No, I only move forward, sir.
I haven't dealt with paragraph 21(1)(c), which may have been part of the report on good governance, democratic development and human rights and is referred to in this motion by Madame Lavallée. I don't know if it's in there or not, but let's talk about this paragraph for a moment. It reads:
positions or plans developed for the purpose of negotiations carried on or to be carried on by or on behalf of the Government of Canada and considerations relating thereto
Now this clearly states that if there's any advice dealing with negotiations with the Government of Canada, the government has the right, under the section on advice and the exemptions for the operations of government, to black it out. We don't know if that's the case, because we haven't seen the report. But let's just look at the title of the report, Afghanistan 2006: Good Governance, Democratic Development and Human Rights. I think it's possible that this report may include positions and plans that were developed to help us negotiate with the Afghan government. We don't know that, but clearly, the advice that was provided may have been in writing, both from the other departments.... It could have been from Foreign Affairs and it could have been from the Afghan government. And the advice was maybe then turned into part of the report.
What the act says is that the access to information officer who was assigned to this department has the right, and not just the right but the responsibility, to look at the advice that was given under the operations of government exemption and to black that out so that the public doesn't get it.
The downside, Mr. Chair, is that if this information is released—not just in this report but in any report—who then is going to provide advice to the minister? If you're at risk of saying some very strong things about another government, for example, or an individual department, or a policy or a program the government has, why would anybody want to give advice, particularly in writing, if there's a major risk of it being released to the public before anything is done with it?
What if we were negotiating with another country, or what if a government organization were negotiating with another government organization? Maybe we're negotiating for property. Maybe we're negotiating about getting our people out of a hot military situation. Maybe we're negotiating to go to Darfur with the UN. Maybe we're doing that—maybe—and the minister gets advice on that, but it's in writing and it's from the UN, Sudan, and our allies. But, no, it's not protected, because it's not under an exemption. But it is under an exemption. And this advice that could have come may have been in this report. That may be why the access to information officer blacked it out and made sure that the public and Canadians and our allies were protected from any breach of this.
In fact, if we didn't have this clause in here, for negotiations carried on by or on behalf of the Government of Canada, there'd be very little diplomatic discussion between our countries on moving some agendas forward. It would all be social. We'd have nice social relationships with everybody, which is a good thing--don't get me wrong, we need that part. We need to develop those relationships. But after those relationships are developed, even in our own business, in our own way of operating as members of Parliament, eventually you get down to brass tacks on whatever the issue is, and sometimes you agree and sometimes you don't agree. And if those things are in writing, sometimes they can be damaging not just to Canada but to the country that may have provided that information. And we need to protect that.
That's what this paragraph does. It protects ministries and other departments of the Government of Canada and advice that clearly affects the operations of government and is clearly exempted and clearly could be part of that report that we're debating at present.
Paragraph (d) reads:
plans relating to the management of personnel or the administration of a government institution that have not yet been put into operation.
Clearly, this could be part of the advice that's in Afghanistan 2006: Good Governance, Democratic Development and Human Rights. Mr. Chair, I haven't seen it, but if you put that title in front of me, my guess is that it probably has a lot to do with how things went in 2006. But my guess—and I haven't seen the report—is that it has the ability to say this is what happened in 2006, but this is what we should be doing in 2007, 2008, 2009. Here are the plans. Here's the framework for the plans to be developed, whether that is on humanitarian aid, what we're doing in terms of financial aid, personnel aid. Or it could deal with the military: plans on where we're going to be deployed, who our partners are going to be, who the partners should be, what we should negotiate on, where we should go with it.
So there are a number of issues in terms of plans that very clearly could have been a part of why this person blacked out that part of the report. I don't know if that part of the report is even in there, because I haven't seen that report. It's blacked out, and I think it would be illegal for me to have a copy of the non-blacked-out report because at present that is the position of the ATI committee.
The ATI officer in this case may have used this advice section and clearly believed that any plans or potential plans that could be derived from this shouldn't be released, but it would be released if this documentation wasn't blacked out.
I don't know about my colleagues, but I'm of the opinion that we continue to rely on the ATI experts who we have in these departments. This individual has been there for many years doing this same work, day in and day out.
And we're inspecting....
Can I have a little quiet?