Information & Ethics Committee on Oct. 5th, 2022

[Caroline Maynard]

That's right.

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

Right.

It should enable people to understand.

[Caroline Maynard]

We should at least get the basis, even if we don't know what was recommended or what the advice was. We should at least know whether the right facts were used.

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

Yes. That would then enable people to understand.

[Caroline Maynard]

That's right.

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

Right. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Pat Kelly]

Thank you.

Now we have Mr. Green.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you very much.

You recommend that the Canadian government follow the lead of countries like the United States and that the information be made public when there are three or more information requests on the same topic. In your 2021-22 annual report, you note the increased number of complaints. How many of those could have been solved, in your opinion, had that been instituted?

[Caroline Maynard]

It's impossible to tell. We don't do statistics on what kinds of information are requested. I wish I could, but with 7,000 complaints a year—

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Let me just ask you more generally, if that were in place, might you have reduced your caseload?

[Caroline Maynard]

There are lessons learned from access to information. If you know there's a crisis, like COVID, and if you know it's going to come and the briefing notes on this will be requested, why not do a standard document? This will be released and this is not going to be released, but you can have the drafting of those documents already with a view to access.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

That's right.

In your letter to the President of the Treasury Board in July 2021, you emphasized “the need to take immediate and concrete action, rather than waiting for legislative change.” A year later, could you share with us what concrete actions and immediate measures the President of the Treasury Board has taken in that time?

[Caroline Maynard]

I would invite you to talk to the Treasury Board for specifics. I know there's a staffing pool that was created by TBS, which was going to be shared by institutions for trying to hire new analysts. That's something I was told was done recently, and it's something that's definitely needed, because every institution is in need—

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Just so we're clear, in your opinion, in terms of immediate and concrete actions, is it safe to say that more steps need to happen? If so, which immediate and concrete steps would you demand from the Treasury Board on a move-forward basis?

[Caroline Maynard]

We need more resources. We need a classification program. We need training. When I talk about resources, it's not just human resources, but financial resources, innovations.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Pat Kelly]

Thank you.

We will now go to Mr. Williams for up to five minutes.

[Ryan Williams, Conservative, Bay of Quinte, ON]

Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Commissioner Maynard, for joining us today.

I want to focus for a few minutes on Bill C-58. The last time the recommendations were made in Parliament, this bill was supposed to correct some of the problems we saw. It's been three years since that bill was implemented and changes were made to the ATIP system.

Has that helped or hindered your work and the work of the Privacy Commissioner?

[Caroline Maynard]

As you know, there were not a lot of changes, but one of the changes that really helped was giving me the authority to issue orders instead of only recommendations. I can tell you that when institutions know that an order is coming, they're moving a little faster. So it has helped us to deal with files and get informal resolutions.

Also, when we don't arrive at an informal resolution on a case—the complainant is still not satisfied or we issue an order—I love the fact that we can now publish these reports. That's something we couldn't do before. We were missing about 35 years of jurisprudence from my office, with all kinds of cases that were investigated and positions that were taken that were not publicized until the annual report. Once a year is not enough.

Now we can publish all of the reports we are issuing. It has helped us explain to complainants, “This is a very similar case to yours, and this is what's going to happen”, or explain to institutions, “This is a position that the commissioner has taken, and she will probably take the same position with your case because it's very similar.”

It really helps to resolve cases. The publishing has been a great improvement.

[Ryan Williams, Conservative, Bay of Quinte, ON]

Do you have all the resources you need for that aspect?

[Caroline Maynard]

No.

[Ryan Williams, Conservative, Bay of Quinte, ON]

Do you have a backlog on that process right now?

[Caroline Maynard]

We are funded now to be closing 4,000 cases. We have 7,000 cases, and we're going to about 10,000, so we're definitely going to need more resources.

I'm going to be in the process of asking for extra funding soon, including for our publishing capacity, because you have to translate everything. We want to make sure that those documents are properly written so that anybody can understand them. It's not easy to write a report on access to information when you cannot provide the information that's being exempted. You have to find ways to provide the information that's going to help everybody, and as many as possible.

[Ryan Williams, Conservative, Bay of Quinte, ON]

How many times would you be involved in asking for those reports, then? Of the 7,000, how many of those would you need to be personally involved with?

[Caroline Maynard]

It would be about 15%. Those are results and orders, or reports that—