Information & Ethics committee  Certainly the ATIP community meetings that Treasury Board holds every couple of months are a good forum. And Treasury Board does put forth its best practices, which we try to follow. I'm participating in a steering committee that Treasury Board has struck dealing with community

Information & Ethics committee  I believe it would be “organization”. I would have to check on that to be certain.

Information & Ethics committee  Unfortunately, I'm not aware of any other universities that have courses on access to information. The University of Alberta course is a few years old now, and we're seeing people starting to graduate from the course. Certainly my staff have taken training through the University

Information & Ethics committee  What I would say is that there are a number of areas in which there could be delays. Retrieval is one of the areas that, during the time of the commissioner's report in 2008 and 2009, was a real challenge for us. Consultations can also be a challenge. We may think we've asked for

Information & Ethics committee  Certainly consultations do provide a challenge to the department to respond to requests. Because we're a regulatory department, there are a number of requests that require consultation to determine cabinet confidences, and because the environment is a shared jurisdiction, we have

Information & Ethics committee  Unfortunately I don't have those figures at hand.

Information & Ethics committee  I could, yes.

Information & Ethics committee  Treasury Board has ATIP community meetings, and we are definitely active participants in these meetings. Either I or one of my staff members always attend the ATIP community meetings. It's a chance to network with colleagues in other departments to discuss best practices.

Information & Ethics committee  It ended on April 1, 2009.

Information & Ethics committee  Sure. Thank you for the question. My office is a central coordinating body for all requests under both the Access to Information Act and the Privacy Act. Requests are directed to Mr. Bernier, and our office will open a file and determine where in the department the request shoul

Information & Ethics committee  When a file is ready to circulate for approval, a duplicate package of the materials that are going to be released is provided concurrently to the minister's office and to our communications branch, for communication purposes only. Once it comes time to release the materials, w

Information & Ethics committee  We give them a copy of the release package when it's going for approval; it might be a little longer than 24 hours. However, 24 hours prior to the release date of the request we do send out our advisory.