2012-2013 Natural Resources Canada

Natural Resources Canada (NRCan)’s mandate is the sustainable development and use of natural resources: energy, minerals and metals, earth sciences and forestry. It develops policies and programs that enhance the contribution of the natural resources sector to the economy.

In 2012-13, NRCan received 769 requests, an increase of 114.8%^{Footnote 1} as compared to 2011-12 (358 requests). Despite the increase in requests received, NRCan generally improved its performance in 2012-13 compared to the reporting period 2011-12.

NRCan completed 78.3% of all requests in its inventory in 2012-13, which is higher than the completion rate achieved in 2011-12 (71.8%). The average number of days to complete a request in 2012-13 was 61 days.^{Footnote 2}

The year 2012-13 was marked by a significant change in the source of requests. While the requests received in 2011-12 came from various sources, those received in 2012-13 were mostly from members of the media. About 65.8% of the requests received in 2012-13 came from this category of requestors, compared to 23.5% in 2011-12.

Table 1: Workload

The volume of pages processed per requests closed and the proportion of requests closed that required the processing of a large volume of pages went down in 2012-13 compared to the previous reporting period. The number of pages processed per request closed for the reporting period 2012-13 (160 pages/request) was also lower than in 2011-12 (374 pages/request).

Timeliness

NRCan responded to 414 requests within 30 days or less, which represents about 60.3% of the requests closed in 2012-13. This rate is about 4.6% higher than in 2011-12. The proportion of requests completed in more than 120 days also decreased, from 21.1% in 2011-12 to 15.1% in 2012-13.

Requests closed past the statutory deadline represented 3.5% of the requests completed in 2012-13 (24 requests late). In comparison, 8 requests were closed past the statutory deadline in 2011-12 (representing 2.9% of the requests closed). This proportion represents an “A”^{Footnote 3} grade.

Workload was the principal reason given for why requests were closed late in 2012-13 (15 out of the 24 requests).

Extensions

NRCan took 300 extensions to close the 687 requests completed in 2012-13. In comparison, a total of 184 extensions were taken to close 280 requests in 2011-12.

About 8% of these extensions were for 30 days or less, compared to 4.3% in 2011-12. The proportion of longer extensions (121 days or more) also decreased from 38.6% in 2011-12 to 18.6% in 2012-13.

A majority of the extensions (70%) were taken for consultations under section 9(1)(b). This proportion was similar in 2011-12.

Disclosure

From the 687 requests completed in 2012-13, 26.9% of them were disclosed entirely, which represents a 9% increase compared to the reporting year 2011-12. Also, the proportion of requests for which the information was entirely exempted/excluded went down from 10% in 2011-12 to 4.5% in 2012-13.

Table 2: Performance

Complaints

The number of complaints received by the OIC regarding NRCan has increased significantly in three years, from 4 complaints in 2010-11 to 21 in 2012-13.

Only one complaint received in 2012-13 was related to administrative matters. The remaining 20 were refusal complaints.

The disposition of most of the complaints received in 2012-13 is still unknown, as 14 of them were still pending as of May 2014. The remaining 7 complaints were either discontinued (4), not well-founded (2) or settled (1).