Information & Ethics Committee on March 21st, 2011

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

I believe Madame Legault had a comment.

[Suzanne Legault]

I just want to clarify something that was said by Mr. Lacroix, that section 68.1 excludes the records from the review of the commissioner. I totally disagree with that interpretation of that section. Obviously it excludes the records that are for journalistic, creative, or programming material. The issue is, is there a right of independent review to ensure that the exclusion has been properly applied? At this point, as I said, I have 182 cases on hold because we have not been able to review those records, and that's the subject of the litigation. Again, the subject of the litigation is not to interpret what's journalistic, programming, or creative material; what's at dispute is my ability to compel the production of those records and to conduct an independent review to ensure that these journalistic, creative, or programming exclusions have been properly applied by the institution.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you, Madame Legault.

Madame Thi Lac, cinq minutes.

[Ève-Mary Thaï Thi Lac, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming here to speak to us today.

As you know, this committee has been conducting a study on open government over the past few weeks. I tell you that because I want to draw a parallel between access to information and open government.

As part of our study on open government, a number of witnesses told us that the number of ATI requests had dropped sharply because their department was being more open and disclosing more information to people.

I, myself, recently wrote to a department asking for a list of the government's legal service providers. The answer I got was that the government would not disclose the names of those suppliers.

To me, that is a flaw of an open government. I then made a request under the Access to Information Act. The person who had written to my office asking for the information initially also made the same request, as did our party's critic. So three requests for the same information were made. But had that information appeared on the Web site, there would have been three fewer requests.

I want to know whether you had worked on an action plan to help your organization become more open and to reduce the number of access to information requests. Or are you of the opinion that such an approach has no place at CBC?

[Hubert T. Lacroix]

I will ask Ms. Bertrand to explain what we have just done and what I meant in my opening statement when I talked about proactive disclosure measures we had put in place at CBC/Radio-Canada.

[Maryse Bertrand]

Ms. Thi Lac, in December 2010, we created a new page on our Web site, a completely redesigned page where we post information pertaining to the five most common types of access to information requests received since we first came under the act.

As Mr. Lacroix mentioned, that includes information on agendas, senior management expenses, audits and retreat expenses, and the list goes on. It includes all the requests—and we provide the translation into the other language—as well as all the information provided to the applicant further to their request.

This effort is a work in progress. We are currently trying to add other categories of information. We start with the most widely requested information so that it is available not just to the requester but also to the general public; we provide both the request and the organization's response.

[Ève-Mary Thaï Thi Lac, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

You just answered my second question as well. And you made those improvements based on your most popular requests. I imagine that was part of the reason why you had fewer requests this year.

In the past, numerous organizations have told the committee about the difficulty they have had finding and keeping staff. Do you have the same problem?

[Hubert T. Lacroix]

Yes, that is the case at every level.

Maryse, could you speak to our turnover and how difficult it is to keep good people?

[Maryse Bertrand]

I would say things have levelled off. It was very tough in the beginning, though. Practically the entire team has turned over since the beginning. Right now—touch wood—it is going pretty smoothly.

[Ève-Mary Thaï Thi Lac, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

I am going to split my time with Ms. Freeman, because I know she had a question.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

You have only 20 seconds left.

[Ève-Mary Thaï Thi Lac, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Great.

Ms. Legault, you mentioned that CBC's next report card would be available this year. You already said that the situation had improved dramatically over last year. Do you think that improvement was the result of the changes CBC introduced to be more open and to disclose more information to the public?

[Suzanne Legault]

I did not measure that, in other words, whether proactive disclosure had an impact on requests. I did not examine that at all.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Merci, Madame Thi Lac.

We're now going to go to Mr. Poilievre for five minutes.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Nepean—Carleton, ON]

Thank you to the witnesses for coming.

Monsieur Lacroix, am I accurately summarizing your position by saying that you have pointed to section 68.1, which addresses the unique nature of your organization, as a potential cause of the challenges that your organization has had in implementing access to information?

[Hubert T. Lacroix]

Partly, but I hope that's not what you retain from my comment.

We were simply overwhelmed by the number of requests. This famous exclusion with respect to our activities, section 68.1, is simply part of the reason why some of the stats that you are seeing on refusal complaints have increased.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Nepean—Carleton, ON]

Thank you.

I think you had said that if all of the ATIP requests were outside the 68.1 exclusion, then responses would be returned on time and without complaint.

[Hubert T. Lacroix]

If you were to deliver thousands of requests outside of section 68.1, we would still have issues. I'm saying that we understand that there is the volume, and that is what has been the issue with CBC/Radio-Canada's ability to turn them around quickly.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Nepean—Carleton, ON]

Okay. Thank you.

Madame Legault, I want to understand the scope of the challenge around section 68.1. In your special report to Parliament you said that the number of requests carried over from 2008-09 is 108. Do you think that the large number of carry-overs from 2008-09 can be explained by the difficulties in implementing section 68.1 of the act?

[Suzanne Legault]

It's very difficult for me to make that kind of determination. It's a question that's better posed to the institution. I haven't seen any of the records, so I don't know.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Nepean—Carleton, ON]

Okay.

Would you suggest that the deemed refusal rate of 57.7% could be partly explained by challenges related to the use of section 68.1 of the act?

[Suzanne Legault]

Again, I'm very limited in that respect.

It seems to me that it's essentially a volume issue. That's my impression. My difficulty is in knowing how long the litigation will last. And we still haven't determined what journalistic programming and creative material mean.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Nepean—Carleton, ON]

And then on the average time to complete a request—158 days—I understand, according to your report, that only 39% of new requests were responded to within 30 days. Do you think section 68.1 might have been responsible for that?

[Suzanne Legault]

Again, I would have the same answer. My impression is that it's simply a volume issue, because they had so many requests in their first year, and then they carried over quite a large number of requests from year to year and still had to deal with their ongoing workload.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Nepean—Carleton, ON]

It sounds to me as if the source of the problem you identify is volume. Is that how you see it?