Robert Marleau , is a former Canadian federal public servant and former

Information Commissioner of Canada The Information Commissioner of Canada is an independent ombudsman and an officer of parliament of Canada who reports directly to the House of Commons of Canada and the Senate of Canada. The commissioner's work is supported by the Office of the ...

. Beginning in 1970, Marleau served 31 years in the

Parliament of Canada The Parliament of Canada (french: Parlement du Canada) is the federal legislature of Canada, seated at Parliament Hill in Ottawa, and is composed of three parts: the King, the Senate, and the House of Commons. By constitutional convention, the ...

, 13 of which were as the

Clerk of the House of Commons The Clerk of the House of Commons is the chief executive of the House of Commons in the Parliament of the United Kingdom, and before 1707 of the House of Commons of England. The formal name for the position held by the Clerk of the House of Com ...

from July 1987 to July 2000. From July 2000 until his retirement at the end of January 2001, he served as Senior Advisor to the

Speaker of the House of Commons Speaker of the House of Commons is a political leadership position found in countries that have a House of Commons, where the membership of the body elects a speaker to lead its proceedings. Systems that have such a position include: * Speaker of ...

. He came out of retirement to serve as Interim Privacy Commissioner and again as Information Commissioner from 2006 to 2009. In his own words, during this time he was "for proactive disclosure, ... for more communication, posting more on the websites, using informal communication methods rather than the ''

Access to Information Act Access may refer to: Companies and organizations * ACCESS (Australia), an Australian youth network * Access (credit card), a former credit card in the United Kingdom * Access Co., a Japanese software company * Access Healthcare, an Indian BPO se ...

''... It's not helpful to appear to be deliberately not communicating,"TS, 26 May 2008 "How Harper controls the spin"
/ref> Marleau resigned from his position in late June 2009, roughly midway through his term. As part of a strongly worded criticism published by Bruce Campion-Smith, contemporary Ottawa Bureau Chief of the

Toronto Star The ''Toronto Star'' is a Canadian English-language broadsheet daily newspaper. The newspaper is the country's largest daily newspaper by circulation. It is owned by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary of Torstar Corporation and part ...

, he lamented one day prior to his resignation the decline of "effort by any government to have" the ''Access to Information Act'' or similar "processes keep pace with time, change and technology." As Chief Clerk of the House in 2000, he was the editor, along with Camille Montpetit, o
''House of Commons Procedure and Practice''
which is available both online and in print. This work is part of an ongoing effort, begun in 1884 by Sir John George Bourinot, to document Canadian

Parliamentary procedure Parliamentary procedure is the accepted rules, ethics, and customs governing meetings of an assembly or organization. Its object is to allow orderly deliberation upon questions of interest to the organization and thus to arrive at the sense or t ...

. Marleau earned a B.A. in

French literature French literature () generally speaking, is literature written in the French language, particularly by citizens of France; it may also refer to literature written by people living in France who speak traditional languages of France other than Fr ...

from the

University of Ottawa The University of Ottawa (french: Université d'Ottawa), often referred to as uOttawa or U of O, is a bilingual public research university in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. The main campus is located on directly to the northeast of Downtown Ottawa ...

. He received an honorary PhD in 2002. In December 2016, Marleau was named a Member of the Order of Canada."Order of Canada's newest appointees include Paralympian, Supreme Court judge and astrophysicist"

CBC News CBC News is a division of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation responsible for the news gathering and production of news programs on the corporation's English-language operations, namely CBC Television, CBC Radio, CBC News Network, and CBC.ca. ...

, December 30, 2016.

References

University of Ottawa alumni Franco-Ontarian people Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Ombudsmen in Canada Place of birth missing (living people) Clerks of the House of Commons (Canada) 20th-century Canadian civil servants 21st-century Canadian civil servants Members of the Order of Canada {{Canada-gov-bio-stub

See also

References