Information & Ethics Committee on May 16th, 2022

[The Chair, Conservative, Pat Kelly]

Next we have Ms. Hepfner for up to six minutes.

[Lisa Hepfner, Liberal, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Thanks very much.

Thank you for being here today, Ms. Maynard, to answer our questions.

You mentioned in your opening statement that COVID-19 has become an excuse for poor performance, which is not acceptable. I agree, but I'm wondering if you can help us understand a bit about the impact of the pandemic on the entire system.

Did we see more FOI requests during that period? What were the impacts on the people trying to respond to those requests? Why are we seeing thousands more cases that you have to respond to?

[Caroline Maynard]

Thank you for the question.

In the first year of the pandemic, we saw a decrease in the number of requests. I think Canadians had other issues to deal with. It was understandable that people were more worried about their health and security than access requests, but in the last year we've seen an increase in access requests.

The problem is that the government employees were not allowed to go back to their institutions to work on files. Often, ATIP units were asked to not connect on the server until late at night or during weekends so that the network was not being overwhelmed with people working.

At the beginning, in the first six months, it was very difficult and a challenge for analysts in the units to respond to access requests, because they didn't have the infrastructure or they didn't have access to paper copies of the documents that would be requested, or they simply were not getting responded to from the OPIs—the offices of primary interest—or from other people working in the institutions. Often, the last thing they want to do is respond to an access request. They have their program that they're dealing with and the operations. That's definitely something that these analysts were dealing with.

Now, after two years, we're saying that there are no more excuses. People are allowed to go back to the office.

We do. We have people coming to my office. We respect the restrictions and the health limitations, but we have to be able to do our work.

In the legislation under the act, there's no way to stop responding to access requests. This is an obligation under the act, and institutions have the responsibility to find ways to do it. There are some departments that used this opportunity to innovate and to put in place technology so that they were able to respond and still work from home. Other departments are taking a little longer in terms of taking this opportunity and these chances to improve their system.

[Lisa Hepfner, Liberal, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

That is a perfect segue to my next question.

When I was a journalist at the Hamilton Spectator, we almost had a mandate to file FOI requests and to look for things to file FOI requests. It was really burdensome. There was a lot of documentation. You had to file it away, send it away. It would come back with thick packages full of documents.

How has that changed over the past 20 years? Are we more digital now, and is there more we can do to digitize the system to make it more accessible and more transparent and easier for people to get the information they deserve?

[Caroline Maynard]

It's actually a double whammy. We are more digitalized now. Government is working electronically. Working from home has helped create documents electronically instead of having documents on paper. For that, we're better. I think we're also using emails to respond to access requests. We are using epost.

On the other side, the fact that we're now creating documents electronically and we're dealing with people by emails and texts has created a monster of information. Sometimes I give the example of an email exchange that four people have kept in their inbox. If you have an access request, normally what we say is that the main receiver of the exchange should keep the emails. The other ones should not have duplicates.

Most people don't erase emails, or they don't file those documents properly. I'm sure you and I are guilty of this as well. You end up with duplicates and numbers of pages. We are now dealing with access requests where maybe you would normally get 10 pages and now you're getting 500 pages in response to your request.

It has created a different challenge. Information management is definitely a big issue within the government, and not just our government. Most institutions have that problem. We're trying to encourage leaders to provide their employees with tools so they can erase, manage, clean up and only keep the corporate documents that are important, but we don't see that, so the requests are becoming bigger and bigger.

[Lisa Hepfner, Liberal, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

I have less than a minute.

I understand that your employees are able to work remotely. What's been the impact of that? Has it been overall positive, negative? Maybe reflect on that for a bit.

[Caroline Maynard]

It's been very positive for my office. I was very pleased. I was surprised, actually. We started working from home right away in 2020. Every file we have here has been digitized. We closed 6,800 cases last year. That's a record. We've never done more than 6,000 in one year. I think the fact that we're working from home and we're giving the tools to our employees to do that has been very helpful. The only files we have to do at the office are the secret files and the top secret files, so we have employees coming in for those.

[The Chair, Conservative, Pat Kelly]

Thank you.

Mr. Villemure, go ahead for six minutes.

[René Villemure, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Commissioner, thank you for joining us this morning.

I will begin by putting a question to you about the letter you sent on July 8, 2021, to Mr. Duclos, who was then president of the Treasury Board, to share with him your observations following meetings with various ministers. One of the things the letter talked about is the importance of implementing a declassification program.

I will provide you with some context. I have thoroughly analyzed the history of document declassification, and I realized that documents are often overclassified—in other words, documents are classified too often. You also talked about that earlier.

According to a recent article published in Foreign Affairs magazine, in a single year in the United States, 4 million people classified 50 million documents, for a total cost of $18 billion. Of course, that is done on a smaller scale here. In conclusion, the article says that most of those documents do not contain important secrets in reality, and that they are being classified only as a precaution or to avoid accountability.

What do you think about that?

[Caroline Maynard]

Your question pertains to two specific issues.

Documents can be classified as “secret” or “top secret”. What we are seeing is that some documents should not have been classified as such. As you say, when people see a document that is classified as “secret” or “top secret”, they often redact it as a security measure because they are afraid of letting secret information through. If classification was done better, some information would surely be transmitted more quickly.

Moreover, some documents that are 50 or 60 years old are still classified as “secret” or “top secret”. We would like there to be a program under which the government would look into those historical documents to determine whether they are really documents that are still secret or of a sensitive nature in 2022 or whether, on the contrary, they could be declassified so that people would have access to them more quickly.

[René Villemure, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

So that would be declassification based on obsolescence, if you will. However, perhaps an effort must be made to not overclassify simply for fear of being afraid.

[Caroline Maynard]

It's a training issue. We definitely need a better system.

[René Villemure, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Of course, you and I both know that it's good to keep secrets, but not everything is a secret, actually.

Your office's mission is to foster transparency and accountability across the federal government. In a few words, you therefore rally confidence. How do you go about doing that?

You mentioned a few departments that are less cooperative than others. However, generally speaking, does the federal government try to stand in your way or is the relationship quite amiable?

[Caroline Maynard]

Actually, we have a very good relationship with the institutions we investigate. The challenge is that people are filing more and more ATIP requests. More and more people are asking questions about our government, its decisions and its spending.

The ATIP request system is very costly to my office, which must do investigations, and to the government, which must manage everything. If we want to reduce the pressure this system puts on the government, the government has to start disclosing information voluntarily. I'm talking about proactive voluntary disclosure and making information available in both official languages on the government website. Canadians shouldn't have to file an ATIP request when we know they should have access to the information in question.

This will also help with accountability, which I talked about earlier. Canadians will have more and more confidence in government if they have access to information that has been proactively made public, and they don't need to file an ATIP request. Often, people who file requests with my office think that the government wants to keep the information they seek secret and not disclose it. That's not the case. It's just that there's a lot of information out there. We want institutions to think about it and determine what information Canadians should have access to. That way, people wouldn't have to wait for a response to their ATIP request.

[René Villemure, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Could we propose a legislative amendment to force government agencies to make that effort, that is, to go through obsolete documents to do some tidying up and declassify some of them? Would that help you?

[Caroline Maynard]

Part 2 of the Access to Information Act already requires departments and ministers' offices to provide specific information, including information about spending. That's a good start.

What I'm suggesting would go even further. For example, in the United States, after three freedom of information requests on the same topic, the information is automatically made public. The Canadian government could legislate a similar mechanism. It could also take steps like that voluntarily, but it's not doing that right now.

[René Villemure, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

I have under a minute left, so I'm going to ask you a quick question.

Does the RCMP cooperate when there are ATIP requests?

[Caroline Maynard]

The RCMP cooperates, but they have a significant backlog. We're currently working with them. Recently, we quickly resolved 50 complaints, so I think they are taking the situation seriously.

[René Villemure, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

What's the longest response time for the RCMP to date?

[Caroline Maynard]

I don't know. I'd have to find out before I can respond. We have over 300 complaints about the RCMP, so surely there are a few that are five or six years old.

[René Villemure, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

I would very much appreciate getting that information in writing.

[Caroline Maynard]

Sure, that's fine.

[René Villemure, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Thank you very much, Commissioner.

[The Chair, Conservative, Pat Kelly]

Thank you.

Mr. Green, go ahead for up to six minutes.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you.

I will follow up on that question in a bit of a rather rapid-fire way. I reference Mr. Michael Dagg, who has a request in to the RCMP and was told that he would have an 80-year turnaround on that.

Would you care to comment about the efficacy of a program that's supposed to be about open government when people who are looking for sensitive information have to wait 80 years for any kind of substantive information?