The National Gallery of Canada paid a private consultant more than $126,000 to censor documents under the Access To Information Act. Other federal departments and agencies hired private censors at fees that ran into the millions, according to Blacklock's Reporter..Brenda Keen Consulting Incorporated of Nepean, ON was paid a total $126,840 for an undisclosed number of hours processing requests for records, according to Access To Information accounts. Keen is a former federal employee..The payments were marked as “Access To Information And Privacy Act consultant services.” Fees paid included $47,198 in 2020, another $70,755 in 2021 and a lesser amount of $2,888 last year..Cabinet in an Inquiry Of Ministry tabled in the Commons last June 16 said in two years federal departments and agencies spent a total $39 million hiring contractors to redact records sought by the public. No explanation was given as to why employees could not manage Access To Information paperwork..“Each file is different based on the complexity and the volume of pages,” said the Inquiry. “Some consultants have other functions including file review and providing technical advice.”.The $39 million represented payments for “contracts provided to consultants related to the processing of requests made under the Access To Information Act since January 1, 2020.” The figures were requested by Conservative MP Kelly McCauley (Edmonton West, AB)..One private censor was paid $15,961 for 10 weeks’ work. Another was paid $72,844 for four months’ work. A third contractor was paid $199,078 to process Department of Justice files totaling 96,971 pages, the equivalent of $2 a page..Consultants were hired “to reduce the current backlog of Access To Information requests which have accumulated over several years,” said the Inquiry. The number of backlogged requests for files was not disclosed..Contracts signed with individual firms included $15.8 million with Altis Human Resources Inc., $3 million with Maxsys Staffing & Consulting, $2.3 million to FCM Professionals Inc., $2.2 million to Excel Human Resources and $1 million to Michael Wager Consulting Inc..Information Commissioner Caroline Maynard in her Annual Report to Parliament said complaints to her office year over year increased 41%..“We’re not able to keep pace,” Maynard testified last May 16 at the Commons ethics committee..“Our backlog continues to grow,” said Maynard. “In concrete terms this means Canadians are not getting timely resolutions of their complaints for Access To Information requests.”.“Just to give you an idea, this month we received 1,000 cases, new complaints,” said Maynard. “If this is continuing for the rest of the year, if that’s what it is going to be, I’m talking about 12,000 cases for 2022.”
