RCMP demanded $1.6-million for info request, report says

June 13th, 2006 · No Comments

Globe and Mail - Bill Curry - 13 June 2006
The RCMP demanded $1.6-million in fees from a journalist who had filed an access to information request even though the question could have been answered with a common computer program.

The finding by Access to Information Commissioner John Reid is contained in his annual report to Parliament, which summarizes his office’s investigations over the past year.

The Access to Information Act allows Canadians to request government documents for a $5 fee. Though extra charges can be added to cover costs such as photocopying or extra research time, the RCMP’s large price tag led Mr. Reid to investigate the journalist’s complaint.

The unidentified reporter had asked the RCMP to provide about 2.8 million criminal records from the Canadian Police Information Centre with the names of individuals removed.

The journalist told the Commissioner the information would be used to identify trends and patterns on police practices and that the Toronto Police Service had released similar data covering a six year period for an $800 fee.

The RCMP responded to the journalist arguing that $1.6-million was needed to pay for nearly 200 days of computer programming at a rate of $16.50 per minute, for a total of $1,599,840.

“The Information Commissioner’s investigation confirmed that the deposit demanded by the RCMP was far greater than the actual costs to the RCMP of complying with the request. Despite the large amount of data to be depersonalized and prepared for release on CD-ROM, simply designed and off-the-shelf software was available to accomplish the task using very little (police) processing time,” wrote Mr. Reid.

The commissioner’s report, which also ranks the performance of government departments in responding to access requests, was released Tuesday even though it was written before the start of the new Conservative-led Parliament.

Earlier this year, Mr. Reid had issued a special report in which he sharply criticized the Conservatives for not honouring their election promise to include his proposals for access reform in the Federal Accountability Act.