Information & Ethics Committee on Feb. 12th, 2026

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 28 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(3)(h) and the motion adopted by the committee on Thursday, February 5, the committee is resuming its study of the state of access to information in Canada.

I would like to welcome the witnesses for the first hour today.

Today, from the Privy Council Office, we have Alexandra Freeland, who's the director general of data and information services; David Neilson, who is the executive director of access to information and privacy; Nabih Eldebs, who is the assistant secretary to the cabinet, security and intelligence; and Matthew Shea, who is the assistant secretary to the cabinet, ministerial services and corporate affairs.

Mr. Shea, I understand you'll be delivering an opening statement. You have up to five minutes to address the committee.

[Matthew Shea, Assistant Secretary to the Cabinet, Ministerial Services and Corporate Affairs, Privy Council Office]

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and honourable members of the committee. Thank you for inviting the Privy Council Office to appear before you to discuss Canada's access to information and privacy system.

My name is Matthew Shea, and I am the assistant secretary to the cabinet for ministerial affairs and services at the Privy Council Office.

I am joined today by Nabih Eldebs, assistant secretary to the cabinet for security and intelligence; Alexandra Freeland, director general of data and information services; and David Neilson, the executive director of our access to information and privacy team.

At the PCO, we have a dedicated and very knowledgeable team responsible for ATIP and information management functions. The PCO fully appreciates the importance of providing Canadians with greater transparency. We are committed to this objective, and we strive to meet our legislative timelines and ensure that government information is available to Canadians.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

I'm sorry, Mr. Shea.

Mr. Thériault, do you have a point of order?

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

We're moving at about 300 kilometres an hour. The interpretation is very good, but it has to be intelligible. The brain has to be able to react to what's being said, not just to the sounds. I would ask the witnesses to speak more slowly.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Did you understand that, Mr. Shea? Speak just a bit more slowly. If you need a little more time, I'll give you more time, but not too much more. Take it down a notch, please. Thanks.

[Matthew Shea]

I will stay within five minutes.

As the Information Commissioner noted previously, the records held by the Privy Council Office are unique and complex. Given the nature of our mandate, documents in our care are often sensitive, and my colleague Nabih Eldebs is here to address some of the national security complexities that may apply to historical documents.

With regard to PCO's access to information performance, our active complaint inventory has been steady over the last few years, fluctuating between 200 and 250 active complaints as new ones are received and others are resolved. We are facing spikes in the volume of requests. We have also observed an increase in the size of requests, and our requests have almost doubled over the last five years. Currently, over 20% of PCO's active files are 1,000 pages or more, with a total of over two million pages in active requests that we must review.

We share the Information Commissioner's desire to resolve PCO's backlog of requests and complaints. Dealing with complaints and orders requires additional resources, which then reduces our capacity to respond to active files, leading to more complaints. We want to break this cycle.

As has been noted, PCO is the custodian of a high volume of historical intelligence files, and many of our active complaints relate to these files. PCO shares the concerns of the Information Commissioner related to historical records held by PCO and is committed to working with Library and Archives Canada to transfer documents on an accelerated basis.

As a first step, by December 31, 2026, PCO will transfer its historical intelligence records dated prior to 1975 to LAC. PCO will also work to proactively release records from 1976 onward in order to match the practices of Five Eyes countries that proactively release records after a defined period.

We are also taking steps to proactively address our own ATIP challenges. As part of our duty to assist under the Access to Information Act, we work with requesters to exclude records that are not of value to them. This allows more targeted responses in a shorter period of time.

Aligned with advice from the Information Commissioner, PCO makes every effort to limit consultations only to those that are necessary. Where possible, we send other departments a notification of release with a shortened deadline, allowing them to raise concerns.

We are making every effort to find efficiencies and implement software improvements. As such, we are following Public Services and Procurement Canada and Treasury Board Secretariat's enterprise solution for new access to information request-processing software. This software is expected to reduce administrative burdens on the team with flexibilities, including faster importing of records and auto-indexing, which will allow us to better search.

Finally, we have ensured that our access to information team has not been impacted by the recent expenditure review and are taking steps to reallocate additional internal resources to this team to deal with the backlog.

We are firmly committed to ensuring that Canadians have access to government information and recognize the essential role that access plays in a healthy democracy. We're constantly working to improve it.

We look forward to elaborating on some of these elements and responding to all of your questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Thank you, Mr. Shea.

We're going to start our six-minute round with Mr. Barrett for six minutes.

Go ahead, sir.

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

PCO had 219 complaints and 42 orders in the year 2024-25. There are a lot of people who, I would say rightly, say that PCO did not do what the law requires. Could you very quickly, in 30 seconds or less, tell me what is driving this problem at PCO?

[Matthew Shea]

I do not know that I can answer that in 30 seconds; however, I will endeavour to answer it for you.

The number of complaints is driven by a number of factors, including the complexity of the files and the number of access to information complaints and requests we are getting. We are currently receiving a large number of requests, and our requests have grown dramatically over the last few years, doubling over the last few years. We have also noted the complexity of the requests and that the number of pages requested is much more than before.

When it comes to the complaints themselves, it is worth noting that our complaints are largely from three individual requesters. Seventy-eight per cent of our complaints are from three requesters, and those have grown in the last few years, whereas complaints from requesters other than those three have dropped by 50% over the last few years.

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

Has PCO consistently followed the law without exception with respect to access to information?

[Matthew Shea]

PCO's access to information team makes every effort to release documents in the timelines outlined in the act and to seek extensions when required.

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

That's not a yes.

You mentioned that PCO is not going to reduce the number of people who deal with ATIPs. How many people has PCO added to the department over the last 10 years?

[Matthew Shea]

We are currently in the process of reducing the department.

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

With respect, sir, the question is this: Over the last 10 years, by a percentage or a total number, how much did PCO grow?

[Matthew Shea]

I do not have those numbers with me. As we're here to talk about access to information, we did not bring financial figures.

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

You brought up staffing levels. If you're bringing up staffing levels as it relates to your ability or inability to appropriately manage requests to access information, I think it's reasonable for us to quantify how many people you have had at your disposal, working in that department, and what their priorities have been.

We have seen requests or instructions for the hurried deletion of things like instant messages, Teams messages. We've learned that some departments have individuals using encrypted messaging services like Signal or WhatsApp. Over the last few years, there have been many instances where access to information, as demanded by parliamentary committees, hasn't been met, including by PCO. This has a damaging effect on public trust.

Our requests aren't for decades-old records. These things could be searched digitally. We're not talking about files in boxes in the basement. Do you require a rethink on how you're processing this? To date, the process doesn't appear to be working, even when parliamentary committees say that they need this information. It's not that it's secret, but it's not forthcoming.

Should you be dealing with this in a reverse chronological order, addressing and resolving things as they come in, instead of, famously, telling some requesters that they wouldn't get the information for 95 years? That would exceed the natural life of anyone old enough to make a request.

[Matthew Shea]

I'll comment on a few things you raised.

In terms of resources dedicated to the access to information function, which is different from the size of the department, we have grown that team. We currently have 33 full-time equivalent employees in that team. That has grown, and that will continue to grow as we try to address the backlog.

We are looking at how we can do things differently. We have taken steps to try to be more transparent and more efficient. An example of that is, if someone asked a question about how much a prime minister's trip cost, they might have received 500 pages of accounting information that they would have had to make sense of. Today, we offer not just to give them that, if they want it, but also to give them a very comprehensive spreadsheet that breaks down all the expenses by item.

We will create documents, if it's in the interest of transparency and efficiency, and if it gives the requester what they would like. If the requester is amenable to that, we find that to be a very effective approach.

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

What's the one tool you don't have today that would most improve PCO's ability to comply with the commissioner's orders and comply with information or document requests from parliamentary committees?

[Matthew Shea]

One of the things the Treasury Board Secretariat and others are looking at is the use of artificial intelligence. If we were to have systems that had a better ability to auto-redact or auto-sort documents, that would help us go through them.

I mentioned that we have two million pages in our active files. If we could pare that down, and if we could eliminate duplication very quickly, that would certainly help our analysts spend their time on the actual redactions to make sure that we're doing things properly and that we're giving Canadians information faster.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Thank you.

Madame Lapointe.

[Linda Lapointe, Liberal, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for being with us today to answer our questions.

Mr. Shea, could you tell us how the volume and complexity of access to information requests have evolved in recent years and to what extent that evolution is putting greater pressure on federal institutions?

[Matthew Shea]

One of the things we've observed at PCO in recent years, since the act changed, is that while in the past, after a certain number of hours, a requester would have to pay a certain amount for the request, this was eliminated in the name of transparency, as approved by Parliament. Since that time, we have certainly seen requesters ask for much larger tranches of documents.

For example, it's not uncommon for somebody to say they want a year's worth of emails from official X. It's a huge number of emails that we need to process. That can be a lot of work, not only for the person whose emails they are but also for the access to information team that needs to look through them, especially at PCO, to see whether they have solicitor-client privilege, cabinet confidences, national security information or personal information. That takes time and effort.

As I mentioned earlier, we have seen an increase in the number of our requests in recent years. They went up 46% in the last three fiscal years alone. Our active files are growing. At the same time, we are finding that we have a smaller number of requesters who account for a larger number of complaints. We currently have three requesters, who are absolutely using the tools available to them within the law, who represent 78% of our active complaints. About the same percentage of our orders that we're receiving are related to files for those people.

What we find is that we are spending a disproportionate amount of our time dealing with those complaints, because there's a process, which my colleagues can explain in more detail. When it comes to an order, there's another process that goes on, which, again, is totally understandable. Of those 33 full-time equivalents I mentioned, we estimate that about 11, about a third of our access to information team, are focused just on those complaints. That means that for all other requesters, we have less capacity.

We are doing our best to look at ways to use technology to reallocate internally to put additional resources, because we absolutely want to be providing information to requesters and to Canadians. However, we are trying to deal with the fact that we have a disproportionate number of files and amount of active work that relate to a small number of individual requesters who, again, I want to be clear, are just using the rights they have to access information.

[Linda Lapointe, Liberal, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Thank you.

You mentioned three requesters. That's their right, of course, but I gather that their requests have clogged up the system, so to speak. Can you tell us where those requests are from? Is it the media? Can you tell us?

[Matthew Shea]

One of the beautiful parts about our access to information and privacy legislation is that we don't share that information. While I have data to tell me that, even I don't know the names of the requesters, and I'm very comfortable with that.

Somebody like David Neilson is aware of those names, and he actually interacts at times with those requesters as they're trying to figure out the best way to respond, but he doesn't share that information with me, and there's no reason for us to know.

We do publish, I believe in our annual report, the percentage of requests that come from media, from individuals and from people who wish not to identify. I think that, increasingly, people don't identify, so we can't really give you accurate data on that.

[Linda Lapointe, Liberal, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Okay. That's surprising, but it is still information of interest. If it's for the right reasons though, there's no problem. It's in the act, so that's their right.

Could you tell us what modernization initiatives, particularly in information management and proactive publication, have made the system more effective, even with the increase in the number of requests that you mentioned?