Evidence of meeting #138 for Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was review.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Information Commissioner, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
Do you mean the well-founded ones?
Information Commissioner, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
I think it was more before. We are now getting to that because we're going to be issuing an order, and we know that the order is the last drop, when we know we can't agree with the institution. At that point, I don't want to waste any more time negotiating or talking or explaining to the institution why we don't agree with them, so an order is issued. That 16% is representative of the orders that I have issued.
Liberal
Darren Fisher Liberal Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS
Is there any thought that some of these unfounded complaints are malicious in nature or a political tactic?
Information Commissioner, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
There's a new disposition in the act that an institution is allowed to refuse to respond to an access request if it's vexatious, made in bad faith, but they have to ask my permission. In the last six years, I think I've received 49 cases like this, but we only agreed to 11 of those. It's not that often that a request is vexatious or made in bad faith.
Liberal
Darren Fisher Liberal Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS
Do you expect the number to go up in the coming years? Based on what you said, it sounds like you think it will stay fairly static.
Information Commissioner, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
The number of complaints goes up with the number of access requests being made. It's proportionate. The more access requests are made—and Canadians know their rights, so they're asking for more information—the more we get complaints, because the institutions are overwhelmed with the number of requests. They don't have the resources to respond to that number of access requests, which keeps going up every year.
When I ask for finance for me, I can respond to the complaints that I receive as much as I can, but institutions are also in need of resources, better processes, and better technology to respond to that increase in requests.
Liberal
Darren Fisher Liberal Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS
Last year, the Conservatives voted against the funding for your office.
Do you worry that by asking for funding directly from Parliament instead of from government, there could be less accountability for funding for your office?
Information Commissioner, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
I've asked for funding for the last 10 years—and not only me, but the former commissioners—and it's been approved three times in 10 years. We don't usually know if it's going to be accepted or not until it's in the budget.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Brassard
That concludes our first hour.
We have six-minute interventions, and then we will conclude on that.
I understand that Mr. Cooper and Mr. Barrett will be splitting their time. We're going to start with Mr. Cooper for six minutes.
Go ahead, sir.
Conservative
Michael Cooper Conservative St. Albert—Edmonton, AB
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Perhaps I'll make a starting point to correct Mr. Fisher. Conservatives voted non-confidence in this rotten and corrupt government. We didn't vote against additional funding for the commissioner.
Ms. Maynard, is it correct that your office sought $6 million in interim funding from this government in 2023?
Information Commissioner, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
In 2023, we requested $3 million.
Conservative
Information Commissioner, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
Since 2018, every year we have asked for $3 million in temporary funding. In 2020, it was permanent funding that was given to us, and since then we haven't received any funding additional to that.
Conservative
Information Commissioner, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
I haven't received any responses.
Conservative
Michael Cooper Conservative St. Albert—Edmonton, AB
I would submit that that is the equivalent of being turned down, if you haven't received any response.
On a different note, the public accounts committee has been seized with the Liberals' green slush fund scandal. One of the issues that we have been probing was the appointment of conflict-ridden chair Annette Verschuren. There is evidence that Navdeep Bains rigged the process to appoint a Liberal insider, Ms. Verschuren, as chair of SDTC, better known as the green slush fund. The committee ordered that the PCO turn over all emails and all documents between the PCO, the industry minister's office—then minister Bains—the PMO, as well as the Department of Industry. Incredibly, not a single email could be found. We're talking about the appointment of the chair, someone who is responsible for overseeing one billion taxpayer dollars. One of the issues identified by PCO in explaining why they couldn't find any emails was that many of the records were transitory in nature and therefore had been destroyed.
Do you have any thoughts on the existing policy around transitory records and whether that policy needs to be re-examined?
Information Commissioner, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
The policy on records is administered by the Treasury Board, and it's the same thing for retention of emails and documents. I've always said, and former commissioners as well, that there is a need for a legislative duty to document decisions. I cannot comment on this particular situation, as we may have a complaint that we may have to investigate, but there is definitely a need—especially nowadays, with the technology that we're facing—to document decisions that have an impact on decisions that are being made in the government.
Right now, there is no such thing as a legislative duty to document. It's something that we had recommended as well in our submissions for our legislative review.
Conservative
Conservative
Michael Barrett Conservative Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON
Commissioner Maynard, yesterday on X, Matt Gurney, who's a journalist at readtheline.ca, wrote, “A U.S. federal agency gave me a detailed response to a question I sent today. It included more info than I asked for and a statement I could attribute to an official. Response time was 2.5 hours. Sigh.” Why is it possible for a Canadian journalist to extract a response like that from the U.S. government, and no journalist can extract anything like that from the Canadian government?
Information Commissioner, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
I cannot comment on that particular situation. I can tell you that some journalists are getting information quickly from this government as well, but there's also a lot of frustration when institutions are not responding with a quick response.
There's a difference between a media request and an access to information request. I'm responsible for the access—
Conservative
Michael Barrett Conservative Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON
There are ATIPs in this country that are older than my children. My children are 11, 10, eight, six and four years old, and there are ATIPs older than each of them. Why?
Information Commissioner, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
Again, I think the system is overwhelmed. The act is antiquated. We're dealing with institutions that are reviewing papers by hand, removing duplicates by hand. There's a lot to be done.
Even within my institution, I had a backlog of files that were the age of your kids. Fortunately, because we became more efficient, we have reduced that age, but it's still not sufficient. We still need more resources to respond to access requests in a timely manner, because, as you mentioned, the information has to be relevant. When you ask for information, you want it now; you don't want it in 10 years, unless you are doing a history book. It is unfortunate that this is the situation in Canada.