Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics
Robert Marleau, Information Commissioner of Canada
Main Estimates 2008-2009

Ottawa, Ontario

[2008-4-16]

[Check against Delivery]

Mr. Chairman, honourable members, thank you for the invitation and for the opportunity to inform you of the priorities of the Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada and to assist you in considering the 2008-2009 Estimates.

With me today are: Suzanne Legault, Assistant Commissioner, Policy, Communications and Operations and Andrea Neill, Assistant Commissioner, Complaints Resolution and Compliance. Also with me are Mr. Daniel Brunet, the General Counsel and Director of Legal Services, as well as Mr. Stephen Campbell, Director of Financial Services.

When I appeared before this Committee for last year’s Main Estimates, a few months after taking up office, I said that my mission as Information Commissioner was to resolve complaints, to foster better relations with federal institutions and to persuade them to be more open and transparent with their information. My staff and I, through a variety of activities, work towards that goal everyday.

It became apparent that other pressing priorities needed careful attention to ensure effective and efficient stewardship of the Office’s internal operations in the area of investigations, internal support services, administrative services and human resources. A lot of efforts were made, and will continue to be made to strengthen, and in some cases build the organizational capacity of the Office.

The Office currently has an annual budget of $7,665 millions and 78 Full Time Employees to carry out its mandate. This budget has not been substantially modified in recent years while the Office has been managing additional obligations.

Last year, we sought and received Treasury Board approval for additional funds to comply with the requirements of the Access to Information Act as amended by the Federal Accountability Act, and to establish and maintain an internal audit function as required by the Treasury Board. This additional funding is not reflected in the 2008-2009 Main Estimates but will be part of Supplementary Estimates in the fall. If Parliament grants this supplementary funding, it will increase our annual budget to $9,638,000 and our human resources to 90 Full Time Employees for 2008-2009.

The coming into force of the Federal Accountability Act placed additional demands on internal resources to the point that a review of our service delivery model, including our investigative and administrative support processes, is required. In order to assess whether we have sufficient resources, human and financial, to deliver on our mandate, the Office will do an A-base review of our funding, operations, technological equipment and staffing levels.

We already began to look at ways to improve the efficiency of our operations. We started a comprehensive review of our complaints-handling process last year, where much improvement was needed. This is one important action of our backlog strategy.

With this strategy, I was hoping to announce today a large dent in our backlog. However, at year-end, according to our service standards, almost 85 percent of our cases were in backlog, an increase from last year. How can this be? Well, the near doubling of our complaints significantly contributed to this. I think, however, that our service standards are unrealistic and played an important role in the backlog by setting timelines with no consideration for the complexity of complaints, and the resources available.

This year, we will fully implement the strategy starting with establishing, on a pilot basis, a dedicated intake and early resolution unit that prioritizes complaints according to a set of criteria that we are now developing. Such criteria may include the urgency of the request, the nature of the complaint and its complexity and the type of complainant. We will also set aside our existing service standards. Instead we will inform our clients on a case-by-case basis of the expected time it will take to respond to their complaint.

Other areas of our operations, such as our information technology system, will require significant strengthening in light of advances in technology. This reinforcement of resources is essential to provide the appropriate tools for staff to do their job efficiently and to enhance electronic communications between us and federal institutions and the public.

In order to assist Parliament and government in addressing access to information issues, we also need to bolster our policy development capacity and the parliamentary relations function.

I would like to note in passing our new approach to report cards which will provide a more complete picture of the performance of the selected institutions. We have selected 10 institutions which will be assessed against various criteria such as the timeliness of their response to requesters, trends we have observed in the last year such as consultations, request processing models and use of extensions, and good practices and the progress these institutions have made to comply with the Act. The results of these reviews will be available in the fall, by way of a Special Report to Parliament.

More fundamentally, an important priority of this Office is to give careful consideration to the reform of the legislation. Mr. Chairman, on July 1st, 2008, the Access to Information Act will be 25 years old. Important amendments were made last year as a result of the Federal Accountability Act namely with the inclusion of a statutory duty to assist. Nonetheless, in this celebration year, I believe that it is timely to take a step back and look how the Act needs to be adapted to today’s realities.

I want to commend this Committee for your interest in seeking reform of the legislation. I stand ready to assist Parliament in modernizing the access to information program. In leading up to such a dialogue, my office will hold a roundtable in June 2008 with stakeholders to exchange ideas on legislative reform as well as administrative reform. We will report on the roundtable this fall.

In conclusion Mr. Chairman, I would like to leave you with a quote from the 2002 Delagrave Report that conveys very well my views and my approach to improving the access to information regime:

“There is no magic solution to the shortcomings of the system. A healthy access to information system needs all its parts functioning well in order to deliver the outcomes intended by Parliament: the right systems to process requests, skilled staff, supportive managers and Ministers, adequate resources, good information management, good understanding of the principles and the rules by all, including third parties, and effective approaches to oversight”.

Mr. Chair, I’ve outlined my Office's priorities and the financial requirements needed for these activities in 2008-2009. I plan to table our annual report to Parliament in the last week of May 2008 and a special report with the new report cards on the access to information performance by selected federal institutions in the fall.