When the government of Pierre Trudeau passed Canada’s Access to Information Act in 1983, it did so with the express purpose of creating what it thought would be an important new tool for governing democratically.
Indeed, the Act’s objective is set out in the first few paragraphs of the legislation: “to enhance the accountability and transparency of federal institutions in order to promote an open and democratic society and to enable public debate on the conduct of those institutions.”
But forty years later and despite promises made by Pierre’s son, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, to make this crucial tool work even better, the federal access-to-information system is in its worse shape ever according to a host of witnesses, including Canada’s Information Commissioner Caroline Maynard, that have spoken before a House of Commons committee studying the issue.
The biggest problem, according to those witnesses: Delays. Under the law, government departments are to provide requested records within 30 days of the request. They can take extra time when certain conditions exist.
According to Maynard, the government failed to meet its legislated timelines on more than 30 per cent of the 400,000 or so access-to-information (ATI) requests made in the last year. One Ottawa-based researcher, Michael Dagg, was told he would have to wait 80 years for records he asked for from Library and Archives Canada about some RCMP operations. That particular delay may be extreme, but delays stretching from months into years for relatively routine records requested are now increasingly common.
“Access delayed is access denied,” said Matthew Green, the NDP MP on the House of Commons Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy, and Ethics, which is in the midst of a study intended to recommend some fixes to the system. “In order to have parliamentary oversight, in order to have public trust, there needs to be quick and efficient access to information.”
Under the current iteration of the ATI Act, departments that fail to respond within legislated timelines do not face sanction. There are no fines and no penalties. Requesters cannot sue the government. The information commissioner has no power to force departments to respond. Each delayed request simply ends up as a data point in year-end reports on departmental performance. And, as Maynard told the House ethics committee, complaints to her office are already up 70 per cent this year.
“It comes down to a culture of secrecy,” said Michael Barrett, a Conservative MP who is also on the Ethics committee. “We’ve heard from witnesses, some of them with access-to-information requests spanning between five and nine years and some departments being worse than others. And then when they receive the access requests, they come back in some redacted form — blacked out with a lot of useful information missing. So it really creates a problem where people aren’t able to get the information they need in a timely way.”
One series of access-to-information requests filed by Global News illustrates the uneven and poor performance of government departments in responding to requests in a timely fashion.
On March 16, 2020, with the COVID-19 pandemic in full force, the federal government shuttered most of its offices and told most of its hundreds of thousands employees to work from home. And while it designated some employees as ‘essential’ it did not designate those working in access-to-information offices as ‘essential.’ As a result, the work in each department’s ATI shop began to grind to a halt as they could not access the secure computer networks in their offices needed to retrieve and process requested records. But as Information Commissioner Maynard would inform all departments during that COVID spring, even a pandemic cannot be used as legal justification for delaying the production of requested records.
And yet, on government websites and in correspondence from ATI analysts, the pandemic was cited time and time again as the reason records could not be produced under legislated timelines.
So, in June 2020, Global News filed identical access-to-information requests to more than a dozen large government departments. The requests were simple: Produce any memos or instructions circulated to department staff telling them how they were to do what Maynard had instructed them to do, which was meet their access-to-information obligations in the legislated 30-day timeline.
Only one department — the Department of Finance — responded to that Global News request in the 30-day window. Health Canada missed by a bit, responding in 43 days.
But the Department of National Defence provided the records in 105 days. Industry Canada took 221 days to respond. Global Affairs Canada took 295 days. The RCMP took 753 days.
And, last week, the Privy Council Office — the department that supports the work of the prime minister — finally provided the request records, 907 days after Global News asked for them. The records provided consisted of two e-mail messages and a PowerPoint presentation deck. Eleven pages in total. Not a word was blacked out, but it still took 907 days to process the relatively simple request.
Three departments — the Canada Border Services Agency, the Canada Revenue Agency, and Environment Canada — have yet to to respond to that June 2020 Global News ATI request.
“We’ve got a problem when we have journalists looking to report in real time on matters that are current in Canada. And it takes years or more to get information,” said Barrett. “It turns them into — as one witness said — into historians instead of journalists.”
Access-to-information requests from journalists make up a small minority of any year’s requests. More than 65 per cent of requests for information are made by everyday Canadians. Many more come from academics, business owners and not-for-profit organizations.
Maynard has provided the government and the ethics committee with a list of 18 recommendations to fix the access-to-information. She believes the system needs more resources and staff to process ATI requests as well as some rule changes. But, as she told the ethics committee when she testified before it in October, the access-to-information system will only improve when there is political will to improve it. In other words, the prime minister and his cabinet must make improvements a priority.
“Actions speak louder than words,” Maynard said. “Leaders must ensure that their institutions live up to their legislative obligations.”
Demands for government intervention in Air Canada labour talks could negatively affect airline competition in Canada, the CEO of travel company Transat AT Inc. said.
“The extension of such an extraordinary intervention to Air Canada would be an undeniable competitive advantage to the detriment of other Canadian airlines,” Annick Guérard told analysts on an earnings conference call on Thursday.
“The time and urgency is now. It is time to restore healthy competition in Canada,” she added.
Air Canada has asked the federal government to be ready to intervene and request arbitration as early as this weekend to avoid disruptions.
Comments on the potential Air Canada pilot strike or lock out came as Transat reported third-quarter financial results.
Guérard recalled Transat’s labour negotiations with its flight attendants earlier this year, which the company said it handled without asking for government intervention.
The airline’s 2,100 flight attendants voted 99 per cent in favour of a strike mandate and twice rejected tentative deals before approving a new collective agreement in late February.
As the collective agreement for Air Transat pilots ends in June next year, Guérard anticipates similar pressure to increase overall wages as seen in Air Canada’s negotiations, but reckons it will come out “as a win, win, win deal.”
“The pilots are preparing on their side, we are preparing on our side and we’re confident that we’re going to come up with a reasonable deal,” she told analysts when asked about the upcoming negotiations.
The parent company of Air Transat reported it lost $39.9 million or $1.03 per diluted share in its quarter ended July 31. The result compared with a profit of $57.3 million or $1.49 per diluted share a year earlier.
Revenue totalled $736.2 million, down from $746.3 million in the same quarter last year.
On an adjusted basis, Transat says it lost $1.10 per share in its latest quarter compared with an adjusted profit of $1.10 per share a year earlier.
It attributed reduced revenues to lower airline unit revenues, competition, industry-wide overcapacity and economic uncertainty.
Air Transat is also among the airlines facing challenges related to the recall of Pratt & Whitney turbofan jet engines for inspection and repair.
The recall has so far grounded six aircraft, Guérard said on the call.
“We have agreed to financial compensation for grounded aircraft during the 2023-2024 period,” she said. “Alongside this financial compensation, Pratt & Whitney will provide us with two additional spare engines, which we intend to monetize through a sell and lease back transaction.”
Looking ahead, the CEO said she expects consumer demand to remain somewhat uncertain amid high interest rates.
“We are currently seeing ongoing pricing pressure extending into the winter season,” she added. Air Transat is not planning on adding additional aircraft next year but anticipates stability.
“(2025) for us will be much more stable than 2024 in terms of fleet movements and operation, and this will definitely have a positive effect on cost and customer satisfaction as well,” the CEO told analysts.
“We are more and more moving away from all the disruption that we had to go through early in 2024,” she added.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
