National Defence Committee on Feb. 12th, 2024

[Bill Matthews]

There are a couple of points here.

Number one, it's the volume and complexity of requests, and in terms of the documents that have to be found, it's often multi-year.

In terms of the staff we have working on ATIP right now, there is a very competitive environment to hire ATIP folks, so there are openings, but finding the people and getting them trained is taking time. It is not just the ATIP team that does this. I know we would all like to picture Taylor or one of her friends having access to all the information, sorting through it and figuring out what can be released. The bigger volume of work sits with the actual information holders themselves.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB]

You have obligations under the act. If you have more volume, why aren't you just assigning more staff to it?

To change gears here a bit, I want to go back to the Mark Norman scandal. CBC reported in 2019 about a military member who spoke on background. He said:

...he approached his commander in July 2017 asking for help with an access-to-information request for internal documents about Norman. His commander, he said, smiled and said there were no records because officials were being careful to avoid using the vice-admiral's name in memos, email and briefings. That would mean any search for records about Norman would come up empty.

That's where the term “this isn't our first rodeo” is from.

Has this nefarious practice ended? You guys used code names like “Kracken”. Who else have you used code names for, like Jon Vance?

[Bill Matthews]

I will not speak to the specifics here.

When you get an ATIP request, it's your duty to provide the information you have. I have talked already this morning—

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB]

This is willful obstruction. Who gave the order?

[Bill Matthews]

I think my point here is that's not the process that should be followed. If that's what happened, that is wrong. There is not direction to do that. Does that happen? Could it happen? I can't speak to the specifics, but it's not direction that ever should have been given.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB]

As the deputy minister, you are aware of this. Were there reprimands? Did people get fired? This is unlawful behaviour.

[Bill Matthews]

Military members do not report up to me, so if someone is deliberately avoiding providing information that should be provided in an ATIP, there should be consequences.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB]

Major-General Simoneau, did anybody lose their job over this?

[MGen Erick Simoneau]

I'm not aware of this in particular. What the deputy minister just said is really important. To my knowledge, I'm not tracking any of this in the system. We can certainly take this under advisement, but there would be consequences for someone passing such an order, absolutely.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB]

That's deflection and obfuscation.

When you look at the ATIPs that I still have outstanding, there wasn't a 30-day reply and there wasn't a 60-day notice that they needed more time. Nothing happened. You could have just sent me a bunch of redacted documents and that didn't happen. Why is there no action when it comes to requests coming from the official opposition's shadow minister of defence?

[Bill Matthews]

On the first point, when we receive a request and it's disseminated, the requesters is not acknowledged. It's agnostic. We do not know who the requester is. Truthfully, it shouldn't matter who the requester is. It should all just get processed.

On the second point, we will use the information you shared with the minister this morning to do some testing to see where the delays might be. Earlier on, at the start of the committee, we were talking about some statistics. I believe we were adding in privacy requests versus ATIPs, so I think we have some clarification to do there, but as the minister said, he will take your requests and we'll see where they are in the system. However, when a request gets disseminated, it does not say “from James Bezan”. It's blank.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Mr. Bezan.

A final five minutes goes to Mrs. Lalonde.

[Marie-France Lalonde, Liberal, Orléans, ON]

Thank you very much.

Thank you all for being here.

I would also like to acknowledge and thank the people of the Canadian Armed Forces for their service to our country.

We've heard much about the modernization and streamlining of the ATIP process. There is one thing that I think we would like to know. In the spirit of looking forward to where we can go, can you point to some of the specific things you will be implementing and the metrics you will assess them by?

[Bill Matthews]

We've talked about the various initiatives. It's probably not as exciting for members of this committee as it is important, but on process standardization, once we assign an ATIP to the relevant assistant deputy ministers and three-star officers, that is critical.

We've talked about the training that's already done. On process automation and the additional tools, those will come, but really the only metric here is percentage compliance. That is the metric. We can talk about cases closed and we can talk about pages reviewed, but from a legislation perspective, the percentage of compliance is the critical metric and that's what we'll use. We are hoping to see improvement within the next three months based on some of that process standardization. I look forward to taking your questions three months from now.

[Marie-France Lalonde, Liberal, Orléans, ON]

That would be my next question. Three months from now, what will the metrics be that will have you saying there is better success?

[Bill Matthews]

There will not be an overnight change in numbers, but as the minister shared in his opening testimony, there was 61.7% compliance last year. We'll be looking for that number to go higher. I would like to see it go up 5% to 10% in the next three to six months, but we shall see.

[Marie-France Lalonde, Liberal, Orléans, ON]

On that 5% to 10% that you hope to see improve, what is the barrier to that improvement? Do we find excuses? How are we truthfully tracking that 5% to 10% improvement?

[Bill Matthews]

The barrier, if there is any, would be around failure to change the internal process to reflect the best practice that gets identified. Some pockets of the organization do better than others. We want to take advantage of how they do it and apply that to others. There are three or four pockets of the organization that really struggle because of volume, so we're looking to focus on those to streamline their process and change it. If we're not getting changes in process, you won't see better results, because the volume is just going to keep coming up.

[Marie-France Lalonde, Liberal, Orléans, ON]

Thank you very much.

Last, we talked very briefly about Bill C-58 Ms. Paxton, earlier we were making reference to your maybe wanting to clarify a few things for this committee.

[Taylor Paxton]

We have taken Bill C-58 and really implemented it within our department in the sense that we understand what we're being asked to do. Proactive disclosure is very important. We are working very hard to improve our compliance on proactive disclosure. There have been some instances where we have had to redirect ourselves on proactive disclosure, and we have done so quickly. We'll continue to do that work.

[Marie-France Lalonde, Liberal, Orléans, ON]

Do I still have time?

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

You still have a minute.

[Marie-France Lalonde, Liberal, Orléans, ON]

Okay. That's good.

Maybe I can hear from our brigadier-general and major-general. Looking forward, what are the key areas where you believe you need to make changes or where you've made the changes and are still waiting for those metrics to come into play to see improvement?

[Bill Matthews]

Maybe, General Simoneau, it's worth talking about some of the changes to get through the grievance backlog and the boards that have taken place.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

He doesn't have that much time, but go ahead.