Iqaluit (Mar 03/03) - The wheels of government grind far too slowly for Nunavut MLA Hunter Tootoo.

Requests for information take far too long, he said, even when they are made by the government's own committees.

In this case -- Tootoo chairs the standing committee on government operations and services -- his committee recently received information it requested six months ago.

"The Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act's job is to provide access to government information and prevent abuses of the use of information in government," Tootoo explained before information and privacy commissioner Elaine Keenan-Bengts made her report to the committee Feb. 19.

The request from his committee was to have received a response to within 120 days. "This is a reminder of the poor performance of the government to these requests," Tootoo said.

"This is a disappointing and evasive action. I'm hoping to see better actions by the government this year and hope that it stops stalling."

The privacy commissioner agreed.

"I support the comments of the chair," Keenan-Bengts said, adding that of 28 files she opened in 2002 that had information request problems, 20 were because government had missed the response deadline.

There are two reasons she can find -- lack of knowledge by civil servants on how to deal with information requests and the heavy workload already faced by departmental info/privacy co-ordinators.

"They are doing after-hours work without pay or other remuneration just to catch up," Keenan-Bengts said.

Beyond not replying soon, the other problem is that government faces no penalties for not replying.

"If the provisions of the act are breached, there is no authority (by the commissioner) to look into violations of privacy, or to compel the government to comply with the act," Keenan-Bengts said.

The only severe court penalty that can be applied is if someone delayed or avoided a request for information deliberately, which rarely happens, Keenan-Bengts said.

What's needed is the threat of penalty even if the delay was innocent, she said.

As well, even if the commissioner makes a recommendation for action, nothing happens if the government doesn't respond within its stated deadline of 30 days.

Another serious problem, Keenan-Bengts said, is government attitude that a person making a request for information should assume the request has failed -- called "deemed rejected" -- if he or she doesn't hear back within the deadline.

"This 'deemed rejection' is a bad idea," the commissioner said.

"A deemed rejection leaves me with no idea what to offer the applicant," Keenan-Bengts said. "It makes a sham of the act."