it in those terms. Item 4 could be applied to frivolous and vexatious matters, but item 11 is really not applicable if you're talking simply about trying to head off things that are just going to tie up resources for requests that are not credible. How do we handle frivolous and vexatious matters? Are you familiar with anything from discussions with any other jurisdiction that would give the commissioner some leeway or discretion with regard to what he reasonably believes to be frivolous and vexatious requests?

[Carolyn Kobernick]

I'm not aware of anything. That would require some discussion and some research, and I would think that's one of the reasons the minister has suggested that it be raised here.

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

I thank you kindly for bearing with us, and for well representing the department and the minister in his absence.

It's always interesting to have people come before us. We come from different directions. It's rapid fire sometimes, and sometimes it's speeches, but I think all of the intent is to try to get as much of the discussion and dialogue on the table as possible.

We certainly are going to be doing a report. We look forward to doing our report to the minister, to tabling it in Parliament, and to carrying on a dialogue. But you probably would agree that for this committee to do a review of the entire Access to Information Act and propose updating it in its totality would be an onerous task that would not be possible given the resources we have.

So I think your expectations--and I hope the minister's expectations--are that we're going to look for those areas in which we can achieve some potential recommendations for efficiencies, or determine where the most significant bottlenecks may be or where resources or maybe management or leadership is needed. These are words that have come up, which seem to have been demonstrated in the justice department, but other departments may not be totally up to speed.

We're hoping there will be an appetite for making amendments to the act as opposed to doing a rewrite. I don't think, at this point, doing so should be considered to be anything other than making some amendments that the committee would like to be considered, and strongly encouraging the minister to consider, as well as potentially bringing forward some amendments to the existing act. That's where I think we're coming from.

We thank you again for being with us today. The witnesses are now excused.

We are not finished yet. We have one more item to do.

Colleagues, at the very last meeting, last Wednesday, we were.... We're not going to go in camera. It'll take some time, and it's not necessary.

This has to do with item 10, the very last item.

[Russ Hiebert, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC]

Doesn't the agenda state that this discussion is in camera?

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

I'm not sure if it's necessary.