I'd like to speak first to the issue of audit reports. For 23 years internal audit reports have been subject to the right of access and to an injury test. Internal audit reports are not released unless and until final audits are completed so they can be put in context. They are also subject to all the other exemptions to protect personal information, commercial secrets, national security, and so forth.
The Auditor General and others went before Justice Gomery, who, remember, had the longest public inquiry in Canadian history into part of its mandate, the Access to Information Act. They said that they needed more secrecy with respect to audit reports. Justice Gomery, looking at what happened in sponsorship, said what you need is the way the government has decided to approach this, which is more external members on audit committees, more involvement of the Comptroller General, and so forth. There was no recommendation by Justice Gomery for increased secrecy for draft audit reports or working papers.
There has never been—and I don't think the Auditor General has ever brought forward—one case where audit working papers or draft audit reports have been released before the final audit was out. Once the final audit is out, they can be put in context and the public can ask, why was that changed from the initial draft; who asked for that to be changed--the precise questions that Justice Gomery was asking about why those early audit reports got changed in the sponsorship inquiry.
The theory behind this act is that secrecy should be hard. You should have a burden of justification. Every one of the new exemptions that have been included in this bill say secrecy should be easy--blankets forever, with no injury test.