I'm the director general for the corporate secretariat of CBSA. With me is Mr. Proulx, who is the access to information director for access to information and privacy.
The ATIP division is responsible for oversight of the access to information function at the agency, which includes fulfilling and administering all legislative requirements for the act related to processing of requests, interacting with the public, CBSA employees, other government institutions, and with the Office of the Information Commissioner regarding investigations and audits, and implementing measures to enhance our capacity to process access to information requests.
I'll briefly outline the CBSA's access to information function, how the agency performs against established service standards, and highlight some of the successes and challenges we experience in our administration of the act.
The Canada Border Services Agency is the second largest law enforcement organization in the federal government. It is responsible for border functions related to customs, immigration enforcement, and food, plant and animal inspection.
The agency administers and enforces two principal pieces of legislation: the Customs Act, which outlines the agency's responsibilities to collect duties and taxes on imported goods, interdict illegal goods, and administer trade legislation and agreements; and the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, which governs the admissibility of people into Canada, and the identification, detention and removal of those deemed inadmissible under the act.
To give you a sense of the scope of our activities, the agency also enforces over 90 other statutes on behalf of federal departments and agencies.
Given the numerous daily activities and interactions the agency has with both businesses and individuals on a variety of matters, we are no strangers to access to information requests. Within the division for which I have responsibility, the access to information division, we have approximately 50 employees who work in ATIP, and 34 of them are dedicated to the processing of access to information requests and privacy requests. In addition, the division also has an internal network within the agency of 17 liaison officers, who provide support within the agency's branches at headquarters and in the regions across the country.
The CBSA's operating expenditures to run its access and privacy program totalled approximately $5.2 million in 2014-15, with $4.2 million dedicated to salary and $1 million to non-salary expenditures. This includes the the cost of administering both the Privacy Act and the Access to Information Act, as the work is done concurrently.
With respect to volumes, the CBSA received just over 6,700 requests in 2014-15. This is the second-highest number within the Government of Canada. It represents an increase of 43.5% from the previous year. In addition, we received approximately 12,800 privacy requests in the same fiscal year.
These high volumes are largely attributable to individuals seeking copies of their history of arrival dates in Canada. In fiscal year 2014-15, 60% of all of our requests came from individuals seeking their traveller history reports, which are used to support residency requirements for programs administered by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada and by Service Canada.
Despite this increase in volume, we were able to maintain a compliance rate of 93.5% for completed requests, because ATI analysts in our case-processing units have direct access to the databases with which they can create these traveller history reports. Also, these reports and the application of the law related to them are fairly standard, which allows analysts to complete these requests without needing to obtain recommendations on disclosure from other departmental officials, which is largely the case with most of the other access to information requests we receive. This greatly reduces the time it takes them to process these types of requests.
In fiscal year 2014-15, a total of 71 complaints were filed against the CBSA with the Office of the Information Commissioner, a decrease of 25% from the previous year. Given the large volume of requests the CBSA processes, this number represents a very small proportion of total requests closed. Nonetheless, we continue to aspire to serve requesters better.
Our success reflects the CBSA's commitment to ensuring that every reasonable effort is made to meet the obligations set out in the Access to Information Act.
The CBSA strives to provide Canadians with the information to which they have a right in a timely and helpful manner by balancing the right of access with the need to protect the integrity of border services that support national security and public safety objectives. Innovative approaches and careful planning will help the agency to continue this success into the future.
In closing, we welcome the review of the Access to Information Act and will fully support and adopt any new measures that are introduced by the Treasury Board Secretariat in support of the amendments to the act.
I want to thank you, Mr. Chair, for the opportunity for us to provide input to you today. We look forward to questions that members may have.