Government Operations Committee on Feb. 5th, 2026

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to meeting number 25 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates.

We welcome back a friend of our committee, Madame Maynard, the Information Commissioner, for an hour and a half. Then we're going in camera for half an hour to chat about how we're going to present our FINA study to FINA.

Welcome back, Commissioner. It's wonderful to have you with us. The floor is yours. Please go ahead.

[Caroline Maynard, Information Commissioner, Offices of the Information and Privacy Commissioners of Canada]

Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee, for the invitation to appear before you today.

Since I do not appear before this committee very often, I would like to briefly talk about my mandate.

I am the independent agent of Parliament responsible for overseeing the federal access to information regime. My mandate is to investigate complaints, ensure that institutions comply with their legal obligations under the Access to Information Act and uphold Canadians' right of access to government information.

This role is essential to transparency, accountability and the integrity of our democratic institutions. As you know, under the comprehensive expenditure review, institutions across government are reviewing public spending to ensure that it is responsible, cost-effective and delivering real results to Canadians. While my office is not directly affected by the review, we respect its spirit by modernizing processes, maximizing operational efficiencies and deploying resources strategically while maintaining our core mandate.

As the government seeks to reduce expenditures, leaders must keep in mind that access to information is not a service. It is a quasi-constitutional right grounded in law and must be treated as such. This right is put at risk by cuts to access to information and privacy teams, as well as to the program areas that hold the records.

In a digital world flooded with misinformation—where artificial intelligence can distort content and falsehoods spread rapidly on social media—timely access to reliable information is more crucial than ever. It empowers us to separate fact from fiction and understand what drives government decisions.

Turning to the review of the Access to Information Act, launched last June by the Treasury Board Secretariat, it is important to note that multiple studies and reviews have already highlighted that changes are necessary.

While I will reserve detailed comment until the government's policy paper is released, the review presents a critical opportunity for meaningful reform. As I recently wrote to the President of the Treasury Board, this review must not become a justification for further secrecy. It must expand access, modernize the framework and reinforce independent oversight. The public's right to know is fundamental to our democracy, and any review must strengthen that right.

In that vein, I would like to talk about one legislative amendment introduced in 2019 that has had a significant positive impact on the overall access to information system and on the work done by my office: the order-making power. When I find that an institution has not complied with the act and there is a corrective action to be taken, I can order the institution to do so. I want to be clear that this power is used in moderation. I only issue orders when efforts to make institutions comply with their statutory obligations are unsuccessful.

Up to January in the current fiscal year, only 230 of the nearly 3,000 complaints concluded through investigations resulted in orders being issued. That represents less than 8% of complaints. This figure demonstrates that my authority to make an order is exercised appropriately and is not overused.

The data also shows that I issue orders mostly in cases involving delays or extensions of time complaints. These are situations where institutions have already missed the statutory deadline for responding, sometimes by months. In such cases, the order simply directs the institutions to do what the law already requires them to do: provide a response to the requester—the response he is entitled to under the act.

In closing, I want to state that, as a matter of principle, I am categorically opposed to any measure that would weaken the order-making power. Revisiting this authority would represent a step backward for transparency, accountability and the access to information system.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thank you very much for the opening statement. I really appreciate the commentary that your office and the info law is not a service. It's an actual right and it's a law. I really appreciate your bringing it up.

Mr. Patzer, we'll start with you for six minutes, please.

[Jeremy Patzer, Conservative, Swift Current—Grasslands—Kindersley, SK]

Thank you very much for joining us here today. I really appreciate your taking the time to be here.

I'm just going to start by reading a couple of headlines from over the years.

In 2024, in The Globe and Mail, there was an article with this headline: “The promise of government-official accountability is vanishing—along with their texts”.

In 2025, CTV News had the headline, “'Hypocrisy is next level:' Canadian officials criticized for using disappearing messages on Signal”.

Then, to start off this year, in January, Blacklock's Reporter reported that there was a memo sent out, effective January 26, telling staff to “delete in-house chat posts within 15 days.” The quote in the article was, “Keeping it longer increases risk and does not align with information management principles”.

Were you made aware of this decision prior to its being enforced by the government?

[Caroline Maynard]

The administration of the retention policy and management of information is the authority of the Treasury Board. We're not being informed when these policies are being issued. We are aware that the government has retention policies and that it has put in place a system that automatically deletes some messages or Teams messages.

I am not against proper information management as long as people are aware of what they have to do with documents that actually document decisions, actions and policy decision-making. With the retention policy, there has to be proper messaging to the employees on how to properly manage their information, so that Canadians can access that information. As you know, without documents, we don't have access to information.

[Jeremy Patzer, Conservative, Swift Current—Grasslands—Kindersley, SK]

There's some obvious interest from the general public in what could be said in some of these messages. There's certainly some value in how decisions are being made.

Are you concerned by the fact that 15 days is where they have this set? That's a pretty quick turnaround for a message to be deleted. I know the Access to Information Act requires 30 days for a response. Is that the timeline?

[Caroline Maynard]

On top of the retention policy, what I'm worried about—actually I issued a letter this week to the institutions—is that they have to be aware that when an access request comes in, all records have to be processed, treated and retrieved, including transitory documents and messages. If they don't have a system in place to stop the deletion or the automatic deletion, we may end up losing some of those documents that are responsive to an access request.

The Access to Information Act does not differentiate between the types of messages and the types of records, but I understand that for proper information management, it is okay to get rid of transitory messages and transitory documents as long as the decisions, the discussions and minutes.... There's a proper way to capture those decisions, so that ultimately they could be retrievable and accessible.

[Jeremy Patzer, Conservative, Swift Current—Grasslands—Kindersley, SK]

Is there any policy on transitory messages that exists for a time frame? Obviously they said 15 days here, but was there a previous rule that was in place for how long a message should be retained?

[Caroline Maynard]

Every government institution is allowed to set the retention period that they believe is appropriate for the type of.... Every record has a retention policy. Some records will be kept for two years and others for 30 days. It really depends. There are some guidance and directives from TBS and from the Library and Archives on those issues.

[Jeremy Patzer, Conservative, Swift Current—Grasslands—Kindersley, SK]

That's interesting. Are there any guardrails or limits in place to protect this process from being abused in attempts to hide corruption or something that the government finds embarrassing, or should there be guardrails in place?

[Caroline Maynard]

Once a document is requested under my act and somebody intentionally deletes it or gets rid of it, there are some provisions where I could refer that as a criminal offence and it could be investigated by the Attorney General. Apart from that, the government at the federal level does not have a “duty to document” that is legislated. There's no sanction. There's no requirement to document under the act, but if you are intentionally removing those documents once an access request comes, that's when the offence can be considered.

[Jeremy Patzer, Conservative, Swift Current—Grasslands—Kindersley, SK]

Are there any ongoing investigations or ongoing issues with that?

[Caroline Maynard]

I have referred to the government, to the Attorney General, a few cases since I was appointed. I'm not aware of any investigations or open cases with respect to those allegations.

[Jeremy Patzer, Conservative, Swift Current—Grasslands—Kindersley, SK]

Okay. Thank you.

I think I have only about 15 seconds left, Chair, so I'll cede the rest of my time to you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thanks.

We'll go to Mr. Osborne, please.

[Tom Osborne, Liberal, Cape Spear, NL]

Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Maynard, for your introductory remarks.

Has the volume of complaints increased?

[Caroline Maynard]

No. Actually, I'm pleased to see that in the last two to three years, we seem to be hitting a number that is very stable, at around 5,000 complaints a year, which represents about 2% of all access requests made to the government.

[Tom Osborne, Liberal, Cape Spear, NL]

Good. I'm glad, because I was sort of going there. The number of complaints has gone down, at about 2% or thereabouts of the total number of requests. I think just under 60% of the complaints are well-founded, which would mean that over 40% are not well-founded.

There's considerable time and resources going into this. How do we narrow down, or make more efficient, identifying the complaints that are actually valid or are well-founded complaints?

[Caroline Maynard]

One thing that I think is misleading is that a lot of our complaints don't lead to a finding of whether it's well-founded or not well-founded, because they are resolved before we get to that; 85% of all our complaints we try to resolve informally. Only 15% of all the complaints have to go into a finding. The 30% and the 60% are of these 15%. Actually, out of maybe 4,000 complaints, we resolved 85%.

Often, what we mean by “resolve” is that the complainant receives the information he's entitled to before we have to issue an order or before we have to complete our investigation because of the negotiations and the discussions we have with the institution. A lot of work is done before we actually have to issue a finding.

[Tom Osborne, Liberal, Cape Spear, NL]

I appreciate that.

In terms of human resources, an army of people respond to access to information requests. The number of pages being released keeps going up. How do we manage the management of information? Some of these requests are duplicate. Some may be frivolous. I have a feeling, based on my time in provincial government, that we're in fact doing research, whether it's for corporations or lawyers or journalists or politicians, whatever the case may be.

How can we better manage the information so that if it's a duplicate request...? On the valuable human resources and the time and the number of pages released, are we able to get to a stage where maybe we can reduce the burden?

[Caroline Maynard]

The proper management of information would be a good start. Right now, public servants are not obliged or mandated to review their inbox. They don't have a maximum volume of what they can keep in their Outlook sent box. There is no proper training on information management.

Ultimately, if the information were properly managed, you could start talking about artificial intelligence tools that review for duplicates, or for documents that are not responsive to the request, before somebody looks at the documents internally. Countries like New Zealand have started using those tools, so they exist. In Canada, I think we have a few institutions that have started doing that as well.

The information has to be found first, before we can use these tools. The problem we have is that information is everywhere right now. It's not properly managed. That's one of the reasons we think people are starting to say, “Let's not keep all our Teams stuff. Let's not keep all the texts that are transitory documents. Let's keep the proper documents for corporate knowledge and business values.” If you don't do that, you end up with a file with millions of pages. Until you clean that up and until people think about this every day, it's not going to get better.

We're working so fast now. We're working from home. We're working from the office. Everything is done digitally. It's no longer about printing a file and putting it in a little folder, which you can get when it's necessary. There are folders everywhere. It doesn't help with access requests at all.

[Tom Osborne, Liberal, Cape Spear, NL]

Proper information management techniques would improve that, no doubt.

[Caroline Maynard]

It would be key.

[Tom Osborne, Liberal, Cape Spear, NL]

What's considered transitory and not transitory? I have a strong belief in “the right to know”, without compromising national security or information.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

I apologize. We're out of time. Perhaps we can get to that on the next intervention.

Madame Gaudreau, you have six minutes.