Evidence of meeting #30 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 request.
A video is available from Parliament.
Information Commissioner of Canada, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
The general fee is five dollars, and then there are other fees that can be charged.
Conservative
Erin O'Toole Conservative Durham, ON
I know the Access to Information Act is from the nineties, I believe. Do you know if that five-dollar fee has changed under your term or before it?
Information Commissioner of Canada, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
No, I think five dollars has remained a constant since 1983.
Conservative
Erin O'Toole Conservative Durham, ON
That's interesting.
Do other countries bifurcate their ATI process, such that they charge, say, a nominal fee for public applicants and they charge a different higher fee for commercial entities?
Information Commissioner of Canada, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
It varies from country to country. I certainly have not studied that in depth for today. I know it varies in the U.S. For instance, there are some groups for which fees are waived. In Canada, as well, there is discretion to waive fees. In the U.K. I believe there is a difference in fees. In Ontario, there are higher fees. It really varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.
The recommendation, in terms of international norms, is to charge no fees, but that really varies across the board. From provinces to countries, there are very different models everywhere.
I'm a strong advocate of having no initial fees simply because—and we don't charge them in our office—I consider that it costs more to charge the fees than to actually get the revenues from the fees. The fees that are assessed sometimes generate complaints as well. I find that it's not efficient in the system to charge the fees. The government is not recouping its money and charging fees delays access and generates complaints. I just don't find it very efficient.
Conservative
Erin O'Toole Conservative Durham, ON
We know the five-dollar charge for the request has not changed since the 1980s. How much has the cost of processing the request changed since the 1980s? Do you have that number or an approximate...?
Information Commissioner of Canada, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
There is also in the Treasury Board statistics an analysis of that. They do have the average cost per request. During the period of 1983 to 1992, the average cost was $1,000; from 1993 to 2002, around $980; and from 2002 to 2012, $1,300. That came down last year. It's a little bit less, it seems. Those are the average costs per request.
Conservative
Erin O'Toole Conservative Durham, ON
For the periods during which you say there was a $1,000 threshold, and then a small drop down, and then a pop back up, would the drop have been probably attributable to the computerization and the sort of standardization of the request process, and now is the added cost due to the rising inflation costs of salaries and those sorts of things?
Information Commissioner of Canada, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
I really couldn't tell you, sir. I really have no basis for any kind of analytics on that.
NDP
The Chair NDP Pat Martin
That will have to wait until the next round, I'm afraid, to go any further. The seven minutes is up.
Thank you, Mr. O'Toole.
Then we go to the Liberals, the new vice-chair of the committee, Scott Simms.
You're up, Scottie.
December 4th, 2014 / 3:55 p.m.
Liberal
Scott Simms Liberal Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL
It's wonderful to be here.
Thanks, brother Chair.
I wanted to just talk about the concept of something I like to call “open by default”. I guess when it comes to open by default, there comes a time when you have to update the technology to make it far more efficient. I remember calling into PCO for some information, and PCO telling me there was no machine-readable.... It was not possible to do, for whatever reason. But if you open this up, you modernize it, and it becomes far more adapted to the technology we have today, will that average cost go down considerably?
Information Commissioner of Canada, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
Will the cost go down? I really couldn't tell you.
Liberal
Scott Simms Liberal Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL
You mentioned that $1,300 is today's standard.
Information Commissioner of Canada, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
That's been the average cost—
Liberal
Information Commissioner of Canada, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
—for the last 10 years.
Liberal
Scott Simms Liberal Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL
Right.
You're saying you can't really tell if that would go down, but what would be the cost of that? What makes up the majority of that cost in, say, the average price at $1,300?
Information Commissioner of Canada, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
I really don't know. The average cost is probably related to the people who do the redactions on the documents.
Liberal
Scott Simms Liberal Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL
Would it be possible for you to have more powers to look at redactions in the near future? Is that something you would like to have?
Information Commissioner of Canada, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
Under the act, I do have the right and the power to review all records and redactions except for records that are excluded as cabinet confidences.
Liberal
Scott Simms Liberal Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL
A great deal of redaction takes place outside of cabinet confidence, is that correct?
Information Commissioner of Canada, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
A lot of redactions are applied to access requests, yes.
If you look at tab 4, the graph on page 2 of that tab basically looks at this indicator that I like to look at, which is how much information is disclosed per request. This is the proportion of all the requests where all the information is disclosed. The statistics go back to 1999. In that year, in 40% of all the requests, all of the information was disclosed. In 2012-13 we were at about 21% or 22%.
So when I look at the costs of processing a request, I do see, certainly, a correlation with the amount of time you have to spend making redactions. Applying exemptions to a record will take you more time, and therefore it will be more costly to process the request. But this is based on the same piece of legislation. This is how we have evolved in administering the Access to Information Act over the years.
Liberal
Scott Simms Liberal Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL
Just by way of information, I'm new here—
Information Commissioner of Canada, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
Welcome.
Liberal
Scott Simms Liberal Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL
—when it comes to the redaction process, what do you do when you review it? What's the process for you personally when you review something that's been redacted and you have an issue with it?