2014-2015 Department of Justice Canada

Overall performance^{Footnote 1}

The Department of Justice Canada (JUS) experienced a decrease in the number of requests of 5.1% and increased the number of requests completed within 30 days by 2.4%. This report provides comparative statistics for the last three periods (2012-2015).

Workload

JUS received 520 requests under the Access to Information Act (the Act), representing 0.1% of total requests received across government in 2014-2015. The number of requests received this reporting period shows a decreased by 5.1% compared to the previous year.

The majority of requests received by JUS were from the public (40.0%), followed by the media (27.5%) and the business sector (16.5%). The number of requests from the public and the business sector increased by 10.1% and 16.2% respectively from the previous year, while requests from the media dropped by 41.6%.

JUS completed 551 requests this reporting period. The completion rate^{Footnote 2} was 87.0%, which is higher than the government-wide rate of 85.1%. In 2013-2014, the completion rate for JUS was 82.4%. JUS also received 148 informal requests in 2014-2015 and 139 of these were completed within 30 days. The number of consultations received by JUS from other federal government institutions decreased from 917 to 584, representing a decrease of 36.3% compared to 2013-2014. The number of consultations received by JUS was higher than the number of requests it received.

In 2014-2015, JUS processed 156,091 pages. The average number of pages processed per completed request was similar to the previous year.

The information released by JUS was mostly in paper format: 164 in paper format compared to 79 in electronic format.

Table 1: Workload

Requests completion time

Timeliness

Figure 1 reveals that 74.4% of requests were completed in 30 days or less, which is slightly higher than the results observed in 2013-2014 and well above the government-wide average. The number of requests completed in more than 30 days was relatively similar.

Figure 1: Request Completion Time

Extensions

JUS took a total of 172 extensions in 2014-2015 compared to 141 in 2013-2014. The most common reason for taking an extension was interference with operations (49.4%), followed by consultations (47.7%), and third-party notice (2.9%).

Figure 2 shows that 38.4% of extensions were taken for 30 days or less, which is higher by 4.8% compared to 2013-2014. Figure 2 also reveals that the proportion of extensions taken between 31 and 60 days in 2014-2015 increased by 3.1% compared to 2013-2014. We note that the extensions taken between 121 and 180 days decreased by 11.2%.

Figure 2: Length of Extensions

Deemed refusals

In 2014-2015, the number of requests closed past the statutory deadline was 42, which accounts for 7.6% of all completed request. This rate represents a “B” grade.^{Footnote 3} 28.6% of these requests were late for 30 days or less while 40.5% were late by more than 365 days (see Figure 3). The most common reasons for not meeting statutory deadlines were workload (59.5%) and consultations (23.8%).

Figure 3: Lateness of Overdue Requests

Disclosure

Percentage of requests for which information was disclosed

In 2014-2015, 8.7% of completed requests were all disclosed, which is lower compared to 2013-2014 (see Figure 4). Figure 4 also shows that the rate for partially disclosed requests was 35.4% in 2014-2015, which is a decrease of 8.6% from the previous period.

Figure 4: Level of Disclosure

Exemptions

The number of exemptions used per completed requests decreased slightly from 1.24 in 2013-2014 to 1.13 in 2014-2015 (see Table 2). The most used exemptions for this reporting period were section 21 (Operations of Government) (30.0%), section 19 (Personal Information) (22.4%) and section 23 (solicitor-client privilege) (18.1%) in 2014-2015.

Table 2: Exemptions

Complaints at the OIC

The number of complaints received^{Footnote 4} against JUS decreased from 51 in 2013-2014 to 44 this reporting period. We observed a large increase in the proportion of administrative complaints compared to the previous period (11.7% in 2013-2014 and 56.8% in 2014-2015). 17 complaints were well-founded, 9 discontinued, 4 settled and 14 were pending resolution.