Information & Ethics Committee on April 18th, 2023

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

I call the meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 64 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics.

Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the House order of June 23, 2022. Members can, therefore, attend in person in the room and remotely using the Zoom application. Should any technical challenges arise, please advise me. My understanding is that we have nobody on Zoom, so this should be fairly easy. Please note that we may need to suspend for a few minutes—I'm reading what I have to read—as we need to ensure all members are able to fully participate.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(3)(h) and the motion adopted by the committee on Monday, May 16, 2022, the committee is resuming its study of the access to information and privacy system.

In accordance with the committee's routine motion, the connection tests have been dealt with, so I'm informing you of that now.

I'd like to now welcome our witnesses for the first hour today. From the Treasury Board Secretariat, we have the honourable Minister Mona Fortier, president of the Treasury Board.

Welcome, Minister.

Stephen Burt is also here, as chief data officer and assistant deputy minister, policy and performance sector, along with Catherine Luelo, deputy minister and chief information officer of Canada.

Minister, you have five minutes to address the committee. The floor is yours. Please go ahead.

[Mona Fortier, Liberal, President of the Treasury Board]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to begin by acknowledging that we are gathered on the traditional unceded territory of the Anishinabe Algonquin nation.

I would like to thank the committee members for inviting me today to discuss their work on this issue, as part of the committee's study.

I also want to acknowledge the work being done by the Information Commissioner of Canada, whom I met with last month.

Public access to government information is central to democracy. As President of the Treasury Board, I am responsible for overseeing the application of the Access to Information Act and Privacy Act by more than 265 government institutions. Our government is proud to have brought in the first measures to reform the act in more than three decades. Under those reforms, we gave the Information Commissioner order-making power, waived all fees in excess of five dollars and introduced a proactive disclosure regime.

Today, the Open Government portal provides access to 37,000 records and two million proactive disclosure records. According to the Open Data Barometer, Canada ranks seventh in the world when it comes to open data. The legislation we passed also set out the obligation to review the act every five years, creating pressure to ensure ongoing improvement. In 2021‑22, a total of 70.7% of requests were processed within the time frame prescribed in the act. I am not the first to say that this compliance rate is too low.

The first review focused on consulting Canadians, especially indigenous people, to help us learn more about the access barriers they were facing. The Information Commissioner's feedback was also taken into account.

I would like to clear up a misunderstanding. The purpose of the report was to identify challenges, not to develop a plan. The review provides the foundation for the work we are currently doing to improve the system.

The goal of the work is fourfold: improve service delivery, enhance staff capacity, meet the needs of indigenous populations more effectively, and continue to develop measures such as declassification. As soon as I'm able to provide more information about the plan, I would be glad to meet with the committee again.

Indigenous peoples have a unique relationship with the ATI regime, and indigenous peoples should have greater control over their information.

The review identified several needed changes, including broadening the narrow definition of “aboriginal government” in the act and ensuring ATIP practitioners have the tools to deliver consistent service for those exercising their right of access. Some have advocated changing the act. My current priority is to improve administration of the existing law. We strengthened the act less than four years ago. We have a lot of work to do to address the underlying systemic issues, and we will continue to take action to do just that.

We recently launched an enhanced ATIP online platform to make it more efficient to submit a request and receive records, while reducing administrative burden. We have onboarded 251 institutions onto the platform, with more to come. Within a year, over 90% of requests will go through the platform. TBS has selected two modern systems that will provide faster processing of requests. The first 13 institutions are being onboarded to the new processing software this year. The more we automate where we can, the more our teams can focus on their core jobs and the better the public will be served.

To help address staffing challenges, we launched a new community development office to support the ATI communities through recruitment, retention, training and professional development. I would also mention that we are continually improving how the privacy program is administered by providing new tools and guidance to government institutions.

I look forward to continuing to work together on Canada’s access to information system. My officials and I would now be pleased to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Thank you, Minister. You're under time, which we all appreciate.

Just to remind all committee members, there's a lot of interest in this both publicly and within this room. Convention around here dictates that the amount of time for the question to be posed will be equal to the amount of time for the answer to be given. I'm going to do that. I'm also going to be strict on the timelines as well as for the questions, because we do have votes this afternoon. I want to be mindful of that, so we're able to get in both panels.

Mr. Kurek, you have six minutes to begin.

[Damien Kurek, Conservative, Battle River—Crowfoot, AB]

Thank you very much, Chair.

Thanks, Minister, for coming before this committee.

I'm going to ask you the same questions I've asked every witness who has appeared before this committee. They are foundational questions.

First, do you believe that access to information and, specifically, an ATIP system are essential in a well-functioning democracy?

[Mona Fortier, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

Yes.

[Damien Kurek, Conservative, Battle River—Crowfoot, AB]

Do you believe that Canada meets the standard that would ensure this is, in fact, the case?

[Mona Fortier, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

I believe we updated the legislation four years ago, and we are improving the system. It is necessary to continue to improve it.

[Damien Kurek, Conservative, Battle River—Crowfoot, AB]

Rarely do witnesses agree on something, but Madam Minister, it's interesting, because virtually every witness who has appeared before this committee answered no to the second question.

It's concerning that we have a massive disparity of understanding and, specifically, your report.... I appreciate the fact that you said you are identifying challenges without providing any solutions. Madam Minister, it's been eight years, counting your predecessors in this portfolio, and Canada's access to information system is struggling. It's failing, and it's causing a loss of confidence in our democratic institutions.

Specifically, when it comes to the retention of staff, that's a huge issue. You mentioned some metrics you're doing to help recruit staff to fill those roles. Can you tell me how many staff work in the ATIP system today?

[Mona Fortier, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

First, thank you for laying out many of the things we have been looking into. After our review, we made many conclusions, and those conclusions demonstrated that we needed to make sure we had a digital system that will support how we treat ATI requests.

We've been also working very hard, focusing on getting staff trained. We're trying to find more staff, so we have a pool of 150 potential candidates who could come and work with us to make sure we're ready to confront the load we have currently.

[Damien Kurek, Conservative, Battle River—Crowfoot, AB]

You didn't specifically answer my question. Are there more ATIP officers today versus when you took over the portfolio—yes or no?

[Mona Fortier, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

Yes.

[Damien Kurek, Conservative, Battle River—Crowfoot, AB]

Okay.

Regarding the use of consultants specifically, are there more or fewer consultants being used across the ATIP system in government today than when you took office?

[Mona Fortier, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

There are fewer.

[Damien Kurek, Conservative, Battle River—Crowfoot, AB]

There are fewer.

Can you identify what the cost of those consultants is today versus when you took over?

[Mona Fortier, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

I can tell you that we have a very important number of staff members across the departments who are working very hard, and we're complementing their work with a few consultants to make sure we get the job done.

[Damien Kurek, Conservative, Battle River—Crowfoot, AB]

A former ATIP officer referenced to me the fact that when the Liberals took office, they removed many of the performance metrics that were associated with what they felt was very important to be able to effectively accomplish their tasks. When those performance metrics and some of the ways that they were able to track the ATIPs were removed, it caused some chaos and confusion within the ATIP systems of a number of departments.

I'm wondering if you could comment on that.

[Mona Fortier, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

I can comment on the fact that we have, in the last year, answered about 70.7% of the requests. That's taking out IRCC, because that represents about 80% of the requests, so we don't put it in that metric.

We know that we have a lot of work to do to make sure that we increase the numbers that we process. Everyone knows that we have received an increased number of requests and are trying to deal with a backlog, explaining why we're putting in administrative support, such as digital. Catherine with my team could explain exactly what we're doing. We're also making sure that staff have the necessary tools to be able to process them.

[Damien Kurek, Conservative, Battle River—Crowfoot, AB]

It seems to me that there is, again, a disparity of understanding from what you're saying today versus what's happening on the ground.

To go back to the consultants issue, I'm curious. Could you provide us with a number? I've tried to get this information from other sources. I'm wondering if you could provide a number of how much, maybe over the last three or so years, has been spent on ATIP contracts to outside consultants.

[Mona Fortier, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

I can tell you that I don't have that number with me today, but it's something that we could provide. The most important thing right now is to know that we have fewer consultants than we did 10 years ago, and we are working on making sure that they complement the work that is being done by departments.

I don't know if my team wants to answer—

[Damien Kurek, Conservative, Battle River—Crowfoot, AB]

Because time is short, you're confirming that you will provide that information.

Could you also provide who received those contracts?

[Mona Fortier, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

I guess so. It should be part of something that we could provide.

[Damien Kurek, Conservative, Battle River—Crowfoot, AB]

Thank you very much, Madam Minister.

Cabinet confidences are a massive frustration across the board, it seems. Can you, in the 30 seconds you have left, talk about how to ensure that cabinet confidences are managed well within the ATIP system?

Right now, we're hearing a whole host of witnesses saying that it seems to be a roadblock to getting information.

[Mona Fortier, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

The most important thing is that we need to make sure.... I think the Supreme Court ruled on the fact that it's important that cabinet has a way of being able to express freely during the meetings. That's why cabinet confidence is important to keep.

However, there is a balance. In the last legislation, there was a proactive disclosure of cabinet documents, and we are providing briefing notes and those types of documents.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Thank you, Minister.

Go ahead, Mr. Barrett.

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

I have a point of order, Chair.

Would you be able to verify with the minister that her simultaneous interpretation device is working correctly? It looked like there was a challenge with it.