Information & Ethics committee  No.

Information & Ethics committee  You can access it through the Access to Information Act.

Information & Ethics committee  I believe that if you do an informal request, we probably can provide you some information on those cases.

Information & Ethics committee  No.

Information & Ethics committee  Good morning. Thank you for inviting me to answer your questions on the Main Estimates for the Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada. Since taking office as Information Commissioner, I’ve always welcomed the opportunities made available to me to come and speak to you about the office’s activities and the state of access to information as a whole.

National Defence committee  As we said, with regard to agents of Parliament right now, there are only two or three who have independent mechanisms to obtain their own finances outside of the government. Unfortunately, we are one of, I think, six that don't have a mechanism for independent financing. That definitely would be the right step forward.

National Defence committee  I really hope not.

National Defence committee  I agree with you that things don't change. When it's your information, you're protecting it, and when it's not your information, you want it. If you want things to be changed, you need to change the culture within the government. The leaders have to provide priorities, clear objectives, resources, training and innovation.

National Defence committee  Access to information units do virtually nothing but this work all the time. There's no doubt that these people work hard and that working in an access to information unit is a calling. On the one hand, requesters aren't happy about not having the information they want and, on the other, departments don't want to give it out because they have other things to do.

National Defence committee  There was only one. It was the TMC.

National Defence committee  Yes.

National Defence committee  There are lots of factors that affect a department's ability to respond. As I said earlier, there is information management, the culture of the department, the lack of resources, lack of tools—all of these things. Often the leadership has an impact as well.

National Defence committee  First of all, the authority to issue orders only started in 2019. It took us about a year or two to start having files where we issued orders. We're seeing an increasing number of orders. This year I have issued 298 or something like that. Most of the time, institutions are complying, or they go to court to contest the orders.

National Defence committee  It has an impact on simply the authority itself and on the credibility of the access request, because we're seeing longer delays. Now we're seeing departments either taking the orders to court or ignoring the orders, so they take extra time to respond to access requests that should have been responded to within 30 days or within an extension that is legal.

National Defence committee  I was going to ask you if you have complaints with my office. I don't think you do.