Information & Ethics Committee on May 17th, 2016

[Robert Mundie]

That's a very good question but a difficult one to measure.

We did take steps to deal with a surge of requests on travel history. It's a fairly complex set of databases that need to be accessed. Through the Customs Act, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada has access to that database. It gets the consent of the applicant and that information is retrieved by the department itself. We could look at ways of automating that process, and we've had some discussions internally about doing so.

The other thing in terms of proactive disclosure is that the President of the Treasury Board and the Treasury Board Secretariat have proactive disclosure of briefing notes going to the president and the secretary of the Treasury Board as one way of reducing the number of requests that come to us practically on a weekly basis, if not a daily one, for the lists of briefing notes that go forward. That is one means of reducing the number of requests, but it's very hard to quantify—

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

We're short on time. I'll maybe have to let Justice jump in, if they have an answer.

[Francine Farley]

As Mr. Mundie said, Treasury Board has guidelines on this. The spirit of the act is to provide access to government records, not to limit it. Access to information requests are supposed to complete the process and not limit it. It's about seeing what kinds of records can go online and view what can be provided in a quick fashion.

[The Chair, Conservative, Blaine Calkins]

Ms. McCulloch, I would be curious to hear your answer on this, given the different nature of Shared Services and the CBSA, which I think gets more private requests for information. You would be the exact opposite.

[Monique McCulloch]

The question was particularly about whether it would reduce the workload. The reality is that, whether it is a formal Access to Information Act request or something to be published on the departmental website as a result of proactive disclosure, the ATIP divisions are always asked to review the information to ensure that there is no information there that could prove injurious if released—injurious to the government, to the national interests, or to individuals. Are there cabinet confidences included? Is there solicitor-client information? Is there any vendor, private, or commercial information? We would still be reviewing the information.

[The Chair, Conservative, Blaine Calkins]

Good.

We have gone significantly overtime. That is partly my fault.

Mr. Saini, I will be very generous here as well.

[Raj Saini, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Mr. Marleau, I specifically want to ask some questions regarding your 2009 report, because you made some very clear recommendations. Recommendation number three was about the order-making power of the commissioner. We know that 68% of jurisdictions domestically and internationally have an order-making power for the Information Commissioner. The one jurisdiction I find intriguing is Newfoundland, where they have a hybrid model. I would like to get your viewpoint or commentary, because you were very clear in your 2009 recommendation that this is the way it should go. I would like you to give us a bit of background on what you feel should be the right approach, or the advantages and disadvantages of both.

[Robert Marleau]

I am familiar with the Newfoundland regime that is now in place. It hasn't been there that long. I don't want to be disparaging of Newfoundland and Labrador, in the context of its being a much smaller community, if I could put it that way, in terms of volume.

What I recommended for administrative matters only at the time was to try to introduce the order-making power. Before an order is issued, there are going to be all of the same types of conversations between ATIP officers and the investigations, if a complaint has come in. Then there may even be a level of mediation before you take it up a notch to adjudication, to order-making.

If you take Alberta as an example, I think they have had some 600 orders in their 13- or 14-year period when order-making powers were granted to the commissioner. That is about 30-odd a year. These become a body of reference for future requests. Every time an order is made, you are probably reducing further complaints, and certainly investigations, by just point outing that the order stands and is now part of the jurisprudence.

That was the rationale and is still the rationale I see. It is a progressive, if you like, process to finally, at one point, get to an order made.

[Raj Saini, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

The next question I have is for everybody else, if anyone can enlighten me on this. I am not sure, but some of your departments you must have requests from foreign governments or share information with foreign governments. Is that true or not?

CBSA...?

[Robert Mundie]

Not for the Access to Information Act....

[Raj Saini, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

No? Nobody shares any information for any requests.

[Robert Mundie]

It has to be a resident of Canada who makes a request.

[Raj Saini, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Okay. I will just go to question three.

In terms of education for the public, do your departments have any kind of proactive way of educating the public as to what your departments do, what information is available, and how they can seek that information?

[Marie-Claude Juneau]

As a public information measure, the Canada Revenue Agency recently updated its website with information on how to make access to information requests.

We have also indicated what kind of information can be obtained without making an access to information request. For example, we refer to My Account and My Account for Businesses as information sources. These are ways in which we try to inform, as much as possible, members of the public who need information from the Canada Revenue Agency.

Thank you.

[Raj Saini, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Does anybody else have any comments? I have one final quick question, if I may.

[The Chair, Conservative, Blaine Calkins]

Ms. McCulloch.

[Monique McCulloch]

All federal government institutions would have very similar public-facing websites that would provide Canadians with information about how they can obtain information, whether it's formally under ATIP legislation or informally through reference material, publications, and proactive disclosure. There's a wealth of information that's already readily available on departmental websites, and we pretty well all have the same look and feel on our public-facing websites.

[Raj Saini, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

I wanted to follow up on what my colleague Mr. Kelly said about proactive disclosure. We know the Pareto principle of 80-20. I'm just wondering if 80% of your work is from 20% of requesters or 20% of similar questions. For streamlining and efficiency, once you get a case and you see that there's a similarity between other requests that you're getting, would it not be better to more proactively disclose that? Would that be helpful, do you think?

[Marie-Claude Juneau]

At the CRA, the reverse is true: 80% of the requests we receive are from individuals. So it's not necessarily the kind of information we can openly disclose, given that it contains a lot of personal information.

As for the other 20% of requests, our agency has already put in place a virtual library that provides access to what we consider to be frequently requested documents. The library includes policies and information manuals. Proactive disclosure can be applied to that 20% of requests, but our landscape tends to involve personal information that we cannot disclose automatically.

[The Chair, Conservative, Blaine Calkins]

That takes us to the end of your time, Mr. Saini.

Colleagues, we have a parliamentary problem. We have 30-minute bells. We are currently at 28 minutes. I would need unanimous consent from the committee to continue. We could get through the last two questioners in the five-minute round. That should give us 10 minutes. That would still give us 18 or so minutes to get to the House.

Do I have unanimous consent to do that? If not, I have to adjourn the meeting

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Conservative, Blaine Calkins]

I have unanimous consent.

Okay, Mr. Kelly, five minutes, please.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

I lost my train of thought for a moment there with the vote coming up. Perhaps I could ask each of the coordinators to maybe let us know very quickly if they believe they currently have sufficient resources to address an opening up of ATIP requests to non-Canadians, which has been recommended.

[Robert Mundie]

I think it would be very difficult for us to estimate the number of access requests that would come in as a result of broadening the eligibility. We do know that non-Canadians do use Canadian agents to access information. So for us, it's very hard to estimate what the impact would be. Clearly, if you did open up access, there would be greater transparency, but there is a cost to that evidently.

[Marie-Josée Thivierge]

Similarly, I think one also has to be mindful that if the government were ultimately to open or broaden the scope of the act and at the same time make a number of other changes, one of the reasons that it's difficult now to assess what the impact would be is that it depends on what the cumulative effect of all the different changes would ultimately be.

If all were to remain the same and you were to indeed open it up, one would expect that the volume would go up and that, as a result, resources would be required. But if, on the whole, there are a number of changes being introduced and they balance off, then it could well be that we'd be able to manage within existing resource levels. But it's premature to say which it would be, unless we have a full understanding of the scope of the changes being made or being recommended.