Government Operations Committee on June 19th, 2020

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

What role would the Minister of Digital Government have in that? In reviewing the mandate letter, I feel like she's supposed to work with departments to develop solutions and use new tools. All the language in the mandate letter for the Minister of Digital Government suggests that this should be a horizontal priority across all departments. Would you care to comment on that?

[Caroline Maynard]

I agree with you. It's part of the mandate letters. Openness and transparency are also part of the mandate letters of all the ministers, which I was pleased to see. However, there is a difference between the talk and the action. As you may know, government is very slow at making changes because we have so many steps to go through for security purposes, and we don't want to have breaches. Sometimes, though, I think government needs to make bold decisions, take a little bit of risk, and in access, transparency and innovation, I think it's the right time to do this.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Forgive me for oversimplifying this, but what struck me in moving a previous motion was that it was suggested to me that perhaps the information might be in a box in a warehouse somewhere in a paper copy. At least with my very basic understanding of technology, I can't help but think that if I'm typing something up in a digital document that becomes paper, that digital document should have—in systems, in principle—a perpetuity that would allow it to have a digital access after it's completion.

Is it a matter of there just not being systems in place where...? I know we have our own government files that we can access, but how is it that we have a digital origin of a file, and then an analog paper finish of the file? It doesn't make any sense to me at all.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Madam Commissioner, only because we're out of time, I would ask that you give a response to Mr. Green's question as quickly as possible in writing and submit that answer to the clerk of this committee, who will then distribute that answer to all committee members. I would appreciate it if you could concur with that request.

We'll now go to our next round of questions, which will be four minutes in duration, starting with Mr. McCauley.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Great. Thanks, again.

I have this vision of our ATIP process being like the end of Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark, when they put the ark of the covenant in this great, massive warehouse never to be seen again.

Have you started any investigations into departments that are skirting ATIP obligations?

[Caroline Maynard]

Yes.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Who are they?

[Caroline Maynard]

We actually started one investigation. I initiated an investigation with Canadian Heritage because there was a complaint with respect to their response to an access request, which said that the ATIP office was closed during the pandemic.

I've been keeping an eye on other institutions that are struggling to start. We were saying that now most institutions are fully operational or partially operational. However, some operations are basically somebody answering the phone and talking to requesters, because they don't have access to anything.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Yes. I've done a count and 46 are operational, almost all of them the smallest of the departments. Then 165 are almost all the major departments, and again, surprisingly enough, the Treasury Board is not at capacity.

How far behind do you think we are? Do you think departments are going to use COVID as a further excuse not to comply and not to release information?

[Caroline Maynard]

We definitely have seen COVID being used as a reason not to respond to some of my investigations. We've seen COVID used to ask for extensions.

That's part of our investigation right now: What is going to be the impact? It's going to be difficult at this point to know the full impact. Definitely there will be some delays and augmentation of complaints and, unfortunately, delays in people getting their information.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Yes, I would say that on 90% of the ATIPs we've done in the last five years, we get an automatic response asking for an extension, even on the simplest of things. You're right. It is a cultural thing.

[Caroline Maynard]

It's resources.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

With three years for the simplest stuff, I think it's a lot more than resources. I think resources...but it can be a cultural denial of transparency.

There was a comment made by the acting chief information officer that, when we come out of COVID, there's going to be a backlog of activities like ATIPs that will have to be addressed on a priority basis. It concerns me greatly that someone is going to be deciding which ATIPs are a priority and which are not.

How do we get past that, where we have some arbitrary person deciding that this ATIP takes priority?

[Caroline Maynard]

I don't know what to say to that.

I believe that every department should have their ATIP access units as part of their essential services, especially when they're dealing with information related to a crisis like this. Either it should be through ATIP or it should be proactively disclosed. When I talk about proactive disclosure, it's really providing information without having to wait for it to be requested.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

I agree with you 100%.

Mr. Chair, how much time do I have?

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

You have 10 seconds.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Thank you again for everything you're doing. It's not easy tilting against the windmill, but those of us on the transparency fighting front appreciate everything you do.

[Caroline Maynard]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Now we'll go to Mr. Kusmierczyk for four minutes, please.

[Irek Kusmierczyk, Liberal, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Thank you very much, Chair.

Thank you very much, Commissioner, for fielding these questions and for your forthright and very comprehensive responses as well.

As a city councillor in Windsor, I was proud of the fact that I was the first and only city councillor to publish my entire voting record online. I feel that transparency and accountability are absolutely cornerstones even when they are not required. It's something that we should be very open and very proactive about.

I very much appreciate the opportunity to speak with you here today.

My question is this. You had stressed in your appearance in front of the House of Commons standing committee on access to information, on March 11, that additional resources are required across the access to information systems. You stressed that the resources available to federal institutions are insufficient. How do you measure whether there are sufficient resources or not? How do you measure that in terms of where the resources need to be? What do you look at? What metrics, performance metrics, do you look at?

[Caroline Maynard]

For my own agency, we've had the same budget with the same number of employees for the last six years, and our complaints have increased by 25% every year. If you're not able to respond to the demand, I guess that's one way to look at it.

Normally, my office receives 2,400 complaints a year. In the last three years, we've had about 2,400 complaints each year. Last year, I received 6,000 complaints, mainly about delays and extensions, and a lot of them were related to one institution, which is IRCC. You may not be aware of this, but IRCC—Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada—is receiving approximately 100,000 requests a year. These are requests from people asking for the status of their immigration or refugee files.

We've started a systemic investigation with respect to that particular institution because we've realized there is definitely a problem that is more than just a one on one. It's definitely a systemic problem, but to start a systemic investigation also requires a lot of resources. It's a long-term thing. My operational budget has not followed through with the demand, the requests and the complaints that we're receiving. We have been receiving temporary funding for the last three years. This year, I've asked for that funding to at least be permanent so that I can hire people, train them and retain them for the long term.

[Irek Kusmierczyk, Liberal, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

I appreciate, Commissioner, that the number of complaints has increased, but do you measure, for example, your office's response time? Are you able to provide metrics in terms of how long it takes you to close a file or what the backlog is, something that gives us a sense, again, that there aren't enough resources to keep up with the demand? Are there metrics that your office maintains and that you can share with us, in terms of your own performance? I'm just curious.

[Caroline Maynard]

Yes. Like any other institution in government, we have a department plan and a department report. Every year, we provide how we did, what our priorities were and how we successfully closed files. We have some metrics on timelines. Luckily, we've been very good at reducing our timelines, even with the smaller resources. We've been making changes in the last two years, and last year was a record year: We closed 5,500 complaints, whereas in previous years it was around 1,600 to 1,800.

[Irek Kusmierczyk, Liberal, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

That's incredible.

[Caroline Maynard]

We've done very, very well with our own changes, as I said earlier, making innovative changes too, but at some point there is only so much we can do. At some point, we need more bodies to do the work.