2017–18 Fees report

Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada

Original signed by

The Honourable David Lametti, P.C., M.P.
Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada

Caroline Maynard
Information Commissioner of Canada

ISSN 2562-2595

Table of contents

• Information Commissioner’s message
• General fees information
  • General and financial information by fee category
• Fees under the organization’s authority

Information Commissioner’s message

On behalf of the Office of the Information Commissioner, I am pleased to present the 2017 to 2018 Report on Fees.

On June 22, 2017, the Service Fees Act received royal assent, thereby repealing the User Fees Act.

The Service Fees Act introduces a modern legislative framework that enables cost-effective delivery of services and, through enhanced reporting to Parliament, improved transparency and oversight. The Act provides for:

• a streamlined approach to consultation and the approval of new or modified fees

• a requirement for services to have service standards and reporting against these standards, along with a policy to remit fees to fee payers when standards are not met

• an automatic annual fee adjustment by the Consumer Price Index (CPI) to ensure that fees keep pace with inflation

• annual detailed reporting to Parliament in order to increase transparency

This 2017 to 2018 Fees Report is the first report to be prepared under the Service Fees Act.

When the OIC became subject to the Access to Information Act in 2007, the organization committed to providing exemplary service to requesters seeking information about its investigations and operations. To remove cost as a barrier to Canadians’ right of access, the OIC exercised its discretion and began waiving all applicable fees for requests under the Act in 2010.

I welcome the increased transparency and oversight that the Service Fees Act’s reporting regime embodies.

Caroline Maynard
Information Commissioner of Canada

General fees information

The tables that follow provide information on each category of fees, including:

• the name of the fee category

• the date that the fee (or fee category) was introduced and last amended (if applicable)

• service standards

• performance results against these standards 

• financial information regarding total costs, total revenues and remissions

General and financial information by fee category

General information

* Includes cases in which a Notice of Extension was sent to the requester within 30 days of receipt of the request.

Financial information (dollars)

* The amount includes direct and indirect costs, where such costs are identifiable and material.

† A remission is a partial or full return of a fee paid. Under the Service Fees Act departments are required to develop policies that determine when fees will be remitted to fee payers should service standards not be met. The requirement for departments to remit is anticipated to come into effect on March 31, 2020. This effective date allows departments time to develop remissions policies and adjust service standard tracking and remittance systems. During fiscal year 2017 to 2018, some departments may have issued remissions, in accordance with their authority of their enabling legislation or regulation, as opposed to the authority given by the Service Fees Act. It is remissions issued under enabling legislations or regulations that are shown above

Fees under the organization’s authority

Fee amounts for 2017 to 2018, 2019 to 2020, and a future fiscal year, as applicable (dollars)

* Fees are adjusted annually in one of two ways: (1) Under the Service Fees Act, fees are adjusted in each fiscal year by the percentage change over 12 months in the April All-Items Consumer Price Index for Canada, as published by Statistics Canada for the previous fiscal year. The Consumer Price Index rate for this report is 2.2%.

(2) The fee is subject to a periodic adjustment at a predetermined rate, in accordance with another authority in legislation or regulation.

† The “Future fee amount and fiscal year” is the new amount of the fee, in a future fiscal year other than 2019 to 2020, adjusted by a predetermined rate, in accordance with the authority in legislation or regulation.