Evidence of meeting #11 for Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was citizens.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Kelly Block Conservative Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar, SK
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Again, welcome, Ms. Legault. It's always good to hear from you. I do look forward to reading the rest of the package you gave us.
I was going to brag about the fact that I have the openparliament.ca RRS feed embedded into my MP website, but then I had to wonder about the high value of the information, like how many words are spoken in the House.
In your presentation you made the following observation. You asked, “At what stage are we in Canada and what lessons can we learn from colleagues in other jurisdictions?” You then went on to reference different initiatives municipally, provincially, and in other countries. We have a list of potential witnesses that we are trying to narrow down to a short list. My question for you is, do you have any colleagues in the other countries you've referenced that you think would be helpful for this committee to speak with?
Interim Information Commissioner, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
Certainly, we can provide a list of potential witnesses to the committee. As I said, we did endeavour to contact a few people in the U.K., the U.S., and Australia, before coming here today, but we couldn't reach everyone. We do have the list of questions and we will provide that to the committee in bilingual format as a preliminary step.
My staff spoke to Melanie Pustay at the Department of Justice this week, so we're getting the government's perspective. It's also important to get the perspective from NGOs or other experts. I think there has to be a balance, because we're getting, as is normal, different perspectives on how these things are working or not working. We can definitely provide a list of potential witnesses to the committee.
Conservative
Kelly Block Conservative Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar, SK
Okay.
On page 2 of your presentation, you state that:
Proactive disclosure refers to an environment where information is routinely disseminated electronically, with the exception of that which government must protect because it poses a risk to a public or private interest.
I'm wondering if you would expand for us what you would define as being too sensitive to be made public.
Interim Information Commissioner, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
It depends on the circumstances. I think the way to go about it from each institution... You see, each institution knows its own information holding and they have to make their own determination based on the Access to Information Act and based on the protection of personal information.
For instance, in our institution I can tell you that the information holdings that are the most sensitive are the investigation records and information we get as part of our investigations--for instance, from other institutions like CSIS or CSE. We do get documents from those institutions. To us, those would be documents that we could not proactively disclose.
What we will proactively disclose is our statistical information, because we know our stakeholders are really monitoring our performance. We want to provide that to them so they can follow on a more regular basis, as opposed to on an annual basis in our annual report. I can tell you that I'm not that pleased about the April statistics, but there you go; they're going to be out.
There has to be a certain level of understanding that we will be more scrutinized when we do this. But I think there's also an education process for citizens that we cannot always be perfect in everything we do, so there has to be this interaction and understanding.
That's an example of what I know, specifically, about what would be highly sensitive and not to be disclosed and what would be disclosed.
Conservative
Kelly Block Conservative Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar, SK
It might have been in one of your answers to a question, but you also said that you were reluctant to compare jurisdictions and that what we need to do is extract some good principles from other jurisdictions. You also talked about proactive disclosure being very different from open government.
When we look at what is happening in other jurisdictions and some of the good principles we need to extract from them, are those the ones that you've captured here, the five principles you referred to?
Interim Information Commissioner, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
Yes, Mr. Chairman, these are the ones we extracted in terms of embarking on a process of open government. There are more details to this in the sense that, for instance, in the Australian task force recommendations, they recommend who should be the people who are going to be developing an open government strategy. In the U.S., you look at how President Obama structured the development of the open government strategy. It's one thing to say we're for open government, but it really has to be put in place, it has to be monitored, it has to be implemented. It's complicated, so there have to be people who are charged with that. They need to have proper accountability.
It is something that needs to be structured, but the five principles are the ones that we thought, for certain, could be extracted out of the other jurisdictions. Then I think there are more lessons to be learned and more details.
Liberal
NDP
NDP
Bill Siksay NDP Burnaby—Douglas, BC
Thank you, Chair.
Commissioner, you mentioned the list of potential witnesses. That would be really helpful. I only wanted to clarify that you would provide that to the committee.
In your statement today, you noted that the Clerk of the Privy Council had said that one of the pressures around this whole issue of proactive disclosure was the globalization of policy issues. I think you've touched on that already this morning, but I wonder if you could say a little bit more about how that pressure is functioning, or what the specific pressure is.
Interim Information Commissioner, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
I can't comment on what the clerk meant; I'm simply reading from his report. But information is global. Development and use of information is global. It really transcends boundaries. You know what the social media is doing. Everybody's interacting on an instant basis, and people are commenting and people are interacting automatically.
Globalization means that...I have an economics background, so I would say from a competitiveness perspective, I don't think we can lag behind in terms of having access to this public asset, that is, public sector information.
NDP
Bill Siksay NDP Burnaby—Douglas, BC
Thank you. That's helpful.
I think earlier as well you were talking a bit about records management. I'm wondering if there's any updating or changes needed around the duty to create a record, and the kinds of policies or legislation we have in Canada on that specific issue as it relates to proactive disclosure.
Interim Information Commissioner, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
The policies are well in place in terms of duty to record. There have been proposals for amendments to have a positive legal obligation to create a record.
To me, as long as the policies are being implemented appropriately and people are held accountable for whether or not these records are created, whether it's in the legislation... To be in the legislation would mean that it would be more in accordance with what's in newer legislation in terms of access to information or in the library and archives act. Maybe that's the proper place to have that duty to record.
I'm hopeful with the records-keeping policy. I am following it quite closely with the national archivist. I know the chief information officer and the national archivist are working on that. In the report cards we did find quite a few departments that are putting in place programs for information management.
I'm hopeful. I'm an eternal optimist. I've said this before, I think.
Interim Information Commissioner, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
We'll see how it goes.
NDP
Bill Siksay NDP Burnaby—Douglas, BC
There are some specific examples of it anyway that give rise to that.
I think one of the sections of your statement that you didn't talk about this morning was the quasi-constitutional or the constitutional right to access to information. I'm wondering why you didn't talk about it. Could you just comment a bit on that question?
Interim Information Commissioner, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
I just thought it was a really long presentation, and I thought it was well-known to this committee in any event.
Interim Information Commissioner, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
No.
NDP
Bill Siksay NDP Burnaby—Douglas, BC
Okay. I see.
One of the issues you talked about was prescribing access design principles. I gather that the issue is making it easy for people, in some ways, to find what they're looking for and to gather the information they're interested in.
Is there a place where that kind of discussion would be held? Is it something that has to be held across jurisdictions? I guess it could be held across the federal government. Exactly what did you mean by prescribing access design principles when we're talking about the technological change and the goals of a proactive disclosure policy?
Interim Information Commissioner, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
You're referring to the British Columbia commissioner's proposals?
Interim Information Commissioner, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
Basically the idea is that you do what's commonly known as an access impact assessment. The idea is to think about disclosure of information when you create documents, when you start developing policies and programs.
One of the difficulties now is with the complexity of government, which is not only done horizontally across departments but also multi-jurisdictionally, i.e. federal, provincial, territorial, aboriginal governments, and in the private sector. So it's very difficult to access information about different types of programs and policy.
My favourite example is the Mackenzie pipeline project. I dare anyone to try to access information on that, because it's been going on for so long and there are so many parties involved. If we think about disclosure of information when we embark on these complex projects, then we can think ex ante about disclosure. That would facilitate access.
I know that Dr. Caron is on the same wavelength as I am on this one. It's the thought process of managing your information and keeping appropriate records when you start projects, programs, and policies. So it's disclosable and also it's archivable.
