Information & Ethics Committee on Nov. 3rd, 2009

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Legault, you mentioned, in answer to a question from Ms. Davidson earlier, that of the top complainants to your office, you thought some of them were providing a service to others. You also said that some of them were resellers of information.

I note from the statistics that were provided previously by Mr. Marleau that 25% of all the complaints to the Office of the Information Commissioner come from two individuals or organizations, described as, in one case, business--that's the largest number--and 12% from media.

Would it be fair to say that if 25% of the complaints to your office are from those types of organizations, 25% of the access to information requests are similarly from those sorts of organizations?

Would that be a reasonable assumption?

[Suzanne Legault]

I'm not quite sure I understand your question.

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

Mr. Marleau provided us with some statistics that say that 25% of the complaints to the commissioner's office come from two individuals or organizations. Would it be fair to say that 25% of all access to information requests come from those same two organizations?

[Suzanne Legault]

The statistics in terms of the requests are published by Treasury Board Secretariat. The statistics published by Info Source for last year, because those are the ones that are published, show that roughly 42% are from businesses. That's 42% of the total requests.

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

That's an even more significant number.

[Suzanne Legault]

As well, 34% are received from the public, 14% from the media, 9% from organizations, and 0.8% from academics.

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

All right. I appreciate that.

What this says to me is that an even greater percentage of the access to information requests are coming from either media or business. In fact, 42%, almost half, are coming from business, which are for-profit organizations.

Now, you mentioned earlier that some of these organizations or complainants are representing others. Do you mean media or do you mean businesses that are reselling the information?

[Suzanne Legault]

Access to information requesters do so anonymously. We cannot question their motives—

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

But you can see the complaints.

[Suzanne Legault]

—under the legislation. So in fact I don't know, in terms of the total number of requests, what interests they represent.

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

Well, somebody is tracking the information, right? That's how you have that information, that 42% come from business. So you must know--

[Suzanne Legault]

We would know that the complaint....

Do you mean in terms of the Info Source statistics?

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

Yes.

[Suzanne Legault]

It's Treasury Board Secretariat that collects the statistics. I don't see all of those requests.

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

Okay.

When we were considering Mr. Marleau's suggestions on how to improve the system earlier this year, we examined this one individual witness who's a journalist, a freelance journalist. He freely admitted that he made several hundred access to information requests a year, and that a fair number of those resulted in complaints to your office.

As I understand it, his business is looking for stories. He makes hundreds of requests for all kinds of information from all kinds of departments each year. When he finds something that he thinks will make a good story, he then writes the story and sells it to a number of publications.

That's his business. Fair enough, it's a business. And I assume a good public service is being provided there as well. But if he's earning income, profiting from that, shouldn't there be some cost to him in obtaining that information, which he's then turning around and reselling for profit?

Similarly, there are businesses--lobby firms, law firms, data collection firms like Dun & Bradstreet--that are reselling their information to other businesses that are also doing things for profit. Doesn't it make sense that some of the burden of the provision of this information...?

As you know, all of this money comes from hard-working Canadians. We tax them, we get this information, and then we give free services to people like Dun & Bradstreet, who will charge probably a significant markup on the cost of their service to resell it to their customers.

Mr. Marleau told us that the average cost to fulfill an access to information request is approaching $1,500.

Doesn't it make sense to try to segregate those for-profit business organizations and charge them something of a reasonable fee for that service?

[Suzanne Legault]

Mr. Chair, as I stated before, to do so, in my view, would be going against the trend internationally in terms of the access to information regime. That being said, whether or not to move to a certain cost recovery system is a policy decision .

I would perhaps issue a word of caution about administering a cost recovery system. One has to look at how much it would cost to administer that versus its benefits. I think the corollary has to be that in the public interest, for non-governmental organizations, non-profit organizations, and academics, fees should be waived.

As to whether it exists in other legislation, we know it exists in British Columbia, so there are examples to follow.

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

Could you tell us a bit about the B.C. experience and how you've looked into that?

[Suzanne Legault]

We could provide you with more detail following this meeting, but I know that under their legislation there is a certain cost recovery system for commercial users.

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

How's it working?

[Suzanne Legault]

It seems to work fine. If I recall, when David Loukidelis, the commissioner for B.C., was here testifying in the spring, he did make some comments that it was working fairly well.

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

Have you done any study of that system and how it works?

[Suzanne Legault]

We have not.

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

Okay, thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

Colleagues, I have to suspend this meeting just for a bio break. It's been over two hours.

We'll take five minutes, please.

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

We're resuming our meeting.

Thank you for your indulgence, colleagues. It seems that whenever there is a bio break, there seems to be also a meeting break, and many people are catching up on their BlackBerry messages, etc.

I have three more people on my list, plus anybody else who cares to be added.

The whole issue of access to information, the act and its operation, and related matters such as the ones Mr. Dechert brought up, are extremely important. We've invested a lot of time, and I hope we don't rush to any conclusion that we tried some stuff and nothing worked, so we'll come back to this another time.

I think that ultimately we do have to come to a point at which we say what's next. I hope we'll have an opportunity as a committee to discuss that--think about it first, but then discuss it.

Mr. Wrzesnewskyj, please.