New Brunswick may have gone 'too far' in axing RTI fees

The provincial government may have gone too far in removing all fees associated with information requests for public documents, according to a senior Liberal cabinet minister.

Former premier David Alward's Progressive Conservatives removed the $5 fee to make a Right to Information request in 2011.

• Province urged to hit public with information fees

Now Victor Boudreau, the minister responsible for the strategic program review, is looking at a report that is recommending citizens and other groups be charged fees when requesting government documents.

"We are the only province that eliminated all fees associated with RTIs, maybe we went too far," Boudreau told Information Morning Fredericton on Monday.

"This is what we need to look at because we have seen a dramatic increase, increased over 50 per cent, over the last four years of RTI requests."

A review of the Right to Information and Protection of Privacy Act was released on Friday by Government Services Minister Ed Doherty.

The act allows any citizen to request public information from the government with no fee.

The review said the number of information requests has jumped to 581 in 2013-14 from 380 in 2010-11.

While there has been an increase in the number of requests made for public documents, the report said it is still lower than in any other province.

"New Brunswick continues to have the lowest number of RTI requests per capita in Canada," the report said.

The report offered 14 recommendations on how to improve the act.

'Frivolous' requests

The Liberal cabinet minister said many requests that come into departments are too broad and some are "frivolous" in the eyes of the bureaucracy.

"I think a fee would help recuperate some of the costs because, as I said, there is a pretty significant cost to this," he said.

"It might help make it so the requests that come in are requests let's say that are more legitimate, as I said there are some that are frivolous and some that people are out fishing for information."

The act already gives a department the right to ask the information commissioner for permission to disregard a request if it is deemed "incomprehensible, frivolous or vexatious."

The cabinet minister said there needs to be a set of criteria put in place to determine whether a RTI request is legitimate, to make the system more efficient and look at posting more information on the government's website.

Boudreau is looking to save upwards of $600 million by cutting programs and raising revenues through the strategic program review process.