Evidence of meeting #52 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.
5 p.m.
Liberal
Lisa Hepfner Liberal Hamilton Mountain, ON
Mr. Jolly, do you have anything to add to the observations by previous witnesses to this committee that more information is available from government than ever before?
5 p.m.
President, Canadian Association of Journalists
Yes, I think I'd definitely push back on that in a similar fashion to that emphasized by Mr. Beeby and Mr. Conte here. I don't think we can equate volume with quality. I think that's an unfair comparison of apples to oranges in this case. I think what we need to look at is, of course, the quality of information, information that reveals things about how Canada operates and how decisions of the federal government are made, information that promotes transparency and accountability, not just spin-doctoring and talking points and sanitized notes.
5:05 p.m.
Liberal
Lisa Hepfner Liberal Hamilton Mountain, ON
Picking up on the question of quality versus quantity, Mr. Beeby, you brought up that the percentage of journalists filing access to information requests is a lot lower than it has been previously. I'm wondering if the percentage is what has changed and not the number of journalists. I don't know the answer to that. We know there's a huge number of people, not just journalists, a ballooning number of people filing access to information requests.
Do you think journalists have stopped, or do you think they're just being overwhelmed by other people filing requests?
5:05 p.m.
As an Individual
It's hard to say, because Treasury Board keeps such poor statistics. They do an annual report, but it's quite unreliable. They don't use scientific methods to gather their data, so it's a lot of guesswork.
On that point, it's interesting that there are more requests than ever before. The number is going up. It's a huge number now. It's almost 200,000. If proactive disclosure of government information is being so helpful in this process, why are so many people asking more and more often for records under access to information? The reverse should happen. If we are proactively making useful information available, then the numbers should go down, but they are going up.
I think that's very telling, because the information that is proactively released is material that really has very little relevance. I think that's why the numbers are going up so enormously.
5:05 p.m.
Liberal
Lisa Hepfner Liberal Hamilton Mountain, ON
Let me read a quote from a previous witness, Mr. Wernick:
I'd ask you to remember that a request is not a request is not a request. Some of them are extremely focused and they know what they're looking for and it's relatively easy to decide whether it should go out or not or to apply the screens. But there are also requests formed, particularly by the brokers and resellers—
He is talking about people who access information in order to sell it to someone else. They're looking for information so they can resell it.
—which are kind of like the trawl nets that go over the ocean floor scooping up everything that lives. I used to get a monthly request, when I was a deputy minister, for every note I had ever sent to the minister that month.
Therefore, I'm wondering if requests like these are bogging down the system. Maybe they're not from journalists and they're not specific. They're not from people looking for information they particularly want. They're just throwing out a trawling net to see if they can find anything that sticks.
5:05 p.m.
As an Individual
I would say those data brokers have every right to request information, just as all of us do. You're forgetting that these people are doing a service. They're selling a service to Canadians who find this information useful. The government isn't supplying it to them. The data brokers are, and that's useful. Data brokers pay taxes.
I don't think it's fair to single out a category of user as somehow gumming up the system. I think if there's any solution to that, then government should just make available the data these brokers are after and everyone will be happier.
In the meantime, that's not happening, and I think they have every right to request information, just as journalists do and just as anyone else does.
5:05 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Brassard
Thank you, Mr. Beeby.
Mr. Villemure, you have the floor for six minutes.
5:05 p.m.
Bloc
René Villemure Bloc Trois-Rivières, QC
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Jolly, you said earlier that we need to take the car back to the repair shop. For my part, I wonder whether we should fix the car or get a new one.
5:05 p.m.
President, Canadian Association of Journalists
Of course, we have to recognize that the system we have always needs to be reevaluated.
We've seen repeated instances with governments of all stripes. The greatest opposition issue of all time, I would say, is access to information and transparency. It does take a concerted effort on the part of policy-makers to say, yes, we're going to do this differently and we believe in keeping some of the promises that are often made to journalists and to citizens in Canada because, so far, it has repeatedly fallen short.
5:10 p.m.
Bloc
René Villemure Bloc Trois-Rivières, QC
Thank you very much, Mr. Jolly.
Mr. Beeby, you said earlier that this is the 16th review you have taken part in, I believe.
5:10 p.m.
As an Individual
It's not the 16th that I participated in, but the 16th that has been conducted.
5:10 p.m.
Bloc
René Villemure Bloc Trois-Rivières, QC
Okay.
Do you think there is a difference between the stated purpose of the Access to Information Act and the purpose of the act?
5:10 p.m.
As an Individual
I'm not sure what you mean by the goal of the Access to Information Act.
5:10 p.m.
Bloc
5:10 p.m.
As an Individual
The point of the act, from my point of view, is to empower ordinary citizens, to empower Canadians, to challenge their government, to hold their government to account, and to acquire information about themselves and issues that they're interested in. It shifts power from government, power over information, to the citizenry, and that's a revolution.
5:10 p.m.
As an Individual
No, it's not, because governments—not just this one, but through the 40 years of the act—have jealousy guarded their control of information. It's a natural process of wanting to avoid embarrassment or maybe to keep malfeasance covered up or whatever.
Controlling information is important to retaining and using power. I think there's a natural bent on the side of government to make sure that access to information does not work.
5:10 p.m.
Bloc
René Villemure Bloc Trois-Rivières, QC
Thank you very much, Mr. Beeby.
Mr. Conte, you referred to democracy earlier. I am very interested in that.
If I understood correctly, you said that no democracy is perfect. Given the current state of the access to information system, what would you suggest to improve the democracy in question?
I would like you to talk about what is happening in the real world, not what should happen in some ideal world that we can imagine. Please go ahead, and speak in broad terms.
5:10 p.m.
As an Individual
Thank you for the question, Mr. Villemure.
I would echo what my colleague, Dean, said about how this act was intended to be a tool to shift the balance of power in terms of the citizens and everyday people trying to have a relationship with government where they have power to get knowledge, to learn what their government is doing day to day. Unfortunately, it also nullified the declassification system, also in the past.
The way that this act was designed 40 years ago did not do that. It failed, and now we have 40 years of evidence that shows this. If we were to do this over again and press “reset”, which I believe we need to do, we would pursue something like the Citizens’ Forum on Canada’s Future, called the Spicer commission. It should be citizens themselves who participate in the formulation of a piece of legislation that is for them. It's not for bureaucrats and government officials; it's for them to say how they want their information.
Right now, it has resulted in obscurity for so long that you have to wonder why people have such problems knowing clarity around residential schools, for example, elements of history, and current events. This transcends so many different areas about how people learn about what this nation is.
5:10 p.m.
Bloc
René Villemure Bloc Trois-Rivières, QC
I wanted to talk about that precisely, archives and the possibility of learning about our own political history, for instance.
Given the current state of things, wouldn't you say that people face certain obstacles that prevent them from really learning about history?
5:10 p.m.
As an Individual
No. If I've organized special trips to Library and Archives to look at previous access packages that have been released and I see that newspapers have been redacted by CSIS and these are public domain documents, this is very telling of what the government doesn't want you to know.