Evidence of meeting #48 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 system.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Senior Fellow, Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, Canadian Foreign Intelligence History Project
A well-functioning access regime is absolutely essential to a functioning democracy.
President, BC Freedom of Information and Privacy Association
Absolutely. It's vitally important
Conservative
Damien Kurek Conservative Battle River—Crowfoot, AB
Okay.
For my next question, I'd again ask for a yes or no or a very short explanation, because time is precious.
Do you think the status quo is adequate in this country?
I'll go in the other direction this time.
Mr. Larsen, is the status quo for the ATIP system acceptable?
Senior Fellow, Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, Canadian Foreign Intelligence History Project
No.
Secretary Treasurer, Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs
It's not acceptable in upholding the inherent and treaty rights of our people and also working towards improving our relationship under reconciliation, but also, it's not adequate in upholding the legal obligations of the federal government, the Crown, to our indigenous people.
Thank you.
Conservative
Conservative
Damien Kurek Conservative Battle River—Crowfoot, AB
Okay.
Mr. Koltun, you made a point about how departments are more than able to fulfill court reporting obligations but are unable to provide timely fulfillment of ATIP requests. I think that's an incredibly important element to this conversation, because I have filed a number of ATIP requests as a member of Parliament, and sometimes the years and long delays that are associated with that....
Could you highlight, specifically in your area of expertise—but I think that can be expansive across government—the need to ensure timely access for citizens or, in the case of immigration, those who are endeavouring to become Canadians, and the importance for this system to work? Could you highlight that?
Canadian Immigration Lawyers Association
For immigration applicants, the importance cannot be overstated. To do a credible, robust, complete immigration application requires a full understanding of everything you have submitted and everything that is happening to your application as it moves through the process.
Conservative
Damien Kurek Conservative Battle River—Crowfoot, AB
You talked a lot about the system just not working well for historical documents. We've heard a number of times reference to “open by default”. I would suggest that this too is a concept that should be translated across government and that maybe the onus needs to be reversed.
Would you care to expand on some of the ways you think we could solve some of these concerns? I have only about 15 or 20 seconds for that.
Conservative
Senior Fellow, Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, Canadian Foreign Intelligence History Project
Yes, I'll certainly find you that.
Certainly I think the system should be more biased in that direction of open by default; however, as a former member of the intelligence community, I do recognize that there are legitimate reasons that some records do need protection. I think the philosophy behind the system needs to change so that it is much more of an expectation of open by default, with clearly delineated exceptions if that's not going to be the case.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Brassard
Thank you, Mr. Barnes. That was nice and succinct, the way we like it.
Mr. Kurek, thank you.
Mr. Fergus, you have five minutes.
Liberal
Greg Fergus Liberal Hull—Aylmer, QC
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Before beginning, I too would like to acknowledge that we are gathered here on the unceded territory of the Algonquin people of the Anishinabe nation.
I have two questions.
Mr. Barnes, I'd like to get back to what you just said.
On the one hand, you worked in the world of security intelligence in Canada, and you also did research into matters related to Canadian history and some of the decisions that were taken. You said that the United Kingdom had adopted a system almost by default. As soon as records are transferred to their national archives, the information in these records becomes public. Nevertheless, for reasons of national security, some records are kept separately.
Can you tell us about your experience as it relates to what happens in the United States? It would be useful to compare Canada's practices to what others do.
Senior Fellow, Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, Canadian Foreign Intelligence History Project
I'll certainly try to do that.
Having come from government and now working on the outside, I've ended up learning a lot more about the access to information process than I ever wanted to know.
Most of my work has been on Canadian files. I have not done work in British or American archives, so I'm not as familiar with the details of their arrangements.
The American system is quite complicated. There are several layers. They have a freedom of information act similar to the ATIP act in Canada, but they also have other mechanisms for the release of material proactively. For example, the various intelligence organizations have historical offices, and they will release batches of records proactively. For example, on the anniversary of the Cuban missile crisis or some other specific historical event, they will release a large batch of records, and they will often have an academic conference to support that. That concept is just totally foreign to Canada.
In the U.K. they have a different system. There, materials are much more regularly released after 30 years and go right to the archives, where they are all open. There are some limits to that, but even the British intelligence services have been much more proactive in supporting official and authorized histories of the various intelligence agencies and so on, which have been very helpful for expanding knowledge of how those organizations have operated.
That hasn't happened in Canada.
Liberal
Greg Fergus Liberal Hull—Aylmer, QC
Given your experience in Canada, your experience outside government and with the best practices you picked up from the United States and the United Kingdom, do you feel we should have a better system while documents are still active and that they should be more accurately filed to make things easier when the files are transferred to Library and Archives Canada after a certain period of time?
Senior Fellow, Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, Canadian Foreign Intelligence History Project
Absolutely, and there are various mechanisms to do that. Clearly, it's recognized that many documents are overclassified. That's been recognized for many years, but the practice still continues.
I'm not sure what practical steps can be taken. It really is a policy decision to reinforce the actual classification process.
Liberal
Greg Fergus Liberal Hull—Aylmer, QC
Actually, I want to talk about the filing of documents.
I wanted to say to better sort documents when they are actually being stored or archived or dealt with in current time before the 30 years have elapsed.
Senior Fellow, Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, Canadian Foreign Intelligence History Project
That gets to very complicated questions of file management and that sort of thing.
As a researcher, I would appreciate that. I think it would be very difficult, given the size of the organizations and the range of records. I don't have any easy fix for how this information would be managed. I could possibly give some greater thought to it, but there's no obvious way.
There are steps that have been taken. The declassification project that Public Safety has started has conducted a pilot study looking at a large batch of records from the 1950s and 1960s from the Canadian Joint Intelligence Committee. The officials involved in reviewing them determined that most of those records could be released. However, the departments that own those records are still trying to figure out what they're going to do with them. They are not yet ready to accept those kinds of recommendations. They still have this culture of secrecy, of overprotection for records that really are no longer as sensitive as they might have been at one time.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Brassard
Thank you, Mr. Barnes.
Mr. Fergus, thank you.
The next member to take the floor will be Mr. Simard.
You have the floor for two and a half minutes, Mr. Simard.