Information & Ethics committee  I think there should be clearly set reasons as to why consultations should or should not be done.

Information & Ethics committee  These organizations are providing the public—Canadians—services on behalf of Canada. They're using public funds to provide those services. Canadians are asking for information about where the money's going and how the decisions are made. These institutions should be subject to th

Information & Ethics committee  We need specific institutions to be in the act.

Information & Ethics committee  No, it's going to increase the number of requests. That's for sure. The question is not what we're going to take away from Canadians. The act has to be reviewed as much as the system needs to be addressed. If you're going to give more information through access requests, you cl

Information & Ethics committee  Right now the act says you have to respond to an access request within 30 days, or you can ask for an extension. There are different reasons. One of them is consultations. Consultations are not mandatory. At this point, a lot of institutions think they are or they are treating

Information & Ethics committee  Everybody in the government needs to be better at management, for sure. What we see is that people don't have maximum capacity for emails anymore. Most institutions have these big inboxes that nobody takes care of, so when you are being asked for emails, you can produce tens of t

Information & Ethics committee  It's definitely needed. I've even offered my services in that regard, although the legislation that governs my role doesn't give me an educational mandate like the Privacy Commissioner's, for example. However, I feel that's part of a commissioner's job. We have a duty to inform p

Information & Ethics committee  The report that was tabled contains a lot of comments and findings about exemptions and exclusions that are not consistently applied or understood properly. However, it doesn't seem to have any recommendations to change the wording of these exemptions or to review the extensions

Information & Ethics committee  The problem is that it's very difficult to recruit people who have the knowledge and who are, as I said earlier, willing to do that job. If an institution.... I feel for them. I tell you, it's definitely one of those tough jobs. When they can't find people who want to do the job,

Information & Ethics committee  We need to provide people with performance indicators at the management level—the DG, ADM and DM levels. That's where you need them to be responsible. The minister is accountable for access. The obligation, under the act, is on the head of the institution. They need to be interes

Information & Ethics committee  There are so many things that need to be done, it's hard to start with one. Yes, the submissions have provided good examples of where things need to be better. Our government needs to provide clear direction to all institutions that they must respect the act. Even if we don't cha

Information & Ethics committee  We definitely need more technology to help. We definitely need to look at information management. Nowadays, people work with emails. I said the last time I appeared before you that we have examples of requests that should result in two or three pages of information resulting in 5

Information & Ethics committee  Right now, institutions are required to maintain and publish a list of all access to information requests they have received and processed over the past two years. We find that not all institutions comply with this requirement. However, it's certainly something that helps, becaus

Information & Ethics committee  Again, we've seen it in some institutions, but not consistently everywhere.

Information & Ethics committee  We would need to look at the number of requests. Unfortunately, despite the systemic investigation into Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, the department doesn't receive fewer access to information requests, and the action plan announced three years ago still hasn't be