I think that as an initial step, when the current Prime Minister presents his first bill to Parliament, the bill will go farther than any government has in Canadian history to expand it to all agents of Parliament, the three big foundations, and the seven big crown corporations that weren't covered. That's welcome news.
Second, we put forward a draft discussion paper and the draft bill. When the Information Commissioner came forward to Parliament—I think it was in October of the last Parliament, and as you know I wasn't here—he said that he hadn't done a lot of consultation on his proposals and welcomed that from the committee. That's one thing.
Also, whenever you are expanding the act, there's a significant amount of due diligence that you have to do to recognize the different circumstances of those you bring in. One example is the CBC. Obviously it's unique, and we would all, I think, unanimously want to ensure that there's a 100% concrete guarantee to journalists that their journalistic sources would be protected, not for five years or twenty years, not at the whim of whoever the commissioner of the day is, but continuously.
When we put the election officer underneath, is it our intention to Americanize our system by having the ballots be subject to access to information? No. So there's a significant concern, as you bring in more organizations, that there's some due diligence and some work to do. We're working on a very tight timeframe. We didn't have the input that the Information Commissioner suggested. He also suggested that our proposals were radical and went farther than he even had asked for.
I'm a believer in access to information. We've talked about that. You know the commitment that I give to it.