Evidence of meeting #17 for Government Operations and Estimates in the 43rd Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was institutions.
A recording is available from Parliament.
February 17th, 2021 / 6:30 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Thanks, Mr. Chair.
Ms. Maynard, welcome back and thanks for the information.
You were mentioning in your opening talk that Treasury Board President Duclos needed to take concrete steps, or that there were concrete steps to take immediately. Have you actually seen concrete steps taken, besides more virtue signalling and “I guess we will get better”?
6:30 p.m.
Information Commissioner of Canada, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
At the beginning of the pandemic, I saw a letter that Mr. Duclos sent to the institutions reminding them—
6:30 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
That letter does nothing. Let's be honest. Has anything concrete been done, in your view?
6:30 p.m.
Information Commissioner of Canada, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
Not to my knowledge.
6:30 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Okay.
You mentioned 15 primary departments. Has there been any follow-up from your department, or from you, about those identified departments?
6:30 p.m.
Information Commissioner of Canada, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
Last Friday I sent an invitation to the ministers responsible for those 15 institutions and I asked to meet them personally.
I don't think they know what's going on. I really think the leaders of these institutions are often kept in the dark, or they don't want to know what's happening.
6:30 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
What did you ask in that letter to those 15 departments? Did you say, “I want this, this and this”, or “We'd like to see this, this and this”?
6:30 p.m.
Information Commissioner of Canada, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
I asked for a meeting so I can tell them, because for each of them it's different. They all have different challenges. I want to be able to tell them which ones they are responsible for.
6:30 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
You commented to Mr. Green that the government needs to take leadership in disclosure in ATIPs. How and who? We've seen the Treasury Board...he's appeared before us, but then nothing seems to get done apart from empty promises.
What needs to be done? What leadership has to be taken by the government and by whom?
6:30 p.m.
Information Commissioner of Canada, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
They need to take risks. They need to change their software. They need to look at innovation systems. They need to tell their people that they are responsible for access requests. They need to put it maybe in their performance evaluations, and that's going to be leading to the performance pay at the end. A manager needs to know that it's part of their job and that they have to motivate their people to respond.
6:30 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
This also has to come from the ministers to start it off—
6:30 p.m.
Information Commissioner of Canada, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
That's it. Exactly.
6:30 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
—with the deputy ministers and the ADMs.
On the comment about not accepting delays, my office submits quite a few ATIPs a year. Almost every one of them is past the 30 days. On every one of them, we file a complaint with your department and we receive a note back saying that, yes, the department is in breach of the Access to Information Act, but nothing gets done from there.
What is the point of all this? Is it just to make MPs feel good with, “Oh look, they were in breach”? Is there any accountability for the departments that continually breach? This goes back long before COVID, so I don't accept any of the excuses from the departments that it's COVID. This goes back long before that.
6:30 p.m.
Information Commissioner of Canada, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
I agree, and COVID is just one more excuse, as you say.
Under the old act, unfortunately, my office and I only had the authority to make recommendations. If somebody was in breach of the timeline, I could recommend that they meet a new timeline. Now, I do have the authority to order an institution to respect a certain timeline. I've started doing that, and it has shown some changes.
6:30 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
How do we follow up and get that order, then? We submitted an ATIP recently and got a note back saying that it would take eight years. All we asked for were emails on one specific contract and five low-level employees who were grading the contract. It came back as eight years.... How do we get your department to force Public Works to do its job instead of what appears to be hiding?
6:30 p.m.
Information Commissioner of Canada, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
The only thing I can say is that if it is a complaint that was submitted before June 2019, I did not have the authority to make orders. It's any complaints that have been filed since June 2019 that we now have the power to enforce.
6:30 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Okay. We should just follow up.
I'm running out of time, so let me ask you this.
At our last OGGO meeting, we had a collection of whistle-blowers. We were looking at this situation. Canada has very weak whistle-blower protection. How is our lack of a proper access to information laws perhaps affecting whistle-blowers and their ability to come forward or our ability to protect them?
6:35 p.m.
Information Commissioner of Canada, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
I don't know. It's a very good question.
To me, I think whistle-blowers need to be able to access the information and people have to be able to know what's going on, so that's where the link is, but between my office and what the legislation is, I am really only responsible for making sure you're getting the information, and I'm trying to do that as quickly as possible.
6:35 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Robert Gordon Kitchen
Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McCauley.
Now we'll go to Mr. Weiler for five minutes.
6:35 p.m.
Liberal
Patrick Weiler Liberal West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Commissioner Maynard, for joining our committee again today.
For my first question, we have heard that there has been a sharp increase in the number of requests coming in this year. Why is there such an increase this year?
6:35 p.m.
Information Commissioner of Canada, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
Actually, this year, I think because of COVID, the demand has been less. I think Canadians have other concerns, especially their health.
The demands seem to have been increasing from December. I've seen an increase lately, but we don't have statistics, because, as I was saying earlier, for Treasury Board, their statistics are always based on the previous year, which is something that I recommend in my submission to Treasury Board to change, so that we have relevant statistics that are taken every couple of months. I have a colleague in Scotland who does that, and it's a lot more useful when you know exactly what's going on in the system.
This year, based on our complaints, it seems to have slowed a bit, but last year, in 2019-20, there was an increase. It's just like I said earlier: Canadians just need to know. They ask for the information they know they have a right to access, and they won't stop asking for the information when they believe they are entitled to it.
6:35 p.m.
Liberal
Patrick Weiler Liberal West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC
With respect to the increase last year, could some of that be as a result of the increased amount of proactive disclosures? How would you account for the increase for 2019-20?
6:35 p.m.
Information Commissioner of Canada, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
We saw a slight increase with some disclosures like briefing notes. For proactive disclosures people have to provide a list of titles of their briefing notes issued during the month. But it was always requested before, so that's not new. I think what really increases the demand is any new crisis or any new decision. We see that now with the contracts for vaccines. A lot of people are asking for that information. As soon as something hits the news and it's really important for Canadians...for instance, CERB. How much money is being spent on this? How many Canadians are getting it? What are we doing with our students?
That is what brings the access. One incident can create a huge surge of demand, and it's really difficult to know exactly what. That's why I think we need a surge in analysts to deal with those, too, because institutions are not equipped to respond to those surges.
6:35 p.m.
Liberal
Patrick Weiler Liberal West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC
Certainly, I sense the heightened interest and thirst for information these days, and I can understand that.
To build off one of the points my colleague made, when you received the additional funding, the $2.2 million, as part of the supplementary estimates (B), how was this funding used? How many new analysts have you been able to hire to help you in the work you're doing?
6:35 p.m.
Information Commissioner of Canada, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
Unfortunately, we only received the money by December. It was great news, but it took a process to get the actual funds. We were able to start hiring people. We are right now in the process of doing a selection process for 25 new investigators. I also hired 12 more last year.
Unfortunately, COVID has slowed down the process. It's more difficult, but it's still possible, so we're doing it. We have a pool right now of 500 candidates who are willing to come and work for me. That's very encouraging, but we still have to do the testing and the interviews. Hopefully, I can use that pool to help other institutions get their analysts too. I'm trying to make good use of this time that we're going to be spending on hiring people.
Yes, the majority of the money, 90%, is going into hiring new investigators.