Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I'm very thankful for the opportunity to discuss with you in greater detail this year's special report, which provides an assessment of delays and examines the compliance of federal institutions with the Access to Information Act.
The purpose of the report cards is not to chastise institutions. This process is a tool at my disposal to affect greater compliance with the requirements of the act. It allows me to see compliance issues in their full context and to recommend meaningful solutions.
This year's report concludes that, although timeliness is the cornerstone of the act, chronic delays continue to be its Achilles heel. In 2008-09, only 57% of all requests received across the federal government were responded to within 30 days. Almost half of the complaints my office received in the same period dealt with delays, and three out of four of these complaints completed with a finding were resolved with merit.
Clearly, this is not what the legislators had envisioned when they established 30 days as the appropriate length of time to respond to a request. It is now imperative to tackle this issue head-on. This is why the Three-Year Plan I announced last summer focuses on assessing the root causes of delays so that solutions can be found. This year's report cards are the first step under this plan.
To obtain a sound, fact-based assessment, I expanded this year's sample from 10 to 24 institutions. These 24 institutions received 88% of all access requests. The assessment therefore provides a reliable picture of the overall situation. We rated the institutions globally: we assessed not only their statistical compliance with statutory timelines but also looked at practices and policies that impact on their performance. For individual institutions, I have made recommendations that are tailored to their unique situations and challenges. In addition, I am making recommendations to the Treasury Board Secretariat as the central agency responsible for the administration of the Act.
With the evidence collected during the process, we have confirmed the continued presence of system-wide issues that we identified last year. These include: lack of leadership; inappropriate use of time extensions; time-consuming consultations; insufficient resources; and deficiencies in records management.
We have also discovered that flawed or ill-enforced delegation orders within institutions may constitute another significant obstacle to timely access to information. A leading cause of delay is the extensive or inappropriate use of time extensions. In fact, institutions' use of time extensions account for 31% of complaints to my office.
I also want to emphasize that frequent and lengthy consultations between institutions represent a major problem. Federal institutions often consult other institutions before determining whether to exempt, exclude, or disclose information.
The time needed to complete the consultation then also depends on the efficiency and goodwill of the institution being consulted, yet only the consulting institution is responsible under the act for completing the request within the statutory timelines. For some institutions, such as Foreign Affairs and International Trade, the Department of Justice, and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, these mandatory consultations represent more than half of their workload.
Although a persistent issue, there is little known about the impact of these mandatory consultations because there are no statistics or no studies available to assess their impact. I am concerned that this lack of data fails to assign responsibility where it belongs. Despite previous warnings and recommendations, our findings show that little progress has been achieved to remedy delays across the system. Of the 24 institutions assessed this year, 13 performed below average or worse. These poor performers accounted for 27% of the requests made to the federal government in 2008-09, which represents roughly 9,000 requests.
In terms of deemed refusals, nine institutions present rates ranging from 20% to 60%. The average time to complete requests varies between 34 days for Citizenship and Immigration to 163 days for Foreign Affairs and International Trade.
However, there is a silver lining in this year's special report. Two institutions, Citizenship and Immigration and the Department of Justice, achieved an outstanding score due to senior management's ongoing support for a compliance-prone culture. Since last year's assessment, we have also witnessed some very impressive results at the Canada Border Services Agency, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and Public Works and Government Services.
These institutions have adopted a strategic approach to their access to information program and have therefore substantially improved service delivery to Canadians. This is proof that the system is not irrevocably broken.
We need to look more closely at the challenges that impede the performance of the institutions that did not perform well. I also believe that the Treasury Board Secretariat must establish strong standards to guide institutions and collect more detailed statistics to adequately monitor and measure institutional compliance. I think these measures are crucial to strengthen institutions' accountability pending legislative reform.
Mr. Chairman, I want to acknowledge the collaboration of the subject institutions and particularly from the access coordinators and their staff in this process.
Before closing, Mr. Chairman, I'd like to clarify my office's activities in relation to recent allegations of political interference.
As I announced on March 2, my office is conducting three priority investigations into complaints we received over specific allegations of political interference with requests made under the Access to Information Act. My objective is to conclude these investigations promptly.
In addition to these investigations, my office will undertake a systemic investigation into delays and time extensions, as announced in the three-year plan published last July. The scope and focus of this systemic investigation will be expanded to examine whether there is interference, political or otherwise, in the processing of access requests and whether this is a cause of delay or it unduly restricts disclosure under the act. My goal is to complete that investigation within 18 months.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
We are now ready to answer your questions.
