Mr. Chair, my name is Michael Olsen. I'm the director general of corporate affairs and chief privacy officer at Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada. Accompanying me today is Audrey White. She's the director of access to information and privacy at IRCC.
I thank you for welcoming us here today and giving us an opportunity to discuss Bill C-58, an act to amend the access to information and privacy acts. IRCC has had the opportunity to appear before this committee on two previous occasions to discuss this review.
Mr. Chair, I want to discuss our department's performance first and then move into a discussion about the proposed amendments to the act.
In 2012-2013, the department received 30,124 ATIP requests. Since that time, the number of requests has more than doubled. Over the course of 2016-2017, we received more than 63,000 ATIP requests, representing a 23% increase from the previous year. For the current year, we are again seeing a 23% increase in the number of requests received.
In 2016-2017, our last year of reporting, IRCC received more access to information requests than any other federal institution. IRCC represents approximately half of all ATIP requests received by the Government of Canada.
Despite this increase in volume, IRCC was able to maintain a compliance rate of 79% for access to information requests and 68% for privacy requests. The ATIP division has been efficient in managing the volume of requests received in order to meet the legislative deadline.
IRCC has launched a number of initiatives in an effort to improve its performance and to address current challenges. Although these initiatives have increased productivity year over year, we continue to create strategies aimed at decreasing our backlog and improving our compliance rate.
The majority of ATIP requests received and processed within our department concern immigration case files. The department holds personal information on millions of individuals and collects significant amounts of personal information annually, due to applications for citizenship, passports, permanent and temporary residence. This in turn has a direct effect on the growing number of ATIP requests received by IRCC.
Mr. Chair, a total of 165 official complaints against the IRCC were filed to the information and privacy commissioners last year, representing less than 1% of all requests processed during that period. The duty to assist is taken seriously at IRCC. The ATIP division notifies requesters of possible delays in service. We act proactively to minimize the number of complaints.
ATIP also offers diverse training in person and online to IRCC employees on the importance of safeguarding privacy and protecting personal information. Mr. Chair, as the chief privacy officer at IRCC, I'm pleased to announce that we'll be having our second annual privacy day on November 1. This will provide a forum to spotlight key privacy issues in a complex and rapidly changing technological environment. Most importantly, privacy day demonstrates our continuous efforts to develop a culture of privacy institution-wide as well as our commitment to increased privacy vigilance. At IRCC, protecting privacy and personal information is paramount.
Bill C-58 provides new proposed subsection 6.1(1), which provides government institutions the ability to refuse requests that are vexatious or in bad faith or missing key details. This new power is discretionary, and IRCC will continue to exercise judgment appropriate to the spirit of the legislation.
As I mentioned, IRCC is committed to the “duty to assist” principles embedded in the act. We already process requests that lack specific details, either because they are unknown, unnecessary, or unspecified. Where necessary, ATIP works with requesters to clarify the scope of the request and to obtain missing information. We would only consider refusal in exceptional circumstances where, for example, all “duty to assist” options had been exhausted, processing the request would be impossible, or processing the request would impose a significant burden on IRCC that could not be reasonably managed through time extensions or other provisions of the act.
Mr. Chair, I thank you again for the invitation to provide IRCC's view on this important subject and for welcoming us here today.
I look forward to any questions you or the committee have. Thank you.