Well, I will try to stick to the issues rather than personalize, but you can't overstate how important freedom of information is to a functioning democracy. The Supreme Court of Canada calls access to information laws “quasi-constitutional”. We're now finally getting through what I believe is the chaff of this bill and getting to the wheat, to the kernels.
I've made the point before that many of the other clauses of this bill pale in comparison to the benefit to Canadians that amending the access to information provisions will bring. I've said before, freedom of information is the oxygen that democracy breathes. You can't overstate how important it is. It's a fundamental pillar of democracy. One of the reasons I wanted to change the name of the Access to Information Act in a subamendment that I'm sure my colleagues are now conspiring to defeat is that we wanted Canadians to view access to information as a right, the right to know--