Information & Ethics Committee on Oct. 23rd, 2017

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

Yes. You had indicated that the Information Commissioner should have authority over the proactive disclosure regime, which I think proposed section 91 explicitly precludes.

[Heather Scoffield]

Right.

First, off the top, I wonder why proactive disclosure is even in there. Do you need legislation to be proactive? Can't you just do it?

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

Well, governments can do it.

[Heather Scoffield]

They are doing it in some instances.

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

Yes, but I think the idea is to handcuff all future governments to ensure that certain information is proactively disclosed.

The other idea, and I'm not sure we've gone as far as perhaps we could, is to reduce the number of requests in the request-based system, which is broken, as we've heard multiple times over the course of our own study, and to ensure that if there is certain information that is constantly requested, that it is being proactively disclosed and we're able to soften the burden on the individuals in each department.

[Heather Scoffield]

That would make sense if there were strict rules that would actually force the government to do it as quickly as we can get it.

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

You're saying that timelines are the concern there.

[Heather Scoffield]

It's not just timelines; it has to be accompanied by the ability of users of the act to say what they want. It's not enough for the government to just say, “We're going to give you this information”; it has to come from the other side too. We have to be able to interact with the system to say what we would like to see.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Zimmer]

That's time. Thank you.

Next up is MP Kent, for seven minutes.

[Peter Kent, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Thank you, Chair, and thanks to you both for being here.

My first questions are to Mr. Di Gangi.

With regard to honour of the crown and section 35, is the deep historic data that is essential to the work that you do and ATI all digitized, or is much of it in original documents in various forms stored in different parts of Canada with INAC?

[Peter Di Gangi]

Sir, it's a bit of both. Library and Archives Canada has been working on a digitization program, but they have a lot of records to go through. You're talking about miles of shelves of documents. At INAC, it's the same thing; they're talking about digitizing. One of the concerns about INAC digitizing is the destruction of documents as they digitize.

For historical context, when you're doing a court case or a claim, you need to look at the entire file to get a sense of it, so there is a bit of concern if the process of digitization is used as an opportunity to remove some materials from the record.

By and large, most of what we're dealing with are physical hard copies of records.

[Peter Kent, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Would you recommend, because of the unique relationship that you have in terms of access to information and a single department, that there be a differentiation between unrestricted access to certain historic records and information related to the performance of the government of the day or to decisions or policy-making plans of the government of the day that might or might not embarrass the government?

[Peter Di Gangi]

I think there is a distinction to be made there. It could be made, perhaps, but who gets to define that? If it's done through consultation, there may be a way to address that idea. Part of the problem is that a lot of these claims relate to government policy and decision-making of previous governments.

[Peter Kent, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

With regard to the current government and the recommendations that we will make again to the Liberal government, what are your impressions with regard to your specific ATI situation and with regard to the splitting of the department?

[Peter Di Gangi]

That's an interesting question. We're still thinking about it. I think it took everybody by surprise. I must say that over the past 10 to 15 years of access to information, the indigenous affairs department has gotten worse and worse. It hasn't gotten better under this government; it's gotten worse. We've had some positive and cordial discussions with INAC officials, but nothing productive yet in terms of changing that situation. To be fair, I think the officials are scrambling to figure out how they're going to manage this division. What are they going to do with the files? They have to deal with staff. They have to deal with files. Who gets what? Where does it go?

We've seen before historically that when departments are divided up, not everything goes where it should, and a hundred years later, you might be looking for something that got sent to the wrong....

[Peter Kent, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Okay. Thank you.

Ms. Scoffield, you spoke of the budgetary considerations before there was the prospect of much lower prices per request. I'm just wondering, with regard to management of CP's budget, are all of the requests that your individual reporters may want to make channelled through you or through an individual who decides which have the priority to minimize the burden that may be imposed by your bureau alone on a department?

[Heather Scoffield]

No, actually, this is one area in which we leave it wide open to reporters to ask as much as they like. We have tried to streamline, but because different people ask different questions in different ways and come up with different results, I think it's better to leave it wide open. It's open season.

[Peter Kent, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

You heard some of the questions to the previous witnesses about the capacity of departments sometimes to manage the volume of questions. I suspect I know the answer to this question, but do you believe that there should be a question quota for individual organizations?

[Heather Scoffield]

Absolutely not. There is an almost infinite amount of information within the government, and it's only by asking persistent questions that we can begin to have a decent understanding.

Just to go back to the previous round of questions, if the government is concerned about the volume of work it has to do in answering all their questions, then just start releasing that information proactively beforehand so we don't have to jump through these hoops.

[Peter Kent, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Right.

I don't have the legal expertise that my friend Mr. Erskine-Smith has, but with regard to that characterization of questions as vexatious, I suspect and I believe from past experience that sometimes the volume of questions from an individual requester might be seen as vexatious because they're shotgun requests, as you said, made by someone who does not know exactly what information might be divulged but who is asking as part of a fairly broad hunt. Do you think it's unfair to describe shotgun requests, high-volume requests by a single requester, as vexatious in themselves?

[Heather Scoffield]

Yes, I do find that a bit unfair. There's no doubt that frequently we don't know exactly what we're looking for, so we have to ask a broad question, but it's also in our own best interest just to manage the amount of information we get coming into the bureau and keeping it under control. We have developed techniques over the years to make sure we're not swamped with information. We do it for ourselves.

We'll ask for a list of reports because we don't have the names of the reports, and then we'll choose the ones that we want from the list when we get it back, rather than just asking for whatever. We certainly don't aim to just go on a wild fishing expedition.

[Peter Kent, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

I have one last brief question. We heard of meeting easily” the 30-day request period some years ago, decades ago. What today do you believe should be considered a reasonable request responding period?

[Heather Scoffield]

I believe the 30 days is appropriate. So much of the information is digitized now. Why can't you just do a search and find it for us?

[Peter Kent, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Zimmer]

Thank you, MP Kent.

Next up is MP Cullen, for seven minutes.