Evidence of meeting #33 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 environment.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Bloc
Robert Bouchard Bloc Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, QC
I have another hypothetical situation involving a request submitted to the Department of the Environment. Say I receive a document, but I realize that half of the report sent to me consists of blank pages.
Who decides what will be sent to me? Is it Mr. Bernier or Ms. Emmerson who makes this decision?
Director General, Corporate Secretariat, Department of the Environment
We're not talking about a decision, per se, as we are just applying exemptions under the act. Experts from Ms. Emmerson's group make the appropriate analyses and recommendations. After that, I make the final decision on the application of the exemptions.
Bloc
Robert Bouchard Bloc Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, QC
In other words, your recommendation is based on criteria?
Director General, Corporate Secretariat, Department of the Environment
That's absolutely correct.
Director General, Corporate Secretariat, Department of the Environment
There are several of them, but each exemption has its own set of criteria. We could certainly provide you with a list.
NDP
Bill Siksay NDP Burnaby—Douglas, BC
Thank you, Chair.
Mr. Hamilton, I'm going to come back to the recommendations that were specific to the report card. In the third one, the Information Commissioner recommended that “Environment Canada identify and implement the necessary enhancements to records management systems to ensure a quick and proper search of records in response to an access to information request.”
In the response, the department said that you were in the process of rebuilding record management services at Environment Canada. It mentions that a new chief of records management services was hired for February 1, 2010. Did that person take office, and is that person currently on the job?
Associate Deputy Minister, Department of the Environment
Yes. Nancy McMahon, I believe, is on the job.
NDP
Bill Siksay NDP Burnaby—Douglas, BC
It also talks about the SharePoint technology-based document collaboration and storage system being implemented across the department. Has that been fully implemented? Is it operational now, and how has it helped to address this issue?
Associate Deputy Minister, Department of the Environment
It's operational; it's not fully there. There's still room for development in terms of turning it into a records management operation as opposed to a documents processing operation.
I'm just looking at the notes here. It appears that it was deployed about 18 months ago, so it's well on its way, but there are still some improvements that we want to make to it.
NDP
Bill Siksay NDP Burnaby—Douglas, BC
So it's also going to become a records.... Remind me of what you just said. There are two facets to it, and the first is the....
Associate Deputy Minister, Department of the Environment
One is keeping track of documents, but then there's also records management--in other words, how you manage those documents that you have. That's the part of it that we haven't fully developed.
NDP
Bill Siksay NDP Burnaby—Douglas, BC
There's more work to be done on that particular recommendation, then. Would you say that you're still working on that issue identified by the Information Commissioner?
Associate Deputy Minister, Department of the Environment
I would say that we've made very significant progress on it, but we're looking to do a little bit more.
NDP
Bill Siksay NDP Burnaby—Douglas, BC
I want to ask another question. We've touched on this, and maybe the answer was given and I just missed it.
In terms of access to information requests that are fulfilled, is there any analysis of them to determine whether there is a way of proactively disclosing information? Is there another data set? Does somebody do analysis of what's been released to see if there is that opportunity to proactively release a category of information in the future that might reduce the number of specific requests?
Director General, Corporate Secretariat, Department of the Environment
Yes, we already have a few databases, at the Department of the Environment, that are posted on the website and accessible to all. One of them is the National Pollutant Release Inventory, which has been referred to in the report on the open government.
We're also working on creating a website on which we intend to post summaries of all the access to information requests we receive. The website will go online in April 2011. The idea behind making those requests available is to make it possible for people to access documents that have already been reviewed. So, we will be able to provide those documents more quickly and easily. Other initiatives are also being taken to help make our department as open as possible.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Shawn Murphy
Thank you, Mr. Siksay.
I have one point that I want to address, Mr. Hamilton. This gets back to the issue of accountability to Parliament.
We had this report tabled in April of this year from an officer of Parliament, which was very negative. But about two months after that, the department tabled its departmental performance report. It's an 83-page document. It talks about everything from providing weather forecasts to the Olympics, but it doesn't mention one word about this very negative report and the struggle you're facing and the challenges in dealing with the access to information requests.
Is there any reason why that was not included in your departmental performance report?
Associate Deputy Minister, Department of the Environment
That's an interesting question. I'll have to go back to look at it, but I'll take your word that it wasn't in there.
I certainly felt, as we looked into the springtime period, that we had quite a bit of attention placed on access to information by virtue of this report and the action plan we had put together. It certainly felt as though it was an item that was pretty heavily on our agenda as a management team.
But I'll have to look, I suppose for next year, at whether we should find a place in our departmental performance report to report on this or whether we feel that we have adequate avenues to provide this information. It's a good question that I'll take under advisement.
But there certainly was an abundance of attention, from our perspective, on this issue by virtue of the report.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Shawn Murphy
Do you have any comment, Mr. Bernier, on that issue? I'm surprised it wasn't in the....
Director General, Corporate Secretariat, Department of the Environment
We definitely see this as a management issue. We actually did not feel that it should have been included in the RPP this year.
Liberal
Wayne Easter Liberal Malpeque, PE
Thanks again, Mr. Chair.
In earlier questions from Carolyn you talked about the consultations across the departments. I know that some requests—from us, certainly—would involve Environment Canada, DFO, and in one particular area in my province, Parks Canada along with it. I certainly understand the difficulty of that.
But what about the area of cabinet confidentiality and national security? In those areas, would there be any ATIP requests that end up at PCO?