Evidence of meeting #12 for Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was changes.
A video is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Scott Brison Liberal Kings—Hants, NS
We have great respect for the work of the parliamentary budget officer. When the Department of Finance provided, I believe a two-year projection, they did so on the basis that we are in very volatile times. Much of our economy is dependent on commodity prices, which as we know have gone through a remarkable drop in the last period. The Department of Finance felt that it was more realistic to provide projections over a two-year than over a five-year period.
But let me—
NDP
Daniel Blaikie NDP Elmwood—Transcona, MB
I take the point about volatility. Am I to understand from this that the department didn't make attempts to forecast past those two years?
Liberal
Scott Brison Liberal Kings—Hants, NS
The amount of information that was provided—the two-year information—was based on being able to provide with confidence projections for Canadians as part of the budget document. Two years made more sense.
The fact is, though, that we listened to the parliamentary budget officer and we provided to the Department of Finance five-year projections. We didn't argue or quarrel with the parliamentary budget officer when that office raised that concern. The Department of Finance—the government—responded. That's part of a dialogue. We're not going to get into fights with officers of Parliament. We won't agree on everything, but we will seek to respect their wishes. We did, in this case.
The other thing, too—and I suspect you're going to mention it—is that the parliamentary budget officer also had very positive things to say about the government's practice now of projecting lapses. The parliamentary budget officer thought this was a significant step forward.
As we move forward, and as we did in this case.... We listened to the parliamentary budget officer in terms of the two-year projections. The Department of Finance, my colleague Minister Morneau, released up to the five years. This is a dialogue.
NDP
Daniel Blaikie NDP Elmwood—Transcona, MB
Indeed, and one hates to curtail dialogue, but at the same time, I think part of the idea of a culture of “open by default” is to reduce the amount of dialogue and therefore the amount of time it takes to get access to information.
Canadians have dialogue all the time with government about access to information requests. Usually it's because they're not getting the information. This is one of the rare cases in which I think a reduction in dialogue is actually a sign of progress. It means Canadians and parliamentarians, in this case the parliamentary budget officer, are getting that information in the most timely way possible, which is the point of being open by default.
Liberal
Scott Brison Liberal Kings—Hants, NS
I broadly agree with you, by the way, that the more information we can put out there the better, so that we're all dealing with the same information. I broadly agree with that.
NDP
Daniel Blaikie NDP Elmwood—Transcona, MB
My next question has to do with the duty to document. If there's virtue in acting quickly in an interim sense—and I think there is—one thing I would have liked to see included in those interim measures is a duty to document. In the meantime, we're potentially losing important information because it's not being written down. I wonder why there is no provision for some kind of duty to document in this interim directive.
Liberal
Scott Brison Liberal Kings—Hants, NS
Actually, this is something that could be addressed as part of the legislative changes.
The first batch of legislative changes would be later this year and early next year. There has been some expert testimony on duty to document and on models in other places.
NDP
Daniel Blaikie NDP Elmwood—Transcona, MB
My concern, and the reason I think it would be important to have some sort of provisional directive, is that a lot of time is going to pass between now and whenever some future ATI reform bill passes, and in the meantime, there's activity happening in ministers' offices, I presume.... I'm not in them, but I presume so—
NDP
Daniel Blaikie NDP Elmwood—Transcona, MB
—and if it's not documented, then it's activity that people may not have access to.
Liberal
Scott Brison Liberal Kings—Hants, NS
There is policy that already exists within the government, but in terms of how we can strengthen the policy, that can be an area to Mr. Kelly's point in terms of what areas the committee can provide advice. That could be one of the areas where you can look at other models. Jennifer may want to provide some insight in terms of policy that exists now.
Deputy Chief Information Officer, Treasury Board Secretariat
Just to add to that, existing information management policies, rather than access to information policies, do capture a requirement for employees to document decisions and decision-making processes. Part of that is also to assist in terms of audit trails, and ensuring there's a solid record of how decisions are taken and when they are taken. There is currently a policy requirement that does apply to public servants, although you won't find that language in the access to information that you might have reviewed.
Liberal
Scott Brison Liberal Kings—Hants, NS
One of the things you may look at is how we can strengthen that in terms of policy as part of legislation.
NDP
Daniel Blaikie NDP Elmwood—Transcona, MB
You've expressed an openness and perhaps a decision to move ahead with order-making powers for the Information Commissioner. I'm wondering if, as part of that, you were also intending to grant the Information Commissioner the power to review documents that have been deemed confidential under any number of secrecy provisions under the current act, so there is an independent third-party review of decisions about whether something is a cabinet confidence or not.
Liberal
Scott Brison Liberal Kings—Hants, NS
That distills down to the argument between exclusions and exemptions in terms of some of these things. We're open to your views as a committee on this. There are different models with their strengths and weaknesses around this exclusion versus the exemption policy. There are clear areas, including security, national security issues, and privacy issues among them where we would all agree on where there has to be either an exemption or an exclusion depending on that. The question is, to what extent can the Information Commissioner have access to cabinet confidences and then discern from there, or whether there should be absolute exclusions in certain areas, such as around national security.
I think there would be broad consensus that exclusions can make a lot of sense. There are different models and the wheelhouse of this committee, as you're studying some of those, would be interested. What I would ask for in terms of your advice—and I'm not trying to direct the work of the committee, but it would be helpful in terms of some of these models—is what you see as the strengths and the weaknesses. Put some thought to that, and the researchers as well, in terms of the strengths and weaknesses of some of these models. A witness may say “I like this particular model”, but the work of the committee and the library as you look at them, is what are the strengths granularly and what are the weaknesses? That can help inform our line of thinking as well.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Blaine Calkins
Thank you very much.
We've exceeded the time, but it was an important answer. At the risk of interjecting on a question the committee member had, I have a personal interest in response to one of the questions. Ms. Dawson, you said there are policies. I'm surprised you said there are policies. I would be curious to get my hands on a copy of a sample policy in one of the departments, if that's possible, to submit to the committee.
Deputy Chief Information Officer, Treasury Board Secretariat
Yes, that's the policy on information management, and we can provide that.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Blaine Calkins
Thank you very much.
We'll now move to Mr. Saini for seven minutes.
Liberal
Raj Saini Liberal Kitchener Centre, ON
Thank you, Minister, for being here, and Ms. Dawson.
Minister, I have a question for you. It's a question on timeliness for responding to requests that are asked. We have the Swedish ambassador who came here, and he said whenever a request is made to the Swedish government they act upon it immediately. In Ontario, the information commissioner has said the average request takes about 40 days. We had the Newfoundland commissioner who came here, and who said they act upon requests within a few business days.
What does the department feel would be the right sort of time frame—and this won't pertain to every request because some requests will be more detailed than others, but on average—to respond to information requests?
Liberal
Scott Brison Liberal Kings—Hants, NS
I think Sweden and Finland were the first to enact an access to information regime going back... in Sweden it was 1776 when they brought in access to information. They're bound to have it pretty good by this point.
In Newfoundland, and you're saying Sweden...I think we need to ensure both in terms of technology and IT and resources that we can respond quickly.
This question of frivolous or vexatious requests is an important one. We're doing research now to determine to what extent these can impede what are considered legitimate...but we also don't want to prevent people.... Broadly, there are people who may think that their request is absolutely significant, and we want to take every request seriously. We are looking at ways to improve service. Part of it will be resources to ensure that departments, broadly, and access to information have the resources they need, but part of it could be process as well.
What are bottlenecks in the process now that are preventing us from acting more quickly? That's something that we're looking at now. Jennifer may want to comment on that, but we are looking at where there may be unnecessary bottlenecks.
Deputy Chief Information Officer, Treasury Board Secretariat
In terms of the time frame, what I can provide by way of context is that currently over 60% are in that range of requests being met within the existing 30-day time limit. We're obviously wanting to improve performance against the time limits that exist today.
I think that something the committee may wish to consider is this. What would be the implication of changing the time limit in terms of those performance standards, and what would be required as an investment if one were to set a more ambitious timeline?
Liberal
Raj Saini Liberal Kitchener Centre, ON
Just to follow up, you mentioned in your opening comments about a government open by default. My worry is that if you do that then you're also going to have international requests for information.
We can get to the $5 fee later, but my worry is that because you have a regime that is funded by the Canadian taxpayer, that is in place for the benefit of the Canadian taxpayer or the Canadian public, that you may be inundated with certain requests from outside the country. How do we prioritize that Canadian requests will be met and not caught up in a backlog? How do we differentiate or prioritize that Canadian requests made by Canadians would be met in a certain time frame, and that international requests would also be met? How are you going to apportion how these things are met?
Liberal
Scott Brison Liberal Kings—Hants, NS
I know Sweden treats requests the same, whether they're international or domestic.
My instinct, and this is just my instinct, is that our priority will be citizens of Canada. As we develop this, there will be inevitable challenges in implementation. As I've learned both as a former minister of Public Works and now at Treasury Board, implementation is always the challenge. My instinct is that we would focus on Canadian citizens first.
Let's be clear, with open data today any information you provide to a citizen of Canada becomes available as the citizen wants to share it internationally or with anybody else digitally.
My instinct on this, and I'd be interested in the committee's views on this, would be initially at least to focus it on Canadian citizens. There may be unintended consequences to that approach that I'm not aware of or haven't thought of.
Liberal
Raj Saini Liberal Kitchener Centre, ON
I have a quick follow-up. You made the announcement that the only cost to accessing a request would be $5. From what I understand, or from testimony that has happened with other witnesses, they've said that the $5 to process that would be very onerous and would be actually a cost to the government.
In some jurisdictions they have eliminated the $5 cost to access information, but they've put a time frame on the amount of time that could be utilized to fulfill that request, whether it be five hours or 10 hours. What's your opinion on that? Should there be a hybrid of both? Should we stick to the $5 cost and allow it to be open ended? You talked about vexatious requests and that somebody could just dump on the system and keep people busy over a period of time. Should there be some sort of hybrid towards that, or do you feel that the $5 cost is sufficient? I'm just worried about the system getting backed up.
Liberal
Scott Brison Liberal Kings—Hants, NS
I indicated some openness on this question in my remarks for a reason. My view on this has been formed by some of the testimony before this committee, and I'm interested in this. There is a difference of opinion around it. The theory is that the $5 represents a hurdle, and a hurdle that will prevent or help reduce some frivolous or vexatious requests. There is a difference of opinion on that.
The administrative cost of processing it is interesting as well. Thanks to IT—the capacity to process credit cards and that sort of thing—it has been reduced significantly in recent years. We have proposed one approach. That approach is part of a commitment we've made, so we take it very seriously, but we're also committed to evidence-based decision making, and if there's a better way....
The other thing to keep in mind is that any changes we make as part of the first legislative changes can, when there's a more comprehensive legislative review, be changed, if we find something is not optimal or is not working well. It's legislation, which means, from an evergreening perspective, that the legislation can always be updated and modernized, at the very least every five years. It can be modernized and updated before five years, if in fact there were a compelling change to be made. Or even without the legislation there can be a directive issued by the government, if we felt that something was not working well or if something could work better.