These are the kinds of reports, Mr. Chair, that support these exemptions in the law that has been set out, and we should be taking these reports, reviewing them, and seeing how they affect this piece. If this ends up passing, which is a possibility, I'm assuming we'll call the commissioner on this. I know I will be asking for the commissioner to appear. Either the commissioner will appear or he'll say he's sorry, that since they have an active file on this, they can't do anything--sorry, we can't come. But when the commissioner appears in front of us again, and if this is still an issue about the ability of this section of the Access to Information Act to allow governments to protect our international affairs, the security of individuals, and the operations of government, then these reports are the things we should be referencing and asking the new commissioner about--no, he's new, so let's give him a break. He may have to get back to us on these positions. Maybe we work on some advice to government to make changes; maybe we agree with what's in there. But there was a report in 2002, and it has a section 21 in the advice and recommendation section.
I've mentioned this 2002 report a few times. There were safety and security issues in this country. They were looking at the access to information report. There were reports done on these specific sections. This is 2007; that's five years ago. Maybe it's time to do another report for you. I know when this committee was first constituted, the actual Minister of Justice came. He's not the Minister of Justice now; he's head of the Treasury Board. We have a new Minister of Justice, but when we tabled the Federal Accountability Act, we also tabled the Open Government Act, which was provided by the previous Information Commissioner. He provided a response to our accountability act, and we actually have in writing a working document that gives the government's response to that document.
If we wanted to get started on that kind of discussion, I think we've got the privacy piece coming up first, which, it sounds from the privacy commissioner, is long overdue, but when we get to access to information, which I know we will study eventually, those are the kinds of things we will deal with. That section that applies in this report that we are dealing with today in terms of gathering evidence may have implications for what we might do.
From 2001 to 2002 there's this index of case summaries. It's the same index we had before, but I encourage people to look at it. They happened from 1994 to 2002, so they're very relevant to what happened prior to that.
In 2001 and 2002 the Information Commissioner was representing Canada, representing himself, so it's Canada versus Canada, which is an interesting piece. In 2001-02 there is an actual case in which the Information Commissioner took the industry ministry to court. It supports the exemption that's available in this report on advice. It isn't new that this has happened. It didn't happen under our government, the new Government of Canada; it happened under the old Liberal government. I would recommend to my committee members that they have look at what the Information Commissioner at the time said and at the outcome of that case. It's appropriate to look at it after the decision has been made; I'm finding it very strange that this motion in front of us wants us to look at something before the Information Commissioner has ruled on it and made a decision. Then I think the debate and the discussion will be a lot more productive than it is today.