Information & Ethics Committee on May 12th, 2023

Evidence of meeting #71 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 privacy.

A video is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

Main Estimates 2023-24: Vote 1 under Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying, Vote 1 under Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner, Vote 1 under Office of the Senate Ethics Officer, Votes 1 and 5 under Offices of the Information and Privacy Commissioners of Canada

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Philippe Dufresne Privacy Commissioner of Canada, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada

Caroline Maynard Information Commissioner, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada

Nancy Bélanger Commissioner of Lobbying, Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying

Sandy Tremblay Director, Corporate Management, Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner

Melanie Rushworth Director, Communications, Outreach and Planning, Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner

9:20 a.m.

NDP

Matthew Green NDP Hamilton Centre, ON

Let's talk about that for a moment.

The 2023-24 departmental plan states the office will be “exploring solutions to enhance capacity to address incoming complaints and breach reports more efficiently, so that we can dictate greater resources to proactively identifying and addressing violations of law that are of the greatest risk to Canadians.”

Does your office have sufficient funding to increase the capacity to address complaints and breach reports, Mr. Dufresne?

9:20 a.m.

Privacy Commissioner of Canada, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada

Philippe Dufresne

No, we do not. We're very grateful for having received temporary funding in this respect in the last budget. That is a positive step, and we will certainly use that.

9:20 a.m.

NDP

Matthew Green NDP Hamilton Centre, ON

What is the impact of not having the capacity to identify and address violations of privacy law?

9:20 a.m.

Privacy Commissioner of Canada, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada

Philippe Dufresne

The impact really increases the risk on Canadians, if we're talking about breaches. We're seeing this as more and more of an issue for all us in terms of these massive situations when organizations that have lots of information are compromised because of an error or because of a cyber-attack. Due to our inability to be involved in more of those and to provide advice, we lose the ability to mitigate those risks.

My goal is really to mitigate those risks at the front end so that the issue doesn't arise at all. That's obviously the goal, but if it does happen, we need to be advised early. We need to be able to react and provide advice so that we can contain the situation.

That's the missed opportunity here: We have to make difficult choices about where we're going to be involved and we have less of an ability to do it proactively.

9:25 a.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative John Brassard

Thank you, Mr. Dufresne and Mr. Green.

That concludes our first round of questioning. We are now going to start our second round. This is a five-minute round, starting with Mr. Kurek.

Go ahead, sir.

9:25 a.m.

Conservative

Damien Kurek Conservative Battle River—Crowfoot, AB

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair and all those involved.

Thank you to our commissioners. It's good to have you back before the committee again.

Ms. Maynard, to follow the line of questioning that my colleague Mr. Gourde asked, I saw this letter. The Clerk of the Privy Council and Secretary to the Cabinet responds to an access to information request with language that accuses the requester, in this case a media outlet, of being vexatious. That's a pretty serious accusation.

If you could, just expand a little bit about the process you go through when a government department comes to you and says, “We don't want to fulfill this request because we think”—in this case it's a media outlet, and feel free to answer more generally—“it is making a vexatious access to information request.” Can you expand on that?

9:25 a.m.

Information Commissioner, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada

Caroline Maynard

I'm happy you made that distinction, because the act does make a distinction. It's the request itself that has to be abusive, malicious, vexatious or unreasonable, not the requester. We are spending a lot of time reviewing the wording of the request, making sure that what's being asked meets the intent of the Access to Information Act and that the request itself is not abusive or vexatious.

The application for the authorization to not act on a request is made by the department. We review it. Sometimes, just by reviewing the argument of the institutions, we can say no right away. It is an exceptional mechanism, because we are taking away somebody's right of access. We make sure that these representations from the institutions are shared with the requester so that they have a chance to respond, and then, based on the response and the argument from the institutions and the wording of the request, we issue a decision to allow or not allow the institution to not act on the request.

9:25 a.m.

Conservative

Damien Kurek Conservative Battle River—Crowfoot, AB

Thank you for that.

It seems this is closely connected to the funding question. Here you have, basically, the Prime Minister's department. He's the leader of the government. It would put you in a pretty uncomfortable position, especially when you've explained to this committee that you need more resources to ensure that Canadians can have access to their government. It's not the government itself as an entity, but Canadians need to have access to their government.

I would certainly not question your integrity and independence, but certainly the situation puts you in a very challenging spot as an officer of Parliament and as an institution vis-à-vis the highest-ranking public servant, who is going to be involved in the passing of the budget, and now all of a sudden there's this conflict. I know you've expanded on that a bit.

Can you explain how you make sure this doesn't happen? Again, it's concerning that there would be what could be perceived as an institutional challenge.

9:25 a.m.

Information Commissioner, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada

Caroline Maynard

I can assure you, as I said earlier, that I am definitely feeling the independence in my role. I use all the authorities I have under the act. The challenge is, as you said, with the optics and what it looks like. However, I am not at all challenged in my authority with respect to who is making that decision or who's asking for the application.

The lack of resources results in people waiting longer for an answer, which is unfortunate. Currently we have 3,500 complaints that are not being investigated because we don't have enough investigators. We have requests that require legal services, and those take away from other types of cases, so we need more resources to be able to respond more effectively.