ETHI Committee Report

Liberal Dissenting Opinion

To the Report of the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics

“Access to information and Privacy Systems”

The current performance of the Access to Information system is not good enough. In 2021‑22, 70.7% requests were processed within the time frame prescribed in the Act.[1] That’s why the government’s priority is to improve service under the existing law, not to re-open the Act that Parliament strengthened less than four years ago.

The goal of our work is fourfold: improve service delivery, enhance staff capacity, meet the needs of Indigenous populations more effectively, and continue to develop measures such as declassification. We will have more details to share within a year.

It will build on improvements that the government has already made. We recently launched an enhanced ATIP online platform to make it more efficient to submit a request and receive records, while reducing administrative burden. We have onboarded 251 institutions onto the platform, with more to come. Within a year, over 90% of requests will go through the platform. TBS has selected two modern systems that will provide faster processing of requests. The first 13 institutions are being onboarded to the new processing software this year. The more we automate where we can, the more teams can focus on their core jobs and the better the public will be served. To help address staffing challenges, we launched a new community development office to support ATI communities through recruitment, retention, training and professional development.

As committee members from the Liberal Party, we were proud to join our colleagues in studying the Access to Information system. It is a testament to Canada that all parties support the Access to Information system and want to improve it, not undermine it. We’re also grateful to the many witnesses who appeared to advocate for a range of improvements to the system, from its timeliness to the accessibility of historical information, which is an essential condition for many communities that are seeking closure.

While the committee’s report advances a number of proposals that will help improve Access to Information, unfortunately others are well intentioned, but unworkable. As the governing party, it is our responsibility to explain some of those challenges in this dissenting opinion.

A recommendation suggests to “prohibit the use of personal emails or encrypted applications” for government work. While the former is already required to comply with security policies, prohibiting encryption would put sensitive information at risk from malicious actors and cyber threats.

The report recommends a review of the system. Such a review was already concluded only last December, and the next legislative review will be held in 2025, only a year and a half from now.

The report recommends ATI employees be prevented from altering requests, something that is already illegal under the law—section 4 (2.1) requires officials to provide accurate and complete responses.

One recommendation is that all Access to Information responses be published online, a dramatic expansion of the current approach of posting summaries. While currently records are shared in the language in which they were created and, if requested, translated into the other official language, to comply with the Official Languages Act, they would all need to be translated before being posted online. In 2021-22, that would have meant translating 8.8 million pages, which would have a very considerable cost (indeed, recent years have seen as many as 24.8 million pages released). Those resources would be better used to improve service.

It recommends a universal limit on extensions of 60 days; however, the length of requests can vary from several pages to millions of pages of documents.  Larger requests require additional time to review to ensure no information is inappropriately released, such as the private information of individuals.

One recommendation suggests dealing with certain requests outside the existing system. That system ensures that laws governing privacy and other limitations are upheld, and any alternative system would need to as well. It is unclear how resourcing a brand new second ATI system would be a better use of resources than improving the system we have.

Another recommendation is for Directors Generals to receive bonuses tied to ATI. However, the ATI system is a core responsibility of only a fraction of the Directors General across government.

Another recommendation suggests the Access to Information Act be amended to ensure old requests are subject to the Act—which, of course, they already are.

One recommendation proposes that cabinet confidences be subject to the Act. The Supreme Court of Canada has recognized that Cabinet confidentiality is essential to good government, saying: "The process of democratic governance works best when Cabinet members charged with government policy and decision-making are free to express themselves around the Cabinet table unreservedly."

This recommendation is political posturing. The Conservative Party of Canada would never implement such a recommendation should it form government again. Don’t expect to see it in their platform anytime soon.

Public access to government information is central to democracy. Our government is proud to have brought in the first measures to reform the act in more than three decades. Under those reforms, we gave the Information Commissioner order-making power, waived all fees in excess of five dollars and introduced a proactive disclosure regime. Today, the Open Government portal provides access to 37,000 records and two million proactive disclosure records. According to the Open Data Barometer, Canada ranks seventh in the world when it comes to open data.

The Liberal government will continue to build on these accomplishments and strengthen the Access to Information system.

Respectfully submitted:

Iqra Khalid, Parm Bains, Greg Fergus, Lisa Hepfner, Ya’ara Saks