Evidence of meeting #21 for Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics in the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was complaints.
A video is available from Parliament.
Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner, Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner
It didn't ring a bell.
Liberal
Assistant Commissioner, Complaints Resolution and Compliance, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
You're looking for information about how we're managing our caseload in a strategic way?
Assistant Commissioner, Complaints Resolution and Compliance, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
Okay.
What we've done is to implement an intake process that does a triage of our complaints. This allows us to assess the complexity of the complaints and stream them into a certain investigation stream. We have different teams that deal with different types of investigations. We also look at the nature of the complaint, the subject of the complaint, the institution to which the complaint is addressed, as well as the complainant, to ensure that we group together complaints to the extent possible, and treat them in a holistic sense as opposed to one by one.
We also have a specific strategy to deal with what we call special delegation complaints, which are complaints that deal with exemptions applied for international affairs, national security, and national defence. We have a specific team that works with those and a specific process that the commissioner piloted about two years ago and has now un-piloted and made permanent.
Liberal
Scott Andrews Liberal Avalon, NL
Has that affected the timeframe in which to resolve some of this? Has that sped up the timeframe? Often we hear that the complaints take so long to resolve.
Assistant Commissioner, Complaints Resolution and Compliance, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
We've had an improvement. Last year I believe we closed 57% of our complaints in less than nine months. This year we have closed 63% of our complaints in less than nine months. We are seeing an increase in the timeliness turnaround of our complaints. As we said earlier, our target is to close our administrative complaints, which deal with delays, extensions, and fees, within 90 days. We're at about 68%, and we've seen a significant increase in the number of those complaints this year. Our other complaints, they'll close within nine months.
So yes, we have seen an increase in the timeliness over the last two to three years.
Liberal
Scott Andrews Liberal Avalon, NL
You just mentioned that you finished one pilot project that you're going to continue on, but you also say that you'll be introducing a pilot-based process that will seek to rapidly resolve complaints and clarify.
Are we talking about the same thing there, or is that something different?
Assistant Commissioner, Complaints Resolution and Compliance, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
That's something we're looking at doing this year, along the lines of, as complaints come in, having a senior investigator sit down and review particularly complex refusal cases to see whether there's any opportunity to settle the complaint at an early stage or, potentially, to clarify or narrow the scope of the complaint. Hopefully that will assist us in treating the complaints in a more strategic and rapid way.
Liberal
Scott Andrews Liberal Avalon, NL
Thank you.
Ms. Dawson, I should have realized when I said 4,700 complaints...because I hope you don't get that many complaints.
In managing the complaints that come to your office, quite often there are a lot initiated by members of Parliament. Are you seeing that these are increasingly more? Is it stable over the years? Is that of concern to you?
Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner, Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner
I'm finding that they're relatively stable. As a matter of fact, I have the power to self-initiate investigations. I've looked at the statistics there, and I actually probably self-initiate slightly more complaints than I get just as a result of information coming to me in other ways. I would say it's fairly stable at the moment.
Liberal
Scott Andrews Liberal Avalon, NL
Do you want to give us a snapshot in time of how many complaints you have ongoing now, self-initiated files or files that you have ongoing?
Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner, Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner
Yes. I have those numbers somewhere.
Basically, just to give you a sense, we've worked on 41 files this year, but in fact many of those files don't actually come to a full investigation that we consider. I think there are something in the order of six or seven investigation files—seven, I think—open at the moment. Two of them are suspended at the moment. Those are full-blown investigations.
Last year we issued four reports on investigations. That varies. We have a number of them that probably will be ready within a couple of months this year.
I guess all I could say is that it's fairly stable. Those are the numbers we have. Many files, of course, lapse into the next year, but we average about 40 files that we're working on.
Conservative
Conservative
Laurie Hawn Conservative Edmonton Centre, AB
Thank you, Chair.
Thank you all for being here.
I'm going to ask you both a motherhood question—I recognize it's motherhood—and anybody can define the word “reasonable” the way they like. Do you think it is logical that all departments, big or small, DND or smaller offices like yours, should operate in as lean and efficient a manner as reasonably possible?
Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner, Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner
Yes.
Conservative
Laurie Hawn Conservative Edmonton Centre, AB
I know it's motherhood, but thank you for the motherhood answer.
Madam McCarthy, we heard from the Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying some points about how they have managed their workload. It sounds like you're doing a lot of the same thing in terms of grouping investigations, assigning investigators to specific types, and so on.
Do you have any sense of how much that has saved you in terms of people or money? I'm not looking for a finite answer, but has it made all the difference?
Assistant Commissioner, Complaints Resolution and Compliance, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
It certainly has assisted us. I think in the last annual report we were looking at about 50% of our inventory being related to three specific streams of institutions or subject matters. Now those three streams are down to about 38%, so we have seen, I think, an impact in those strategies.
The other thing we've seen is that there's a lot better communication with complainants, which has made the process more efficient generally. I do think we have seen a significant improvement.
Conservative
Laurie Hawn Conservative Edmonton Centre, AB
We also heard about integration of support services, which of course is going on across the government. Both of your departments are doing that, I'm assuming.
I'll start with Ms. McCarthy.
Assistant Commissioner, Complaints Resolution and Compliance, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
Yes. We have actually sent our human resources function to Shared Services Canada. We also have explored opportunities to share services now that we're co-located with a number of other agents of Parliament.
Conservative
Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner, Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner
No, our office is a little bit different because we are part of Parliament as opposed to part of the public service. But we do outsource some of our basic things like staff payments and stuff.
Conservative
Laurie Hawn Conservative Edmonton Centre, AB
Madam Dawson, this is for you. We heard from the Office of the Privacy Commissioner about being a voluntary participant in SOR. I was on that committee, and I forget the number of departments we targeted but it was substantial. There were a lot of smaller departments. I think we just said “if you wish” and we encouraged them to. It sounds like you were one of the voluntary participants. Is that correct?
