Information & Ethics committee  Totally. We definitely needed more people and resources with respect to the new authorities with Bill C-58. Some of the money you see in the increase comes from that. We requested additional funding for four years in a row through a submission to Treasury Board. That was give

Information & Ethics committee  When the information is already public, an institution can use this as a reason to not respond to an access request and just refer the requester to that information. More information that is published will definitely lead to fewer access requests or more specific access requests.

Information & Ethics committee  I would invite you to read my submission and recommendations to Minister Duclos back in 2020 with respect to the legislative review and also the system as a whole. I have very specific recommendations in there, but the main issue—

Information & Ethics committee  They were supposed to issue their report early this year, but apparently it's been delayed until December. Very specifically, there are things in the act that need to be changed. The 30-day timeline is fine, but the timeline doesn't take into consideration the consultation that

Information & Ethics committee  As I said earlier, it's really difficult for me to say because we do not have access to cabinet confidences, and requesters will often agree not to request those. They will let it go because they know that nobody can tell them if the documents that have been redacted as cabinet c

Information & Ethics committee  Yes. We are seeing similar issues. It hasn't gotten better. I think some departments are definitely better. However, overall, Madame Legault said it and we're saying it again: Canadians are asking for more and more information from their government. The requests have increased

Information & Ethics committee  As you know, culture takes a very long time to change. We definitely need more serious leaders with directions to their people, to their public servants, to disclose by default, as you say. We need a more robust legislation. We need to reduce the impact of some sections. Some o

Information & Ethics committee  At the time, I did agree that it was not enough, but we did make a lot of changes. Unfortunately, on Bill C-58, there was not a lot of consultation when it was first tabled. If you look at the first draft of Bill C-58 and what was actually passed, there were a lot of changes, a

Information & Ethics committee  Yes. We do it through guidelines.

Information & Ethics committee  There are various reasons why information should be kept secret. Certainly, there are good reasons related to national security, but there are also times when the content of certain meetings in which people in government have decisions to make are kept secret because that lets th

Information & Ethics committee  No. The complaints we receive about IRCC are usually addressed within 30 days. IRCC officials respond very quickly to requests; they do not get it done within 30 days, but they often do within 60 days. So oftentimes, someone will file a complaint with our office, but before we be

Information & Ethics committee  Thank you.

Information & Ethics committee  Our funding was based on closing 4,000 cases approximately per year. Like I said, our complaints are now almost double that. What we did is invest in our people, invest in training and invest in templates and process, but like I said in my opening remarks, innovating is now at it

Information & Ethics committee  I think the $800,000 was a lapse, again from the previous year, which we didn't use, so we asked the government to give it back to us so we could spend it last year. Now we're going to be looking at asking for more money to increase our resources and our IT infrastructure.

Information & Ethics committee  Yes, in the next six months.