Procedure and House Affairs committee  No, I would agree that at the moment it is certainly implied consent. I haven't seen the documents in dispute, from Parliament to the Auditor General, but there is an implied consent. You ought to have known that this was under the control of a federal institution; it came under

Procedure and House Affairs committee  If I can echo that, I'm in fact on the record as having said that on a number of occasions, starting in the book you have before you. I would certainly have the House of Commons, the Senate, the Governor General, and the court administration subject to the act, with no exceptions

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes. Mrs. Legault and I agree. I don't think Quebec would be the model I would go to, unless you wanted to have the House of Commons added to schedule 1. That is, it would be subject to the act. This is not what we're discussing here today. If it is to look at parliamentary priv

Procedure and House Affairs committee  About 4% of the requests lead to a complaint, so it's not surprising that even over the past 30 years, this hasn't surfaced yet. Perhaps, given the publicity this is given, it might, and sooner than we'd want it to. I'm not surprised by it.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  You're very right. The aim of the act is transparency and accountability, and it has been said over and over again by the court. In some ways you're going against the principle of the act itself. You are also going against a trend. The British House of Commons is now subject to t

Procedure and House Affairs committee  You're giving me too much credit for remembering the details of that particular case. I don't. I would answer to you with that the famous lawyer's phrase that “it depends”. It depends on the situation, depends how it is framed, and I would have to go back and see whether there is

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Otherwise, unless such a consent were to be made in a positive sense on each and every occasion for specific documents, an exclusion would apply. “Make it simple” is what I would say, so that there isn't a debate every time on whether discretion was applied properly.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  At the moment, the breach is that all of a sudden, there is a sensitivity by some access to information coordinators in some departments that some information under their control has originated from Parliament, at whichever source, and in some cases they have a sensitivity to the

Procedure and House Affairs committee  If I can answer the question, I agree fully with Mrs. Legault that at the moment if this were to go to court, Parliament would lose. There's no other way I can say it, and none of us wants that. Therefore, if you want to impose and assert parliamentary privilege, the act has to

Procedure and House Affairs committee  It wouldn't prevent Parliament, in specific instances, from consenting to disclosure.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Mr. Chair, thank you for inviting me to speak on this particular subject. I am certainly not an expert in parliamentary privilege. I do claim an expertise in access to information and privacy. I make the point also that the comments I am about to make apply equally to the Priva

Information & Ethics committee  I recommend you leave it alone, because, as I said, the act was beautifully crafted, has been 30 years in existence, has been interpreted ad nauseam, and it covers all this. There's a provision in section 25 that you could have a document—I'll use another example—you could have a

Information & Ethics committee  I don't know if they have the culture of avoidance. I don't think they ever did until September 1, 2007. Quite the reverse, they have a culture of disclosure. If you do something bad, it's going to be on CBC news tomorrow. When it comes to access, for some reason—I don't know i

Information & Ethics committee  Yes.

Information & Ethics committee  There are about 250 institutions.