Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Good morning, my name is Aaron Wudrick. I'm the federal director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. I'm very pleased to appear today, and I thank the committee for its invitation to speak about prospective reforms of the Access to Information Act.
The Canadian Taxpayers Federation is a federally incorporated, not-for-profit citizens group founded in 1990, with more than 89,000 supporters nationwide. We are dedicated to three key principles in which we focus all our advocacy, those being lower taxes, less waste, and accountable government. It is, of course, on the third point of accountable government that I make my comments today.
My remarks are largely built around the recommendations made by the Information Commissioner, the large majority of which the Canadian Taxpayers Federation supports, and which of course serve as an excellent basis for any discussion of reform. If anything, our main critique of the commissioner's report is that, with 85 separate recommendations, there are simply so many that it is unlikely that each one will receive sufficiently thorough individual examination. I do want to take the opportunity, too, to echo the remarks of Mr. Holman. We're certainly in support of everything he said today.
In our view, most recommendations for ATI reform fall into one of two broad categories, those being the scope of the application of the act and the administration of access to information requests. We propose some key principles to guide any reform of the Access to Information Act.
With respect to the scope of the act's application, as a general principle the federal Access to Information Act should cover all of the federal government, including both government-controlled and government-funded areas. The principle here is quite simple—where taxpayers' money is being spent, the public deserves accountability and transparency. Many government entities, including the House of Commons and the Senate, are currently not covered by the act. There are others, which are relatively obscure to everyday Canadians, such as the commissioner for federal judicial affairs, which is probably unknown to 99% of Canadians even though its budget is over $500 million a year. Other little-known entities that are partly arm's length from the government, such as the Canada Health Infoway, which has received more than $2 billion in federal government funding since 2001, are also not currently covered by the act.
Additionally, proactive disclosure should include all information that is in the public interest. This can be achieved by way of a public interest override applicable to all exemptions, of which we also believe there are too many. Of particular interest to the CTF, in our role as a spending watchdog, is the proposal that third-party exemptions may not be applied to information about grants, loans, and contributions given by government institutions to third parties.
Now, many of these principles are encapsulated in several of the commissioner's recommendations, including recommendation 1.1, which would extend coverage of the act to entities funded or controlled in full or in part by government, entities that serve a public function, and institutions established by statute; and recommendation 1.4, which would extend it to the Board of Internal Economy, the Library of Parliament, and other entities that support Parliament.
Recommendation 4.1 proposes that a general public interest override be applicable to all exemptions to replace some of the other narrower overrides, and recommendation 4.19 proposes that, as I mentioned, third-party exemptions may not be applied to information about grants and loans.
Another recommendation of interest to us is recommendation 4.25, which proposes that “the solicitor-client exemption may not be applied to aggregate total amounts of legal fees”. That is to say, if you make a request about the cost to government of pursuing a particular legal case, the itemized information about that case is still confidential, but the global cost, the total cost, would be publicly available.
Turning to the second area, the administration of access to information requests, there's been considerable attention focused on the five-dollar access fee. Our view is that a five-dollar fee is an affordable, reasonable fee that does make sense insofar as it can prevent frivolous request-filing. However, the additional fees for research and production of documents should be eliminated or steeply curtailed, as they can be prohibitive.
Delays are also a concern for us. We are a group that files a lot of ATI requests. We have discovered that delays are the norm rather than the exception. We find that there are delays simply because the departments choose not to have the resources in place to complete the requests within 30 days. Given that there are no consequences for failing to meet the 30-day limit, it's not surprising that compliance with that limit is fairly lax.
With respect to the data, as mentioned by Mr. Holman also, they are often not provided, and in our experience, never provided in a digital-friendly format, like Excel files or CSV files. Information is, in fact, often very hard to read. It seems to have been printed and photocopied multiple times, so you can barely read it.
On this front some of the key recommendations by the Information Commissioner include recommendation 2.7, which proposes that institutions be required by default to provide the information in a digital, open, reusable, accessible format; and recommendation 3.1, which proposes that the extensions be limited “to the extent strictly necessary, to a maximum of 60 days”, so twice the 30-day limit. As well as recommendation 3.10, which would require specific reasons be provided as to why an extension is required.
In summary, it's fair to say that in our view the act is simply too narrow and littered with too many exemptions. We very much welcome the new government's promises with respect to increased accessibility and openness, and look forward to seeing it matched with concrete legislative action.
Thank you very much, and I'm happy to take questions.