Information & Ethics Committee on April 15th, 2010

[Suzanne Legault]

—because that is the core of the consultation at the Privy Council Office. There are no statistics in terms of cabinet confidences and the delays and timelines of cabinet confidences.

In fact, I believe that this year in this report card is the first time we have had statistics. They have a very large number of consultations—1,700—and there are four people working there at the review period. Obviously that's going to generate delays.

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

Mrs. Block, please.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar, SK]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Welcome to our witnesses this morning.

Your report card grades for certain departments earned media exposure for those grades this last week—certainly the red alerts--but I want to turn our focus onto another one a little more closely. I'm looking at the RCMP. You gave them a C this year. They received an F in 2005, under the previous Liberal government.

In fact, in your opening remarks you said, “Since last year's assessment, we have also witnessed some very impressive results at the Canada Border Services Agency, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police...”. It goes on. You went on to say, “These institutions have adopted a strategic approach to their access to information...”.

Can you talk about those approaches? Can you talk about why we see such changes and what factors helped to improve their grade?

[Suzanne Legault]

Yes, certainly. In fact, I was astounded by the Canada Border Services Agency's report this year. They have made tremendous strides. They went from a deemed refusal rate of over 60% to 30% and to very low this year—I think it's 4.7%. So there is hope for the Department of Foreign Affairs if they can follow the same curve, because CBSA also has quite complex types of information.

But really, the recipe for success essentially is the leadership at both the ministerial level and with the senior officials of the institution; adequate resources being put into the access to information section of the department; ongoing training, not only of the access professionals but within the institution, so that there is a culture of transparency that gets developed and sustained; and full delegation to the coordinator of access, which we strongly believe in--we don't believe in diffuse delegation orders. We think this is the recipe for success.

By the way, what they've done at the RCMP is that the person in charge of making the decisions is someone who has intricate knowledge of law enforcement, so the person there is not only an expert on access to information but also an expert on the subject matter of the institution. That, we think, is a recipe for success.

The duty to assist a requester is part and parcel of the culture of the access office. The consultation processes are given great support and they are respected. So they respect the consulting institution and the timeliness of it, and they work very hard at having sound information management practices.

That's the recipe for success. When you have all of these practices, usually institutions do very well.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar, SK]

Thank you very much.

In terms of my second question, as I look through your report I see that you gave the Department of Justice an A again this year.

In fact, in your opening remarks, you said that “there is a silver lining in this year's special report”. You said, “Two institutions, Citizenship and Immigration and the Department of Justice, achieved an outstanding score...”. Do you recall what their grade was in 2005, under the previous Liberal government?

[Suzanne Legault]

For the Department of Justice?

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar, SK]

Yes.

[Suzanne Legault]

The justice department, from 2004 to 2006, had an F.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar, SK]

Okay. So we've gone from an F to an A in the last five years.

Can you tell the committee why we see such a significant change under our Conservative government?

[Suzanne Legault]

I don't know that it has anything to do with any specific government. I certainly did not study that in my report cards. It was very much an institution-by-institution process.

What we have found at the Department of Justice is that this recipe for success was very much put in place. I met with both the minister and the deputy minister at the time—there has recently been a change in deputy ministers—and there is a very, very strong commitment to access to information at the Department of Justice.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar, SK]

I just have one further comment. You did mention that leadership was part of that recipe--

[Suzanne Legault]

Yes.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar, SK]

--and I would suggest that our Conservative government has been providing that leadership to that department.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

I just had a thought. Maybe we should transfer the responsibility for the act to DFAIT and their score would go up, too. In any event....

Madame Thi Lac, s'il vous plaît.

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

My colleague will ask the first question and I will follow her.

[Meili Faille, Bloc, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

Earlier, the parliamentary secretary made a statement that made me think about one aspect of the issue. At Foreign affairs and International trade, they seem to have the bad habit of closing flies on the basis of section 13 and section 15.

Could you tell me which institutions are used to acting in this manner? Does it mean that departmental people try to clarify in advance what in the requests they would be able to disclose or not?

I have some experience with Public Works and Government Services Canada. When we talk to the coordinators, we are usually able to agree, after a brief negotiation, on what types of information will be disclosed to us and what will not be, and the requests are thus clarified. At Foreign affairs, there seems to be a problem.

Also, I find that the system is not necessarily the same in all departments. In some, everything works well whereas, in others, it does not.

Especially at Foreign Affairs, they use section 13 relating to information obtained on a confidential basis, and section 15 relating to information from foreign governments.

[Suzanne Legault]

Mr. Chair, we have seen that at Foreign Affairs, as well as in the other departments which consult Foreign Affairs, when there are requests relating to section 13 or section 15, that is to say relating to international affairs, practices have developed to avoid the consulting institution having to obtain a deemed refusal. However, that institution is the one having to answer for its performance — if it replies on time. That is why we are very concerned by delays.

In such situations, the Department of Foreign Affairs and International trade as well as other departments will close part of the file, or even the whole file, and will advise requesters that they will disclose what they can and that, for the rest, there will have to be a consultation by the Department of Foreign affairs. If information is disclosed later on, they will get back to those requesters.

These procedures are a source of concern. Especially for us, if we have complaints and that the file is closed, the process becomes somewhat complicated. The issue is that this type of consultation usually takes a lot of time. What we hear from Foreign Affairs is that, when they have to consult foreign governments, those have no compulsion to answer in any given time. So, it is difficult for them to assess the time it will take to provide an answer.

What we do not know is what kind of follow-up there is by Foreign Affairs. Do they call back? Do they tell those foreign governments that they will disclose the information if they do not receive an answer within a given time? We have absolutely no information about this whole process of consultation. That is why we will have to have a closer look. As I said earlier, no statistics or details are available on this. It is not entered in the technological system and therefore we have no data on those consultations.

[Meili Faille, Bloc, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

Do you recommend that the Act be improved?

[Suzanne Legault]

I believe it is quite clear that the issue of time extensions, as I see it, would probably be better dealt with through amending the legislation. My point is that, pending such amendments to the Act, I believe we should look very closely at the issue of interdepartmental consultations because there are systemic delays in obtaining access to information.

[Meili Faille, Bloc, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

Earlier, in one of your recommendations, you also stated that the Treasury Board Secretariat should establish a better framework for prioritizing the access to information requests. That is what I understood.

My question was related to the prioritization of requests. You have talked to the Treasury Board Secretariat.

[Suzanne Legault]

They have issued best practices in order to avoid any additional delays being caused by prioritization in the departments. That was our recommendation.

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

Merci.

Mrs. Davidson, please.

[Patricia Davidson, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Thanks very much, Mr. Chair.

Again, Commissioner, thank you for being here with us today.

We've certainly all been looking forward to seeing this report card. It has some very positive things in it and it also has some things in it that need more work. I think everybody recognizes that with access to information, and the strong commitment to that by the government, there certainly is more work to be done. We welcome your report.

We certainly know that, under this government, the Access to Information Act now applies to far more institutions than it did previously. We have discussed that with you several times in the past.

In relation to my colleague's questions, I think you stated that there was a total of roughly 34,000 requests in 2008-09—and that is the report card year—57% of which were dealt with within the 30-day timeframe. In some of the information we've had previously, I note that in 2004-05 we were looking at 24,000, wo we're looking at 10,000 more requests than we were four years ago. I think that volume contributes to some of the issues—certainly not all of them, but to some of the issues of numbers that show the increase in percentages.

We get a lot of comments that this government is slower to respond to access to information requests than others. How would you relate that...? We know that the number for those dealt with within 30 days is slightly lower, but we also know that the number of requests has increased significantly. Do you see any relation in those...? Are the numbers themselves causing some of the issues with the percentages? Or is it all other issues?

[Suzanne Legault]

Mr. Chairman, I think the best way to answer the question--and it's the way we tend to approach it as well--is that it's easier when one looks at each specific institution to see either how they address an increase in volume of requests or how they handle a change of circumstances.

For instance, at DFAIT, one of the key components of their challenge is that their consultation requests are far higher in terms of volume than their actual requests for information. They get about 665 requests themselves, but they have to respond to over 1,000 consultations. I would suggest that probably their level of resourcing has not kept up with this demand.

The Treasury Board Secretariat obliges other departments to consult with the Department of Foreign Affairs, so in a way they have become a sort of central agency in matters of access to information. I would say in looking at that, for instance, that it's a good example of where the increase in workload has probably not been addressed by appropriate resourcing, so there hasn't been a correlation.

If, for instance, you look at another one—was it NRCan?—that has had a large turnover of staff in the last year or so, then you'll see that this will have an impact on its performance.

On the overall increase in the volume of requests, it hasn't gone from 20,000 to 30,000 in a year; it's basically a steady increase year over year. So I don't think that this in itself is a major problem. I think it's best to look at it institution by institution and how their own circumstances are being addressed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

You have time left.