Information & Ethics committee  Yes, absolutely. I couldn't agree more that I would like to see our elected representatives able to cut through the barriers to transparency that are embedded in the convention—which is a good way of saying it—of cabinet confidence. Previous governments and current governments seem to approach cabinet confidence as being something that's almost like a law of nature.

Information & Ethics committee  Yes. I think we absolutely have to have transparency about where and when secrecy is used. What we start to get is a kind of layering of secrecy so that not only are decisions opaque but the basis of those decisions—the orders that inform those decisions—are opaque as well. This goes back to what I mentioned earlier about the issue of trust and transparency.

Information & Ethics committee  This is not anomalous, in my experience. Our organization makes recommendations on reforms to transparency laws provincially and federally. One of the trends we tend to see when there is a public inquiry, an investigation, a commission or a review is that one of the first things that is presented is the administration of the act.

Information & Ethics committee  Thank you very much for the question. I think rebuilding trust is a vital step for this committee to be thinking about. One thing that can be done, I think, is to impose some limitations on the delays that are systemic in the system. Right now, the Access to Information Act permits open-ended extensions and consultations that can further exacerbate extensions.

Information & Ethics committee  Absolutely. We have quite a few in our brief here. I think the cabinet confidence issue is also an important one here. Many of the records that people are really interested in pertain to why government is doing what it's doing, how it's rationalizing those decisions, who is making those decisions and on what basis.

Information & Ethics committee  Thank you. I jump at the opportunity to speak to this. It's a deterrent fee. This is not really a cost recovery fee. It's a fee that's designed to make people think twice before using the FOI process. In B.C. we went from having no fee to really a mix now of $10 for some organizations and public bodies, and others that haven't implemented the fee just yet.

Information & Ethics committee  Thank you. No, I don't think it has to be one before the other. You can do both at the same time. There are a lot of really good arguments to be made about improving the accessibility of the access system and the way that the information is managed in government. I really take that quite seriously.

Information & Ethics committee  I think that they're very important. We have to be able to access the records and to locate the records that are pertinent to access requests. However, ultimately, we have to make sure that the records that are released are released in a timely fashion, are comprehensive and are not full of holes, and that can't be addressed exclusively with digitization.

Information & Ethics committee  Thank you very much. My name's Mike Larsen. I'm the president of BC FIPA and a faculty member in the criminology department at Kwantlen Polytechnic University. I'm joining you from my office here on the unceded territories of the Coast Salish peoples. I'm grateful to the members of the committee for inviting us to speak with you again after our first presentation in the fall.

Information & Ethics committee  Thank you for that. It's a good question. I think there needs to be a differentiation between access to information and open governments. I've been really heartened by a lot of open government initiatives that I've seen the Government of Canada take over the last 10 years. A more active and proactive release of datasets I think does put us not necessarily at the head of the pack but certainly in a progressive way.

Information & Ethics committee  This is a very important question. I think people sometimes interpret the systemic delays in processes.... I had an RCMP request take five years recently. That was a record for me. FIPA often hears from people who interpret it this way: “There's something to hide. There's something sinister.

Information & Ethics committee  Yes, absolutely. I would say that the ones that you mentioned have been mentioned many times in the past, so there is a moment to start working on this, even if we won't see the results immediately. I think that strengthening proactive disclosure is a really important mechanism, because ultimately people are seeking information and using the access to information law, not necessarily as a means of last resort but because there are no other avenues that are readily available.

Information & Ethics committee  The straightforward answer is that FIPA didn't consult on that particular project. We were interested in the idea of a digital charter and we saw the obvious intersections with transparency and access to information, particularly proactive disclosure, but we haven't had an opportunity to consult on that.

Information & Ethics committee  Excellent. I'll keep this very close. I think it's a good idea for the committee to look at New Zealand's Public Records Act of 2005, which embeds a requirement for the documentation of government work. It requires that people who are working for government create and maintain adequate records of their activities.

Information & Ethics committee  Our remarks today are based on a comparative scan of the provincial freedom of information and access to information mechanisms, with reference to some international ones. One of the things we find as a standard for robust and effective transparency laws is the inclusion of a public interest override that allows for information that is deemed to be in the public interest to be released—indeed, requires it to be released, in some instances proactively released—and overrides exceptions and exemptions that would otherwise apply to certain categories of information.