Information & Ethics Committee on March 7th, 2023

[Caroline Maynard]

Commissioner McEvoy just tabled a report on that, and you will see that 80% of the requests have been reduced because of that fee. It's only five dollars more than at the federal level, but it had a huge impact on access requests. The government has to decide whether that's the proper way, but I can tell you that usually access should be free. This is how Canadians are getting the information, and it's a part of our democracy. I think it speaks for itself.

[Parm Bains, Liberal, Steveston—Richmond East, BC]

Some valid complaints could just go missing basically and not come through. Is that right?

[Caroline Maynard]

Yes.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Thank you, Mr. Bains and Ms. Maynard.

Mr. Villemure, you have the floor for six minutes.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for coming to see us again, Commissioner.

I listened to your opening remarks, and I believe you are disappointed with the situation.

Would you say that this government has a culture of access to information or, on the contrary, that it does not?

[Caroline Maynard]

It's always been very difficult to change the culture of government. When it comes to access to information, we can undeniably see that it's easier to hide or withhold information than to simply disclose it. Some departments are doing better than others, but we can see that there is still this culture of trying to apply exemptions and exclusions rather than asking what information should be given to Canadians.

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

So the culture of access to information hasn't improved in the past few years.

[Caroline Maynard]

No.

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

Are you hopeful that it will improve? Have you seen that the government is willing to improve?

[Caroline Maynard]

Again, it really depends on the minister, deputy ministers and directors. We see a difference in some institutions, where managers are very involved, ask a lot of questions about access to information and make it a priority. The problem is that it's specific to each institution and each division. So I couldn't say that it's consistent across the federal government.

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

About a year ago, I read a study in Foreign Affairs magazine about secrecy in the United States. It said that the way they trained government officials made them more likely to keep secrets than respond positively to a request for access. So when they were faced with uncertainty, they preferred to say it was secret information.

Are we seeing the same thing here?

[Caroline Maynard]

Yes.

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

All right.

You mentioned that it was hard to operate within your current budget, given that you've received a higher number of requests.

Do you believe that your budget should be determined by a separate entity, such as the Office of the Auditor General, or at least by a different entity than the one currently limiting your budget?

[Caroline Maynard]

I certainly do. I am not the only one whose budget is determined by the government right now. It also sets the budget of the Auditor General, who is an officer of Parliament too.

I believe that the budgets of the officers of Parliament should be debated before a parliamentary committee or brought before a special committee, which could make recommendations based on what it hears from the officers of Parliament. This would preserve the independence of our offices.

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

I believe that is how it's done in some countries, such as Australia, if memory serves.

[Caroline Maynard]

I can't confirm that, but I can tell you that Canada has an independence mechanism for certain officers of Parliament, like the Public Sector Integrity Commissioner and the Chief Electoral Officer. The mechanism already exists in Canada, but it doesn't apply to all officers of Parliament.

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

So it wouldn't be unheard of to apply this mechanism to your office, for example.

[Caroline Maynard]

No.

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

For many of the mandates we are studying here, the national security exception often comes up. It's strange, but I sometimes feel like it's a catch-all they use to say nothing.

Do you feel the criteria for national security are clear and justified, or could they be improved?

[Caroline Maynard]

I think that's a question for the experts.

It's true that people often use that exemption. On our end, the analysis criteria are clear to my analysts and me, because we run the test all the time. However, we find that in other institutions, there's often turnover among analysts, so they don't have all the experience required. As you said earlier, it's easy: as soon as people see a document classified as confidential, secret or top secret, they tend to think that the information should be hidden or shouldn't be disclosed. In reality, the test goes further than that. For example, we need to determine whether there will be consequences should the information be disclosed.

Over time, the need to maintain the confidentiality of records wanes. That's why we need a declassification program. That way, experts could go through the records and automatically restore access to those that are overclassified after several years, as is often the case.

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

We feel the same way. Sometimes too many records are classified under national security. Over time, no review is done and these records remain classified. It's a problem for historical records and a bunch of other things.

Would a registry of access to information requests help speed up processing? Would it help if people were more aware of what's going on or of your challenges and budget limitations?

[Caroline Maynard]

Right now, institutions are required to maintain and publish a list of all access to information requests they have received and processed over the past two years. We find that not all institutions comply with this requirement. However, it's certainly something that helps, because people can go through the list and perhaps see that the institution has already processed the information they want.

In addition, we should have better proactive disclosure practices. We can't just stick to what is required under the Access to Information Act, we need to consider any request that comes up frequently. It's a practice we encourage. For example, people often ask for access to briefing notes these days, or at least the headings in briefing notes. Every time I meet with a minister or deputy minister, I ask if it's possible to proactively post that information on the department's website.

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

Have you seen any progress on that?

[Caroline Maynard]

Again, we've seen it in some institutions, but not consistently everywhere.

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

Are institutions like the Royal Canadian Mounted Police or Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada champions of access to information?