Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and members of the committee.

I'm accompanied today by Layla Michaud, who is my director general of corporate services and the office's chief financial officer.

I will briefly review my office's achievements, our priorities for the next year, and some of the challenges we face.

Overall, I'm must say that I'm very proud of the incredible work being done by my very dedicated staff.

In 2013-14, we will have $10.5 million available to carry out our work. An added $2.6 million was provided to my office to cover the costs of relocating our offices next fall. We must repay this increase in appropriations over 15 years. In the 2014-15 fiscal year, our budget will be just under $10 million, which includes a $500,000 reduction as a result of the deficit reduction action plan. By the end of 2014-15, we will have fully implemented the budget 2012 cuts and the cost containment measures, which in total will amount to 8% of our budget.

For 2013-14, 77% of our financial resources have been allocated to our program and 23% to our corporate services. In terms of our human resources, I have 93 full-time equivalents on staff, down from 106 at this time last year. Of the 93, 70 work for the program and 23 for corporate services.

As you know, over the last four years, I have made significant changes to streamline our entire operations. I think the results are very positive.

On the program side, we have resolved 7,300 complaints since April 2009, including some of our oldest and most complex cases that had accumulated over the years. For a fourth year in a row, we have completed more files than we received during the year. Our median turnaround time is now 215 days and, more importantly, 86 days from the day cases are assigned to an investigator. I have strengthened our legal capacity to assist with formal investigations and litigations. That helped reduce our outsourcing costs for legal expertise.

In internal services, we are completing our information management and information technologies strategy, which we began four years ago. In the past year, I have also outsourced all our human resources activities to Shared Services Canada.

As you have seen from my report on plans and priorities, I have set ambitious performance targets for our program, and our internal services will be facing a challenging year in 2013-14.

That being said, my focus remains on the realization of the key results area of my strategic plan, which will be in its third and final year. I will hence, in this fiscal year, renew this strategic direction for the following three years, to lead the OIC through to the end of my mandate in 2017.

On developing a leading access to information regime, my focus in the next fiscal year will be to complete our three systemic investigations: into consultations, interference with the access to information process, and on text-based messaging. I also plan to complete the investigation I launched recently in response to the environmental law clinic complaint.

To coincide with the 30th anniversary of the Access to Information Act, and building on 30 years of experience at the OIC, we will issue recommendations for modernizing the act by way of a special report to Parliament in the fall of 2013.

We will continue to strive to provide exemplary services to Canadians. As you saw in our report on plans and priorities, I have a dedicated team, with difficult targets. Those targets are to complete 85% of the administrative complaints within 90 days and 75% of priority or early resolution complaints within six months. My goal is to leave, at the end of my term, a manageable and up-to-date inventory of cases to my successor.

As part of our work in this regard, we will target the complaints in our inventory that deal with special delegations—national security, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and the Canada Revenue Agency. We will also continue to work towards the resolution of the oldest complaints in our inventory and to closely follow the progress of our investigations.

In addition, we will keep seeking ways to be an exceptional workplace. To that end, we will roll out a comprehensive talent management program, a new human resources plan, as well as a code of values and ethics, with excellence in all aspects of our work as our goal.

Our internal services will be responsible for the relocation of our office in the fall, the completion of our information management and information technologies strategy, and for exploring further the opportunities for shared services with other agents of Parliament.

Mr. Chair, one of the fundamental principles underpinning access to information is having an independent oversight of government decisions on disclosure. The Access to Information Act explicitly prescribes that the Information Commissioner “shall receive and investigate”—it's a positive legal obligation, which leaves me no discretion—the complaints of individuals who believe that their rights under the act have not been respected.

Even though I was able to decrease my inventory of complaints by close to 29% in the last four years, I still have about 2,000 files in my inventory at this time. At the same time, we are receiving more administrative complaints. We are up by 38% in the last fiscal year. In the last month alone, in April 2013, my office registered 277 complaints. The additional efficiencies I can now make will remain marginal.

When I appeared last year on the 2012-13 main estimates, I did not know whether my office's budget would be cut. In a letter to the Minister of Justice at the time, I wrote:

The overall conclusions of my review indicate that any reductions to the Office's existing funding envelope will potentially have significant adverse impacts on program results, including eroding the significant progress made over the last two years in reducing the inventory of longstanding cases and our ability to deal with the demands of our current inventory.

Hence, if you ask me today the question whether my budget is enough to accomplish my mandate, my answer is no.

In the coming months I will continue, however, to work to improve our performance to meet our ambitious targets, but I will also—and I feel I must—be seeking additional funds to ensure that the Office of the Information Commissioner can meet its obligations under the act. Frankly, Mr. Chair, I think if I did not do that, I would be acting irresponsibly.

With that, Mr. Chair, my colleague and I are here to answer your questions.

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