Evidence of meeting #22 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 requests.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Parm Bains Liberal Steveston—Richmond East, BC
Finally, can you explain the challenge of declassification and what the government is doing about it?
Information Commissioner, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
The challenge is that we don't have, right now, a declassification program. In those cases we were talking about earlier, sometimes historical national security documents are still classified as secret or top secret and the process of going through an access request when those documents are considered sensitive is even harder for the analysts, and it's harder for our investigators because we have to demonstrate that the information is public or is already out there or that the sensitivity is not there anymore. It doesn't mean because it's classified it cannot be disclosed. It just adds that level of complexity.
Liberal
Parm Bains Liberal Steveston—Richmond East, BC
Your budget has increased by two-thirds since 2015. What has this increase allowed you to do?
Information Commissioner, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
It allowed me to finally hire about 25 new investigators full time instead of having consultants and letting them go at the end of the year. We now have retention plans and development plans, so we have a bigger group of investigators dealing with our cases.
Information Commissioner, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
Thank you.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Pat Kelly
All right.
Mr. Villemure, you have the floor for two and a half minutes.
Bloc
René Villemure Bloc Trois-Rivières, QC
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Ms. Maynard, thank you for your answers, which are always clear.
I only have two and a half minutes, so we have to try to keep it short.
Does the Commissioner's office's mission included educational component for both departments and agencies and the public? Essentially, do you educate people or departments about what constitutes privileged information or what is secret, for example? Do you provide that kind of training?
Information Commissioner, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
Yes, we do. The act that governs my office doesn't specifically give me that authority, unlike the act governing the Privacy Commissioner, for example, which gives him a mandate to educate on that issue, but I do it anyway, because I feel it's important.
That's one of the reasons we had asked for the authority to release our reports. We set guidelines and we put them up on our website. That way, people can see that we're consistent in our decisions and they better understand the process we follow in our investigations.
Bloc
René Villemure Bloc Trois-Rivières, QC
So the departments and the public have access to some of the education you provide.
Information Commissioner, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
Yes. We do it through guidelines.
Bloc
René Villemure Bloc Trois-Rivières, QC
All right.
In your own words, how would you define what should be considered a secret?
Information Commissioner, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
There are various reasons why information should be kept secret. Certainly, there are good reasons related to national security, but there are also times when the content of certain meetings in which people in government have decisions to make are kept secret because that lets them speak freely, without feeling they need to pay attention to what they are saying. However, as you said earlier, it should be limited to very sensitive documents or subjects.
Bloc
René Villemure Bloc Trois-Rivières, QC
Thank you very much.
To finish up, I'd like to talk about your investigation of IRCC, which was on your list of rogue agencies, so to speak. Is the slow pace at the Office of the Commissioner—I am not in any way targeting you when I say that—in turn slowing down the immigration system?
Information Commissioner, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
No. The complaints we receive about IRCC are usually addressed within 30 days. IRCC officials respond very quickly to requests; they do not get it done within 30 days, but they often do within 60 days. So oftentimes, someone will file a complaint with our office, but before we begin to review it, they receive the information they requested. So those are matters that we close quickly, as far as IRCC is concerned.
Information Commissioner, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
Thank you.
Conservative
NDP
Matthew Green NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Thank you.
I can't help but notice in your program expenditures your main estimates of 2021 were about $14.9 million, yet in these estimates that we have before us for 2022-23 they're about $14.1 million. I'm just wondering. We've talked about increases but we're showing a decrease here of around $815,000, and I've also noted that in your departmental plan you've talked about the increase of complaints, yet you don't seem to have plans to increase your human resources over the next three years.
How do you reconcile those two things?
Information Commissioner, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
Our funding was based on closing 4,000 cases approximately per year. Like I said, our complaints are now almost double that. What we did is invest in our people, invest in training and invest in templates and process, but like I said in my opening remarks, innovating is now at its limit. We did everything we could. We've provided all the tools that we could and now we need more people and we need fewer complaints.
NDP
Matthew Green NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
I don't know that we're going to get fewer complaints unless we change the legislation and improve transparency on the government side.
Just to be clear, am I reading this correctly? Are you actually asking for $815,000 less in the 2022-23 estimates than you did in 2021?
Information Commissioner, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
I think the $800,000 was a lapse, again from the previous year, which we didn't use, so we asked the government to give it back to us so we could spend it last year. Now we're going to be looking at asking for more money to increase our resources and our IT infrastructure.
Information Commissioner, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
Yes, in the next six months.
NDP