Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre says there is a need for more automatic disclosure of information from the House of Commons and the Senate.ETHAN CAIRNS/The Canadian Press
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre says responses to access to information requests need to be quicker and Canada’s Information Commissioner should be given more power over “the gatekeepers” within the federal government.
At a news conference in Vancouver on Thursday, Mr. Poilievre answered a question from a reporter about challenges that the freedom of information system is facing.
“Will we fix the access to information system? Yes, we will,” Mr. Poilievre said, referring to changes he would make if he wins the next federal election.
“We’ll speed up response times. We will release more information,” he said.
Mr. Poilievre also committed to giving the Information Commissioner of Canada more power to override what he described as “the gatekeepers” within the federal government and, overall, “favour transparency over secrecy.”
Last October, federal Information Commissioner Caroline Maynard and her provincial counterparts signed a joint resolution calling on governments to modernize access laws and strengthen the public’s right to information.
In an interview with The Globe and Mail after the letter was released, Ms. Maynard called for a rejuvenation of access law and the systems that implement it, saying they were not up to par.
“Every one of us is calling on our governments to do something about it,” she said, referring to her fellow commissioners. “We need more resources, not just for our own offices, but for the offices that are dealing with access requests.”
Mr. Poilievre’s comments Thursday come amid concerns about the effectiveness of the federal access to information system.
The Globe’s Secret Canada project, launched in the fall of 2021, investigated Canada’s freedom of information system, tracing wide-ranging challenges for Canadians trying to access public information using the legal framework governments have created.
The reporting found that federal public institutions are regularly breaking access laws by improperly withholding records that should be public and violating statutory timelines.
The Globe reached out to the office of the president of Treasury Board, which manages issues involving federal access to information. Ronny Al-Nosir, the press secretary to Treasury Board President Anita Anand, said they were not in a position to provide a comment on Thursday.
A report released from the Treasury Board’s secretariat in December, which assessed the handling of requests, found delays are common in the federal system. Roughly 28 per cent of access requests (excluding those to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada) were completed outside legislated timelines.
The report also noted that 54 per cent of institutions met the Treasury Board’s performance target on timelines, which aims for 90 per cent of all access requests to be closed within legislated deadlines.
On Thursday, Mr. Poilievre raised another concern about access to information at the federal level. He said there is a need for more automatic disclosure of information from the House of Commons and the Senate.
And he called for the pro-active release of expenses and decisions of the parliamentary precinct, referring to the district including Canada’s parliamentary buildings, so that it is available by default.
Last October, the federal Liberal government declined to make changes to federal access laws, despite nine months of parliamentary hearings about its flaws.
Months earlier, the House of Commons committee on access to information, privacy and ethics that had been studying the issue produced 38 recommendations on how to make the system better.
None were implemented. Instead, the government said they will review the law again in 2025.
With a report from Tom Cardoso and Robyn Doolittle
Ian Bailey