Information & Ethics Committee on Nov. 16th, 2010

[Suzanne Legault]

As far as I know, it's not the information that was provided. There are privacy concerns there in terms of posting the whole thing and there are official languages issues, so I think that needs to be looked at in more detail.

Essentially what we have in the legislation now is that you can have a reading room, right? Each institution has to have a reading room as part of the legislation, but it's a paper reading room. I think what we would want to do is move to a virtual reading room, but it would have to be treated such that it's not disclosing information to other people that is personal to a specific complainant. So it does require quite a bit of extra work--and translation perhaps.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

So in the case of your office, when you say that you're now one of those agencies doing that, again, you're just posting a listing of requests that you responded to?

[Suzanne Legault]

Yes.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Okay.

I wanted to go back to the five principles. You've touched on this a number of times, and you just touched on it again with point four about the other considerations that need to be part of an open government system. I just wondered if you could say a bit more about each of those, maybe starting with official languages, as that is something here in Canada that's different from the other countries you've been talking about today. Could you say a bit about how you see that affecting our considerations here?

[Suzanne Legault]

It's certainly a consideration that we would need to have in terms of the information we disclose proactively. Right now, the way I understand it, anything that's posted on an institution's website has to be translated into both official languages.

However, I'll explain what we're doing in our office, because we're moving towards this proactive disclosure or open government type of initiative within our own office. What we're going to do is.... There's a lot of information within federal institutions that is already being produced in both official languages because we have to do so within the context of our organization. For instance, corporate governance documents are usually produced in both official languages. They're already translated. So what type of this information can be disclosed proactively, having due regard to privacy concerns and so on and so forth?

I think there are already matters that are translated within institutions that could be proactively disclosed. That's certainly what we're moving towards doing. For instance, for our records of decisions of our executive committee, we're looking to post that proactively because we think our stakeholders are interested in understanding where the governance of our office is going.

On the other hand, we are now publishing our statistics on a monthly basis in an Excel format so that it's reusable, so people can basically take it and make different analyses than we do in our annual report. That doesn't require translation. So it depends on what type of information it is. But there's already quite a lot that's already translated, so official languages, yes, but what are we already translating that we could disclose with no additional cost?

The other matter is the privacy concerns—confidentiality, security, crown copyright--and that's what I mean when I say I like the Australian model, because these experts in these different fields need input into this discussion so these considerations are properly addressed. I'm not necessarily the right person because I'm not an expert in crown copyright or common licences of the various permutations that can be put in place in order to protect crown copyright while at the same time permitting use of government data.

So these issues are there because when we looked at the three jurisdictions and the three models, these are some of the issues that were raised in different contexts, and official languages is germane to Canada. That's why we need a made in Canada strategy.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

In terms of doing the work of access to information currently, is there a privacy impact assessment that's done as part of that process automatically?

[Suzanne Legault]

In terms of...?

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Your time is up, Mr. Siksay.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Okay.

In terms of release of information or responding to an access request or making data sets available.

[Suzanne Legault]

Okay. In access to information, there is a provision in the act itself for the protection of personal information, so that's always considered. In fact, it's one of the exemptions that's used the most in terms of disclosing only part of the information.

In terms of releasing data sets, yes, I think there would need to be privacy impact assessments, but then again, I would urge you to speak to the Privacy Commissioner in that respect. But I would think so.

The thing is, though, that one of the components of the joint resolution of the information commissioners and privacy commissioners last summer is that this should be done at the onset. So when you start a database, you should be mindful of disclosure requirements, and you should be mindful of privacy concerns at the time you develop your database, so that it's not something that you have to do after the fact. It should be embedded in the design of those data sets.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you very much, Mr. Siksay.

Go ahead, Ms. Bennett. You have five minutes.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

Thanks very much.

With reference to the data sets, I understand that when the U.K. government put their data sets up online, it created about $8 billion in the digital economy. Just to speak to Ms. Davidson, it means that the data set remains intact; it's just that you have kids, literally, who can pull out the data that farmers or somebody else would want and make it much more easily accessible to somebody. The data can be monetized and can then be sold to somebody. As Madam Lauriault from the University of Ottawa said, whether it's your bus schedule or garbage collection, there are ways you can use the data to make money.

You tell us that only four out of 250 departments are doing this, and one of them is yours. This is a huge holdback in terms of hindering the digital economy in Canada.

[Suzanne Legault]

Mr. Chairman, I think I have to correct something. Perhaps I wasn't clear. There are four out of 250 that I know of that are disclosing their completed information requests. In terms of the other data sets that are available, NRCan is producing quite a lot of very valuable data. Environment Canada is another department disclosing information, and recently so is Citizenship and Immigration, so there is information being disclosed at the federal government level in various institutions. There's no doubt about that.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

One of the concerns has been crown copyright. I imagine one of the reasons that you like the Australian model is that they moved to this Creative Commons attribution licence. They got around what was traditionally crown copyright, allowing people to use it in a Creative Commons attribution. It's encouraging this digital economy, as opposed to punishing people for using it. I understand that places like the U.K. appointed somebody like Timothy Berners-Lee or some wizard who designed the World Wide Web to come and help you do that and make it happen. Are you aware that Canada has appointed anybody to help us with this?

[Suzanne Legault]

I think you would have to speak to the office of the chief information officer, because they're the people who now, in my view, are most active.

On the list of witnesses, we've also suggested that you might want to hear from people at NRCan who are doing it and are producing very good data sets, as well as Environment Canada. These people will be able to tell you who the experts are, whom they've consulted, whom they're working with, and so on.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

At your FPT meeting in September you've obviously given some resolutions in terms of your five initiatives. One is that you're calling on the provincial and territorial governments to declare the importance of open government. You said that on September 1. Have any of the governments come forward with declarations in favour of open government?

[Suzanne Legault]

I don't know if any have at the provincial level. At the municipal level, I don't know if they've made a declaration per se, but in terms of declaration, I think I should mention that one has to be mindful that a declaration on its own is not sufficient. The Clinton administration in the 1990s also made a declaration in terms of fostering disclosure of information, and it hasn't led to the significant changes that we're seeing following the Obama initiative. That's why the five principles, it seems to me, have to be together. It's fine to declare that we're going to do something, but there have to be timeframes, it has to be organized, there has to be accountability, and so on.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

I believe Vice-President Gore was doing a lot of the background work at the time in order to get this done.

In terms of the timeframe it takes for you to deal with complaints and to do a proper investigation, I know you sent a letter to the Speaker asking for additional resources. Is there any hope that Treasury Board or any other source can get you the resources you need in order to do what Canadians expect from you in a timely fashion?

[Suzanne Legault]

It's a complex question, Mr. Chairman, in terms of the funding because we've received quite significant additional funding in the last three years and I fully recognize that we are now fully staffed, essentially, give or take a few. We have some work to do in terms of efficiencies of our own investigation and a lot of training to do with our investigators in order to get our processes as efficient as they should be. So that's one component. I have work to do to make these more efficient--quite a lot.

That being said, the request for funding that I'm putting forward before the panel tomorrow is to deal with litigation and complex investigations that are now putting a lot of pressure on my office for a variety of reasons, which I will explain to the panel tomorrow. I don't know, Mr. Chair, if you want me to go into this area today to answer to the member's question.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

It's irrelevant to this discussion, Madam.

Okay, thank you.

Mr. Calandra, five minutes.

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I note that for 13 very long, miserable, dark years access to information around this place was quite limited. The doors to the Wheat Board were closed. The CBC was closed. I believe some 70 institutions weren't accountable to Canadians through access to information. Sometimes in the military it has been called the “decade of darkness”. I guess it can be realistically called the “decade of darkness” for access to information as well.

But in February 2006, which is typically the coldest and darkest month of the year across Canada, it became sunnier and brighter and the doors of this place were opened up. CBC was put on the list. The Wheat Board was put on the list. Some 70 institutions were put on the list and Canadians were given access to all these organizations. I note that the budget has gone up from $7 million to $12 million. The Treasury Board Secretariat responded to 72% of the requests within 30 days. The majority of the other requests were responded to within 30 days. We've finally seen the opening up of Parliament.

We have a government, of course, led by Prime Minister Harper that was elected in 2006 that understood what Canadians wanted, following the decade of darkness and the scandals with respect to sponsorships, which the previous government tried unsuccessfully to hide. They knew they had a government that finally would understand them and would open the doors and give them the access to the information that they needed and that they really rightfully deserved because they are, after all, the ones paying the bills.

What you have been describing is a massive undertaking, obviously. It's something that we have to be extraordinarily careful in doing. I can tell you this. I appreciate the work that you've put into this with respect to the individuals we should be contacting and the jurisdictions we should be looking at, because we have to get this right. I'm wondering if you would agree. You've said that we're coming along. NRCan.... You've suggested the immigration department were coming along.

I'm wondering if a phased-in approach to doing this is something we should look at. We have the departments that have already done this, have gone down the road, are doing it properly. But would it not make sense to then slowly do this so that we are doing it in a way that protects privacy where it needs to be protected but gets the information out? If that approach is something we should look at, if that's how we can be successful in making sure that we actually get this right.... You said Australia, but perhaps one day we could be the jurisdiction that other countries come to look at.

[Suzanne Legault]

I'm not sure how to answer that question, Mr. Chairman.

I'm not the right person to ask whether we should go slowly in anything. It's not in my grain. That being said, there needs to be reflection, that's for sure, and experts need to be consulted. If you look at the Australians, they set up a task force in June, which reported in December, and the government responded in May. Their information commissioner was appointed formally, I think, on November 1. So in the course of about one year, they've basically done their analysis, their study, and recommendations, and the government has taken a position. That seems to be fair.

I think Canada probably has an advantage in some respects, because we do have departments that are doing it. They know how to do it. We also have one of the most connected countries in the world. One of the challenges in Australia is that they need to have an ICT broadband strategy at the same time. We are doing well in that respect. We've lost a bit of ground, but we're doing well. So we have some good advantages.

Really, if you look back to the 1990s, when we put forward government online initiatives, we were the leaders in the world. I think it's time to reclaim that, and I think we can. Certainly the possibilities are there. As I said earlier, we're exporting our experts to advise other jurisdictions.

Because some of the other jurisdictions have done some of the thinking in some of the models, I think we should bank on that and should use their experts now to help us move forward at a more rapid pace, while paying due consideration to all of these concerns.

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

I'm glad you referenced that, because most of the information is obviously going to be Internet-based. I note that once we do make progress on our economic action plan and broadband strategy to connect much of the country and some of the rural areas and give them access to the high-speed Internet they have never had before, it will be a lot easier for Canadians all across the country, including rural jurisdictions, to access the information they want. That will be because of the hard work of this government in making sure that broadband is throughout the country. So I'm glad to hear that.

You talked about declarations that people make and you talked about President Clinton. That's something that's happened a lot with previous governments, which have made declarations about this, that, or the next thing, and have never quite lived up to the expectations citizens have put on them or demanded of them.

Understanding the complexity of what we have to do, or of our undertaking—and you've clearly indicated that you want to get on with it—give me a timeline for it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Madame Legault.

[Suzanne Legault]

As I said, if you look at the Americans, they had very, very tight timelines, and they've put data out. There were some mistakes and they had to fix them. That was their approach to it, and they're very candid about it. That was the way they wanted to go about doing it. The Australians are going to take a different approach and be more measured.

But I think there are probably some things that can be done fairly quickly. The disclosure of access to information requests is not something that should be so difficult that it takes a lot of time to put into place, depending on the resources of various institutions. But it's really not something that should be that time-consuming.

The idea is to have an implementation plan, to have something that you can do in the short term, medium term, and longer term, and then you get organized and you have people who have proper accountabilities and are responsible for delivering on the results. So it has to be structured.

I cannot give you a timeline, because essentially it would be up to the government to put something like that in place, and certainly not the Information Commissioner. I don't have the mandate.