Evidence of meeting #22 for Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics in the 40th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was privacy.
A recording is available from Parliament.
NDP
Bill Siksay NDP Burnaby—Douglas, BC
Are you doing more analysis of that, and will there be more detail at some point?
Privacy Commissioner of Canada, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
Yes.
NDP
Bill Siksay NDP Burnaby—Douglas, BC
I want to go to the backlog issue again. Were privacy impact assessments part of the backlog? Is there a backlog of those? Is that a separate category of backlog? Do you have a plan to specifically deal with those assessments?
Privacy Commissioner of Canada, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
Yes, that's a separate category of backlog, but I don't think it's as severe a backlog. We're dealing with privacy impact assessments also with organizations that we can phone up and say, “In the meantime, if we can't get to that, here's what you can do.”
I believe there are about 20 of those assessments, and we have PIAs coming in from the public sector. I believe there are maybe 15 or 20 assessments in that backlog, compared to serving the public, which doesn't have the resources of a government department that should be able to do a lot of these things by itself, that should have the knowledge to do a lot of it by itself. They're two separate things.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Paul Szabo
The chair has a couple of questions that may help.
Following on the PIAs, a PIA was to be done on a health-related bill on human pathogens and toxins. I think it's about two years old. Has that ever materialized? Is there any follow-up? What happened there?
Privacy Commissioner of Canada, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
Yes. Following the time of the tabling of the bill and the bill going through Parliament, we were in touch with department and agency officials and gave them information on doing a PIA. We referred them to the Treasury Board website, where there's extensive information on doing that. We have not heard back from them. In the meantime, the bill is before the Senate.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Paul Szabo
My recommendation was that you should get in touch with the Senate committee to make sure the Privacy Commissioner's office is well represented in those discussions.
As far as transfers in from other government agencies or departments are concerned, do you have many of those?
Privacy Commissioner of Canada, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
We do. I can't speak to the exact figure, but I think that's a major source of employment, people coming from other government departments or agencies.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Paul Szabo
These are temporary transfers, people who are seconded for a little while and go back?
Privacy Commissioner of Canada, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
There are both types. They can change for a permanent job, and some can come for a year or two.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Paul Szabo
Yes, I understand. It's not detailed out in the statistics. I assume they're buried in the number of indeterminate employees.
Privacy Commissioner of Canada, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
I'm sorry, the number of determinant and indeterminate employees...?
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Paul Szabo
You have casuals, term employees, and students, and everybody else is indeterminate. If you have someone who has just transferred in from another agency or department for a short-term secondment or something like that—
Privacy Commissioner of Canada, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
There are only two.
Director General and Chief Financial Officer, Corporate Services Branch, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
It's not recorded in the data. There are only two who are temporary transfers in, and I believe we have three temporary transfers out. So we have a net loss of one.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Paul Szabo
I'm sure everybody is being paid, but it just adds to the list of turnover.
Looking quickly at the bar charts, I found this one particularly interesting. A long time ago, somebody told me a story about a judge who was reading off a litany of offences that some person had committed over the years, and the lawyer said, “But your honour, the rate of occurrence is decreasing, so it's good news.” Well, no.
Where are you right now? Last year, 40% of your staff had less than a year of experience--or 43%, to be a little more precise. We are still in this baby boom exodus, so do you have any idea or ballpark figure as to how many of your staff will likely retire over the next three to five years?
Privacy Commissioner of Canada, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
I did see that figure, because we monitor this closely. It seemed to me that there were to be no more than 10 in the next five years, far fewer than we think.
One of the interesting things that happened since we had our last major discussion on human resources is that the average age of the office has gone down, because we are trying to reach out for a new demographic in terms of interest in what we do, in terms of knowledge and skills, and also to try to counteract these retirements. So there wasn't a huge number of employees slated for retirement.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Paul Szabo
That's encouraging, because the Auditor General has raised this a number of times over the years, that some 25% of the public service will be retiring in this five-year span. I wasn't sure what impact that might have on you.
Who defined “backlog” as something over a year old?
Privacy Commissioner of Canada, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
We did, perhaps after discussion with your committee, because at one point we had the term “unassigned files” as the definition of backlog.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Paul Szabo
That's precisely where I was going. If members are interested, I'm looking at page 5 of the statistical handout, which shows that complaints over a year old represent only 42% of the outstanding files. That means there are 406 files that are not a year old. But are they assigned? I'm interested in the 403, because they are a lot of files we don't know anything about.
It's really the aging of the thing. I think you're doing a review now of your reporting conventions, or whatever they might be, and I hope this gets standardized, because when I see backlogs of one year on anything—you name the subject matter—my antennas go up, and you have to ask why. I think it has to do with your staff turnover and the fact that your productivity rate can't possibly get up quickly enough. I am a little bit concerned because you have had a fairly high turnover rate in the Privacy Commission. It means that the cost per case has to be extremely high, simply because of the delays.
I guess my question to you is whether this is way you see it. Do you have a plan to stabilize the turnover that's not due to retirement, so we can have people with a greater level of expertise and who can be more productive and, therefore, process files on a more timely basis?
Privacy Commissioner of Canada, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
Yes, we have what you would call a multi-pronged approach. The issue of hiring and retention has been a major focus of our human resources department. We've been looking into things such as training employees to make sure they know what they have to do, that they're clearly doing a good job and are happy in the workplace. We have been conducting exit interviews to see why employees are leaving, to find out what it would be. Unfortunately, these weren't very, very helpful, because it just seemed they were moving on to a new job opportunity.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Paul Szabo
Okay, and that's my next question. Of the people you lost, the 69 out of the 158 of your complement, how many of those went to other Government of Canada departments or agencies? What percentage?
Privacy Commissioner of Canada, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
I couldn't speak to that accurately off the top of my head. I would think almost—