Friday » July 11 » 2008
Information buff hounds CBC
One person filed hundreds of queries under access law
David Akin, Canwest News Service
Friday, July 11, 2008 Ottawa Citizen
One curious Canadian with an apparent obsession with the CBC has
single-handedly forced that Crown cor****ation to more than double the
number
of employees in its access-to-information department.
The individual, whose identity cannot legally be revealed, sent 448
separate
requests for information from the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. in the
four-month period between Sept. 1, 2007, and the end of the year. The CBC
first became subject to federal access-to-information laws on Sept. 1 and
has
now received 604 requests -- almost all of them from that same individual.
The CBC, the Canadian Wheat Board, and more than 65 other federal
agencies,
Crown cor****ations and institutions became subject last fall to the
federal
access-to-information law as part of the Conservative government's Federal
Accountability Act. The CBC hired three people to handle the requests it
expected to receive. There are now seven people working in that
department.
"It's been a very difficult situation that the office has been facing,"
said
Katherine Heath-Eves, a CBC spokeswoman.
"But a request is a request, and each one has to be treated fairly."
So far, that requester appears to be entirely unsatisfied with the
service.
According to a briefing note obtained, coincidentally enough, under an
access-to-information request, the person filed 524 separate complaints in
2007 with the federal information commissioner. Those 524 complaints
accounted
for nearly one-quarter of commissioner Robert Marleau's record caseload
last
year of 2,387 complaints.
In briefing notes prepared for Treasury Board president Vic Toews,
bureaucrats
say 60 per cent of complaints filed with Mr. Marleau were made by just 10
people. Mr. Toews is the cabinet member responsible for the administration
of
the federal Access to Information Act. The briefing notes were prepared in
May
to help him counter criticism from the opposition and others that the
access-to-information process was breaking down.
Opposition politicians were particularly critical of a government decision
to
close a database, known by its acronym CAIRS, that some requesters said
was a
useful way to keep tabs on the access-to-information system. The briefing
note
said it was a waste of resources, as it cost $50,000 a year to maintain
but
was used regularly by only 13 people.
Complaints doubled in 2007 from 2006, and many who make frequent use of
the
system have complained of lengthening delays.
"Sometimes it can take two years, three years, even four years to get
records.
So, in fact, the system has degraded since this government has taken
over,"
said Michel Drapeau, a lawyer and author of The Complete Annotated Guide
to
Federal Access of Information. "They may not be responsible in total for
it,
but the fact is it has been degraded. Access delayed is access denied."
But the briefing note for Mr. Toews says the system has never been better:
"Canadians have more open and transparent access to government information
than ever before."
Fanny Lemieux, a Treasury Board communications strategist who prepared one
of
the briefing notes, wrote that in 2006-07 the government handled 29,182
requests, a record and 10 per cent more than the previous year. She argued
that this data showed the system was effective.
The government refused to provide any information for just 1.8 per cent of
those requests, an improvement on the previous year, when the government
refused to disclose any records for 2.3 per cent of requests. Ms. Lemieux,
in
her briefing note, suggested this was evidence the government was more
transparent.
She also noted that in 2008, 255 government institutions are now subject
to
the Access to Information Act, compared with 165 at the start of 2007.
The government requires a $5 processing fee for each request filed. Other
fees
may apply. About 10 per cent of all access-to-information requests are
filed
by journalists.
--------------------
http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.
html?id=8d00e8c4-ed1c-47e7-ba08-d8360b7bf9c0&p=1
|
