Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to provide the government's response to Bill C-613, An Act to amend the Parliament of Canada Act and the Access to Information Act (transparency).
For many reasons, the government cannot support this bill, not least of which is because it includes a number of problematic amendments.
The proposed changes to the Access to Information Act, for example, would increase the required administration involved, and seldom does an increase in administration result in decreased costs or efficiencies to taxpayers. Our current system includes an independent Information Commissioner who reports directly to Parliament and who already has a strong mandate to investigate and resolve disputes concerning access requests.
This system has a very broad reach and includes nearly 200 federal institutions, including crown corporations like the CBC and Canada Post, and government funded foundations like the Canada Foundation for Innovation.
In 2012-13 alone, the system released nearly six million pages of information to Canadians, which is an increase of over a million and a half pages over the preceding year. During that same year, the government received and responded to nearly 54,000 access requests, which is more than in previous years.
This proves that Canada's access to information system is working well.
Under our Conservative government, Canadians are accessing more information from the government than ever before.
That is something all Canadians can be proud of.
The government is determined to ensure that Canadians continue to have access to government information and documents of all kinds. The government recognizes that accountability and transparency are an ongoing process.
We acknowledge that Canadians expect a high level of openness in government. We also understand that they expect to have more opportunities to participate in public affairs, particularly through the use of new and emerging technologies.
The government is committed to meeting these high expectations of Canadians, which is why we have continued to explore and implement new ways of giving Canadians access to government information. This includes our popular open data portal at data.gc.ca. This portal provides government data in machine-readable formats to enable citizens, the private sector, and non-governmental organizations the ability to leverage it in new, innovative, and value-added ways.
Our efforts also include the many measures we have taken to proactively disclose financial and human resources records of government institutions to the public. These include the disclosure of travel and hospitality expenses for selected government officials, contracts over $10,000, for instance, and the awarding of grants and contributions over $25,000, all of which can be found easily online.
By making this information readily available on departmental websites, Canadians and Parliament are better able to hold the government and public sector officials to account.
In short, we will continue to improve transparency and openness within government, but we will not do so by supporting the bill before us today.
The changes proposed by the member for Papineau ring hollow. After all, it was this member who accepted speaking fees from unions and then voted against union transparency legislation. It is also the member for Papineau who promises to repeal the First Nations Financial Transparency Act.
Recently, Barb Cote, a member of the Shuswap First Nations, thanked our government, stating:
The First Nations Transparency Act came in, and it actually showed what the previous council was doing—spending all our money on places that were not for the people.
This is the legislation that the member for Papineau will replace.
These, I would say, are not the actions of a champion of transparency.
The proposed changes in this legislation would lead to increased delays in response times to access for information requests and add cost pressures on government institutions.
As it stands, institutions are already required to document their deliberations and decisions on each request received under the act. Under our government, institutions are required to provide a detailed explanation every time they apply an exemption under the Access to Information Act. If requesters are not satisfied with the application of any exemptions, they may file a complaint with the Information Commissioner of Canada, who will examine the matter in detail. Also requiring the provision of detailed explanations every time an exemption is applied would add an unnecessary burden on the entire access to information program across the government.
The bill would also amend the Access to Information Act to eliminate all fees for access requests, except for the $5 application fee. This change would not show respect for the tax dollars of Canadians. As we all know, some individual access requests carry a large cost, given the high volume of records involved and the hours required to respond, so the government has the authority under the access to information regulations to charge an extra fee to reflect these costs. The government feels that it is quite reasonable to require a minor additional fee to process requests that consist of thousands of pages of material. I would add that federal institutions take a fair and judicious approach to charging these fees. This includes waiving or eliminating them. The vast majority of requests are fulfilled at no direct cost beyond the initial $5 application fee. In 2012-13, for example, this was the case for 99.5% of all cases. Again, 99.5% of these requests required no additional fee.
This legislation would also expand the mandate of the Information Commissioner to include the power to order the release of information. This would fundamentally change the role of the Information Commissioner, whose office would then become a quasi-judicial body. This would be in addition to the Information Commissioner's current role as an ombudsperson, which works well given her strong powers to investigate and resolve disputes about access requests.
I would also note what former information commissioner John Reid had to say on this question. He told a parliamentary committee in 2005 the following:
There is no evidence that order powers would strengthen the right of access, speed up the process, or reduce the amount of secrecy. The experience of 22 years is that the ombudsman model works very well. Fewer than 1% of complaints end up before the courts.
That said, it would be much better to continue with the present situation where the commissioner can apply to the Federal Court when an institution refuses to follow one of her recommendations to release some records.
I would just like to talk about one last change proposed in this bill: the requirement for a parliamentary committee to review the Access to Information Act every five years. I just want to say that the House of Commons Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics is responsible for carrying out such reviews and reporting its findings. The committee has actually carried out 15 studies on access to information since 2006.
From a careful reading of this private member's bill, I see more costs and more administration being added to government. I also see the potential for more litigation and disagreement, which in turn would add costs and further slow the process.
I do welcome the proposal by the member for Papineau to improve the transparency of the Board of Internal Economy. However, as stated by the Clerk of the House and former Speakers, there will always be a need for the board to meet in camera.
I would therefore encourage all members of this place to join me in opposing Bill C-613.