Clement admits access law needs reviewing
‘We’ve run out of time’ to examine before election, Treasury Board head says
OTTAWA— Tony Clement admits the federal government needs to review and update Canada’s aging access to information regime. But he says he’s run out of time.
Clement admitted that the 31-year old Access to Information Act needs to be reviewed, but he says there’s not enough time before the next federal election, scheduled for October 2015.
“Obviously, things are changing very rapidly in the information and information technology sector, so I think it is appropriate to (review the act),” Clement, whose party has been in power since 2006, said in a yearend interview with the Star.
“I think we’ve run out of time to do it in a way that’s meaningful before the election.”
It’s not clear how long a “meaningful” review would take, because the act has not been substantially updated since its introduction in 1983.
Clement drew criticism in November when the 2014 to 2016 phase of the so-called open government initiative — which he has personally championed for years — did not include plans to update the act.
The act allows any Canadian to request the release of government documents, from mundane to top secret, for a $5 fee. While noting the access to information system was groundbreaking when it was introduced, advocates have argued that long delays and easy justifications for withholding or censoring documents need to be addressed.
A 2013 to 2014 report from the Canadian Journalists for Free Expression gave the system a failing grade and estimated 80 per cent of responses were partially or mostly censored, while 45 per cent of requests were delayed for beyond 30 days.
Another oft-cited issue is the act doesn’t specifically catch new forms of communication, such as Black- Berry Messenger conversations or PIN messages. These two forms of communication are quite popular among political staffers, who, as a rule, are issued BlackBerry devices for their work.
Overall, the access system has recently seen a spike in demand. The number of requests filed with federal departments and agencies jumped 28 per cent in 2012 to 2013 to 55,145. Many of those requests come from Canadian citizens, rather than reporters and businesses.
At the same time, complaints to information commissioner Suzanne Legault’s office increased by 30 per cent last year, a strain that the watchdog warns could prevent her from launching investigations.
Despite the figures, Clement said he believes Canadians “are getting more and better access than ever before.
“We’ve had a record number of (access) requests, no question. But we’ve released a record number of materials and we’ve actually improved the file,” Clement said.
Charlie Angus isn’t convinced. The New Democrat MP accused Clement of being a “lame duck minister” in further delaying improvements to the access regime.
Angus noted the government has had eight years to bring in promised reforms and has not seemed to make it a priority.
“What’s really cynical here is that fixing the access to information system was one of the fundamental promises of the 2006 election campaign. So they were elected on this promise and ragged the puck for eight years, and now admit that yeah, the system’s broken,” Angus said. “It’s simply not credible.” Both the NDP and the Liberals have put forward legislative amendments for the access to information system, but — perhaps unsurprisingly — the opposition suggestions were not embraced by the majority Conservatives. But for Clement, steps the Conservatives have taken outside of the access regime play a role in the conversation on transparency.
He points to the government’s “open data” initiative as a positive development.
The open data website has thousands of data sets that can be analyzed, manipulated and turned into applications — or news stories.
While the vast majority of the data sets are basically maps — geolocation data — there are a number of interesting files on government spending, the population of the federal public service and environmental indicators. But for any other improvements to citizens’ access to government records, Canadians will have to wait.