Evidence of meeting #58 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 office.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
NDP
Karine Trudel NDP Jonquière, QC
Thank you.
My apologies for being late. I was with some people from Italian television. It was time-consuming and a bit difficult owing to interpretation. I already have difficulty with my English, so you can imagine what Italian is like for me.
Thank you for your presentation, Mr. Therrien. I read the report and would like to go back to the questions my colleagues asked. We were talking earlier about the rate of reporting, which will soon be mandatory. I would like to know how that will affect your staff, whether financially or in terms of human resources.
Do you have the necessary resources right now or do you need more?
Privacy Commissioner of Canada, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
You are referring to companies reporting privacy breaches, which will become mandatory under the provisions that will soon come into force. Under the act, companies will be required to report major breaches. So we will have to look at those reports. Companies currently report on a voluntary basis. In the past three years, we received about a hundred reports each year.
Judging from experience when a similar provision was implemented in Alberta, we expect a significant increase in the volume of incident reports when the provisions come into force.
We currently have the equivalent of two people working on these matters. If the volume increases substantially when the provisions come into force, that will create much more pressure on us. We will have to deal with that. We will see what the new volume is, but as it is we do not have much leeway. There might be problems in that regard.
As a rule, we do a fairly superficial review of those reports because we do not have the resources needed to do much more, except when the risk is especially high. In recent years, we conducted some investigations of that kind when the risk to privacy was high. So we do a lot of relatively superficial analyses and a much more detailed examination in certain exceptions.
Privacy Commissioner of Canada, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
Possibly.
Privacy Commissioner of Canada, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
Very good.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Blaine Calkins
Thank you very much.
This brings our rounds of questions to a close.
Commissioner, I want to thank you and Mr. Nadeau and Ms. Kosseim for continuing to appear before the committee and answering our questions. I think we've learned something new and valuable here at the committee today. I'm looking forward to engaging with you in the future to handle some of the coming challenges. We look forward to seeing you at a future date.
Committee members, we'll suspend for a few minutes and then we'll resume with Madame Legault.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Blaine Calkins
Colleagues, we'll resume our meeting now in the second hour.
We are pleased to have with us from the Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada Madame Suzanne Legault, who is the commissioner. With her is Ms. Layla Michaud, who is the acting assistant commissioner for complaints resolution and compliance.
This is with regard to the main estimates.
Madame Commissioner, we have your opportunity for opening remarks, and then we'll proceed to our questions. Welcome again to our committee.
Suzanne Legault Information Commissioner of Canada, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you very much for the opportunity to discuss the main estimates for the Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada.
The Access to Information Act establishes the Office of the Information Commissioner as the first level of independent review of institutions' handling of access to information requests. I am required by law to investigate all complaints within my jurisdiction. These investigations are conducted in an efficient, fair, and confidential manner.
My office receives two kinds of complaints. Administrative complaints relate to matters such as delays in responding to requests. Refusal complaints relate to matters such as the application of exemptions used to withhold information.
The fiscal year that just closed was one of significant activity for the Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada. On the investigations front, the main areas of focus were the implementation of a simplified investigation process, with supporting advisory notices; the roll-out of interest-based negotiation and mediation for investigations; and putting into operation the special allotment funding received as part of last year's Supplementary Estimates B. I appeared before this committee in November on those supplementary estimates and would again like to thank this committee for supporting my request for additional funding.
This year, the overall main estimates for my office are $11.2 million, including employee benefit plans. The main estimates allotment for 2017-18 is in line with amounts received in previous years without the special purpose allotment. Given the number of complaints we receive, this amount is not sufficient to carry out the mandate of the Office of the Information Commissioner and to serve Canadians adequately.
Let me elaborate.
The number of requests made under the Access to Information Act has been increasing every year, as have complaints to the Office of the Information Commissioner. In 2010-11, when I became information commissioner, the government received approximately 41,000 requests. Last year, the government received 75,000. This is an 81% increase.
For the past two years, the office has received over 2,000 complaints per year. In addition to the continuous rise in complaints, there are other factors and risks that must be taken into account when forecasting our workload for the upcoming year. These include an anticipated surge in complaints related to Phoenix pay issues and the declining performance of institutions.
The inventory of complaints remains an issue for the office. In this past year, with the addition of the temporary funding the office resolved 2,245 complaints; however, the total number of open complaints at the close of the year still stood at more than 2,800, a reduction from the beginning of the fiscal year but nonetheless quite a significant number. This number will undoubtedly grow, under the current resource levels.
Without additional funding, the OIC does not have the capacity to absorb the expected increase in complaints and related workload. This is especially problematic as I continue to see complaints that demonstrate a culture of delay across the system and of exemptions applied in an overbroad manner.
I have put in place a plan to continue to safeguard the right of access under these circumstances. This is especially important given that the Office of the Information Commissioner will soon be in a period of transition as my mandate comes to an end. This plan will ensure corporate stability and transfer of knowledge.
For the coming year, I have the following key priorities.
First, we will continue to capitalize on the momentum gained last year as part of our simplified investigation process and interest-based negotiation. We will also continue to review the inventory of complaints to develop strategies for grouping complaints by subject matter or institution to maximize efficiencies. For example, we began a strategy last year that deals with complaints against Canada Post.
Second, we will leverage IT tools to enhance efficiencies. Examples of these tools include an online complaint form, optical character recognition software to ease searching through voluminous records, and the use of dashboards for investigation and litigation files.
Third, we will continue to hold the government to account on its promise to be open by default, and particularly to amend the Access to Information Act. I note that the government was recently elected to the steering committee of the Open Government Partnership. I'm hopeful that this will encourage the government to lead by example and take bold action on openness and transparency, including transforming the outdated Access to Information Act into a model law for other countries to follow.
Finally, I am in discussions with the government for another round of supplemental funding so that the successes of 2016-17 will not be lost in the year to come.
Fiscal year 2017-18 is shaping up to be one of change and challenge. Additional funding is necessary so the office can meet the challenges that are coming. However, if supplementary funding is not forthcoming, I know the Office of the Information Commissioner will do its best to provide exemplary service to Canadians under the current resourcing levels.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
We are ready to answer your questions.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Blaine Calkins
Thank you, Madame Legault.
We'll now proceed to our first round of questions, for up to seven minutes, and we'll start with Mr. Saini.
Liberal
Raj Saini Liberal Kitchener Centre, ON
Good afternoon, Madam Commissioner. It's always a pleasure to have you here.
While we're looking through your departmental plan, I wonder about your mentioning that you would be completing your security audit in the upcoming year. Can you give us a little information about the security audit, what is behind it, and what sorts of changes you're thinking about making going forward as a result of it?
Information Commissioner of Canada, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
Yes. As you know, we have an audit and verification committee at the OIC. We are following the government's policies on audit and evaluation, and this past year was the time for us to do an IT audit.
We did one on two fronts. We did the security of our systems, but we also did the security of our information management of high-security information holdings. Madame Michaud led that exercise, so she can give you some details about it, but the audit was completed.
There were some changes recommended, particularly around governance, concerning policy instruments and matters such as that. But the actual IT systems, the security systems, the management of information of high-security information holdings were all in very good order. It was mostly around governance—the policy documents—which is not unusual for small organizations.
Perhaps Ms. Michaud would like to add something.
Layla Michaud Acting Assistant Commissioner, Complaints Resolution and Compliance, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
Actually, it was a very good audit. We were very pleased with the results. We began to implement the recommendations right away.
As Commissioner Legault said, it was mainly about governance. For example, policies were in place but were not signed. Policies were in place but were not approved by the executive committee. Almost all the problems are fixed now.
Information Commissioner of Canada, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
If the committee wishes, we're more than happy to share the actual audit, the results and the action plan that we've put in place. We have no difficulty doing that.
Liberal
Raj Saini Liberal Kitchener Centre, ON
That's great.
I also wanted to talk to you about providing an update to the committee on the backlog of cases you were working on. I know that we provided temporary funding as a committee. Can you give us some background in terms of how many you were able to clear, how many are left over? How did that work? Was it enough money? Did we give you too much?
Information Commissioner of Canada, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
We got around $3 million. The objective we had to fulfill was to close 2,361 files. By March 31 we had closed 2,245—a gap of 116.
We haven't finished all of the calculations, because the fiscal year is not quite closed, but we're looking at a lapse of about $400,000 out of the $3 million that we were not able to spend and that will go back into the system. As of today, we have closed an additional 113 files.
We achieved 95% of our results by March 31, even though we received the funding extremely late. It was extremely labour intensive, I must say, to manage all that—the extra volume, those extra files, the extra funding, the extra hiring, the extra managing, the training, and so on.
We had a very busy year, so we were a little bit short on the total. We were able to keep some of the consultants, and now we're three short, four weeks after.
Liberal
Raj Saini Liberal Kitchener Centre, ON
Between 2014-15 and 2015-16, the median turnaround time for refusal cases went up from 128 days to 163 days. Is there a reason for that?
Information Commissioner of Canada, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
We've managed to reduce the turnaround times significantly year over year. Investigations are not a perfect science.
I can assure you that when we did the long gun registry case or the political interference cases, it took us more than a year to do them. We have some files that we close in just a few days. It's not a perfect science, but we measure the turnaround times.
You were asking about the progress with the funding this year. The progress on the median turnaround time is quite significant. Last year the median turnaround time, once the case had been assigned, was 48 days. Now it's 36. For refusals, it was 163. This year, with the additional funding, we were at 70 days to complete a file.
Liberal
Raj Saini Liberal Kitchener Centre, ON
Okay, that's fine.
But here, for 2018, you've increased the average time to nine months, or 270 days. Was that to put in a buffer?
Information Commissioner of Canada, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
I'm just going to go through the departmental plan to see what you're looking at.
Liberal
Raj Saini Liberal Kitchener Centre, ON
Where it says, “Median turnaround...for refusal cases”, your target is nine months, but your average is 163 days.
Information Commissioner of Canada, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
Overall, we consider that a refusal file lasts about nine months, but we've been trying to reduce that all the time. That's the median turnaround time. You're going to have outliers on each side. That's why.
These were our performance targets, 90 days and nine months, which was about the average. You can see that we're quite below that on the median. But we will have cases that will take a lot longer than nine months.
Liberal
Raj Saini Liberal Kitchener Centre, ON
I have a quick question. Just on the capital assets, it seems like last year there were more purchases of capital assets compared to this year. What did that comprise?
