Information & Ethics committee  Yes.

Information & Ethics committee  I think you've put your finger on an important aspect of it, which is that we need to create opportunities that make this sort of work interesting enough and attractive enough for people to want to go into it. That means providing incentives in terms of training and so forth that

Information & Ethics committee  You'd like a response.

Information & Ethics committee  Well, I have to say this one has troubled me as well, Mr. Chairman, because I too was concerned about some aspects of this chronology. As I understand it, having talked to my staff as late as yesterday about this, I could see how, in looking at the nature of the request, they cou

Information & Ethics committee  I have to be absolutely honest with you and say that I have not thought about improvements to legislation. Maybe that's a factor. I haven't had time to think about these things.

Information & Ethics committee  We will continue to face these pressures from our open and responsible government, as we should, so I would see probably that if the requirements are going to go anywhere, they're going to increase rather than diminish. Maybe it's a question of going back to these guidelines, whi

Information & Ethics committee  I see your point, and I don't disagree with the fact that when you have reports that are done for public consumption from the outset, and reports that are done for confidential purposes and the use of governments, you're going to get two different kinds of reports. That is simply

Information & Ethics committee  No, the minister was not receiving briefings on these reports. Let me go to the point about blacked out and not blacked out. I want to back away from this particular case and just talk about what happens when redactions are done. A person looking at a report to decide what to r

Information & Ethics committee  I see the line of your questioning, yes. First of all, I thought we had established that the requests we had in 2007 were not for the same report. We in fact have provided the 2006 report.

Information & Ethics committee  I don't know. I don't have that document, and I was not aware that anyone in the committee should have access to that document.

Information & Ethics committee  I'm not prepared to discuss that document, Mr. Chairman.

Information & Ethics committee  Well, I was Deputy Minister of International Trade for three years. Then I was three years at Agriculture, and for the last four months I've been in Foreign Affairs. So if you add that all up, I get pretty close to six and a bit years.

Information & Ethics committee  You're forcing me to get into my memory banks here a bit, but over time, of course, the main feature has been the increased use of the legislation to have access to information. So just the increase of requests has multiplied. Over time, of course, the government, and I'm think

Information & Ethics committee  Yes, it is. Since arriving at the department I have tried to do something I did in Agriculture, which is to have a weekly review of ATIP requests at the senior management level, and we're getting there. The issue in my department is that the ATIP requests are vastly larger in num

Information & Ethics committee  Again, I'm somewhat confused about—