It's true, and I normally deal with any item relating to me, and if corrective action needs to be taken, that's great. But it's not for us to do that. We can talk about the policy aspects of the exemptions. Do these need to apply? Do they need to be changed? Do the definitions need to be improved, whether in sections 15 or 17? The fact is we have the law in front of us and we don't have the position or ability to make that decision.
We have professional people whom we have asked to do an independent review of this. We have asked them to do it. People have asked them to do it; I didn't ask them to do it, but the individual requester did. After that is dealt with and the commissioner rules on it—and I do use the word “rules”, because that's what it is, as the commissioner gives his opinion.... And the commissioner told us previously that they can't compel a department to do something, but they work on that, and in the vast majority of cases it works. But I do have a list of 50 some items where it didn't work. Maybe we should review what the differences were under the Liberal regime, where they refused to make the change the commissioner offered. Maybe they had good reasons, but they had to go to court over it, and they lost. So we should look at that in the future, I think. So I'll be thinking about that and pursuing that.
We don't have the answers that we have on this section. Now, this section hasn't gone by without its own review. And let me tell you about reports. They're all 2002 or older, so it's not as if the Conservative Government of Canada, the new government of Canada, has made some major change to this. We are doing what the law sets out, the law that we haven't changed, the law that we are working on with these issues. The exemptions I'm talking about have to do with the responsibility of government. I've talked about the importance of our relationships in Foreign Affairs and that the exemption applies to international affairs and defence.
The exemption I'm talking about now deals with the safety of individuals, and it makes sense that we have the ability to protect people, both our people and our allies, with the information they may have provided us in confidence. Could you imagine if Canada provided another country with information in confidence, so they could make a policy or a diplomatic decision to work with us—whether they wanted to come to Afghanistan and be part of that major effort we have, both from a humanitarian and military point of view—but that information was released in the country and put that government, which should have been making an informed decision, on the hot seat, because the local press in that country was making something of the information they had?
Decisions need to be made on information. We all make decisions on information. Some of that information is confidential, and this country provides confidential information to other countries about Canada, about their country, and other countries we may be dealing with, that will help protect the safety of individuals and international affairs and defence—and those are just two parts of the act.
But of the reports I want to reference, there is one from 2002 that includes a section...it's Strong Medicine For Delays. That report, I think, would tell you that the issue of protecting the safety of individuals is very, very important, and that any delay in that could be detrimental to those individuals. So I would recommend you read this report, and it supports the exemption in the act.
There was also a report in 2002 about the safety of individuals, or section 17 of the act, a specific report making sure the exemption we have put in the act does what it's intended to do in terms of protecting Canadians, not only at home but also abroad, and our allies around the world.
Again, this isn't done in isolation. There are a number of reports here, Mr. Chairman. A bunch of case studies have been done, and there are case summaries that can be...and these cases happened from 1994 to 2002.
The report I referenced earlier, the Imperial Consultants Canada Ltd. v. Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration), dealt with the issue of the safety of individuals. It was supportive of the responsibilities of the government. It was supportive of this exemption that exists in this piece of legislation that has been developed and that has been supported by the vast majority of parliamentarians over the last couple of decades.
There is also the report, which I referred to before, that was done under the Liberal regime, in terms of reform of cabinet confidence. It upholds the exemption piece on the safety of individuals and that this is an appropriate exemption in the act for the responsibilities of government. There is a section there; it's listed in the act.
If you want some of this information, you can get it right off the Internet. It is available to everybody to read, not just to us, as parliamentarians, of course, but to all Canadians. In fact, with the use of the Internet now, basically the whole world can look at this.
In 2001 there was a report, Strong Medicine for Delays, which I mentioned, but there's another section in there that you should be looking at.
There's an important one in 1999-2000, Fear of Retribution, which is another very important piece to look at. It was reviewed with the concept that the safety of individuals should have an exemption in the Access to Information Act that would help protect individuals from the fear of retribution.
And who knows? I don't know. You don't know whether any of the information in the report that's entitled Afghanistan 2006: Good Governance, Democratic Development and Human Rights, which is what we're debating here today, in terms of its release, in terms of its blacked-out form, would have been detrimental to somebody's safety, both Canadian or non-Canadian, in Afghanistan or at home here. Would there have been a fear of retribution if that information got out? I don't know what that form of retribution might be. It might have been a prison term. Hopefully, it would not be, but it could have been violence of some sort. It could have been loss of a job. I don't know what that retribution would entail.
Of course, we don't know that. We shouldn't know that, as the report has been sent to the Information Commissioner to rule on what other areas can be released. And we should be waiting for that decision to be made. I have full faith in the commissioner that this committee unanimously supported that they would make good decisions.
And we quoted...and Madame Lavallée was mad at me for quoting from it. He wrote a book on House procedure--he and his partner. We have a lot of faith in that book.