2024-2025 Departmental plan at a glance
A departmental plan describes a department’s priorities, plans and associated costs for the upcoming three fiscal years.
Read the full departmental plan
The OIC plans to close more complaints than it will receive in 2024-25 as it strives to meet Canadians’ expectations for timely decisions.
The OIC will also continue to publish final reports of its investigations on its website to help parties understand how the OIC interprets the Act.
The results of the complainant consultation process will further inform the OIC’s equity, diversity and inclusion priorities, as well as plans for further process improvements.
The OIC will continue to build capacity to investigate complaints in an efficient manner by rigorously implementing its Professional Development Program for Investigators, ensuring staff have the experience and skills to tackle complex investigations.
Key priorities
- Investing in and supporting our resources: continue to advocate for a funding model that provides the OIC with the resources needed to operate and reflects the Commissioner’s status as an independent agent of Parliament.
- Innovating and transforming operations: provide tools to the OIC to consistently improve its annual performance by assigning and concluding investigations more rapidly and excel in a hybrid work environment.
- Maintaining and enhancing the organization’s credibility: upholding the right of access to information through the OIC’s investigations and reports; continue to issue an increasing number of orders, seeking to ensure their enforcement through litigation, if necessary and, as we await the next review of the Act, contribute to finding new ways to make information available through means other than access requests to provide relief to an overstretched system.
Refocusing Government Spending
In Budget 2023, the government committed to reducing spending by $14.1 billion over the next five years, starting in 2023–24, and by $4.1 billion annually after that.
While not officially part of this spending reduction exercise, the OIC will respect the spirit of this exercise by ensuring that the prudent use of public resources will serve as a key consideration in all of OIC’s actions and decisions.
The OIC’s refocusing government spending strategy is to fund its technology infrastructure modernization projects by using carry-over funds from one year to the next, and extending the project over several years. Additionally, the OIC’s is in discussions with Public Services and Procurement Canada to reduce its office space allocation in order to free up space.
Highlights
A Departmental Results Framework consists of an organization’s core responsibilities, the results it plans to achieve, and the performance indicators that measure progress toward these results.
In order to meet Canadians’ expectations, the OIC continues to streamline its processes, improve efficiencies and render decisions in a timelier manner. The results of the OIC’s complainant consultation process will inform further improvements to be made. Part of this consultation is to identify barriers that may exist and to ensure the complaint process, from start to finish, is accessible for all.
Reducing the amount of time to assign a complaint, as well as reducing the time it takes to complete an investigation once assigned, are key priorities for the OIC. When assigning and concluding complaint investigations in a timely manner, the OIC ensures Canadians receive the information to which they are entitled without delay.
The OIC publishes all orders it issues on administrative complaints and all final reports on orders issued on refusal complaints. The OIC also publishes final reports when the Commissioner deems them to be of value in providing guidance to both institutions and complainants.
While this is a resource-intensive process, involving legal review, translation and web publishing, it is vital to both ensuring the transparency of decisions made by the Commissioner and attaining a better understanding of the application of the Act. More and more, institutions and complainants refer to published decisions to frame their arguments and negotiate whenever possible, an informal resolution to the issue at hand.
While the informal resolution of complaints is by far the most efficient way to conclude a complaint investigation, the Commissioner will not hesitate, when necessary, to use the full extent of her powers and order an institution to comply with the Act.
Legal support is essential to both the investigative process and any litigation following the conclusion of a complaint. As the Commissioner continues to issue orders, the OIC anticipates that activities related to litigation will increase over the next year. It is also likely that the Commissioner will be required to appear before the courts to defend her orders and seek strategic interventions when appropriate. To that end, the OIC is working to increase its capacity in legal services to ensure adequate representation of the Commissioner’s position before the courts.
The OIC will continue to balance the needs and preferences of its employees, as well as operational requirements to sustain a hybrid work environment that is inclusive, equitable, transparent and high-performing. The OIC is innovating and transforming operations by including a new centralized records management database and collaborative platform, as well as additional secure information technology equipment and software.
Government Transparency
Departmental results:
Planned spending: $12,018,752
Planned human resources: 99
Three strategies will continue to guide the OIC’s work in 2024–25:
- Invest in and support our resources
- Innovate and transform our operations
- Maintain and enhance our credibility
The plans outlined in this report will ensure the OIC carries out its core responsibility: government transparency.
The OIC will continue, through investigations, to ensure that Canadians have access to the information to which they are entitled to under the Act.