2019–2020 Annual Report to Parliament - Access to Information Act

Mandate of the Canadian Space Agency (CSA)

To provide a better understanding of the context in which the Act is implemented at the CSA, this section gives an overview of the CSA's objectives and activities.

The CSA reports to the Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development. Its mandate, as set out in the Canadian Space Agency Act, is "to promote the peaceful use and development of space, to advance the knowledge of space through science and to ensure that space science and technology provide social and economic benefits for Canadians."

Mission

The CSA is committed to leading the development and application of space knowledge for the benefit of Canadians and humanity.

To fulfil its mission, the CSA:

• pursues excellence collectively;
• advocates a client-centred attitude;
• supports employee-oriented practices and open communications;
• commits itself to both empowerment and accountability; and
• pledges to cooperate and work with partners for our mutual benefit.

The CSA has been a source of inspiration for Canadians since its creation in 1989. In addition to consolidating major federal space programs, it coordinates all the components of the Canadian Space Program and manages Canada's major space-related activities.

The new Space Strategy for Canada launched in 2019 highlighted the importance of space as a strategic national asset and identified harnessing space science and technology as a priority to solve important issues on Earth. This new plan allowed the CSA to undertake a series of initiatives to support the Canadian space industry so it can take full advantage of the growth in the global space sector, while ensuring that Canada keeps pace.

More information on the CSA's activities can be found at: www.asc-csa.gc.ca.

Delegations of Authority

Under the Act, the head of the CSA is the Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development. In June 2016, some of the powers under the Act were delegated by the Minister to the incumbents of the CSA positions of Vice-President, Chief Information Officer, and Access to Information and Open Data coordinator. The appended grid on delegation of authorities identifies the powers delegated.

The Access to Information and Open Data coordinator is responsible for implementing the Act on a daily basis and providing reports to the Vice-President and the Chief Information Officer.

The Access to Information and Privacy (ATIP) Office is comprised of the Access to Information and Open Data Coordinator and the Access to Information and Open Data Officer.

This office works closely with all sectors of the CSA to ensure the application of and compliance with the Act.

Lastly, the Act allows government institutions to provide services related to access to information to another government institution presided over by the same minister or under the responsibility of the same minister, or to receive such services themselves from any other such institution. However, at the CSA, no contract for such services, as stipulated in section 96 of the Act, has been entered into with any other government institution.

Evolving Role of the ATIP Office

In 2016–2017, the ATIP Office was mandated not only to process Access-to-Information requests and report on the administration of the Act, but also to implement the Open Government and Open Science initiatives.

Open government is becoming a global priority in improving transparency and making information more readily available to the public. The Government of Canada is no exception in that regard and has implemented a series of commitments in which departments and agencies are taking part. Briefly, the goal is to release as much data and information as possible in a manner that is accessible, interoperable and publicly usable. This vision of transparency is closely linked to the vision for the application of the Act.

Further to a decision to link Access-to-Information and open government and open science activities, the ATIP Office has become a one-stop shop for CSA employees wishing to share information and members of the public wishing to obtain information.

This innovative and effective pairing, which resulted from a centralization of activities, has made it possible for the CSA to optimize its acquisition and application of knowledge.

Request Processing Procedure

When it receives a request under the Act, the ATIP Office consults the appropriate Office of Primary Interest and, when necessary and appropriate depending on the case, Justice Canada, the information-related communities of practice, the Treasury Board Secretariat or other institutions.

The ATIP Office uses an electronic ATIP request processing system to record the administrative actions taken, to review the records in question and to apply any exemptions and exclusions.

Various consultations may occur in the course of processing Access-to-Information requests. The ATIP Office primarily consults third parties because the CSA holds many of their records. The ATIP Office validates the confidential nature of the information in its care with the third parties. The groups consulted are usually other departments or CSA partners or contractors. When it is believed that a record must be excluded under the Act, the CSA will also undertake consultations with Justice Canada, which, if necessary, will seek the opinion of the Privy Council Office to ensure that it is in fact an excluded record.

Once the records have been analyzed and consultations have taken place, the CSA recommends exemptions to the CSA's Vice-President and Chief Information Officer, who are responsible for approving the release of records under the Act.

The records in response to Access-to-Information requests are then sent to the requesters. Lastly, a summary of the completed Access-to-Information requests is posted on a monthly basis on open.canada.ca.

Requests received and processed

The CSA received a larger number of Access‑to‑Information requests in the current fiscal year, compared with the previous year. The number of requests received rose from 33 to 43 during the year, a 30% increase.

In addition to the requests received in 2019–2020, three requests were carried over from the previous year. In total, the CSA processed 45 requests in 2019–2020, while three requests were carried over to the next fiscal year.

Excluding 2016–2017, when an unusual number of requests related to access contract documents increased the number of requests, the number of requests processed has increased steadily over the last five years. The following table illustrates this trend:

Sources of requests

Requests are categorised into six categories, according to their source (the media, the public, the academic sector, the private sector, organizations, and declined to identify).

Requests in the media category accounted for 65% of all requests received, compared with 30% in 2018–2019, and amounted to a 117% increase for this request category. This year we saw a decrease in the number of requests from the academic sector (12%), compared with 33% the year before. Meanwhile, the percentages of requests received from the private sector and from the public remained fairly stable from last year (9% and 12%, respectively) to this year (9% and 14%, respectively).

No requests were made in the "declined to identify" and "organization" categories during the 2019–2020 period.

The following table presents the sources of the requests.

Informal requests

Informal requests are requests that are not filed or processed by a federal institution under the Act, such as requests for records disclosed in response to previous access requests. A list of these previously processed access requests is published every month on the Open Government Portal, making it easier for requesters to find the requests of interest to them and request them from the CSA. No fees can be charged and this type of request is not subject to a response time. In addition, the Act does not give the requester the right to file a complaint with the Information Commissioner.

The CSA noted an increase in this type of access request since 2013–2014. However, a more pronounced increase in 2016–2017 coincided with the release of the summaries of completed requests on open.canada.ca. This one-stop portal seems to have contributed substantially to the increase in requests, since requesters can submit them electronically, thus making it easier to access documents that are already published.

The majority (99%) of requests processed informally were submitted following the release of the summaries of completed access requests. Of these, 94% were received through the Open Government Portal. The proportion of such requests was 87% in 2018–2019.

The number of requests processed informally increased in 2019–2020, from 31 to 89 (a 187% increase).

In total, 87% of requests were processed within 15 days or less, while 13% received a response within 16 to 30 days.

The following chart shows the variances in informal requests since it became a requirement that federal institutions keep track of them for their statistical reports:

Reasons for declining to act on a request

The new Act now allows institutions to request authorization from the Information Commissioner to decline to act on a request that is vexatious, is made in bad faith, or is otherwise an abuse of the right to make a request for access (section 6.1).

In 2019–2020, the CSA filed two requests on the basis that they were vexatious, made in bad faith, and amounted to an abuse of the right to make a request for access. However, the requests were not accepted because the CSA failed to establish, on a balance of probabilities, that they met the criteria set out in subsection 6.1(1) of the Act. Therefore, both requests were processed and answers were provided to the requesters.

Provisions and processing times

The Act stipulates that access to information requests must normally be responded to within 30 calendar days. Among the requests processed in 2019–2020, 24 (54%) received a reply within the timeframe. This proportion is mainly due to the extensions that were needed to complete the consultations required to process the requests. The following table illustrates the processing times for the current year.

It should also be noted that the Act provides for extended time frames for some requests if consultations are needed with third parties or other organizations. Given the nature of the records requested from the CSA in 2019–2020, 22 processed requests required such consultations. Therefore, factoring in these extensions authorized by the Act, 78% of the requests received replies within the prescribed time frames.

Of the 45 requests processed this year:

• 24 requests (54%) resulted in partial disclosure;
• 14 requests (31%) resulted in full disclosure; and
• One request resulted in the full exclusion of the response record.

For the other requests, either the requests themselves were abandoned or no records existed. In one specific case, the CSA had to invoke a special provision allowing it to not confirm or deny the existence of records, so that it would not disclose injurious information simply by confirming the existence of a record. The following table shows all of the provisions that were invoked.

Exemptions and exclusions invoked

Of the 45 requests processed this year, 54% required exemptions.

The following table shows the frequency of exemptions and exclusions invoked in 2019–2020 for the 24 requests disclosed in part. Note that more than one section may apply to a given request.

Medium used to disclose records

In 2019–2020, a total of 38 requests resulted in the disclosure of records. Three responses were disclosed in paper format (8%), while the other requests (92%) were disclosed electronically. As in previous years, none of the records was consulted in the CSA's reading room.

Pages reviewed and disclosed

With the Treasury Board Secretariat's introduction in 2011-2012 of a new detailed statistical report, it is now possible to report the number of pages reviewed and compare it with the number of pages disclosed.

The number of pages reviewed or disclosed can vary considerably from year to year, depending on the subject matter of the requests and the quantity of relevant records held by the CSA.

Despite the increase in the number of requests this year, there was a slight decrease in the number of pages disclosed. A total of 2,139 pages were disclosed in 2019–2020, compared with 2,984 in 2018–2019. However, the total number of pages reviewed by the ATIP Office over the year remained similar, at 4,197 pages, with less than one percent decrease.

The majority of processed requests were less than 100 pages in length (82%), an increase in comparison to last year's rate (75%). It should also be noted that two requests of over 501 pages were processed. The effort required to process these requests was similar to last year: three requests were over 501 pages in length in 2018–2019.

Consultations and extensions

The CSA collects some third-party information due to its relationship with different partners in various projects.

Therefore, it is not unusual for the requests processed to involve consultation with third parties and, consequently, lead to time extensions under the Act. The CSA consults third parties and sometimes other federal institutions with the aim of providing as much information as possible, in accordance with the spirit and letter of the Act. The complexity level is also evidenced by the fact that some of the requests require consultations with more than one entity.

In 2019–2020, 22 processed requests were somewhat complex owing to the need for consultations or legal advice. This was higher than last year, when only nine requests required consultations. In most cases (95%), the requests processed in 2019–2020 required external consultations, while the others (5%) needed legal advice.

The requesters for each of these requests were informed of the extension, as specified in the Act.

Consultations received from other federal institutions

In 2019–2020, the CSA received 47 consultation requests from other departments and two from other organizations, for a total of 49 consultation requests. This represents a 40% increase over the previous year (49 in 2019–2020, compared with 35 in 2018–2019).

In addition to the consultation requests received in 2019–2020, three requests were carried forward from the previous year. In total, the CSA processed 50 requests in 2019–2020, while five requests were carried over to the next fiscal year.

Moreover, the number of pages processed during those consultations rose sharply, from 635 pages in 2018–2019 to 2,397 pages in 2019–2020, a 278% increase. This surge affected the average number of processed pages: the average was 20 pages per request in 2018–2019, in comparison to 49 pages per request in 2019–2020.

For the most part, the CSA's processing times for these consultations were less than 30 days (76%). Nine consultations (18%) received a reply within 16 to 30 days, two (4%) were processed within 31 to 60 days, and one consultation request (2%) received a reply after more than 365 days.

The following graph shows the variance in the number of consultation requests over the past five years.

Consultations Regarding Cabinet Confidences

Similarly to last year, two requests required consultations for exclusions. One of those consultations with Legal Services required less than 15 days for processing, while the other required 16 to 30 days.

Justice Canada was consulted because of the Treasury Board Secretariat's 2013 directives, which stipulate that Justice Canada may now confirm how to apply section 69. The directives have helped improve consultation times over the past few years.

Impact of COVID-19

During the period covered by this report, operations at the ATIP Office were not significantly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, request intake was not affected, because the 43 requests received in 2019–2020 reached the CSA offices before they were closed.

Despite this closing, the ATIP Office was able to minimize the situation's impact on its operations through the use of telework, since each ATIP office employees had the equipment needed to continue processing access requests.

Updates

In 2019–2020, after Bill C‑58 entered into force, the ATIP Office completely updated its guidelines and procedures for administering the Act. A new access to information and privacy manual was produced and posted on the CSA's intranet. It should also be noted that intranet site pages describing ATIP Office services were created and put online to more effectively communicate changes to the Act.

Complaints

Last year, one complaint was still pending with the Information Commissioner. The complaint had been sent to the CSA in January 2019, under section 32 of the Act. The file has since been closed and the complaint was determined to be unfounded.

During 2019–2020, the CSA received two new complaints under section 32 of the Act on the basis that the CSA allegedly did not carry out reasonable searches to locate the documents. These two complaints were still being processed at the end of the reporting period.

Audits

An audit exercise on the administration of the Act at the CSA was conducted in 2018-2019. The objective of this audit was to determine whether the Access to Information management framework in place allows the CSA to meet the requirements of the Act.

The audit had identified an opportunity for improvement in relation to the production of the annual statistical report, including the purchasing of a new electronic access request processing system. The CSA acquired this new system in 2019–2020. The system was set up, functionality tests were carried out and training courses were taken by employees to ensure that the system was operational by the beginning of 2020–2021. The project has been completed and the system was put into service.

Compliance monitoring

The time spent on processing Access to Information requests is tracked through the electronic ATIP request processing system. For CSA reporting purposes, reports, including one weekly report, are sent to senior management and others concerned by the requests.

Access to Information Act and Privacy Act Delegation Order

The Minister of Industry Canada, pursuant to section 73 of the Access to Information Act and the Privacy Act, hereby designates the persons holding the positions set out in the schedule hereto, or the persons occupying on an acting basis those positions, to exercise the powers and functions of the Minister as the head of a government institution, under the section of the Acts set out in the schedule opposite each position. This Delegation Order supersedes all previous Delegation Orders

Section 1: Requests Under the Access to Information Act

Section 2: Decline to act on vexations, made in bad faith or abuse of right requests

Section 3: Requests Closed During the Reporting Period

Section 4: Extensions

Section 5: Fees

Section 6: Consultations Received From Other Institutions and Organizations

Section 7: Completion Time of Consultations on Cabinet Confidences

Section 8: Complaints and investigations

Section 9: Court Action

Section 10: Resources Related to the Access to Information Act