Questions and answers

May 16, 2022

Finance

The OIC's total budgetary spending has increased by 10.2% ($1.6M) as of March 31, 2022 compared to the same period in 2020-2021. This is primarily due to an increase in personnel expenses and temporary contracts to increase the OIC's capacity to conduct investigations.
In order to adequately respond to the increasing number of complaints (70% increase), the OIC will be pursuing additional permanent funding. Based on current funding, the OIC is expected to deal with 4400 complaints annually.
This additional funding would be invested in hiring investigators and corporate support staff, in supporting IT infrastructure projects and tools as well as publishing final reports on my investigations and facilitating my order-making powers.
We are currently assessing the level of additional resources that would be required to manage the current volume of complaints.

On April 1, 2022, my inventory of complaints stood at 4,165 (compared to 4,066 on April 1, 2021)
New complaints continued to grow, with 2021-22 being a record year that saw 6,941 complaints registered (70% increase from last year). Despite this rise, the OIC has managed to clear almost 90% of the backlog I inherited at the start of my mandate in March 2018.
There are now 406 pre-March 2018 complaints remaining in the OIC inventory. The inventory of complaints as of April 2022 breaks down as follows:

Corporate resources are needed to pay employees, pay bills, hire new team members, provide a secure IT infrastructure, to support our investigations and, by definition, our mandate.
In order to keep the costs of internal services as low as possible, the OIC has taken a number of steps, including collaborating with other organizations that provide services at a lower cost. For example Health Canada (Employee Assistance Program, Informal Conflict Resolution), Human Rights Commission (Procurement and Finance).

This is well above the 4400 files we are expected to close, based on our current funding.
In order to close these requests, we have had to take exceptional measures that are not sustainable over the long term. As a result, due to the increase our inventory is only growing. As you know, one of my priorities is still to deal with the backlog of complaints.

The OIC recorded 70 percent more complaints in 2021-22 compared to the previous year.
- As of March 31, 2022, the OIC had registered 6,947 complaints (83% administrative vs 17% refusal).
- In fiscal year 2020-21, the OIC registered 4,068 complaints and in 2019-20, 6,172 complaints.
For the next fiscal year (2021-22), as of May 10, 2022, we had:
- 1 047 registered complaints of which 943 (90%) were administrative and 104 (10%) were refusals.
- As a comparison, by this date, we had registered 415 complaints in 2021 and 498 complaints in 2020.
Over 1047 complaints so far (compared to 415 this time last year), if we continue on this trend, we will see well over 7K this year (2022-23).

Complaint activity in 2021-22
	Active complaints as of April 1, 2021	Complaints registered between April 1, 2021 and March 31, 2022	Total	Complaints registered before April 1, 2021	Complaints registered between April 1, 2021 and March 31, 2022	Total	Well founded	Not well founded	Resolved	Discontinued	Cease to investigate	Total
	Active complaints in 2021-22			Investigations completed in 2021-22			Outcome
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada	846	4199	5045	765	3616	4381	185	26	4101	69	0	4381
Canada Border Services Agency	184	789	973	77	241	318	57	17	232	12	0	318
Royal Canadian Mounted Police	258	458	716	164	198	362	105	45	181	31	0	362
Canada Revenue Agency	452	154	606	333	54	387	59	256	41	30	1	387
Privy Council Office	241	110	351	72	42	114	42	12	18	42	0	114
Library and Archives Canada	221	90	311	27	18	45	20	3	19	3	0	45
National Defence	173	69	242	97	34	131	68	25	16	22	0	131
Justice	152	61	213	101	14	115	32	14	6	63	0	115
Correctional Services Canada	98	93	191	64	30	94	40	9	32	13	0	94
Global Affairs Canada	114	72	186	55	19	74	46	6	18	4	0	74

Since June 2019, I have the power to make orders, and institutions have to comply with it or challenge the order in court.
A majority of complaints have been resolved prior to reaching the order stage. In addition, there has been no application under section 41(2) by an institution seeking review of the subject matter of our order, yet.
Power to order disclosure of information and the publication of reports have had a deterrent effect and positive impact on compliance.

An interesting idea to explore would be for Parliament to invite ministers or officials to report on the progress of the Commissioner’s recommendations and the state of access to information in their institutions.
Clear directives across institutions regarding management of information as well as innovative ways to retrieve information could go a long way to ensure timely disclosure. Government leaders have the power to make this happen.