Information commissioner wants authority to make GN disclose records
Power to make orders would ensure better GN transparency, Graham Steele says in annual report
Nunavut’s information and privacy commissioner, Graham Steele, says the legislature should pass an amendment allowing commissioners to order the disclosure of documents. He also says Nunavut’s Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act is out of date and needs replacing. (File photo by Mélanie Ritchot)
Nunavut’s information and privacy commissioner, Graham Steele, says he wants the legislature to grant his position more authority to enable the disclosure of government documents.
Steele made his recommendation in his annual report for the 2021-22 fiscal year, which was tabled Wednesday in the legislative assembly.
Currently, under Nunavut’s Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act, the commissioner does not have the authority to order the disclosure of documents. Instead, the commissioner can recommend disclosures.
Under these current rules, Steele says GN employees don’t always follow through on the commissioner’s recommendations, and that there are no “consequences” for not following the territory’s access to information laws.
“I believe that giving me that authority would be an immediate improvement in the system, because right now all I can do is make recommendations,” he said in an interview.
“If they knew that I could order the release of documents, it would make them immediately pay much closer attention to the overall quality of their decisions.”
In his report, Steele highlights what he calls the GN’s failure “to exercise its discretion in access cases.”
Exercising discretion, Steele said, means “to choose to release as much information as possible.”
While the existing law highlights a minimum amount of information the GN should be required to release, Steele says it could do more.
However, that hasn’t happened.
“There’s things that maybe, technically can be withheld, but there’s no real harm in releasing the information,” he said. “People are going to have more confidence in their government the more they believe they are getting the full story… That’s why I encourage governments to release as much as they possibly can.”
In the short term, Steele says granting the privacy commissioner the power to order the disclosure of documents requires the legislative assembly to pass a simple amendment to the current Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act.
In the long term, Steele says the act needs to be completely updated. The current act has been in effect since 1996, predating the establishment of Nunavut.
More than 25 years later, Steele says a new information and privacy act should match modern technology, hold the same standards as other territories and provinces, and it ensure that all GN departments are providing consistent results in delivering access to information requests.
“The law needs to keep up, and the Nunavut law unfortunately has fallen further behind than anywhere else in Canada, there’s just no good reason for that,” he said.
“The system’s just fallen into a rut where it’s just good enough to stay out of serious trouble, so it doesn’t get the attention it needs.”
I say give it to him. He seems like one of the more competent people involved in our government.
Him sure, but who knows who the next commissioner will be. The courts are involved in the process for a reason. We can’t legislate based on what individuals happen to be involved at any given time.
If the person in this position, whomever that might be, does not have the power to make the Government comply with the rules we want they comply with then what is the point of this position at all?
1. Government Action or Decision
2. ATIPP Request or Challenge
3. Government Response
4. Appeal
5. ATIPP Commissioner’s Investigation and Public Report
6. Government’s Public Response
7. Application to the Courts.
Read some of the previous commissioner’s recommendations and tell me if you still think they should automatically bind the government without first being approved by the MLAs or the Courts. For just one example until around 2015 she was slamming the GN for using’s this wacky unproven and insecure technology called “E-Mail”, instead advocating a return to faxing.
“The law needs to keep up, and the Nunavut law unfortunately has fallen further behind than anywhere else in Canada, there’s just no good reason for that.”
No good reason, undoubtedly.
The bad reason, at least part of it, is we live in the most poorly educated region in Canada where the importance of practices like transparency and openness of information are not well understood or appreciated by the public.
Conversely, those in power have few incentives to enhance those features of governance beyond the bare minimum. Instead, power is incentivized to favour secrecy and the maximal amount of friction possible to prevent the exposure of the incompetence and shortcomings we know abound in all our institutions.
The general rule of thumb for modern ATIPP legislation is that you are legally required to disclose all documents unless you can make a strong case for protecting those documents. It’s astonishing that Nunavut’s legislation is so far behind the curve.
Having reviewed many different ATIPP requests I can tell you the vast majority have no goal about transparency and openness. They are mostly former employees who seem to enjoy putting their former departments through work to produce emails about them.
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But yes the GN is terrible at reviewing and producing materials.
“Insider” makes a great point! Nunavut is unique in the huge portion of its working population employed directly by the GN. Public servants should have a employee-employer relationship with the GN around information related to their employment. It is bonkers under ATIPP that their request for “anytime kinda mean anyone ever said about me” is treated the same as someone seeking their own health records, or why their public housing unit was omitted from the recent round of repairs.
Remove the personal information fee waiver from HR related ATIPP requests, this will free up time and resources for the GN focus on transparency for the actual public.
To quote the current commissioner: “GN employees are entitled to use the ATIPPA if they want to. But the ATIPPA is sometimes a blunt instrument for dealing with the nuances of the workplace… I do not believe the drafters foresaw that the ATIPPA would be used primarily as a proxy battleground for labour relations issues.”
https://www.canlii.org/en/nu/nuipc/doc/2021/2021nuipc19/2021nuipc19.html
Seeing as the only people who can make a change to this legislation are Nunavut’s MLAs, why are none of them quoted for reactions in this piece?