Information & Ethics Committee on May 14th, 2021

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

I call this meeting to order.

This is meeting number 35 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics.

I'd like to remind committee members that today's meeting is going to be webcast and will be available via the House of Commons website.

Today we're studying the main estimates 2021-22, including vote 1 under the Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying and votes 1 and 5 under the Offices of the Information and Privacy Commissioners of Canada.

Today our witness to carry us through the first hour is Caroline Maynard, who is the Information Commissioner of Canada. We'd like to welcome the commissioner and turn it directly over to her to begin with an opening statement, and then we'll have some questions from members.

Thanks so much for being here.

[Caroline Maynard, Information Commissioner of Canada, Offices of the Information and Privacy Commissioners of Canada]

Thank you so much.

Thank you for inviting me to appear before you today.

It has been over a year since we last spoke, and I am pleased to be here to answer questions about my Office's portion of the main estimates.

Generally speaking, in the past, our figures have not changed that much from year to year. However, you may notice that this year there is an increase to my permanent funding. I received this as part of the supplementary estimates (B). This has made a significant difference to the Office of the Information Commissioner's operations.

In past years, the temporary nature of the additional funding granted to my office annually to address the backlog of complaints has prevented me from permanently staffing a number of positions on my investigations team. Year after year my predecessor and I were forced to request the funding anew.

Permanent funding has at last allowed me to adopt longer-term approaches to human resources planning in order to ensure stability within my office and contend with the volume of complaints that we are investigating. We are capitalizing on this opportunity.

I have used this funding to begin staffing processes that, once concluded, will result in a net gain of 26 full-time equivalents, 21 of whom will be working in the investigations and governance sector. Some of these new employees have already started on investigations at the OIC. Others will soon be joining us. I look forward to welcoming them to my team.

Together we will continue to work to uphold the right of access, which is compromised due to the pressures we see within the system, a situation I highlighted even before the pandemic but one which I believe, with strong leadership and bold actions, including voluntary disclosure and proper information management, we can address.

I would just end with the assurance to you all that my Office's commitment to transparency and fair and efficient investigations endures. We could always do more with more resources, but we have proven to be innovative with what we have and we have demonstrated great adaptability, particularly in this time of upheaval.

It is a great source of pride to me that since the very beginning of the pandemic, the Office has been able to maintain its operations, and indeed continue to innovate, even as we all dealt with the restrictions imposed upon us.

This bodes well for the future of the organization.

I am happy to stay and I will answer the questions you have for me today.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

Thank you, Commissioner.

We're going to begin with Monsieur Gourde for six minutes.

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Lévis—Lotbinière, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for joining us, Commissioner. It is always a pleasure to have you here.

It seems to me that the last time we spoke, we talked about delays in processing complaints.

Has the situation improved in the last year, despite what we are going through?

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

Commissioner, I believe you're still on mute.

[Caroline Maynard]

Sorry. I didn't think I put myself on mute.

I'm sorry.

Mr. Gourde, it's not better than before, but it's not worse either.

I am pleased that we have been able to keep up the pace at the Office. We have received over 4,000 complaints again this year and we managed to close 4,060 files, despite the fact that we have all been working from home since March of last year.

My goal was for the backlog not to increase. So I tried to keep the number of outgoing files equal to the number of incoming files. Ideally, we would have completed more. But as you know, while I have received additional resources, this has not necessarily been the case for the other agencies. Our investigations are actually limited by the speed at which those agencies can respond to our requests for representation. This year, our ability to close the files was impacted.

Despite this, I think we are on the right track.

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Lévis—Lotbinière, QC]

Based on your experience over the past year with the pandemic, do you think that telework will be possible for some members of your staff in the future?

[Caroline Maynard]

Yes, definitely. The pandemic forced us to adopt new ways of working.

We were fortunate that all my employees had access to their computers at home and everyone has been connected since last March. In addition, we have learned to live with new ways of working, including electronic signatures and electronic mail. Many documents are now sent electronically. This has made our job easier. We are realizing that we are able to work from home, and my employees have told me in several surveys that they would like to have that flexibility when we get back to normal in the next few months.

We will probably offer some flexibility, a hybrid work arrangement. Some days we will work from home and some days from the office. This will allow us to have some collegiality and to meet together. We miss that very much. The work itself and the efficiency of the employees have not changed.

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Lévis—Lotbinière, QC]

I thought I heard that there were 21 additional permanent positions. Did I understand correctly?

Perhaps the interpretation was playing tricks on me, I'm not sure.

[Caroline Maynard]

Yes, we finally received additional permanent funding last summer. That allowed us to plan to hire 27 new staff members, including 21 new investigators.

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Lévis—Lotbinière, QC]

So with these new hires, you will be able to do the work for the next five years, right?

[Caroline Maynard]

We hope so.

It's really something that I wanted to do. The temporary funding that we had for the last four years allowed us to hire consultants, but we had to let them go at the end of the year. We were not able to keep our employees because we could not offer them permanent employment. Our goal now is to retain our employees and train them to be part of our team for the long term.

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Lévis—Lotbinière, QC]

We know that training employees takes time. Once they are trained, they become an indispensable resource.

I have no more questions.

Thank you, Commissioner.

[Caroline Maynard]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

Thank you, Mr. Gourde.

Commissioner, I'm wondering if you can lift your microphone away from your face a little bit. That may reduce the static. Thank you, Commissioner.

Ms. Shanahan, we'll turn to you for the next round of questions.

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

Thank you very much, Chair.

I just want to say that it sounds like you've had some good news, Madam Maynard, but I'd like to have a little bit more detail about how the additional funding is going to be allocated to help you complete your work.

You were mentioning in your response to Monsieur Gourde how the hybrid workplace has turned out to be a benefit and something to be considered. Is that going to alter some of your spending plans? Can you shed some light on that for us?

[Caroline Maynard]

We were going to be short in location for 27 new employees, so we were looking at having extra rental space. However, because of the hybrid possibility and the flexibility that telework and working remotely are giving us, we see that we won't need the additional rental space, so the money will be able to be spent on people and on innovation in technology.

We are definitely moving to a cloud environment at my office so that we can have easy access to all of our documents. We're scanning all the files so that we don't have paper anymore and so that people can work from home easily.

It also is going to give us the flexibility of hiring people outside of the national capital region, which is great, because we've always had difficulties recruiting in this field. Now we can have people in Toronto, Vancouver and London, Ontario. This has been a great opportunity for my office in terms of hiring and retaining all these people.

As for the $3 million we received permanently, I was getting it every year for the last five years, but, as I said earlier, it was always a temporary measure. Now we finally are able to invest long term in our employees and in our infrastructure so that we will definitely be getting some long-term gain.

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

That is very interesting.

You mentioned having less of a need to have employees in Ottawa itself, where we all know the rental market and the real estate market are heating up. As it is, though, with those other centres, is it possible that you could have employees in smaller centres and in rural areas as well?

I'm just throwing that out to you, because I think we're blue-skying a lot of ideas here.

[Caroline Maynard]

We're definitely looking at all of the different options.

Right now we're not looking at getting more buildings or rental space, because people are enjoying working from home. However, I am told as well that people are missing their colleagues, the coffee talk and the lunches, and being able to to look to the colleague beside them for help sometimes. Right now it's a little bit harder. You have to call people. You have to send them an email or do a live chat.

We're looking also at using Zoom or Teams meetings—video conferencing, and all that technology—to help everybody learn and be more efficient and be happy working from home or at the office. I think having both will be a positive thing.

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

Excellent. Flexibility is the key, I think.

I want to understand a little bit better. You mentioned that you received additional funding. I just want to clarify the amount. Was it $4 million or $3 million?

[Caroline Maynard]

[Inaudible—Editor] million.

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

Pardon?

[Caroline Maynard]

It is $3 million.

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

We know that budget 2021 proposes to provide additional funding over the next five years. I have the amount of $12.8 million, but maybe you'll correct me on that.

The idea there is to “support further improvements to the online Access to Information and Personal Information Request Service, to accelerate the proactive release of information to Canadians, and to support completion of the Access to Information Act review”.

I'd like to have your comments on that, particularly the access. Will there be increased online access, and will that benefit Canadians who are not necessarily in Ottawa to easily access that?

[Caroline Maynard]

My understanding is that the additional $12 million was given to the Treasury Board, the department responsible for administering the Access to Information Act and the process and systems.

We didn't receive any of that money. It's for the government to better their system and improve their online request system. I don't know what the plan for the Treasury Board is with respect to the money specifically, but I know they are putting together a new portal where Canadians will be able to make their access requests, and they will also receive the documents through that portal. I think that's what they are looking into: making it easier for Canadians to get information.

I'm sure if you ask Minister Duclos and his team to tell you exactly what their plan is, they will be happy to answer. We didn't really receive any of the additional information on that.