The other issue is that a number of cases were completed--I'm not going to talk about them--back in 1998-99.
There's another report I referred to on the exercise of discretion, which I think is important in this area. Your definition of who gives the advice, when they give it, and whether it's protected or not is an important one. There is a report from 1998-99, Outsiders vs. Insiders. It really discusses the issue of whether a consultant provided the information or not.
I don't know where the information came from and who provided the information in the Afghanistan 2006: Good Governance, Democratic Development and Human Rights report, but it could have come from people who are not government officials. It could have come from NGOs or a number of areas. This is in Foreign Affairs and not National Defence or any other area, so we could have looked for the NGOs to provide us with their opinions. They're not really employees of the corporation, but their advice is very important to us.
We may have used the exercise of discretionary power to say, “You're right.” The ATI officer could say, “You're right, this isn't from the government, but these people gave us information in confidence so we could do good public policy and assist them, and that's why we've blacked it out.” We don't know that because we haven't seen the report, of course. I'm waiting patiently for the Information Commissioner to report on that--and I think we all should be.
Those are some of the reports that are in here. We've had some examples of the piece.
It has been mentioned that this report was made public or was available. I think a previous speaker said it was in the Globe and Mail. There's an assumption being made that the report in the public was the actual report that was blacked out, but we don't know that for sure. Another member has mentioned that the complete report was received by somebody in the academic world. We don't know for sure whether that was even the report that was requested.
As you know, only the requester of the information, the ATI report—and I think there have been a few—once they get a copy of what's been returned to them, can appeal that if they're not happy with it. In this case, for the report on Afghanistan, my understanding is that there have been appeals from people because they were not happy with what was provided to them.
But how are we going to be privy to the actual document? If we are not, as a committee, a requester, how can we have any authority to look at the unblacked-out area? So I have some concerns about where we're going with this motion. I don't think we actually have the right information in front of us. I think the act that we have in front of us clearly indicates to us that there are exemptions, clearly defined and stated in the act, and I only read three of them. There are more of them; there are 13 exemptions in the act.