Parliament’s information commissioner said Canada’s federal police force needs an “urgent … change of course” when it comes to handling requests made to it under the federal Access to Information Act.
Commissioner Caroline Maynard had launched a special investigation of the RCMP for repeated and systemic violations of the Access to Information Act.
Maynard tabled her report “Access at Issue: The Need for Leadership” in the House of Commons Tuesday. MPs on the House access to information and ethics standing committee will now consider her recommendations.
“The key findings in my special report lead me to conclude the obvious: a change of course in the area of access at the RCMP is urgently needed,” Maynard said in a statement. “If the Minister and senior RCMP leaders fail to act on my findings, the organization will continue to fail at upholding the right of access.”
Her findings come after an internal RCMP audit published earlier this year that found the force’s access to information understaffed and poorly managed. Moreover, the audit team was unable to properly document the force’s failures to fulfill its responsibilities under the Access to Information Act because the force simply was not collecting enough or appropriate information about its own performance.
“The audit team was unable to assess the effectiveness of the initiatives given the lack of evidence-based performance information,” the audit said.
Similarly, Maynard’s office found that when it tried to investigate individual complaints made by requesters about the RCMP’s failure to provide information, the RCMP failed to respond to her investigators’ queries.
“I want to stress that the situation in the RCMP is critical and may soon cross the point of no return, unless the organization’s senior leadership takes immediate action,” Maynard said in the report. “It is critically important that the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness (Bill Blair), to whom the RCMP reports, ensure that the necessary resources, processes and tools are available so that the RCMP can begin to meet its obligations under the Act.”
Neither the RCMP nor Public Safety Minister Bill Blair was immediately available to respond to the information commissioner’s report.
—More to come