Thank you so much for having me.
I want to start today by saying that my own work is on transparency and open government more broadly. Access to information is certainly an important cornerstone, but transparency itself is more extensive. I think that will be useful because the motion that passed to initiate your study refers to the “access to information and privacy system”, not specifically to the Access to Information Act, which is, to me, a little bit more specific.
I don’t want to repeat any of the points made by previous witnesses regarding the Access to Information Act itself. This has to be one of the mostly widely studied pieces of legislation there are, and I think there's been a great deal of agreement, obviously not unanimous, on the problems surrounding the act and what could be done to improve them. I’m happy to speak to that during questions and I’ll reinforce many of the points you’ve already heard.
I thought I would use my opening remarks to draw on my experience as the chair of the Open Government Partnership’s international experts panel and my experience over the last three years with the national security transparency advisory group, or the NS-TAG, as we’ve come to be known.
I will start by saying there is no clear or very coordinated transparency strategy in Canada, but I think this committee should note that a lot of activities are taking place—in many cases they are actually quite siloed—that are meant to improve the quantity and quality of information and data disclosure, and to improve transparency and accountability in government. If done well, these things should, theoretically, help to ease pressure on the ATIP system itself.
Canada has submitted five action plans to the Open Government Partnership, which include a range of commitments to improve openness. Some of the 2015 improvements to access to information mentioned by previous witnesses here were the result of commitments included in early plans to the Open Government Partnership. The plans engage a wide range of government departments and agencies and they have helped to release information and data via the creation of mechanisms like the open science and data platform.
Library and Archives has done a lot of interesting transparency work, in spite of the fact that it's been heavily criticized for compliance with the Access to Information Act.
The government has elaborated a national security transparency commitment. The NS-TAG has a role in helping to advance this. We’ve released three reports to date. The first was kind of to simply say what we heard in our first year. The second looked at building transparency into national security institutions. The third looked at how national security institutions engaged with racialized communities. From what I understand, the government is also working on an open government strategy for the OECD.
For me, a full study of the access to information and privacy system—again, I'm stressing the word “system”—needs to go well beyond the act itself. It needs to include these other activities. It needs to include offices beyond just the Information Commissioner and the Privacy Commissioner.
Just to wrap up, my recommendations would be to have a Government of Canada transparency strategy that brings these sorts of dispersed initiatives together. The structure around the strategy and things like access to information, Library and Archives and systems of information management, all need to be included. That includes looking at things like storage and retrieval and the need for all of these things to be resourced properly.
Emphasis should be put on proactive disclosure and open by default where appropriate. One thing that the NS- TAG has recommended to the national security community is the development of a statement committing to transparency, including what it means to the different security institutions and how it will be measured. This would be helpful across government. Transparency is something that really needs to be baked into the function and culture of government in a way that it currently isn’t, including in times of crises.
I will just leave it there. Thank you.