Freedom of information commissioners across Canada say they don't have the resources needed and a backlog of complaints is adding up.

Dulcie McCallum, Nova Scotia's freedom of information and protection of privacy officer, says her province is just one facing a bulging caseload, overworked staff and frustrated citizens forced to wait months, sometimes years, before their grievances are settled.

Gary Dickson, Saskatchewan's information and privacy commissioner, say his department has open access-to-information complaints that are more than five years old. (CBC)

"I've been in this job three years and ... I've repeatedly asked for more resources, and they aren't provided," said McCallum, a lawyer and former ombudsman in British Columbia.

"In other jurisdictions, there are similar struggles…. We just don't have enough people working here to manage things in a timely way for some," she added. "All my colleagues are bemoaning this."

In 2009-10, McCallum's office closed 110 complaint files through informal channels, a process that took an average of 231 days to complete. Another 13 files were handled through a formal review process, which took an average of 492 days — or almost 18 months — to complete.

Aside from McCallum, there are only four people in her office and her budget has been cut twice since she started the job.

"We are one of the most under-resourced [freedom of information and protection of privacy] offices in Canada," she said, noting the province's NDP government rejected her request for an additional staff member last year.

"I'm not an accountant, I'm a lawyer, but I think we're going in the wrong direction."

Year-long waits in Saskatchewan

In Saskatchewan, information and privacy commissioner Gary Dickson said the backlog is worse in his province, where three investigators are handling 300 open files, a caseload that increased 62 per cent in the last year alone.

Dickson said the Saskatchewan government has rejected his request for a fourth investigator for the past three years, even though some of the open files are more than five years old.

His office is now telling all complainants it could be a year before an investigator contacts them, he said.

"This issue of backlog and delay is probably one of the most significant operational issues that face all information and privacy oversight offices," Dickson said in an interview.

"It's just a huge issue…. We're all bedevilled with waits and delays."

In Alberta, information and privacy commissioner Frank Work said he would need to double his staff after the Alberta Court of Appeal ruled in January that he could no longer extend 90-day statutory deadlines without giving reasons that could be subject to court review.

"Clearly, those kinds of resources are not available in these times," Work said in a statement.

In New Brunswick, the province's ombudsman handled all complaints about freedom of information requests until last month, when the province appointed Anne Bertrand as its first access to information and privacy commissioner.

Steve Gilliland, a spokesman for the ombudsman, said the office did not keep track of how long it took to process access complaints.

System 'fundamentally important'

Fred Vallance-Jones, a freedom of information expert who teaches journalism at the University of King's College in Halifax, said governments at the federal and provincial levels simply don't feel the need to improve the system, especially when the economy is weak and budgets are tight.

"There's not a lot of votes in it, even though it's fundamentally important to our democracy," he said. "The whole access system across the country is starved for resources…. It becomes a barrier to access if the appeal procedure takes a year to produce an answer."

In Ottawa, federal information commissioner Suzanne Legault has hired more investigative staff and set targets for them to reduce the complaint backlog. But at the close of 2009-10, her agency still had 1,000 cases that were between one and eight years old.

There were signs of improvement: Complaints were taking 245 days to resolve in 2009-10, down from 343 the year before.

Michel Drapeau, an access expert and professor at the University of Ottawa, said his federal complaints have taken an average of two years to settle, and some are still in the system five years after he filed them.

"I'm not so sure it's an absence of resources," he said in an interview. "I think some of these commissioners have forgotten what their primary missions are: investigations of complaints."