The best-laid plans
Budget day in Ottawa is weeks away, and the kabuki theatre of pre-budget consultations is now playing, running for 26 days this year. Citizens and others have until Feb. 25 to add their two cents, so clearly the budget will be tabled sometime after that. The official date is otherwise hard to predict. COVID-19 meant no budget at all in 2020. Last year it was pushed to April 19. Late March is more common, but the vagaries of politics make it a moveable feast.
A lesser-known document dump is also on the horizon. Each department must by March 31 publish their plans for the 2022-2023 fiscal year. Previously known by the charming moniker “Main Estimates, Part III, Report on Plans and Priorities,” they are now called “Departmental Plans.” They’re always released in a giant batch, often close to budget day.
The reports are self-congratulatory and dense with bafflegab. They’re supposed to look forward three years, and include all the money departments have been given as of Feb. 1. Almost no one reads them, with the possible exception of a few industrious MPs on Commons committees, where the reports get tabled. Few journalists bother, although some beat reporters do wade in.
Still, stories can lurk in the thickets of turgid prose. As a beat-free Ottawa journalist, I picked 10 key departments each year and scanned their reports, alert for the unexpected. The exercise almost never produced a story directly from the pages, but did let me frame some highly focused Access to Information Act requests. I would cite chapter-and-verse from the department’s own document, so the ATIP officer could target the records with some precision. The resulting release package frequently gave me an exclusive.
There’s no central repository of Departmental Plans, but there is an index listing departments and providing links to the reports. A related document that departments produce annually is the Departmental Results Report, which looks back at their performance in the previous fiscal year. These are typically unloaded in a batch in late autumn, though the most recent were withheld until Feb. 1 this year. They’re unashamedly full of self-praise, and much less useful as source material. I have yet to read one acknowledging that “we screwed up,” even though screw-ups clearly happen. The hardy can check them out via this central index.
To illustrate the story possibilities of Departmental Plans, witness this tidbit in Treasury Board’s report from last year. Treasury Board has overall responsibility for the Access to Information Act across government, and the document cited the department’s performance in responding to the ATIA requests it received:
So Treasury Board said it would try to respond to requests within legislated deadlines at least 90 per cent of the time, but has been repeatedly falling short, now down to 67 per cent. That’s a news nugget. Note also that the department is patting itself on the back for the increasing number of datasets it publishes. Does anybody ever ask for these datasets or use them?
Another example comes from the Canada Border Security Agency’s report last year. It refers to a “pilot project” that encourages people who’ve been ordered to leave Canada to depart voluntarily:
I want to know a lot more about that pilot, and an Access to Information Act request to CBSA just might give me a scoop.
Feb. 7, 2022
Updates: Budget day for 2022 was set as April 7. The 2022-2023 Department Plans have been released.
