Evidence of meeting #149 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 year.
A video is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
I didn't ask the question, fair enough.
Where are the problem departments? Who are the problem departments? How many do you have?
Information Commissioner of Canada, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
Each department has its own.... I couldn't tell you. With the RCMP, it's clearly a resource issue.
Liberal
Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
Are the complaints resource-based, like they don't have the resources to do that? What happens? They don't do it, then people complain to you, and you say “Give me more resources so I can handle their complaints”.
Information Commissioner of Canada, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
They need more resources.
Liberal
Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
Is it right for us to be giving you the resources, or should we just give them to the RCMP?
Information Commissioner of Canada, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
That's exactly what I was saying earlier. Even if you give me more, if you give me $9 million tomorrow morning and I hire 25 new investigators, I will not get the response I need from the institution because it doesn't have the resources to respond.
Liberal
Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
Realistically, then, pumping more money into your department is not actually the solution.
They can't answer someone else and that someone else comes and complains to you. You say, “Okay, now you have to talk to them and to me”, but they still say, “I don't have anybody to answer the question”.
Information Commissioner of Canada, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
Yes. There are some institutions where we will need additional resources to me and—
Liberal
Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
Would it be possible for you to give us a list of who needs what? Instead of just saying what you need, you'd say it would be better if the RCMP got this and Canada Border Services got this, specifically targeting these requests for information so they don't come to you.
Conservative
Information Commissioner of Canada, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
I'm trying to do this through my investigations, to make recommendations to each of these institutions. They have to go and get the money and the resources. They are responsible to put their priorities into ATIP access.
Information Commissioner of Canada, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
I can do that in my annual and special reports. We try to do that, yes.
Conservative
NDP
Charlie Angus NDP Timmins—James Bay, ON
Thank you very much.
I'm interested in following up on some of the questions raised by Mr. Baylis.
My first question, though, is the following: We have repeat offenders, the same organizations year in, year out, do we not? The RCMP—I've always been on this beat and it's always been RCMP, CRA and Canada Border Services. It's a question of either they don't have the funds or they decide not to put the funds in because they have other priorities. To me, if we have a quasi-constitutional right to access to information and you find the same laggards, year in and year out, the problem is not a lack of funds. It's a corporate problem within their structure.
What tools do you have to make them comply?
Information Commissioner of Canada, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
You're right.
One thing we are trying to do more and more is systemic investigations and audits of places where we know there's an issue with either resources or training and make recommendations to the institutions to address those. I'm trying to do more of those and I do have the authority.
The other thing we have to remember is that it's not that people are complaining about an agency, that they are doing something inappropriate or they are not applying the act properly. That's something I'm trying to do better in reporting in the next couple of years. Some requesters expect more information and they will complain no matter what the response from the institution is. You might end up with an institution that's doing really well, and it might have more complaints, but we ultimately make findings that the complaints were not well founded.
I don't think my office has been doing really well at providing that information through our annual reports or special reports, and it's something we're going to be working on. We need to really go and examine what the issues are, what causes the delays and whether the exemptions or exclusions are appropriately applied.
The other thing is that the statistics we have from Treasury Board just provide statistics on timelines but don't give you the full picture of how big the request was or how many pages. What we are noticing right now is that some institutions are doing really well in terms of the timelines, but we're getting a lot of complaints on the exclusions and exemptions side. They're responding to the request really quickly, but they will block everything. Then we have to investigate. They might look very good on paper because they respond to requesters quickly, but they might not be that good in meeting their obligations.
NDP
Charlie Angus NDP Timmins—James Bay, ON
When we make requests, sometimes the department comes back and says, “Oh my God, it will be so many thousands of pages. What about focusing it and limiting it?” Then maybe instead of asking for a two-year period or a three-year period, we ask for a two-week period where we're looking.
To me, that's reasonable. That's a department that's trying, within its means, to respond.
My concern is that we've just had a situation with Facebook telling the regulator, “Thanks, but we're just going to carry on.”
I dealt, through your office, with the justice department for six years to try to get the political decisions around the decision to target the St. Anne's residential school survivors, and we were given delay after delay and a threat to go to court. We ended up with 3,000 pages of blacked-out emails. That tells me that the justice department doesn't believe they actually have to comply.
Do you have the tools to make them comply? In a case that, to me, is so egregious, I'm sure out of 3,000 pages there had to be at least one email that wasn't solicitor-client privilege.
We hear that with SNC-Lavalin. We hear it whenever there's a government scandal. They just throw in solicitor-client privilege and then they can black everything out.
How, then, do we actually hold the justice department of Canada to that—that they have to respect the quasi-constitutional rights of citizens as well?
Information Commissioner of Canada, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
You're right in the sense that I'm limited right now under the act to make recommendations to departments when I don't agree with them, but I hesitate to go to court after, if they have agreed with my recommendations.
The new act will give me the authority to make the orders. At that point, the institution will have to go to court if they don't agree with the orders. I think that will be very helpful and it's something we'll be using.
The other thing, as I said earlier, is that it's really hard to issue recommendations on a daily or weekly basis but we can't do anything about it or publicize any of it, so people are not aware of what we're doing, because we have to wait until the annual report or a special report is issued.
Under the new Bill C-58, I'm going to be able to publish those decisions, which I think the institutions are not going to like as much. That's another tool that will be used or will be beneficial. Hopefully, the more we publish and the more Canadians see what they're entitled to and the institutions realize what we're pushing for, the more we'll have consistency and a better response rate.
NDP
Charlie Angus NDP Timmins—James Bay, ON
The ability, then, to make an independent report based on a case and the ability to issue order-making powers are fundamental for you to ensure the rights of citizens to get access to information.
Information Commissioner of Canada, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
Yes, it's key.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Bob Zimmer
Thanks, everybody.
Thanks again to the commissioner for coming today. It's been a while.
You're starting to settle into your job well.
