Evidence of meeting #40 for Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics in the 45th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was requests.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Brassard
Thank you, Mr. Barrett.
We have Mr. Al Soud. I have one more five-minute round here, and then another five-minute round. Then we'll conclude this panel.
Go ahead, Mr. Al Soud.
Liberal
Fares Al Soud Liberal Mississauga Centre, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Commissioner, for being with us today.
I wasn't there at the time, but when this committee met in February, one of the concerns raised, including by you, was that the review might result in a reduction of your order-making powers. That said—I'm still new to this committee, so forgive me if I misunderstand—one of the policy approaches proposed actually gives your orders more weight by making them enforceable as court orders once registered with the Federal Court.
Just to confirm, this would in fact strengthen your order-making powers. Isn't that right?
Information Commissioner, Offices of the Information and Privacy Commissioners of Canada
Yes, it would strengthen the order.
Liberal
Fares Al Soud Liberal Mississauga Centre, ON
That's fantastic.
The February study also raised the issue of the duty to document. The policy paper proposes establishing exactly that—the idea of requiring institutions to document decisions and related information, setting a clear expectation that this is a foundational portion of the public's right to access records, especially in the digital age.
Would you agree that this is an important measure?
Information Commissioner, Offices of the Information and Privacy Commissioners of Canada
It is a recommendation from all commissioners that a duty to document important decisions be added to our legislation.
Liberal
Fares Al Soud Liberal Mississauga Centre, ON
That's fantastic.
You've taken a slightly different note here. You've identified leveraging technology and refining processes as central priorities for improving efficiency. We've noted over the course of this committee that, so far, you are particularly efficient.
In light of budget constraints and limits on expanding investigative staff, I'm wondering this: Your departmental plan references the use of artificial intelligence. Could you walk us through the various ways AI is currently being implemented in your office?
Information Commissioner, Offices of the Information and Privacy Commissioners of Canada
Right now, we're still testing the AI system because—as you know—we have to be careful. It has to be tested internally. We are using it for things like translation and any internal communications. We're allowed to use it for those.
Also, we are looking at starting to test a triage-type of AI process, because we are receiving over 6,000 complaints per year and they all have different subject titles. Right now, everything is done manually. We have great employees doing that, but it could help them know which bucket a complaint goes into. I know the technology exists, so it's something we're looking into.
I'm really close to Commissioner Dufresne, the Privacy Commissioner, so we have to be very careful in how we use AI and not breach anybody's privacy or put information out there that we hold as protected in our office. Therefore, we're very careful in terms of what we do with AI.
Liberal
Fares Al Soud Liberal Mississauga Centre, ON
That's fantastic.
Once again, taking a slight shift, for 2024-25, your actual result for indigenous contracts was 48%, while your planned target for 2026-27 is 14%. Could you speak more to this?
Information Commissioner, Offices of the Information and Privacy Commissioners of Canada
We have now limited the number of consultants we use. If you look at the number of contracts my office is using, it's very small.
One of the projects that we've been working on for the last five years is moving us to the cloud with more technological tools. Having such a small office and such a small team of technical information employees, we had to use a few contractors. We almost see the light at the end of the tunnel, and we have almost completed our project. This is why we will be reducing the number of contracts.
Liberal
Fares Al Soud Liberal Mississauga Centre, ON
As an agent of Parliament, your office was exempted from the comprehensive expenditure review, but your office did take steps on its own initiative to increase efficiencies. I'd like to offer you the opportunity to speak to that a little more.
Information Commissioner, Offices of the Information and Privacy Commissioners of Canada
We are always looking at ways to do our work better. We have created tasks that employees are following. We are streamlining the process of everything.
We answer the phone. Sometimes it's just a question of asking our employees to contact the complainants and institutions verbally or physically visiting the offices, so the communication goes faster. We're trying to manage most of our cases informally and only use the order-making power in cases where it is completely necessary. Those are the types of things we do internally.
Liberal
Fares Al Soud Liberal Mississauga Centre, ON
I would also like to offer you the opportunity to give us a broader breakdown on the main estimates, since that is why we are here today.
Information Commissioner, Offices of the Information and Privacy Commissioners of Canada
About 90% of our budget goes to the salaries and benefits of employees. We are very small. Everything is linked to my mandate, and this is what we are trying to do. That's the priority.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Brassard
Thank you, Commissioner.
Mr. Hardy, you have the floor for five minutes.
Conservative
Gabriel Hardy Conservative Montmorency—Charlevoix, QC
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Before I get to my question, Ms. Maynard, let me first congratulate you. This is something that we rarely see here, by which I mean being so efficient, being proactive, trying to improve things without constantly looking to create another bureaucracy to manage an inefficient one. Kudos to you.
You say that you have fewer subcontractors. So you will not be among those asking the government to invest more than $20 billion a year in subcontractors. Well done, I'm really glad to hear that. We like to see that.
You talked about transitory information earlier. Obviously, there's a lot of information in the digital era, texts and so forth. When there is a request for information, do you sometimes sense that the person might use the pretext that the information is transitory?
We had a witness here who said that he had installed an app that automatically deleted his messages. He said that, in any case, it was transitory information. If it's not you or us who make that decision, how does someone decide that the information is merely transitory? The thing is that you don't have access to the information after the fact.
Information Commissioner, Offices of the Information and Privacy Commissioners of Canada
It's important to know that, under the Access to Information Act, any document requested must be provided when the request comes in, whether it's transitory or not. The medium of the document doesn't matter. I'm not opposed to cleaning up our data. We're in an era when we can't keep everything. There are very clear policies and directives from Library and Archives Canada and Treasury Board that determine what we have to keep and what we can delete, according to very specific retention periods. Some information has to be kept for seven years. There is also information that only has to be kept for two weeks.
I think the problem lies with the directives though, whether people comply with the directives. It's always difficult. We have to trust our people. There are also tools that people use that could even be restricted for information that is purely transitory. I would say that Teams chats should not be used to do work, but rather just to find out if the person is there, if they are coming for lunch, if they are late. That's the kind of conversation we used to have. Now, if you make an access to information request tomorrow morning in connection with conversations on that platform, you'll get little tidbits like that. That's not where you're going to get relevant information through an access to information request.
Conservative
Gabriel Hardy Conservative Montmorency—Charlevoix, QC
Do you think though that that could be used to some extent? We were saying earlier that, in that kind of conversation, sometimes there is information that can lead to a political decision. For example, in that type of exchange, one might talk about the restaurant for dinner that evening, agree on the choice of wine and, in the same conversation, plan to discuss such and such a topic.
Do you get the sense that people can sometimes hide behind the fact that these exchanges are transitory but you would have liked to get that conversation, which unfortunately no longer exists? Is that something you have to deal with?
Information Commissioner, Offices of the Information and Privacy Commissioners of Canada
Once again, it's a question of properly informing our people, training them properly to use the right tools for their work as opposed to what they use to communicate, as you said. It has alway existed though. We used to have PIN‑to‑PIN messages, whereas now we have smart phones and chats. All that to say that it has always existed. The same thing goes for the telephone.
Information Commissioner, Offices of the Information and Privacy Commissioners of Canada
We just need to make sure that people understand their responsibilities relating to access to information. In the case of important decisions, we have to make sure that the information is stored somewhere and is accessible.
Conservative
Gabriel Hardy Conservative Montmorency—Charlevoix, QC
People have to have an ethical basis for their decisions. We really agree on that. That has to be present in every decision.
Earlier, you talked about people giving up. That is interesting. I have heard the figure of 97%, but there are cases when a person finds that people do not want to provide the information requested or provide it with redactions. How many people find the system too cumbersome to fight it and end up giving up?
Information Commissioner, Offices of the Information and Privacy Commissioners of Canada
I wouldn't say they give up.
When you look at the system as a whole, we have very few complaints, just 3% of requests or 6,000 complaints. For us, that's a lot, but I'm not complaining about it. People are very patient in general. They accept the response times or are satisfied with the response they receive. They all have the right to file a complaint. For our part, we receive 3% of all access requests made to the federal government.
Conservative
Gabriel Hardy Conservative Montmorency—Charlevoix, QC
I see.
I would like to finish with something that was mentioned earlier, which is that you have access to the redacted and the unredacted documents in order to compare them. Do you think that, in some cases, the redacted information could easily have been provided and that this could have been interpreted as a discouraging tactic?
Information Commissioner, Offices of the Information and Privacy Commissioners of Canada
It might not be a tactic, but people are afraid, which is unfortunate.
I was saying earlier that people should use their discretion. It's often in these kinds of cases that we are able to get more information for complainants, because discretion can be used when we get to that point, once we talk to them.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Brassard
Thank you, Mr. Hardy and Madam Commissioner.
Ms. Chagger, you have five minutes.