2012-2013 Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), as the national public broadcaster, provides radio and television services to Canadians, incorporating a range of programming in English, French and Aboriginal languages. CBC was part of the 70 institutions that became subject to the Access to Information Act in 2006 and 2007 under the Federal Accountability Act.

CBC received 154 requests during 2012-13, a decrease compared to 2011-12 (218 requests). Overall, CBC’s performance was stronger than the government-wide average, except for requests where all information is disclosed.

CBC completed 83.5%^{Footnote 1} of all requests in its inventory in 2012-13. The average time to complete a request was 38 days.^{Footnote 2} CBC noted in its annual report that more than 1,900 visits were registered on the Corporation’s Transparency and Accountability website, where already disclosed records of public interest are posted.

The number of pages processed per request went down significantly in 2012-13, with 82% of requests requiring 100 pages or less to process.

Table 1: Workload

Timeliness

CBC closed 101 requests within 30 days, representing about 66.5% of requests closed during the reporting period 2012-13. This is about 13% lower than in 2011-12.^{Footnote 3}

CBC was able to maintain its performance in terms of timeliness, as recorded in its 2011-12 report card, with only 1.32 percent of its requests completed past the statutory deadline in 2012-13^{Footnote 4} . This rate represents an “A” grade.^{Footnote 5}

Extensions

In 2012-13, CBC took 42 extensions to close 152 requests. In 2011-12, 41 extensions were taken to complete 208 requests.

79% of the extensions taken were for more than 30 days.^{Footnote 6}

57% of the extensions were for consulting with a third party (section 9(1)(c)).

Disclosure

Of the requests completed, 11.2% were disclosed entirely, which is similar to the last two reporting periods. In comparison, the government-wide disclosure rate was 21.6% in 2012-13.

The proportion of pages processed that were disclosed increased significantly (34.4%) between 2011-12 and 2012-13.

Table 2: Performance

Complaints

The number of complaints received by the OIC against CBC decreased in 2012-13 to 45 (in comparison to 71 in 2011-2012). Of the 56 complaints completed with findings in 2012-2013, 40 were considered well-founded and 16 not well-founded.