OTTAWA — Federal delays in answering queries from the public are getting worse and threaten to scuttle the right to know, says Canada’s information watchdog.Interim information commissioner Suzanne Legault urged government agencies to take “immediate steps” to curb the persistent foot-dragging she detailed Tuesday in a special report to Parliament.
Citizens who pay a $5 application fee to make an Access to Information request are supposed receive an answer within 30 days, but many agencies average several months.
Thirteen of the two dozen key departments studied by Legault’s office received below-average marks.
She gave the Privy Council Office, the central branch that serves the prime minister, a D for lagging behind the pack last year.
It took the agency an average of more than five msonths to complete a request.
The Foreign Affairs Department’s performance was so bad it received a “red alert” — a grade below failure.
Sixty per cent of requests to the department were not handled within specified timelines.
Legault said almost half of the complaints her office received over the last year involved departmental delays.
Three-quarters of these grievances were found to have merit.
“Delays are eroding Canadians’ right to know,” Legault told a news conference.
Departments are allowed to take extensions to answer requests, but agencies that lack enough staff to process applications are “using extensions as an administrative measure to cope with heavy workloads,” the report says.
Legault cited other chronic issues, including “multiple layers of review and approval” within agencies, which slowed processing, as well as lengthy consultations with other departments before records are released.
Statistics show the overall state of delay has worsened since 2002, she said.
“There’s a constant decline year over year. Length of extensions is getting longer.
“The length of consultations is getting longer.”
There are no consequences for missing access request deadlines.
Imposing legislated timelines on departments would “make a big difference,” Legault said.
“The fact that there’s no real time limit is a huge issue.”
Treasury Board President Stockwell Day, minister responsible for administration of the law, told the Commons on Tuesday the government hoped to do better.
“We want to improve our process.”
Appearing before a Commons committee, Guy Giorno, chief of staff to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, said the government expects full compliance with the Access Act.
“The time frame for compliance is an issue . . . it’s obviously something of concern,” he said Tuesday.
The Conservatives have put an end to the amber-light system for flagging access requests that may attract media or political attention, Giorno said.
At the same time he testified that ministers’s offices get advance notice — an average of four days — when sensitive requests are about to be released. Such briefings are considered acceptable as long as they don’t delay disclosure.
Legault’s office is investigating three allegations of federal interference in the processing of requests.
One of the probes involves a complaint by Canadian Press reporter Dean Beeby, who was denied records — at least temporarily — due to apparent meddling.
Email correspondence shows a bureaucrat was ordered to retrieve a 137-page report on real-estate transactions from the Public Works mailroom after an aide to then-minister Christian Paradis learned the document would be disclosed to Beeby under the access law.
In the United States, President Barack Obama has underscored the need to be more open, but there has been no such signal from the Canadian government, Legault said.
“Do we have a government right now that is instilling a culture of transparency, that is taking a leadership role like the American president is taking in matters of promoting transparency, which is broader than Access to Information?” she asked. “I haven’t seen evidence of that yet.”
The Access to Information Act has not been significantly updated in its 27-year existence — except for changes which extended its scope to cover some Crown agencies, including the CBC.
Users have long been plagued by administrative headaches.
The Conservative government broke 2006 election promises to bring in wide-ranging reforms to the law.
In addition, the information commissioner has struggled with backlogs and delays in responding to complaints from frustrated Canadians.
Legault said her office began the last year with 2,500 files carried over from the previous one. “That’s too much.”
She said while her office is “making a dent” in the backlog, “we have a lot more work to do.”
“We’re part of the problem, and we have to fix it.