Information & Ethics Committee on May 4th, 2026

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

You have 10 seconds left.

[Patrick Bonin, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

—processing times, you're saying it's not a matter of—

[Caroline Maynard]

That's for access to information requests. When requests are made, federal institutions often ask for more time to respond. However, if the person making the request files a complaint with my office, we can investigate and try to put pressure so that the request is responded to as quickly as possible.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Thank you.

Thank you, Commissioner.

Mr. Hardy, you have the floor for five minutes.

[Gabriel Hardy, Conservative, Montmorency—Charlevoix, QC]

Thank you very much.

Ms. Maynard, thank you for being with us once again. It's always a pleasure.

Last week, I went to a committee meeting on the Major Projects Office. We were told that, despite an annual budget of $42 million—it's actually $213.8 million over five years—not a single project has been approved yet.

How many files do you process on an annual basis with your $17.7 million budget? I'm just trying to compare both organization's efficiency.

[Caroline Maynard]

It's different, but we've processed 6,000 files in one year.

[Gabriel Hardy, Conservative, Montmorency—Charlevoix, QC]

So that's 6,000 files a year with a $17 million budget. Now that's productive. That's great.

While we're on the subject, is your budget sufficient to cover your needs? I know it fluctuates. You mentioned getting 60% more complaints in one month.

Let me ask a supplementary question: When you have 60% more complaints coming in in one month, do you feel that it's because people want more transparency and access to information?

[Caroline Maynard]

There's a demand, but I also think that federal institutions don't have the resources to keep up with the increased number of access to information requests.

[Gabriel Hardy, Conservative, Montmorency—Charlevoix, QC]

So, on the one hand, there's a demand for more transparency and access to more information, but, on the other hand, there's not enough staff to respond to information requests. You mentioned a moment ago that 40,000 requests out of 200,000 aren't processed. Most are not responded to within 30 days. There's not enough funding to hire more staff to handle the current number of requests. Is that correct?

[Caroline Maynard]

Yes.

[Gabriel Hardy, Conservative, Montmorency—Charlevoix, QC]

Beyond financing, what can be done to make your work easier and improve transparency? What would you like to tell our committee today?

[Caroline Maynard]

The Access to Information Act dates back to 1983 and needs to be modernized. It's long overdue. You reviewed it in 2020. I think it's time to review it again to take into account the way people work nowadays. This act was first implemented when people worked with pens and paper. Now, people work with electronic files.

We need better information management and a change of culture within government. People need to think about transparency before secrecy. There are a number of things that could be brought forward.

[Gabriel Hardy, Conservative, Montmorency—Charlevoix, QC]

Let me pick up on that last sentence, about the need for more transparency from the government. I'm going to ask you another quick question afterwards.

I spoke with someone from the RCMP last week and mentioned something that I find somewhat peculiar. I want to run this by you as well. You appear before committees—committees that may modify laws, possibly to allow you to work and act more efficiently. However, these committees are chaired by Liberals. So, as was mentioned earlier, at the end of the day, if you have to ask the person you're about to investigate to give you more money so that you can do a better investigation, it's a strange situation.

Do you feel like that's what's happening? You have to report to people that you may end up investigating, and they might not be too inclined to give you all the funding you need to do your job.

[Caroline Maynard]

Personally, I don't feel like there's a conflict, but it could give the impression that I might stop an investigation because the people involved are responsible for my budget. That's exactly the reason why we're asking for an independent funding mechanism. By “we”, I mean myself and several other officers of Parliament. We don't have the privilege of receiving funding without having to submit requests to departments that we're investigating.

[Gabriel Hardy, Conservative, Montmorency—Charlevoix, QC]

That makes sense.

I also read that $1.6 million in legal fees were spent to challenge your requests over the last four years. It means that you also have to face departments that are reluctant to provide the information and are willing to fight you in court using taxpayers' money.

When you make a request, do you believe that it's not too much to ask at that stage? You want transparency. Are your requests excessive?

[Caroline Maynard]

My orders, you mean?

[Gabriel Hardy, Conservative, Montmorency—Charlevoix, QC]

Yes.

[Caroline Maynard]

I'm a lawyer. I believe in the justice system. Up to my level, there's a process in place. Federal institutions can challenge my orders in court. It's the process provided for in the Access to Information Act. The government makes use of it, but not often. I think less than 5% of cases end up in court.

It's a pretty large amount, sure, but it's part of our justice system. I don't have a problem with federal institutions that disagree with me having access to a legal challenge mechanism.

[Gabriel Hardy, Conservative, Montmorency—Charlevoix, QC]

Last week, the number of committee members was changed. Since then, several committees have held in camera meetings. Do you see transparency as an absolute priority, or is it acceptable to you that people cannot see what's going on in our committee meetings?

[Caroline Maynard]

Transparency is important in any context.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Ms. Church, you have five minutes. Go ahead.

[Leslie Church, Liberal, Toronto—St. Paul's, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Welcome, Commissioner.

I want to read a quote from the former chief information officer of Canada, Dominic Rochon, who appeared before this committee on February 12. It's a bit of a long quote, but I think it's important to what I'm hoping to drive at. He said:

Looking purely at the data can be misleading. You heard my colleague who appeared for the Privy Council Office mention previously that there are a small number of individuals who could clog up the system. For example, at one point there was one individual who happened to reach out to 50 different departments and ask for every single [Microsoft] Teams chat document they had. You can imagine that one individual taking up that amount of resources across the system can be very challenging. There needs to be a way to look into that, perhaps using the Information Commissioner, so that we can prioritize and understand so that a small number of the population cannot necessarily monopolize the system.

He went on to say:

In terms of statistics, let me just give you the following. There are, as you may have heard, over 250 institutions that the law applies to. Of those 250...155 actually received a request and closed the request in 2024-25. Of those 155...91 responded at a rate of 90% or more. That's not a system that is completely failing. In fact, when I go abroad, I see that Canada is actually seen as a star performer when it comes to trust and transparency.

My question to you, Madam Commissioner, is this: Right now, the act contains no mechanism to address this problem. Bad-faith actors can weaponize digital tools to flood dozens of institutions at once, tying up public servants, burning through taxpayer dollars and crowding out legitimate requests from journalists, researchers and ordinary Canadians. Many provinces and territories already have safeguards in place, and so do many of our G7 peers, including the U.K., New Zealand and Australia. Canada is a bit of an outlier.

Is there anything we can be doing to ensure we have the basic tools at our disposal to address this type of situation?

[Caroline Maynard]

I disagree that we don't have any mechanism in Canada. Whether we are at the federal level or the provincial level, we all have a disposition in our act that allows institutions to request permission from their commissioner to not respond to requests that are vexatious, in bad faith or an abuse of the act, of the process.

With regard to the example you provided, for one institution that may be an abuse of process because of the size of the institution, but for another one it may not be. It really depends on the way the request is posed, who it's addressed to, how they're working with the.... We've had that happen many times.

Right now there is a system in place, and people are using it. It's the same thing in the U.K. and Australia. I think we do have the process in place.

[Leslie Church, Liberal, Toronto—St. Paul's, ON]

Would you agree with Mr. Rochon, the former chief information officer, that roughly 85% of records created today are transitory—things like scheduling texts, Microsoft Teams chats, working drafts, invitations, etc.? Do you believe that about 85% are transitory?

[Caroline Maynard]

I wouldn't know if it's 85%, but I can tell you there are a lot of transitory documents in institutions.