Unfortunately, I was unable to be here the last week that the committee was meeting. I was with the finance committee on a tour.
I'd like to quote you something that Mr. Leadbeater, the deputy information commissioner, said. If you could comment on it, that would be fantastic. He said:
We have no objection to government communications functions or ministerial staff knowing what information is going to be released under the access to information so that they can be prepared with house cards and Q and As and so forth, as long as the process of doing that does not prejudice the requester by either delaying the answer going out or by changing the amount of censoring that's in the document and so forth. That process, I think, can flow without there being any exchange of identities--and some departments do it very well. So no, as long as timeframes are met under the statute and it is properly applied, we don't have any problem with the “sensitive requests” being routed through the communications function of a department.
This came from the deputy information commissioner, and I want to know what you three think of the comment.