I am finding it remarkable. We had witnesses here today who could cite no precedent for this. We have an independent officer of Parliament who has termed this a “dangerous precedent”. We have Conservative talking points saying that all this is doing is closing a loophole and following the will of Parliament, and we have a statute that the Supreme Court of Canada has called “quasi-constitutional”. It's called the Access to Information Act.
She wants to do her job. The government is taking away her ability to do the job and it could, as she has pointed out, set up a possibility for cover-ups of future scandals. We might never have known some of the scandals in the past that have been unearthed if the government can just go back and erase them, put them down the legislative black hole, the memory hole—all gone now, no records, no problem, and we move on.
This is astounding in a democracy and what's even more outrageous is it's being snuck into the end of another omnibus budget bill. I am absolutely outraged. My constituents are outraged. This is anti-democratic in the extreme.