Report 25 - Access to Information Review Task Force

MANAGING RESPONSE TIMES UNDER CANADIAN ACCESS TO INFORMATION LEGISLATION

2.5.3 The Perspective of the Access to Information Commissioner on Solutions

2.5.3.1 Discourse, Persuasion, Advocacy by the Information Commissioner

• Always the preferred route and traditionally successful, because governments, politicians, and the public service do not like negative publicity and are open to direct (preferably private) persuasion in support of openness and accountability;
  
  
• Awareness that these same actors cannot control Officers of Parliament or Officers of the Legislature, who have considerable freedom to speak out, because of their independence from government;
  
  
• Normally, Information Commissioners want to be "popular" and not be perceived as enemies by those they work with. They have some reluctance to make "waves."
  
  
• Bob Clark as Information and Privacy Commissioner in Alberta (1995-2001) is a former politician, Cabinet Minister, and acquaintance of the Premier; Clark is a rare example of a Commissioner with the ability to intervene at the highest political level to settle perceived problems.
  
  
• Access to Information Commissioner, John Grace, is a leading member of the Ottawa establishment and was very well placed during the 1990s to make personal appeals to try to settle pressing ATI problems; he also had a strong commitment to personal diplomacy as a way of solving issues. But he was also the first Information Commissioner of Canada to make a public issue of delays in meeting timelines.

2.5.3.2 Publicizing the Problem

• Information Commissioners have ready access to the media through press releases and annual reports; in particular, their criticisms of government are often perceived to be newsworthy.
  
  
• When a situation gets bad enough that an Information Commissioner speaks out on an issue like delays, the results are usually positive in terms of government efforts to address the problem. John Reid's experiences are unusual in eventually arousing more antipathy than support from the public service and the political elite (despite his good intentions).

2.5.3.3 Issuing Report Cards to Government Departments

• When John Reid, a former Liberal Cabinet Minister (1978-79) and long-time Member of Parliament (1965-84), became Information Commissioner of Canada on July 1, 1998, he and his senior staff soon decided that the problems of delays and deemed refusals were out of hand and that novel approaches should be taken;

• Reid introduced "a 'zero-tolerance' policy for late responses to access requests … and, most important, the full weight of the Commissioner's investigative powers would be brought to bear to achieve these goals." ⁽⁸⁵⁾ (emphasis added)
  
  
• Reid described the response to his new approach in his annual report released on October 15, 2000 (under the heading: "Access - A Right under Siege: Mayday - Mayday."): "Many government insiders considered this plan of action to be threatening, ill-considered, perhaps even arrogant for a newcomer to the Commissioner's job. There has been a worrisome hardening of attitudes and increased resistance to the Commissioner's investigations as a result. When the Commissioner's subpoenas, searches, and questions come too insistently or too close to the top, the mandarins circle the wagons…. The Treasury Board's attack involved starving the Commissioner of vital resources to do the job." ⁽⁸⁶⁾ (emphasis added)These facts speak for themselves in terms of a predictable response.
  
  
• Commissioner Reid, October 15, 2000: "There is no retreat from the game plan of 'zero tolerance' for delays or for the general culture of excessive secrecy." ⁽⁸⁷⁾
  
  
• The new strategy of issuing report cards to federal agencies on an annual basis. Reid himself described what he found:
  
  
  • In 1998-1999, six departments were reviewed and all received a failing grade of "F" because from 35 to 85 percent of requests received in those departments were not answered on time. [To receive the highest mark, an "A", late answers should occur in 5 percent or less of cases.] In 1999-2000, the same six were reviewed again along with two additional departments; four of the original six again received an "F", although the percentage of requests not answered on time had fallen to a range between some 23% to 52%. Two moved from an "F" to an "A". One of the two newly reviewed departments received an "A", the other received an "F".
    
    
  • The "report card" approach caused something of a stir amongst senior officials. I hasten to add that this approach - of prodding officials into action, through public exposure of poor management, was a last resort. All the other options (from cajoling to court action) had been tried without success by my predecessors. While I fully agree that all efforts to tackle the delay problem in a co-operative manner must be explored before the exposure route is taken -- 16 years of patient waiting for compliance to occur was too long. ⁽⁸⁸⁾ (emphasis added)
    
    
• Complaints surfaced that the report card standards were so stringent that progress in individual departments was not being rewarded; this was, understandably, a demoralizing factor for some access to information coordinators.
  
  
• Experienced educators know that for grades to be respected the grading system has to be fair: The grading scale used for these report cards was certainly very severe, since the grading range for being penalized for deemed refusals, between earning an A and receiving an F, was only 20 percent. In other words, the grading scale was highly artificial, not least in terms of the lack of explanations offered to readers and users for the standards adopted. ⁽⁸⁹⁾ Evidence of the inherent unfairness of the grading scale can be found in the Information Commissioner's own admission in May 2000: "The other four departments which failed on their report cards last year (CIC, CCRA, DFAIT and ND) received "F"s again this year. But even in these cases, there is a bright side to the story. All are showing substantial improvement over previous years and all have put in place resources and processes which, in this Commissioner's view, will bring them into compliance by the end of fiscal year 2000/2001."The Commissioner added: "This year, among the failing group, the non-compliance rate ranges from a high of 51.5 percent to a low of 23.4 percent." It is unusual to have such a range of performance in the F category and for an educator to respond to "substantial improvement" with another failing grade.
  
  
• A grading system in which everyone fails is not a grading system appropriate to the problem being evaluated; that was the situation in the first report cards of 1999.
  
  
• Such report cards have to make realistic and plausible recommendations. The 1999 report card recommended that "[t]he coordinator should be directed by the Minister, in writing, to exercise the delegation to answer requests within deadlines whether or not the senior approval process has been completed." It is hardly surprising that departments ignored a recommendation that flies directly in the face of how the public service functions under the doctrine of ministerial responsibility. ⁽⁹⁰⁾
  
  
• The detailed report cards on six departments in the annual report of the Information Commissioner for 2000-2001, released in early June, 2001, are in a 47-page appendix and are quite detailed and more user-friendly in terms of discussion of the issues and recommendations for improvement. ⁽⁹¹⁾
  
  
• The summary of discussions held by the Access to Information Review Task Force with access to information coordinators made the following relevant points:
  
  
  • "It was noted that the Information Commissioner's 'report cards' on how requests are being handled has provided an innovative way of monitoring departmental implementation of the Act."
    
    
  • "Relations with the Office of the Information Commissioner were seen by a number of participants to have deteriorated over time. An apparent wear and tear on public servants' morale resulting from increasingly negative commentary in the Information Commissioner's annual report along with demands by investigators, perceived as overly persistent and excessive, were all cited as being harmful to maintaining good working rapport with the Information Commissioner's Office. It was felt that this could potentially exacerbate the already negative impacts of too few human and financial resources for the access to information function in government." ⁽⁹²⁾ This criticism reflects the realities of trying to make an ATI system work in practice.
    
    
• The summary of discussions with 'report card' departments further pointed out, with respect to missed deadlines, that "[t]he simple letter grade assigned by the Information Commissioner (IC) does not capture the fact that a significant percentage of records requested are released, nor does it consider appropriate applications of the Act or the need to conduct consultations on the documents";
  
  
• Requests are considered non-compliant by the IC even if only a few documents out of an otherwise completed request are held back for reasons of unavoidable delays due to need to consult internally with offices across the country or abroad, with foreign governments and with other federal government departments; moreover, the letter grade assigned by the IC does not assess whether the departments correctly applied the Act and the permissible exemptions. ⁽⁹³⁾
  
  
• The summary of discussions with 'report card' departments also made the following points about the Information Commissioner's Report Card process:

• "The IC is focused on delays, at the expense of other important issues such as content and quality of responses";
  
  
• "The IC report does not consider consultations, which are also growing in number as the complexity and number of requests grows";
  
  
• - "The IC's simple letter grade does not capture the fact that the vast majority of the records requested are released on time, and a very large proportion is released with few or no exemptions";
  
  
• - "Account should be taken of the existence of documents in decentralized offices and the difficulties this engenders in gathering documents located across the country or abroad, as well as access to the advice on sensitivity provided by decentralized line offices";
  
  
• - "When departments get constant negative attention from the IC, no credit for the correctness of application of the law or good quality of responses, nor for investing substantially increased resources into the process just to maintain compliance in the face of rising demand, a "fatigue factor" will predictably set in at senior management levels; in such circumstances ATIP can be seen as a "black hole" or bottomless pit for resources, which could result in resentment on the part of line branches"; (emphasis added) This is a very perceptive observation.
  
  
• - "If the IC could be persuaded to refocus on broader issues, such as the ATIP community for example, the community as a whole could move in the best way for all".
  
  
• - "Departments should not wait until they get a "report card" to review their processes, measure throughout, identify problems and take remedial action; it is difficult to recover the department's reputation once it gets tagged with the "secrecy brush" and improvements should be made as soon as problems are identified";
  
  
• The Ontario Information and Privacy Commissioner's latest annual report contains an excellent form of "report card" for individual provincial departments that "names names" in terms of institutional improvements in meeting timelines for access requests and details how these were accomplished, identifies continuing deficiencies, flags with arrows those departments whose records have improved in the past year and those which have declined, and praises the best performers. All of this is done in a very judicious and objective tone. ⁽⁹⁴⁾ This Ontario example is a considerable improvement on the federal approach to report cards.

2.5.3.4 Confronting Ministers and Senior Bureaucrats

• As part of its zero-tolerance policy, Commissioner Reid and his senior staff also adopted the radical approach of summoning Ministers and the highest level of public servants to explain, under oath, why access to information was not working properly in their departments;
  
  
• Commissioner Reid, October 15, 2000: "The 'zero tolerance' policy with respect to delays in answering access requests involved two main activities: … 2) calling Deputy Ministers to explain the reasons for delay (on the record and under oath) when the assigned investigator could not resolve the matter with his or her counterparts. The bad news of this policy … was that senior officials did not enjoy being the focus of attention and they have found a multitude of ways to register their displeasure." ⁽⁹⁵⁾ This was completely predictable.
  
  
• "Ministers and Deputy Ministers were called upon to explain cases of unreasonable delay. Their explanations were received directly and not through the buffer of intermediaries." ⁽⁹⁶⁾ This activity, dubbed by critics as the "Star Chamber," (in reference to the supposedly inquisitorial tribunal style) was extremely unpopular among individuals at the very summit of political and bureaucratic power in Canada;
  
  
• Some observers regard the action by Commissioner Reid as having the perverse effect of increasing resistance to cooperation with his office, generating anger and hostility towards the Commissioner, and "poisoning the atmosphere" towards the Access to Information Act, versus an earlier grudging acceptance.
  
  
• While the concept of asking for explanations is clearly appropriate, an approach that can be characterized as "inquisitorial" seems to be predictably counterproductive.

2.5.3.5 Waving Access Fees in the Case of Failing to Meet Timelines

• In 1987 the Standing Committee on Justice and Solicitor General recommended that the Information Commissioner be authorized to waive access fees if a government institution fails to meet specified time limits without adequate justification. Since the government of the day ignored this recommendation, it deserves re-consideration.
  
  
• In 1999 the British Columbia legislative committee reviewing the administration of its Act made a similar recommendation.
  
  
• Because fees are often waived, and only modest amounts are being collected in other cases anyway, the 'punitive' effort of waiving fees in these circumstances may be minimal for a department.
  
  
• Waiving fees is a problematic response to the problem of delays, since it takes, on average, some four months for the Information Commissioner of Canada's office to complete an investigation of a deemed refusal. ⁽⁹⁷⁾ Thus it might be six months after the date of an applicant's original access request before the Information Commissioner would be in a position to order a fee waiver. At this point, most records should have been disclosed to the applicant anyway, at least under normal circumstances.

2.5.3.6 Making Decisions: Empowering the Commissioner

• The Chair of the federal Access to Information Review Task Force said in a speech in London, UK on March 5, 2001 that "Until now, Canada has made a very parsimonious use of Courts to resolve access to information disputes. That is probably due to a number of things - including our legislation, the structure of the Information Commissioner's powers and possibly because litigation is not the "Canadian way to go" - It makes for a rather economical and, on the whole, non-litigious system." ⁽⁹⁸⁾
  
  
• There is some evidence that the provinces and territories have not encountered as massive a problem with delays in responding to access to information requests as the federal government. (This is not to suggest in any way that there are not problems with how to manage delays in the provinces and territories, especially for requests for personal information).
  
  
• One possible explanation, as evidenced by the Ontario decisions summarized in appendix 1, is that the Quebec, Ontario, BC, and Alberta Information and Privacy Commissioners oversee the FOI process with the power to make binding orders. The result is that government departments that act inappropriately are instructed what to do to remedy the situation, such as failing to respond to an access request or taking unreasonable extensions. However, even an Information Commissioner with regulatory power cannot, in practice, control the allocation of resources, although he or she will be listened to attentively because of this statutory authority.
  
  
• In the provinces that follow the Ontario model (especially British Columbia and Alberta), there is a formal mediation process to try to solve the problems of dissatisfied requesters. The problem of delay tends to be dealt with successfully through mediation and then targeted, concrete efforts to remedy administrative problems, such as inadequate resources.
  
  
• The Information Commissioner of Canada could be given order-making power, which would increase his authority with departments subject to the Act. ⁽⁹⁹⁾ Such decisions could still be appealed to the Federal Court of Canada (which is a very slow process, compared to recourse to decisions by a provincial or territorial Information and Privacy Commissioner). ⁽¹⁰⁰⁾

2.5.3.7 Making Decisions: The Power of the Federal Court of Canada

• The Federal Court, Trial Division, in a series of decisions (1988-90) has asserted its power to review judicially the issue of delays in response to issues brought before it (sometimes by the Information Commissioner of Canada); ⁽¹⁰¹⁾
  
  
• The Federal Court has also ruled that a government department must act "expeditiously" in the processing of access requests:
  
  
• Justice Muldoon: "Confessions that such [access to information] requests ought to be processed as expeditiously as possible may be good for an individual's soul, but it has no didactic energy in gaining the attention of government departments. It has no effect in actually providing legally that less than expeditious processing of requests for information is breaking the law, as it surely is." ⁽¹⁰²⁾ Muldoon found that the obligation of the department in question was to process the access requests "as expeditiously as possible."
  
  
• Muldoon also found that "the Department acted negligently and ignorantly outside of the spirit of the Act by obfuscating (without malice) the reasons for the delays in responding to the access requests during the course of the Information Commissioner's investigation;….The department must state cogent, genuine reasons for the extension, and for its length." ⁽¹⁰³⁾
  
  
• The Federal Court has also ruled that the Information Commissioner of Canada has the authority to oversee the processing of access requests under the Act, including the responsibilities for administrative and political decisions required to administer the Act. ⁽¹⁰⁴⁾

2.5.3.8 Guiding Government Departments

• In 1999-2000 the Information Commissioner's office provided departments with a detailed approach to the responsible use of the Act's provisions allowing extensions of time for answering access requests. It provided specific (reasonable) guidance on the meaning of:
  
  
  • Reasonable periods of time for consulting with 3^rd parties, for example;
  • Large number of records;
  • Unreasonable interference with operations; ⁽¹⁰⁵⁾
    
    
• The Information Commissioner of Canada is predominantly responsible for overseeing and monitoring the health of the federal ATI system, but he or she has to choose their methods of enforcement very carefully in order to avoid counterproductive results. Any such official in Canada would be unwise to alienate a significant segment of the public service, except in extreme circumstances, such as an effort to abolish the Access to Information Act.

2.5.4 The Perspective of the Government on Solutions

2.5.4.1 The Time Required to Refine a Request and to clarify what the Applicant is Seeking

• Section 6 of the Access to Information Act states: "A request for access to a record under this Act shall be made in writing to the government institution that has control of the record and shall provide sufficient detail to enable an experienced employee of the institution with a reasonable effort to identify the record." The statutory expectations here should be sufficient to make the system work, if each of the three conditions are met: the applicant has to be able to provide sufficient detail about the record requested to enable an experienced employee to locate that record with a reasonable effort. The implication, as well, is that this process will be interactive among applicant, coordinator, and the custodians of the records.
  
  
• A key activity in successful implementation of ATI timelines is refining the request; ⁽¹⁰⁶⁾
  
  
• The consultation with 'report card' departments noted that "[a]ttempts to re-focus requests if they are too broad has been found to work well, as well as calling the line divisions promptly and pushing the communications package on sensitive requests."
  
  
• Should the clock starting ticking for timelines before this process is completed and the coordinator has a concrete request to deal with? The common sense answer is no, but the tenor of section 7 of the Access to Information Act is that the calendar starts to move as soon as the request is received. This does not make practical sense and may require clarification.
  
  
• Almost every applicant needs to clarify his or her request with the Access to Information Coordinator, whether because of the almost inevitable lack of knowledge of the records available, frequent lack of clarity as to just what the applicant wants to do with records, ⁽¹⁰⁷⁾ and the problem of affording costs of access; clarification needs to be built into the access system in terms of meeting timelines. ⁽¹⁰⁸⁾
  
  
• Clarification of the Access to Information Act to determine that the timelines only begin when the coordinator has a clear access request in front of him or her should be considered. This will necessarily involve a process of negotiation with requesters.

2.5.4.2 Promoting Routine Disclosure/Active Dissemination of General Government Records

• The Chair of the Access to Information Review Task Force stated in a speech in London, UK on Match 5, 2001:
  
  
  • "In Canada, over the last few years, there has been considerable focus on enhancing the quality of service to Canadians. This thinking does not seem to have yet made many inroads in the area of access where it would have important implications for the way access is provided. Better service would mean a faster, simpler, easier process to access information including electronic access."
    
    
  • "Finally, a somewhat more recent concept that is being discussed in a number of jurisdictions is the idea of government information as a 'national resource.' In short, this suggests that a major role for the government, the largest holder of data in any country, would be to put as much as possible of this information into the public domain, as fast as possible, for it to generate knowledge and wealth. This concept would take access way beyond responding to individual requests to the systematic proactive release of information on an ongoing basis." ⁽¹⁰⁹⁾
    
    
• General records (as opposed to personal records) that are of interest to the general public should be routinely disclosed by means of the web site of the government department, etc. ⁽¹¹⁰⁾This use of what the Americans call "electronic reading rooms" should be cost effective and save ATI money. ⁽¹¹¹⁾
  
  
• The summary of discussions with 'report 'card' departments estimated "in one case that the number of access requests would be reduced by 25% if certain information of particular interest to business were disclosed routinely by proactively positing it to the website."
  
  
• Participants in the same consultation process also "strongly recommended that departments look strategically at their communications plans, identify the information that the general public wants, and disclose it proactively through the Internet and other means;"
  
  
• One roadblock is that the Official Languages Act likely requires that such records be translated.
  
  
• A Web Site might usefully record a list of the records a department has already released, or disclose the records themselves, if they are of general interest. In 1987 the Mulroney government said it would "take steps to make lists of records which have been disclosed under the Access to Information Act available to users to help them to identify the records they want." ⁽¹¹²⁾
  
  
• The summary of discussions held with access to information coordinators by the Access to Information Review Task Force included the following observation: "Several participants pointed to the benefits of encouraging 'informal' access to government information through means other than the Act. Some noted a trend towards increased use of departmental web sites as a way of keeping people informed and of furthering the government's objective of more open government."
  
  
• The summary of discussions held with the 'report card' departments noted that one of the participants "provides a bilingual summary of the documents released on the departmental website in an effort to disseminate widely information about recent releases."
  
  
• Information Commissioner John Reid recently stated:
  
  
  • "After 18 years of experience, departments know (or should know) what types of records citizens, journalists, academics, business people and politicians are seeking. The government's procurement of goods and services is one area where all the records are of interest. So, too, audit reports, and expense records of public officials are regularly requested. When government gives loans, grants and awards--the public is interested. All internal guidelines, policies, practices--which make up the legal régime under which decisions about citizenship, refugee status, entitlement to benefits, liability for taxes--are of interest and routinely requested. The list is large--but it is well known. All such records should be placed into an electronic reading room without waiting for requests. Record keeping systems should have public dissemination in mind as a design principle." ⁽¹¹³⁾ (emphasis added)
    
    
• Reid also stated in another speech in 2001:
  
  
  • Despite these strong legislative and judicial exhortations to openness, the Act is administered all too often as a secrecy statute where the test is: "if in doubt, keep it secret" - a test which has been specifically rejected by the Federal Court. Even after 18 years, no department, of which I am aware, does an annual content analysis of the requests received and answered, with a view to identifying information which could be made available on a routine basis -- perhaps on a website -- without the need for a formal access request. (This is sound advice.)
    
    
• Why complain of the burden of access requests until every effort within your control, as public officials, has been made to disclose information proactively, informally and routinely? ⁽¹¹⁴⁾
  
  
• BC Information and Privacy Commissioner, David Loukidelis, highlighted the importance of routine disclosure without an access request in his first annual report:
  
  
  • "I have urged deputy ministers and other public body heads to begin routinely disclosing information - ideally using the Internet. With the obvious exception of information protected under the Act's mandatory exceptions to the right of access, it makes sense for public bodies to routinely make as much information available as possible without an access request being necessary. This better serves the Act's goals of openness and accountability while decreasing the cost of complying with the Act. I urge all public bodies to be aggressive about this and to make as much information as possible available to the public without access requests or cost." ⁽¹¹⁵⁾
    
    
• Proactive release of information by means of government websites and publications is subject to official languages rules; this requirement has time and resource consequences. However, nothing prevents government institutions from providing on their website an up-todate list, in both official languages, of records already released, which could be made available informally to requesters in the language of origin and only translated on request.
  
  
• An example of sophisticated routine disclosure of a wide variety of records is the Web Site of the Canadian Blood Services; it is responding to the strong public interest in a safe blood system. ⁽¹¹⁶⁾
  
  
• The Web Site of National Defence already includes a very useful annotated edition of the Access to Information Act, its detailed annual reports to Parliament on the progress it is clearly making in managing the access to information and privacy function, and a very helpful list of all requests completed back to 1997 with information about how to access the same records. ⁽¹¹⁷⁾
  
  
• In April, 1994, the Ontario Information and Privacy Commissioner and the Information and Privacy Office of Management Board Secretariat released an important report on "routine disclosure/active dissemination." ⁽¹¹⁸⁾ The Commissioner's latest annual report announces its creation of a working group, with several provincial institutions, on routine disclosure/active dissemination. ⁽¹¹⁹⁾
  
  
• Routine disclosure/active dissemination have to be a key part of any solution to the issue of meeting timelines and containing the costs of an ATI regime;reliance on the Access to Information Act should be at one end of the disclosure spectrum for government records, not the normal approach to obtaining government information.
  
  
• The summary of discussions held with coordinators by the Access to Information Review Task Force included this statement: "Increasing routine disclosure (for example on web sites) of all kinds of governmental information and making access under the Act a 'last resort process' for complex government records would improve very significantly public access to government information." ⁽¹²⁰⁾
  
  
• Promoting routine disclosure/active dissemination of general government records holds the promise of reducing the need to make formal ATI requests and thus lowering the pressure of meeting ATI timelines by, hopefully, decreasing the volume of requests.

2.5.4.3 Charging for Access to General Information

• The practice of the Harris Government in Ontario, by introducing an application fee for access, was effective in reducing the frequency and volume of access requests; reducing the number of access requests makes it easier to meet timelines. Governments need to decide whether they wish to be perceived as discouraging requests for their records.
  
  
• The problem of setting realistic fees in terms of the limited amounts of money that governments customarily recover; ⁽¹²¹⁾
  
  
• The relative difficulties of determining the true costs of properly administering an ATI regime; ⁽¹²²⁾
  
  
  • The Chair of the Access to Information Review Task Force made the following summary statement about costs in a speech in London, UK on March 5, 2001: "The [2000 Treasury Board] study indicated that for 1998-1999 the total overall cost for the Canadian access to information program was estimated at almost $29 M ($28,845,000); a significant amount but just a small fraction of the communications budget of the Canadian government, which is approximately $350 M. There has been a steady increase in cost over the five-year period of the study, the number of requests growing by 41%. from 9,792 to 14,340 requests per annum. During the same period, greater efficiency was achieved since the unit cost per request declined by 23% from $2,250 to $1,770. The time for searching for and locating documents decreased by an amazing 30%. However, the time for review of documents and approval have increased and now constitute more than one third of the total cost." ⁽¹²³⁾ (emphasis added)
    
    
  • The Chair added with respect to the collection of fees: "In Canada, reasonable fees can be collected for processing the request but not for time spent on review and approval. However, we collect less than 1.4% of process costs in fees.
    For 1999-2000, the average cost per request completed was $927 - this was for search, retrieval, and reproduction only. The average fee collected per request completed was $11.78 and the fee waived per request completed was $8.95.
    
    
  • There are a number of disincentives for institutions to collect fees: it is complex to administer and adds to the workload; the collector of the fee does not benefit, quite the opposite, as it can lead to a separate complaint to the Information Commissioner. It is never collecting fees."
    
    
  • Should individuals have to pay to exercise a fundamental right in a democracy?
    
    
  • It is possible that increased charges for all aspects of access to general government information would reduce the number of requests and thus minimize the burden of compliance with related time lines. There is a plausible argument that an appropriate fee structure, inducing the right kind of incentives on all sides, can contribute to meeting timelines by introducing discipline in the ATI system.
    
    

2.5.4.4 The Importance of Commitment to ATI at the Highest Levels for Meeting Timelines

• A lack of commitment to open, accountable government influences the problems of meeting timelines and coping with delays. As Information Commissioner, John Reid, said in a recent speech in Warsaw:
  
  
• "The senior management cadre must realize that the attitude its members express towards the right of access rages like a grassfire through a department. If employees feel that compliance is not a priority for the leaders, you will see delays, inflated fees, antagonism towards requesters, inadequate searches, and an increasing number of complaints. When the leaders decide not to keep minutes of meetings, when they tell others not to write things down, when they perpetuate the myths about abusive requesters, when they tolerate giving the Minister's needs priority over legal rights, when they do not foster a culture of openness in general - their employees get the message loud and clear". ⁽¹²⁴⁾
  
  
• Government departments need to build trusted relationship with requesters with respect to openness and accountability;
  
  
• The need to educate officials about their ATI responsibilities: As John Reid said in his Warsaw speech on March 15, 2001, a critical way to deal with problems in the administration of ATI is "educate all government employees who play a role in processing access requests. This education must be on a mandatory, regular and targeted basis. In other words, the education program for ministerial staff will differ in some respects from that for senior managers or officials in operational areas."
  
  
• The need for leadership from the top: As John Reid also said in a speech in London, England in March, 2001, in celebration of the enactment of a U.K. Freedom of Information Act, "I urge the Prime Minister and Cabinet to set the tone and example for the public service. From the top, there needs to be a strong message of support for embracing openness as a new cultural imperative in government. One of the great disappointments in Canada--where a culture of secrecy is still too strong--is that no Prime Minister has led the cultural change." ⁽¹²⁵⁾
  
  
• The position of the Mulroney government on strengthening and improving access to information (1987): " … the greatest need is for government leadership to incorporate the principles underlying access to information into the practice of public administration at the federal level in Canada. The government will act to ensure that this occurs." ⁽¹²⁶⁾ (emphasis added)
  
  
• Commissioner Reid, October 15, 2000: on the government's motivation in crushing MP John Bryden's private members bill to reform the Access to Information Act: "… the government's motivation was … to resist the value of openness. It talks the openness talk, but it has not yet walked the walk." ⁽¹²⁷⁾ (emphasis added)
  
  
• MP John Bryden (summer, 2001) on reform of the Access to Information Act: "The really important changes are those that make as much information available as possible while respecting a dedicated bureaucracy's need for a reasonable degree of confidentiality. Only then can one create the culture in government where the default option of choice is to release rather than withhold. Unfortunately, the reverse is more often the case. When in doubt about whether something must be disclosed by the Act, officials tend to choose secrecy rather than openness. This must change." ⁽¹²⁸⁾
  
  
• Former Information (and Privacy) Commissioner of Canada, John Grace, appearing on June 7, 2001 before the MPs ad hoc Committee on Access to Information ⁽¹²⁹⁾: "The failure of leadership at the highest levels to support the values of openness in a democratic society is at the root of the weakness of the Access Act today. Access commissioners can plead, task forces can recommend, parliament can amend. But unless a Prime Minister gives substance to any promises of openness, the specific written and public direction to his ministers and deputy ministers that access to information is not to be unreasonably delayed or denied, unless such leadership is tangible and visible, we are all wasting our time in a search for reform. What incentive is there for rank and file public servants to embrace the spirit and the letter of access to information legislation when the example before them is to obstruct the law, a law that has been on the books for 17 years? I can't emphasize enough that a change in attitude across the whole bureaucracy is more important to making access work effectively, more important than any amendment to the Act no matter how brilliantly conceived." (emphasis added)
  
  
• The oversight role of Parliament and its committees has been relatively non-existent since 1987 with respect to monitoring compliance with timelines: Commissioner Reid (May, 2000): "…Parliament, too, needs to remain concerned and vigilant about the widespread problem of non-compliance with response deadlines under the Access to Information Act. Access, like justice, is denied when it is delayed. These report cards and report card updates are offered as tools to assist MPs and committees in their oversight work." ⁽¹³⁰⁾
  
  
• The root issue for successful implementation of an ATI regime, including meeting timelines, is political support for the process and, in Western liberal democracies, support from incumbent governments is almost inevitably going to be lukewarm, because making it easier for outsiders to attack the government is so counter-intuitive. Other proponents of open, accountable government, including the various Information Commissioners, have to hold their feet to the fire in this regard.
  
  
• The summary of discussions with coordinators held by the Access to Information Review Task Force included this statement: "The Department of Justice, Treasury Board, and the Privy Council Office were singled out. A review of their specific roles in leading and guiding the public service in implementing the Act and in encouraging government transparency was seen as central to enhanced service delivery under the Act and beyond." This comment was in effect a plea for more direction, support, and expert advice from these organizations in their role as central agencies responsible for ATI.
  
  
• The consultation with 'report card' departments further emphasized the importance of leadership from the relevant Minister and the Deputy Minister: "Strong leadership and personal involvement by the executive management level was considered essential to success. Those ATIP Coordinators who are able to go directly to the DM if there is a problem in obtaining documents have found that extensions need only be taken for very large files that are physically impossible to move in the required turnaround time;…. Regular reports to senior management in several instances keep ATIP issues on the front burner."
  
  
• If access coordinators and their staffs are to take seriously their statutory obligations to comply with ATI timelines, they need to be assured that the government has a strong commitment to the broad goals of an ATI program. A striking model in this regard is a letter from Arthur C. Eggleton, the Minister of National Defence, to his deputy minister, dated April 6, 1999, which concluded: "Responding to the requests for information from citizens in a timely manner is essential not only because of the requirements of the access legislation, but also to enhance the opinion Canadian citizens have of this institution and to promote the Department's objective of transparency."

2.5.4.5 The Central Administrative Role of the Treasury Board Secretariat in Managing Timelines

• Management of the overall administration of ATI legislation is ultimately the responsibility of central government, i.e. Treasury Board Secretariat and the Department of Justice, not the Information Commissioner of Canada;
  
  
• If Treasury Board in particular does not take its administrative oversight of the implementation of ATI seriously, then the whole system will be ineffective, whatever the pleadings of the Access to Information Commissioner; monitoring compliance with timelines and ensuring training opportunities are key aspects of effective implementation of this Act.
  
  
• Commissioner Reid (May, 2000): ".. the President of Treasury Board must fulfill her role to ensure that the Access Law is effectively and consistently administered across government. Treasury Board, as a priority, must begin collecting the appropriate statistics to enable Parliament and all Canadians to know which departments are failing in their duty to provide timely responses." ⁽¹³¹⁾ Treasury Board Secretariat is uniquely placed to monitor issues of timelines and workloads, since they are also responsible for resourcing levels across government.
  
  
• Commissioner Reid, October 15, 2000: "Last year, the [Treasury] Board received poor marks for having largely ignored its responsibilities under the Act. This year there were some signs of rejuvenation."
  
  
  • Creating a Training Advisory Working Group to promote knowledge of access obligations and responsibilities;
    
    
  • Bi-monthly meetings and a conference on the Commissioner's Report Cards.
    
    
  • "Treasury Board showed its most tangible commitment to solving the delay issue by informing all departments that it would sympathetically entertain requests for additional resources needed to respond to unexpected peaks in access workloads."
    
    
• Reid also wants Treasury Board to collect statistics to reveal the performance of all government institutions under the Act;
  
  
  • He argues there is a need to develop a professional code of conduct for access coordinators;
    
    
  • "Finally, the TBS has not tackled its primary leadership responsibility to be the champion of a culture of openness within the federal bureaucracy…The Board has spent no time educating itself and the public service about the profound and tangible benefits of the access law." ⁽¹³²⁾
    
    
• The consultations with 'report card' departments also emphasized the need for training, education, and awareness of obligations under the access legislation in order to meet timelines. This cannot happen in an administrative vacuum in central government.
  
  
• The Treasury Board Secretariat has to oversee the administration of ATI, including the monitoring of compliance with timelines, in order to ensure a healthy system. In particular, it should do as much as it can to adopt what Professor Alasdair Roberts has termed "an evidence-based approach to access form." ⁽¹³³⁾

2.5.4.6 The Proper Administration of the ATI Program in Government Departments

• The statutory obligation to comply with the Access to Information Act lies with the particular government institution, so there are limits to what even the Treasury Board Secretariat can do in managing compliance with timelines.
  
  
• The position of the Mulroney government (1987): "The government believes that it is the responsibility of the head of each government institution and his or her deputy minister or chief executive officer to ensure that the requirements imposed by the legislation are met by the institution." ⁽¹³⁴⁾
  
  
• As Information Commissioner John Reid said in Warsaw, "it is vital that those in the government who coordinate the processing of requests for access to information be trusted members of senior management having the full delegation to answer access requests without multi-layers of concurrence or approval. Too often, coordinators are under classified, file preparers who must rely on more senior officials to make the real decisions. When it comes to the approval process, heads of ministries should follow this simple advice; get a coordinator you trust and get out of the way!" ⁽¹³⁵⁾
  
  
• The summary of discussions held on October 19, 2000 by the Access to Information Review Task Force with access to information coordinators made the following relevant point: "Flexibility in delegating authority was seen by several participants as greater acceptance of 'risk management' and as having resulted in improved flow of information to requesters. Others noted that this was linked to increased interest in ATIP processes on the part of senior managers who had communicated their interest in ensuring access processes work effectively. Similarly, a more open approach to releasing information, by streamlining approval processes, and increasing budgets and resources to clear backlogs were all identified by several participants as having played a major role in implementing the Act more effectively in their workplaces."
  
  
• Commissioner Reid (May, 2000): "Transport Canada, by comparison with other departments of similar size, does not receive a large volume of access requests. It should be possible for the department to come into compliance by means of a re-engineering and streamlining of its delegations, procedures and practices. The delay problem at Transport Canada does not appear to be due to a lack of resources dedicated to the function." ⁽¹³⁶⁾

  Commissioner Reid, October 15, 2000, on Transport Canada's failing grade: "… its problem is not a large volume of requests and insufficient resources to handle them. Rather, it is a top-heavy approval system wherein the Deputy Minister insists on personally reviewing and making decisions with respect to more than 40% of access requests received. This is highly unusual in government. In this Commissioner's view, it is also entirely unnecessary. The processing of access requests should be left to properly trained professionals who have no other strategic agendas beyond obedience to the Access Act." ⁽¹³⁷⁾ As noted earlier, this latter statement is unrealistic in terms of how responsible government works in practice.
  

• Commissioner Reid, October 15, 2000, on why 2 failing departments from 1999 now had A grades: "These departments devoted the energy and resources necessary to clear up a significant backlog of late cases and establish procedures and practices to prevent the delay problems of the past from returning." ⁽¹³⁸⁾
  
  
• The summary of discussions held by the Access to Information Review Task Force with access to information coordinators made the following relevant point: "Improved internal communications and good staff relations in some departments were characterised as supporting "learning" environments. Some participants noted that this kind of environment has led to a better understanding of the importance of the access to information coordinator role and that this in turn has resulted in the provision of more timely responses to requestors. One roundtable group noted that the ATIP co-ordinator function is being appreciated more and that, increasingly, employees are seeking advice from access to information and requesting training to become better informed about the Act."
  
  
• When the BC Information and Privacy Commissioner criticized the Ministry of Forests for not meeting the Act's timelines, it commissioned "a thorough review by KPMG of the Ministry's access request processes." ⁽¹³⁹⁾
  
  
• Again in BC, Commissioner Loukidelis has recently urged public bodies "to make full use of their in-house access and privacy professionals…. I continue to be deeply impressed by the skills, knowledge and experience of these people, who can only be described as professionals…. Public bodies should take advantage of this professionalism. They should trust their professional staff to decide access requests without second-guessing them through sign-off processes that merely duplicate what has already been done. I recognize that a public body may have other legitimate reasons for reviewing such decisions, but generally the decision should be left to the professionals, without any further processes." ⁽¹⁴⁰⁾
  
  
• Loukidelis also drew attention to the classification and compensation of staff: "If public bodies are to be able to recruit, train and retain top-quality access and privacy staff, the classification of their positions must reflect the level of skill, experience, training and knowledge required of their incumbents. This is something that should be examined at the provincial level, with a view to increasing the classification of ministerial Directors/Managers of Information and Privacy and also their staff. This will enable ministries to find and keep good staff, who can make the right decisions (or defensible ones) without having to resort to costly second-guessing by more senior employees (including executives)." ⁽¹⁴¹⁾
  
  
• Ontario Information and Privacy Commissioner Ann Cavoukian's important recommendations for better quality service in response to access requests:
  
  
  • Adding a commitment to meeting the 30-day response standard for access requests within the Quality Service framework and including this commitment as part of the performance contracts for Deputy Ministers and other senior government officials. In June 2001, the Commissioner applauded the fact that "[c]ommitments to performance standards, including response times in dealing with requests, were, for the first time, included in Deputy Ministers' performance contracts in 2000…. Deputy Ministers must now account for ministry performance on ATI programs as part of the annual appraisal process with the Secretary of Cabinet." ⁽¹⁴²⁾ (emphasis added)
    
    
• Recognizing the critically important role played by Freedom of Information and Privacy Coordinators, through appropriate levels of delegated decision-making authority, and appropriate job classification as befits the nature and responsibility of the position;
  
  
• Adequate resourcing of Coordinator's offices to enable Quality Service for access and privacy to be consistently achieved. ⁽¹⁴³⁾ (emphasis added)
  
  
• In her London, UK speech on March 5, 2001, the Chair of the Access to Information Review Task Force listed some of the issues that it is studying. I include them here because many of them (already raised above) are so relevant to the problem of meeting timelines under access legislation:
  
  
  • Integrating access with other measures of transparency and accountability;
    
    
  • Strengthening leadership and accountability; ⁽¹⁴⁴⁾
    
    
  • Technology applications to facilitate the access process;
    
    
  • Competent, stable, resourced ATI units;
    • The consultation process with 'report card' departments identified "additional resources" as the most important solution to ensuring success in meeting timelines established under the Act. This included additional staff resources on a permanent basis and to hire contractors to cure backlogs and workload spikes. (emphasis added)
      
      
  • Routine proactive disclosure;
    
    
  • New approaches to policy making that are compatible with early disclosure;
    
    
  • Training, education, awareness (including changes in processes); ⁽¹⁴⁵⁾
    
    
  • The consultation process with 'report card' departments included this elaboration: "ATIP processing should shift from only applying the Act to more of a management and process-oriented focus; this requires a different skill set on the part of ATIP supervisors who are becoming more involved in the monitoring aspects of the work; more sophisticated monitoring is made possible by means of tracking systems such as ATIPFlow, which enables closer monitoring of the status of requests as well as the performance of ATIP offices."
    
    
  • Modernizing records management;
    
    
  • Enhanced dialogue with requesters; ….
    
    
  • Creating a culture of access.
    
    
• "By creating a culture of access, I mean creating a culture where providing information is seen as an integral and valued part of the job of every public servant. Not something outside of their "real job" or an annoyance to be dealt with - my sense is that this new perception would influence how governmental information is created, stored and communicated." ⁽¹⁴⁶⁾
  
  
• Managing the ATI system does not require super heroic management skills in light of other complex tasks that appear to be better managed. It does require a commitment to the importance of access to government information in a democratic society and the application of well-developed bureaucratic skills.

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⁸⁵ Annual Report 1999-2000, p. 9.

⁸⁶ Annual Report 1999-2000, p. 9; see also p. 10.; (FUNDING)

⁸⁷ Annual Report 1999-2000, p. 11.

⁸⁸ Speech by John Reid in Warsaw, Poland on March 15, 2001.

⁸⁹ "The grading system in the current report cards is based only on the number of deemed refusals relative to the number of requests processed within the time requirements of the Act." (Special Report May, 2000) Commissioner Reid, October 15, 2000: "These grades were based on the percentage of access requests received which were not answered within statutory guidelines…." Annual Report, 1999-2000, p. 14.

⁹⁰ Special Report (May, 2000).

⁹¹ Annual Report 2000-2001, appendix A.

⁹² www.atirtf-geai.gc.ca

⁹³ www.atirtf-geai.gc.ca

⁹⁴ Information and Privacy Commissioner/Ontario, Annual Report 2000 (June, 2001), pp. 22-26.

⁹⁵ Annual Report, 1999-2000, p. 14.

⁹⁶ Annual Report 1999-2000, p. 31.

⁹⁷ Annual Report 1999-2000, p. 32.

⁹⁸ www.atirtf-geai.gc.ca. Of course, that statement only applies to the federal ATI regime.

⁹⁹ In my (hardly unbiased) opinion, the continued arguments in favour of the "ombudsman" approach at the federal level, to both freedom of information and privacy protection, are quite debatable and uninspired by informed knowledge of what has been accomplished at the provincial and territorial levels. The federal privacy and access to information regime was developed in the 1970s , is quite outdated, and has been bypassed, in terms of practical accomplishments, by the Ontario/BC/Alberta model. Even the new Information Commissioner in the United Kingdom has been given order-making power.

¹⁰⁰ The key point is that professional staff mediates most FOI cases in the larger provinces successfully. In British Columbia, less than 10 percent of such cases require a decision by the Information and Privacy Commissioner. Requiring such a Commissioner to make decisions also imposes some intellectual and legal discipline on the process (primarily outside the more cumbersome court system).

¹⁰¹ Justice Muldoon: "The content of the 'review of any refusal to disclose a record requested under the Act' is quite unlimited. It means therefore, nothing less than unrestricted judicial scrutiny which may result in measures or relief which are, at least, corrective, directive, instructive and declaratory. In effect Parliament accords the plenitude of judicial supervisions which is the hallmark of a superior Court's jurisdiction. Parliament imposes no restriction here." Canada (Information Commissioner) v. Canada (Minister of External Affairs) (T.D.), [1990] 3 F.C. 514 (para. 13).

¹⁰² Canada (Information Commissioner) v. Canada (Minister of External Affairs) (T.D.), [1990] 3 F.C. 514 (para. 20).

¹⁰³ Canada (Information Commissioner) v. Canada (Minister of External Affairs) (T.D.), [1990] 3 F.C. 514 (para. 22).

¹⁰⁴ See Canada (Information Commissioner) v. Canada (Minister of External Affairs) [1989] 1 F.C. 3 (para. 27).

¹⁰⁵ Annual Report 1999-2000, pp. 17-20.

¹⁰⁶ The Ontario Information and Privacy Commissioner has issued a very useful and brief "practice guideline" on "clarifying access requests." http://www.ipc.on.ca/english/our_role/code/practices/numb15.htm

¹⁰⁷ I realize that applicants do not have to explain why their need records, but doing so on a voluntary basis often helps to expedite the identification of relevant records and the process of disclosure.

¹⁰⁸ In the US, where the agency cannot meet the timelines and has to seek an extension, the requester is provided with an opportunity to scope down the request or to arrange an alternative time frame. Refusal by the requester to reasonably modify his/her request or to arrange for an alternative time frame is a factor in the adjudication on a delay complaint (s.552^c - Title 5).

¹⁰⁹ www.atirtf-geai.gc.ca

¹¹⁰ As John Reid said in a speech to a recent Government On-Line conference , "No bureaucrat is plotting--as they should be--to use the new information technology to turn the page on the request driven, adversarial, slow and expensive access to records regime established by the Access to Information Act. There is no technical reason why accountability through transparency cannot be as easy as a visit to a website." Speaking at a Government On-Line conference in Ottawa, April 18, 2001; available from www.infoweb.magicom, OIC-speeches.

¹¹¹ See U.S. General Accounting Office, Information Management. Progress in Implementing the 1996 Electronic Freedom of Information Act Amendments (GAO-01-378, March, 2001), appendix 1, pp. 19-24; www.gao.gov

¹¹² Canada, Access and Privacy: The Steps Ahead, p. 34.

¹¹³ Speaking at a Government On-Line conference in Ottawa, April 18, 2001; available from www.infoweb.magicom, OIC-speeches.

¹¹⁴ Speech in Warsaw, Poland; available from www.infoweb.magicom, OIC-speeches.

¹¹⁵ Annual Report 1999-2000(Victoria, BC, June, 2000), p. 10.

¹¹⁶ www.bloodservices.ca

¹¹⁷ See www.dnd.ca

¹¹⁸ http://www.gov.on.ca/MBS/english/fip/papers/routinedisclosurepaper.html

¹¹⁹ Information and Privacy Commissioner/Ontario, Annual Report 2000 (June, 2001), pp. 9-11.

¹²⁰ www.atirtf-geai.gc.ca

¹²¹ See Canada, Access and Privacy: The Steps Ahead, p. 43.

¹²² See the comment by John Reid in a presentation to the ADM Advisory Committee, Ottawa, Feb. 23, 001: "And may I open a second parenthesis here concerning the recent TBS-sponsored study on the costs of access. In my view the study is profoundly flawed, because there was no effort to determine fairly the 'per request' costs in departments which manage well the access function and compare that cost with the 'per request' cost in departments which manage the function poorly. Where there are multi-layers of approval, where the minister's communications needs are factored in to the cost of answering an access request, and when a department's records management is in disarray, costs will appear high. That high cost is not the fault of the right of access, as the study implies. I support, indeed encouraged, the effort to quantify and make public the costs of administering the access law. What I had in mind, and still encourage, is a quantification of the costs of administering access well. There is no doubt that it is very expensive to administer the Act badly."

¹²³ www.atirtf-geai.gc.ca

¹²⁴ Speech in Warsaw, Poland, March 15, 2001; Reid added: "So often I hear senior officials say: 'I don't have to like this law; I only have to obey it!' -- and that grudging attitude is infectious in destructive ways at lower levels. No matter how well crafted an access law may be, it will only be a good law if public officials make it work." Reid made all of the same points from his Warsaw speech in a presentation in London, UK on March 5, 2001.

¹²⁵ London, UK, March 5, 2001.

¹²⁶ Canada, Access and Privacy: The Steps Ahead, p. 51.

¹²⁷ Annual Report, 1999-2000, p. 12.

¹²⁸ John Bryden, "Reforming the Access to Information Act," Canadian Parliamentary Review (Summer, 2001), p. 7.

¹²⁹ " In June 2001, a group of 14 all-party backbench MPs, led by MP John Bryden, decided to conduct their own review of access to information. The content of their deliberations can be found at www.mpsonaccess.ca

¹³⁰Special Report to Parliament of the Information Commissioner of Canada Pursuant to subsection 39(1) of the Access to Information Act (Ma, 2000).

¹³¹ Information Commissioner of Canada, Special Report (May, 2000), p.

¹³² Annual Report, 1999-2000, pp. 13-14.

¹³³ See Alasdair Roberts, Jonathan DeWolfe, and Christopher Stack, "An Evidence-Based Approach to Access Reform," (Working Paper 22, School of Policy Studies, Queen's University, July, 2001).

¹³⁴ Canada, Access and Privacy: The Steps Ahead, p. 32.

¹³⁵ Speech in Warsaw, Poland, March 15, 2001.

¹³⁶ Special Report

¹³⁷ Annual Report, 1999-2000, p. 15-16.

¹³⁸ Annual Report, 1999-2000, p. 15.

¹³⁹ Annual Report 2000, p. 8; see also p. 9, advocating "changes in their [crown corporations] decision-making processes, again to make them more time- and cost-efficient."

¹⁴⁰ Annual Report 2000, p. 9.

¹⁴¹ Annual Report 2000, p. 9.

¹⁴² Information and Privacy Commissioner/Ontario, Annual Report 2000, p. 2.

¹⁴³ Ontario Information and Privacy Commissioner, Annual Report 1998, http://www.ipc.on.ca/english/pubpres/ann_reps/ar-98/ar-98e.htm#recommend

¹⁴⁴ The summary of discussions that the Access to Information Review Task Force had with access to information coordinators on October 19, 2000 included the following relevant point: "Some participants noted that support from ministers' offices as well as increased departmental collaboration and respect for the role of the access co-ordinator is providing significant impetus for improved access to information in a number of departments. Some suggested that the creation of the Access to Information Review Task Force is indicative of government leadership to help ensure improved access to information by Canadians."

¹⁴⁵ The summary of discussions that the Access to Information Review Task Force had with access to information coordinators on October 19, 2000 made the following point: "Increased opportunity for training was identified by some participants as empowering, career enhancing and as providing for more effective delivery of service to access requestors. The Treasury Board manual and the work of Treasury Board's Training Advisory Group was cited as instrumental in raising awareness of the need for appropriate and ongoing training opportunities." www.atirtf-geai.gc.ca

¹⁴⁶ www.atirtf-geai.gc.ca