Remarks to House Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics

OTTAWA, ONTARIO

[2004-11-3]

Let me begin by acknowledging the historic creation of this Committee. Matters of privacy, openness and ethics do not always get to the top of the priority list of any government. These matters have long needed a Parliamentary committee to champion their cause. I am delighted that my office is finding a true parliamentary home. Perhaps now, it will no longer be necessary to say of our Annual Reports, as did my predecessor, John Grace, that for all the Parliamentary attention they received, we might as well have put them in a rocket and sent them to Mars! I thank you for inviting me to appear before you today.

I am also pleased that my most recent Annual Report, dated June 2004 but tabled in Parliament on October 6^th has been (or will be) referred to this Committee. Because Estimates are usually considered in the Spring, just before our Annual Report is tabled, no Committee in the past has had the benefit of discussing budget matters in the context of the information contained in an up-to-date Annual Report.

What are our immediate challenges? It seems clear that this Committee will soon be asked to review a bill reforming the Access to Information Act. There is some uncertainty whether or not it will be Bill C-201 or a yet-to-be introduced government bill, but all parties and the government appear determined to modernize and strengthen the Access to Information Act. You may count on me and my officials to assist you in your deliberations when they begin. I have already informed Parliament of my "wish list" for reform in the form of a Special Report, tabled in 2002, in response to the government’s internal task force report on access reform. Copies are available on request or at infocom.gc.ca.

I won’t, in these remarks, repeat my wish list for reform. Rather, I want to stick to the main reason for this meeting, my office’s resources. In this regard, I want to point out that, unless my office is properly resourced, I cannot ensure, on behalf of Parliament and the public, that the government lives up to its openness obligations. As it stands, our resources are entirely inadequate.

Truth be told, we are in a financial crisis. In the last decade, resources have not kept pace with workload. With respect to the investigator group, the office has been unable to replace retiring or departing investigators and has a current investigator complement of 23, which is well below the number of investigators required to complete the forecast annual workload of received complaints. On top of this deficit, there is a growing backlog of incomplete investigations, which is now equivalent to a year’s workload for the office.

With respect to the non-investigator group, the office has seriously depleted its capacity in the past 10 years in order to transfer resources to the investigator group. The office has moved from two assistant commissioners to one deputy commissioner; from an Executive Director of Operations and two directors of investigations to a Director General of Investigations and Reviews and a Director of Operations, and from a Director of Legal Services and Director of Litigation Services to a single Director of Legal Services.

As well, the office had to give up entirely its public affairs, research, education and training capacity in order to put resources towards an increasing workload of investigations.

Despite repeated efforts to convince the Treasury Board to properly fund the full range of the commissioner’s mandate--including several exhaustive reviews by independent consultants, jointly with the Treasury Board Secretariat-- emergency and partial funding only has been forthcoming.

This resource crisis was a matter of discussion by the Parliamentary Committee on Government Operations and Estimates during the Information Commissioner’s appearance earlier this year. Some members asked whether the inadequacy of resources may be the government’s way of weakening the commissioner’s ability to investigate and expose cases of improper government secrecy. They also wondered if the government is using its authority to grant and withhold resources to undermine the commissioner’s effectiveness and independence.

I did not then, nor do I now, consider it necessary to impute bad faith to make the point that there is a real problem of inadequate funding for the commissioner and that the real result is a weakened ability to do the job Parliament has asked the Information Commissioner to do.

We currently have a submission to Treasury Board for additional funds. The magnitude of increase to base funding my office requires is approximately two million dollars, which represents an increase of some 30%. We hope this will be approved and that it will be the end of our need to come back to the House for supplementary estimates, as we have done for the last three years. We want to get back to a quality of service which the public deserves. Yet, we may need your help because there is little incentive for governments to help make my office strong.

I am also urging government and this committee to work with all Officers of Parliament to find a new funding mechanism which will be more independent of government. The approach taken by Parliament to the funding of the Ethics Commissioner provides an interesting alternative. In that approach, the Ethics Commissioner proposes a budget to the Speaker of the House of Commons. Once the Speaker is satisfied (likely after review by the Board of Internal Economy), the budget will be forwarded to Treasury Board which will, without change or reduction, be included in the government’s spending estimates and the funding made available to the Ethics Commissioner.

In closing, I wish to remind members that the Access to Information Act delivers tremendous "bang for the buck". The entire system, including departmental processing mechanisms and the Information Commissioner’s office, costs less than one dollar per Canadian per year. I urge this committee to make it a priority to nurture and protect this vital tool for fostering accountability in government. I urge you to bear in mind these words of former member John Bryden speaking on second reading of Bill C-462 in April of this year:

"This initiative of bringing transparency and accountability to government has always been an initiative of all members of the House, regardless of party. It has not been an initiative of government."

Thank you for your attention. I am now available to answer your questions.