Government Operations Committee on Feb. 17th, 2021

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

I think we talked about this last time.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Thank you very much, Mr. Drouin.

We'll now go to Ms. Vignola for six minutes.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Maynard, thank you for being back with us.

The disclosure of information is an important part of your job, but there is also the part that concerns the protection of identity or privacy online.

Some recipients of the CERB, the CRB or other benefits had their identity stolen. Some 15-year-olds have just received a T4 slip stating that they had received—

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Excuse me, Mrs. Vignola.

Could you hold the microphone up a bit higher towards your mouth?

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Is it better now?

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

I've stopped the clock for a second.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Is it better if the microphone is at that height, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

That's good. Thank you.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

All right.

I won't start again from the beginning. In fact, I would like to know whether, to your knowledge, there are mechanisms to prevent identity theft when a person goes to a government website to change their contact information, for example, or to apply to receive a cheque. Have measures been adopted to prevent identity theft?

[Caroline Maynard]

Mrs. Vignola, I will just say that I am the Information Commissioner. It is my colleague Mr. Daniel Therrien, privacy commissioner, who sees to everything that concerns privacy and the protection of personal information. So I suggest that you invite him, because he certainly has a lot to say on this subject. I know that he works very hard to ensure that incidents like this are prevented and that the situation improves.

Unfortunately, this does not fall within my mandate.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

All right. Thank you very much.

So let's come back to the issue of access to information.

You know that Canada is a member of the Open Government Partnership and that, as a member of its steering committee, it is expected to be a leader in the field.

Do you find it worrisome that Canada, a country that is considered a leader in transparency, can act as it is currently doing with respect to disclosure of information, particularly with respect to contracts and vaccines in the context of COVID-19?

[Caroline Maynard]

Is it troubling? There's no doubt that our government has responsibilities and obligations, and I want it to live up to them. There are provisions in the legislation.

I believe that the government now has an opportunity to show much more leadership in this area by adopting the principle of voluntary disclosure, as I said earlier.

It's true that contracts may contain confidential clauses or clauses protected by law, but there are definitely ways to make disclosures without violating these conditions. The government must keep this in mind when entering into contracts with third parties. We talked about that last time. Contracts can be drafted in such a way that it is clear that certain clauses will be confidential and not disclosed and that others will be publicly available.

I can't give you any more details because there are ongoing investigations into these matters. Still, the Canadian government has a great opportunity to show leadership in this area.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Thank you.

Through the Supplementary Estimates (B), 2020-21, the Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada requested $2.2 million for permanent resources for a viable and sustainable investigation program and $600,000 to support access to information.

Are these amounts sufficient to help you in your duties and meet the demand?

[Caroline Maynard]

Yes. I admit that I was very happy to see that an amount that had been given to us temporarily for four years was finally given to us permanently. This allows us to hire, train and retain people, in other words, have a retention program. This will make a huge difference.

Now, I would like the institutions to have the same support so that they can respond to us. In fact, even though I have more investigators, the institutions don't have more analysts right now. It's more difficult to do our investigations in these circumstances.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

I understand that some institutions have greater needs, but on average how many analysts do you think are needed in each institution to properly support access to information and assist you in your work?

[Caroline Maynard]

It's very difficult to answer that question. As you said, the number of requests processed and the size of the files varies from one institution to another.

For example, we arranged a meeting with representatives from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada to get a clear understanding of their situation. This department receives 100,000 access-to-information requests a year, but each request takes 10 to 30 minutes to process. In other words, even if little time is spent on each file, it takes a lot of analysts.

However, the Canada Revenue Agency processes files that are 10,000 pages long. It takes financial auditing experts to process these files.

Each institution has different challenges. My recommendation to the institutions would be that they look on an annual basis what the demands and difficulties were, so that they can adjust afterwards. What we're seeing is that institutions don't adjust from one year to the next.

I would also recommend the establishment of a process whereby an ad hoc group of analysts trained by the Treasury Board could assist in emergency situations. That would be ideal. It would provide a group of people who could go to work in institutions that receive more urgent requests.

At present, institutions receiving requests related to COVID-19 are certainly seeing an increase in the number of requests, but they don't have more resources to process access-to-information requests. It's as simple as that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Ms. Vignola.

We will now go to Mr. Green for six minutes.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I'm going to start off with a bit of a summary in terms of how I have understood the briefing by Commissioner Maynard, and then I'm going to ask the commissioner to let me know how she feels about that assessment. The takeaway is that this government claims to be open by default, but the access to information system had already entered into a critical phase before the pandemic and, if I understand correctly, could soon be beyond repair if certain serious problems are not resolved. It came off as very alarming. The overall message that I took is the commissioner has identified the following issues as key in improving our country's access to information.

You've stated quite clearly, I think, here today—and I thank you for your candour—that there's inadequate leadership and a lack of clear guidelines on transparency and disclosure expectations, that there is a pressing need to innovate and to allocate enough resources to the access to information system, and that there is a necessity to properly document decisions and to efficiently manage institutions' information. The fourth point I took away is that records need to be declassified in a timely manner.

Does that accurately represent your briefing to this committee?

[Caroline Maynard]

Those are the four pillars that I find are key for the system to operate better and to be a better access system for Canadians. These are actions that the government does not need legislative changes in order to put in place.

Better legislation would definitely go a long way. I think a lot of people know that Canadian legislation did change a little bit last year, but it's still mainly 34-year-old legislation. We did better with the changes, but it's not perfect, so those will definitely be welcome.

For the steps that you mentioned—having better leadership and directives and not accepting delays—it's almost as if now the 30-day timeline is just a suggestion.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

It's a suggestion.

I really do appreciate your candour. This is really important. Again, this is a government that claims to be open by default and almost all of whose mandate letters give directions to ministers to be open by default, and yet we hear time and time again not just from you but from the public as well about the challenges that have been presented. We heard extensive testimony and suggestions around whistle-blowers in previous aspects.

When I look to the south, to the American example, we like to pretend our government is much further advanced in comparison, but theirs has multiple ways for proactive disclosure to happen that we do not have here as it relates to lobbyists and as it relates to just the way in which these files are managed.

At the beginning of the pandemic, the Treasury Board Secretariat tracked the operation status of the federal institutions' ATIP offices and found that 46 out of the 265 offices could operate at full capacity and that all but one were operating at partial capacity.

To what extent has the federal government kept you informed of the status of ATIP offices within federal institutions?

[Caroline Maynard]

I have been receiving the updates, and they do a survey with all the institutions every couple of months, or maybe monthly. The only problem with those updates is that they don't say to what capacity. When they say partial capacity.... We've noticed with respect to the complaints we've been dealing with that there were analysts in the beginning who had only cellphones. They didn't have access to their server. They didn't have access to their files.

Now most of them have access through a laptop from home, but they maybe don't have access to secret or top secret files, or they don't have access to paper files, so those partially accessible files for ATIP units can go from 10% to 90%. It's hard to know exactly what it means, but the Treasury Board is sending us the results every month, or every couple of months.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

You're unclear about why some offices were able to operate at full capacity or partial capacity, while others were not at all. What is the reason and the rationale they're providing you for these inadequacies?

[Caroline Maynard]

Every one of them has different challenges.

If you talk to somebody like Library and Archives, they are dealing with an enormous number of paper files, because they're historical files. When these people were told they could not access the office, they had a huge challenge in front of them to respond to access requests. There were other groups who were dealing with very secret documents, or classified documents. Again, nobody—or a very limited number of people—can work from home on secret documents.

There are also departments where, like I said earlier, the OPI, the people who have access to the documents you are asking for as a Canadian, don't see ATIP as their primary activity. It's not part of their work. That's why I talk about culture change. We need our public servants to see this as their responsibility. It's not just the analyst at the ATIP office who needs to work on ATIP files. It's all of our job. We are all responsible.

When I create a document, I need to know that that document will be accessible. If somebody asks for it, I have to know where it is and I have to be able to provide it to my ATIP analyst in a very timely manner, because they have 30 days to respond to that request. If you and I spend 10 days finding it, that takes 10 days out of the 30 days. That's where I think the leadership directive and the guidance need to come down from the top of every institution.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

I strongly agree and I appreciate your candour.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Thank you, Mr. Green.

Thank you, Ms. Maynard.

We'll now go to our second round.

Mr. McCauley, you have five minutes.