Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Welcome, Mr. Reid.
Mr. Reid, I think you said in one of your articles that it's hard to overstate what a central place freedom of information plays in our democracy, that the public has a right to know what the government is doing with their money, and that this idea is central to everything we stand for.
The Conservatives, during the election, promised to lift this curtain of secrecy in Ottawa. We all welcomed that and looked forward to that opportunity, so I, for one, share the frustration that came through in the language you used in the report you gave recently. We were all crestfallen. Any parliamentary veteran knows that shipping draft proposals to a parliamentary committee is not a way to speedily move forward an issue or get something passed into law. In fact, it's the polar opposite. It's death by committee.
Even though we're crestfallen and disappointed that Bill C-2 won't have meaningful access-to-information amendments, you've put forward a road map for us to at least make sure that Bill C-2 does no harm, and that while we're busy at the ethics committee trying to craft new access-to-information legislation, at least we won't be going backwards; there'll be nothing retrograde about Bill C-2.
First of all, I can say these are very modest ideas. There's certainly nothing radical that I see in the eight recommendations you've made. I am surprised, though, that you didn't advance at least one new idea into Bill C-2 in relation to your frequent comments on the lack of documentation and on the obligation to record what goes on so that the information will be available to subsequent researchers.
Can you say why you chose not to add that into your list of eight recommendations, and speak to how we may add it and still be in order for Bill C-2?