Information & Ethics Committee on May 14th, 2019

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Zimmer]

I will bring to order meeting number 149 of the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics. Pursuant to Standing Order 81(4), we are studying the main estimates 2019-20, vote 1 under the Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying, vote 1 under the Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner, vote 1 under the Office of the Senate Ethics Officer, and votes 1, 5, 10 and 15 under the Offices of the Information and Privacy Commissioners of Canada, as referred to the committee on Thursday, April 11, 2019.

Today we have with us, from the Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada, Caroline Maynard, Information Commissioner of Canada; France Labine, deputy commissioner, corporate services, strategic planning and transformation services; and Layla Michaud, deputy commissioner, investigations and governance.

We will start off with you, Commissioner, for 10 minutes.

[Caroline Maynard, Information Commissioner of Canada, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada]

Thank you, Mr. Chair and committee members. I am pleased to be here with you today.

As you said, Mr. Chair, I am joined by France Labine and Layla Michaud.

I now have 15 months under my belt as the new Information Commissioner, and at this point in my mandate, I see very positive signs of progress but also some challenges that lie ahead.

I am very grateful for the $3 million in temporary funding announced for my office in budget 2019, which was sought to allow me to maintain the momentum of my complaint inventory reduction strategy. I will be devoting this money to hiring new investigators, just as I did with the $2.9 million of temporary funding allocated in last year's budget.

This is the fourth consecutive year that my office is requesting and receiving temporary funding. Note that these requests for temporary funding were stopgap measures in anticipation of a more permanent solution. Improved funding is key to enhancing the OIC's capacity to fully and effectively fulfill its mandate.

My team makes the best use of every dollar we receive. We are reviewing and improving the investigation process. We use technology to innovate and speed up tasks and processes. We collaborate with institutions and requesters as much as possible with a view to completing investigations effectively and efficiently.

Our results speak for themselves. The number, the quality and the timeliness of completed investigations have dramatically improved. My team closed more than 2,600 complaints in 2018-19. This is 76% more than the previous year. It's a record for this organization. Two-thirds of these investigations resulted in requesters receiving more information and faster responses from the institution.

However, despite our best year ever, I foresee trouble on the horizon. I started the first year of my mandate with an inventory of approximately 3,500 files and I received more than 2,500 new complaints in 2018-19. This large number of new files meant that despite my team's excellent performance, I was barely able to make a dent in my inventory. At this rate it will take us decades to clear our backlog.

Simply put, my allocated resources of $11.5 million in the main estimates and 93 approved full-time equivalents are stretched extremely thin by the enormous caseload, which has increased by 25% in the last six years. Without the additional funding I could have in the neighbourhood of 5,800 old and new complaints in the books this year.

On top of this, the proposed amendments to the Access to Information Act currently before Parliament will have operational and, therefore, financial impacts on my office—potentially significant ones.

At the time Bill C-58 was introduced, the then President of the Treasury Board stated that the government would also be increasing the Information Commissioner's resources by $5.1 million over the next five years and $1.7 million on an ongoing basis.

While this additional $1.7 million will be very welcome should Bill C-58 be adopted, it will not be sufficient for my office to meet the requirements of the bill in its current form.

Looking ahead, operating year by year with temporary funding is both inefficient and unsustainable. This is my number one complaint. It does not allow me to plan for the medium or long term. Insufficient funding means that I am unable to maintain momentum in completing investigations and ensuring that Canadians' right of access to information is respected.

I can assure you that I will continue to use my current resources to the greatest effect. I will also continue to take every step I can to find efficiencies in my operations, but frankly, there is only so much that reviewing processes and streamlining can achieve. This is why it is a priority for me this year to secure adequate permanent resources that will account for all the work my office has to carry out under the act.

With more ongoing resources, I could increase the size of my investigation team permanently, to not only complete more investigations each year but also get moving on new ones more quickly.

Permanent funding would also be required to allow me to operationalize the amendments to the act and to ensure as smooth a transition as possible.

These are the results I would like to achieve for Canadians.

Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today.

I would be pleased to take your questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Zimmer]

Thank you, Commissioner.

Mr. Erskine-Smith, you have seven minutes.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Thanks very much.

It is incredible in some ways that Bill C-58 is still not law, but you probably feel that more than we do. What number would you be looking at on an ongoing basis to fulfill the needs of your office? What is that magic number?

[Caroline Maynard]

We have 3,500 old complaints right now in the backlog and in the inventory.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Let's just bracket that for the time being. On an ongoing basis, how much does your office need annually to function?

[Caroline Maynard]

Right now, with the $3 million extra that we have, we are floating just equally with what we have coming in and what we are finishing. I'm receiving about 2,500 complaints a year and this year we closed 2,600.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

That's with the $11.5 million from the main—

[Caroline Maynard]

Plus $3 million.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

—with a top-up of $3 million. You're looking at $14.5 million just to get by. You said it was a 25% increase over six years. Has that stabilized or is it a continuing trajectory?

[Caroline Maynard]

It keeps going up. From 2014 to date, we started with 1,700 complaints a year, and now we're at about 2,400 to 2,500 a year.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

If there was a one-time injection of funds to say, “Let's clear out that backlog”—3,400 would be left, I guess, after this year—how much money is required to clear out that backlog?

[Caroline Maynard]

It's very difficult to know. My office calculated we would need approximately $9 million in one year to hire all the investigators necessary to get rid of the backlog. Even if we were to do that, the institutions would not be able to absorb the extra workload.

We need a continuous amount of money coming in for at least five years, so we can work on our backlog, work on new files, but we also need more resources for the institutions to be able to respond to us. We can't do these investigations by ourselves. We need the institutions to be able to respond to both new requests and complaints.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

At what point does a file enter into the backlog, as it were? Is it after one year?

[Caroline Maynard]

It's just at the end of the year.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

That's what I mean. When we talk about 3,500 that are in the backlog, you've cleared out 2,600. If I commence a file today, and if a year from today it's not closed, does it enter the backlog?

[Caroline Maynard]

Yes, it would be in my inventory when I start the year.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

There are 3,500 files that are over a year old. What's the oldest file?

[Caroline Maynard]

The oldest is 2007.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Wow, 2007. Is that because it's a very complex file?

[Caroline Maynard]

It's a very complex file, yes.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

When you look at the 3,400 files that remain, is there a sense that there are very complex ones that would take up the bulk of time?

[Caroline Maynard]

We have 500 cases, and we have less than that now. I think we reduced it to 300 that are previous to 2015. Am I correct?

[Layla Michaud, Deputy Commissioner, Investigations and Governance, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada]

Yes.

[Caroline Maynard]

That was my priority this year. I wanted to get rid of all the old files previous to 2015. The problem with those cases is that most of them are special delegations, national security cases, consultations with other countries, provinces, etc. There's a lot of complexity to these files or they're humongous. Sometimes we have to talk to different institutions and get third party information. The quick and easy ones are done within a year. The backlog gets bigger and larger with older files.