Information & Ethics committee  I left government three years ago, so I think you're in a better position to judge that based on the feedback. I do think it is the model to be expanded to a much longer list of categories of information, and if information is getting to voters, taxpayers and citizens directly w

Information & Ethics committee  You can either hard-wire them into the legislation or you can create a list you can add to through regulation. It's up to you to decide how to construct it, but I will say that the government tomorrow could roll back any of the practices around posting research on travel, hospita

Information & Ethics committee  Whether it is a request-based model where something is released, or something is released unless there's an argument not to, redaction is the process of separating the releasable from the unreleasable. It does require the exercise of judgment and interpretation of the law and the

Information & Ethics committee  I don't have at my fingertips any international comparisons. Frankly, I think probably no government does a great job on records management. It's just not something that politicians are attracted to investing in. It's seen as overhead. It's seen as bureaucracy. There's much more

Information & Ethics committee  I think you could weave some of that language into a proactive disclosure chapter of the act if there is a part of the act that covers proactive disclosure and there's an onus to disclose unless you can provide a reason not to. Subject to the limitations of the records system, so

Information & Ethics committee  I think it would be possible to follow the example of the other commissioner, the Privacy Commissioner of Canada. Privacy commissioners have not been shy about conducting studies, issuing reports, and commenting on the privacy practices of government entities and, indeed, priva

Information & Ethics committee  I believe that for a system to be transparent, there are two important factors. The first is a legislative framework that establishes all the obligations and practices for proactive disclosure. There is nothing stopping the next government from rolling back, curtailing or making

Information & Ethics committee  No government that I've ever worked for has really taken record storage management or retrieval seriously. I worked as the deputy minister at the department of aboriginal affairs, and we were often called upon in litigation and other proceedings to go back to documents from the l

Information & Ethics committee  I think that people in good faith in the departments are trying to comply with the requests and then sort out the various exemptions and reasons why there would be a need for confidentiality or withholding. It could be legal advice. It could be something like evidence in a harass

Information & Ethics committee  I'd like to expand upon some of the messages in my document. Records are not just required under the Access to Information Act. There is an infrastructure of document management, storage and retrieval that feeds requests under the Privacy Act: discovery and litigation proceeding

Information & Ethics committee  No. However, a deputy minister or someone of equivalent rank has to establish a process. In fact, accountability initially rests with the public service and the head of the institution. A minister, or people in the minister's office, shouldn't be getting politically involved in

Information & Ethics committee  To begin with, there is feedback from the commissioner through institutional performance records and investigation reports. There are also committees like yours.

Information & Ethics committee  One of the things that could be covered by the proactive disclosure provisions that I'm recommending would be that departments and agencies would have to post every single request that has been filed, every request that has been disclosed and the elapsed time. That would create a

Information & Ethics committee  I think the bigger issue, Mr. Kurek, is that there is an entire nervous system of political staffers who work for ministers in the Prime Minister's Office who are equal partners, and in some cases, the most important partners, in the decision-making process. You have an act that

Information & Ethics committee  Yes, of course. I don't think I need the rest of the time. I think—