Information & Ethics committee  Yes. Totally. I understand that TBS is now putting in place a system for online requests and online responses, which we are part.... It's like a pilot project. I think that will help for sure, as long as institutions join the pilot project. Hopefully, that will increase other typ

Information & Ethics committee  I tabled that report very recently. I understand there's a plan of action being prepared that will be shared with us and the public within the next six months. They're working on obtaining more human and financial resources, which they definitely need. Whether or not we'll see

Information & Ethics committee  We are one of the only countries in the Commonwealth that does not have an agency independent of the government to review cabinet confidence documents. Like I said earlier, requesters understand they are not entitled to those documents. It's difficult for me to tell them whether

Information & Ethics committee  I cannot get into the specifics of the complaints or the investigations per se. When we see actions that could be interpreted as intentionally trying to hide or erase or take away from somebody's access, I cannot investigate whether it was intentional criminally, so I refer it to

Information & Ethics committee  We're not informed. There's no follow-up with my office if it has been.

Information & Ethics committee  The act provides a good test. You have to prove the harm. By providing the information, is there going to be some kind of harm to our relationship with other countries, or with respect to the information itself? As time goes on, sometimes the sensitivity of that information dimin

Information & Ethics committee  We are the first stage of review in the federal government. If someone isn't satisfied with my office's investigation or investigation report, they can go to federal court.

Information & Ethics committee  As an attorney, I'd say that it's not easy for someone who isn't represented by an attorney.

Information & Ethics committee  We have an access unit that works very hard to convince the government or the departments concerned to release information. These individuals apply the law to try to encourage disclosure of information. Some officials are more reluctant, however. We'd like ministers, deputy minis

Information & Ethics committee  Yes.

Information & Ethics committee  I would not be able to tell you right away. I don't think more than 5% of our cases deal with cabinet confidence. What often happens is that requesters know they're not entitled to those documents, so they will remove that from the scope of their requests, saying, “I want everyt

Information & Ethics committee  We don't look at what the intentions of the requesters are. We are asked to review to make sure the request has been responded to in time, or that the redactions are appropriate. We do have a section in the act now that institutions can try to refuse to respond to a vexatious req

Information & Ethics committee  I totally agree that we need to increase resources within institutions. They need more trained analysts. They need human resources, but also technology to respond to the increase in demand. There are definitely some investments that need to be made, but like I said earlier, there

Information & Ethics committee  We only track the number of complaints we receive. The TBS is the administrator of the act, per se, so it receives the annual report from each institution, so it knows which institutions is getting what number of requests. Based on my statistics, I can tell you that Immigration

Information & Ethics committee  It's a culture of openness and moving away from secrets, like we talked about earlier. More resources will be needed, but better management of information.... There are a lot of different factors that need to be considered. It's not just one thing. Definitely I think that leader