Information & Ethics Committee on March 4th, 2009

[Robert Marleau]

No, not directly through our investigations. Is there zeal in stamping something top secret when it's not? It happens. We find it. We argue it, and usually it gets released, because we can see what is top secret. This doesn't prevent us from seeing the file, so we will see it.

In fairness, the RCMP also has had a very large increase in the number of requests this particular review period. They have invested more resources. We expect from their action plan that has been published in our report that they'll do a little bit better next year.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

How often do files go missing?

[Robert Marleau]

I have no idea, sir.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

That seems to have been an issue raised--

[Robert Marleau]

Through our investigations, it's quite rare that we would conclude that a file has gone missing.

Files get lost, records don't get found, poor search practices are in place, and there's mismanagement of records. Alvin Toffler, whom I referred to earlier, coined the phrase “information overload”. Right now across government there is an information management crisis, so files going missing is probably not an uncommon thing. Whether they go missing deliberately is another issue.

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

Mr. Dreeshen, please.

[Earl Dreeshen, Conservative, Red Deer, AB]

Thank you very much for coming here today, Mr. Marleau.

I'm a former schoolteacher. I just did some calculations, and I think I've done around 20,000 report cards in my life as a high school teacher. We didn't give stars.

I would like to talk to you about one of the things I have here in The Toronto Sun. It talked about the worst performers and some of the better performers. We've just put the stars there, but it would seem as if the media is looking more at the letter grade you have. It seems to me as though the Fs they see are the things that are being reported.

I want to talk a little bit about that. You've talked about the CBC and so on. Of the top ten users we've spoken about before, you said there's a legitimate role for data brokers. How many of the top ten would you consider to be data brokers?

[Robert Marleau]

We've identified them in our list, sir, as “media” or “business”. Data brokers are in the business category. And we stick to those because they're the same ones used by the Treasury Board, so as not to divulge any identity.

[Earl Dreeshen, Conservative, Red Deer, AB]

What departments are usually targeted by these top ten users?

[Robert Marleau]

It cuts across the board. There would be one user who specializes in a department--we have those--they just know and they're on the trail of something, or they want to keep a flow of information on a particular policy or issue. There are specialists and there are universalists.

[Earl Dreeshen, Conservative, Red Deer, AB]

This probably wouldn't be fair, but if you were to take out the top ten users I wonder how those report card marks would change.

[Robert Marleau]

It's difficult to say, because when you talk about the top ten users and the top ten complainers, there's a gap. And since I only see the complaints, it's hard for me to actually overlay that. I was formerly a high school teacher as well, and when you're doing this kind of grading you want to be as fair as you can be. We work from complaints for the calculation of the percentage of the use of our resources, and the report cards were on performance of the institutions in a timeliness context.

[Earl Dreeshen, Conservative, Red Deer, AB]

I have just a couple more points, if I could.

On page 43 of the report, you gave the Department of Justice an A this year. Of course in the three years prior to that it was all Fs, and you mentioned this earlier. And you indicated that it had a lot to do with a change in direction. What was the major problem in the three years before?

[Robert Marleau]

If you go to page 42, the second bar from the bottom notes “senior management leadership”; I think that's what made the whole difference.

[Earl Dreeshen, Conservative, Red Deer, AB]

That would be the same situation you had with respect to Library and Archives Canada as well?

[Robert Marleau]

Library and Archives Canada are a little different. They really take their duty-to-assist mission seriously and work very closely with the requesters to understand their requests and therefore better satisfy them. So in that sense it's slightly different. But of course duty to assist flows from the top. A duty-to-assist statement in a statute says “the head of the institution shall”.

[Earl Dreeshen, Conservative, Red Deer, AB]

Going back to this media report, if you look at these ten institutions, basically there were only two that received poorer grades than back in 2005 under the Liberal government. Is that how you see it?

[Robert Marleau]

There are only two that received....

[Earl Dreeshen, Conservative, Red Deer, AB]

Poorer grades this year than last year.

[Robert Marleau]

Yes. There's an improvement in PCO, for instance. There's an improvement in Public Works. So there is improvement.

The other thing we did in this report, which maybe the media is not picking up, but we wanted this committee to have, was the context in the action plan. What I was trying to do in a way was create a public contract between the institution and Parliament by saying here's how we're going to turn this ship around, a little bit like how a teacher makes a contract with his students.

[Earl Dreeshen, Conservative, Red Deer, AB]

I have just a couple of quick--

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

A quick one.

[Earl Dreeshen, Conservative, Red Deer, AB]

It's hard for me to get my head around this, but would your staff have the same commitment for those frequent users as they would for that lady from Moose Jaw?

[Robert Marleau]

I have to say, yes, that the complexity of their complaints sometimes is more challenging than the one from the little lady from Moose Jaw. But what we've done is put in a triage system. If their complaint fits our triage, it rises to the top like the others. So there is no discrimination in our approach. But the latest snow removal contract at the headquarters of CBC might fall a little further down the line.

[Earl Dreeshen, Conservative, Red Deer, AB]

Do you think the department feels the same way?