Information & Ethics committee  It often has the effect of causing people who receive redacted documents to wonder what is being hidden from them. They have the right to file a complaint. That’s often what leads to more complaints for my office every year. There are more requests, more information is refused, and so the applicants, the complainants, turn to us to get access to those documents.

Information & Ethics committee  No.

Information & Ethics committee  It has a huge impact. My office has only three people dealing with our own access requests. Last year, we received a request that ended up with 33,000 pages. We ourselves had to request an extension, because we are subject to the act as well. We don't want to say “no” to access requests, but sometimes we are realizing that it's difficult to negotiate or to try to understand what is behind the request.

Information & Ethics committee  I think that is definitely something that's internationally equal. Everybody is pushing their government to do more proactive disclosure. We all agree that more information given, without us having to go through the access system, which is already overwhelmed, is key. One issue we have in Canada....

Information & Ethics committee  I am very encouraged by IRCC. They are doing an action plan in response to the systemic investigation. The results are not there, but I think they're coming. We will see some improvement. Unfortunately, we're not seeing it now, but it's something. I had to do a systemic investigation of Library and Archives, because we were not seeing any improvement at all.

Information & Ethics committee  Do you mean the online complaint form?

Information & Ethics committee  Well, it has more impact, I think, on the institutions themselves, which have to deal with those types of requests, and yes, they are real. We all have that one requester or two requesters who, for some reason, have a chip on their shoulder, and they decide to overwhelm with a number of requests or a request that is frivolous.

Information & Ethics committee  I have to say that I feel very confident that my office is very independent of the government. We have issued investigations against all departments, including PCO, which is under the purview of the Prime Minister. The only part that is not clean, in my view, is the funding. We have not been able to obtain an independent process under which we can get appropriate funding.

Information & Ethics committee  I think there was a recommendation at one point for an independent parliamentary committee to review funding requests from agents of Parliament. We report to Parliament, so I think that would be the appropriate venue. You can look at the integrity commissioner. He has a specific independent process under which he can obtain some funding.

Information & Ethics committee  Well, those innovations are mainly privacy-related issues, but one thing I find.... I went to visit the U.K. commissioner and the Scottish commissioner, and they have a monitoring capacity on institutions directly instead of having the administration done by a government institution like TBS.

Information & Ethics committee  I'm sure there are, but everybody has a different act and a different type of jurisdiction. There are ombudsmen and there are commissioners. We try to keep up with what's going on, but it's really the institutions that have to invest in those innovations and look at what can help them.

Information & Ethics committee  I will send you that.

Information & Ethics committee  In an access request, there is a place where people have the choice of whether or not to say they are a member of a particular group. Treasury Board, which is responsible for access requests, could add to the list of groups, obviously, if it considered it appropriate in the present circumstances.

Information & Ethics committee  You are welcome to ask him directly.

Information & Ethics committee  Our statistics show that there are not huge numbers of complaints concerning the language in which documents are provided in response to access requests. It is very rare for people to complain about not getting a document in their language. The impediment lies more in the area of proactive disclosure.