Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I must say, Mr. Marleau, that I have so many questions that I hardly know where to start. I have too many questions, and I'm going to have to make some choices between the technical questions I would like to raise and the more political ones.
First of all, in your presentation, you say that you are ready to assist Parliament in modernizing the access to information program. And you talk about your round table in June with stakeholders. This is not a priority, but at some time, I would like to know who you are planning to invite to your round table. However, that is not my question, as I said, I hardly know where to start, so I feel I have to demonstrate what I mean.
I'm going to speak in more general terms about modernizing the Access to Information Act. I have noticed—and I didn't need a private school education to figure this out—that governments do not want an Access to Information Act. They want one for window dressing, but they don't want a genuine act. Even at this committee, when we talk about reviewing the Access to Information Act, modernizing it and strengthening it, immediately all the government members become quite uncooperative, and actually resort on some occasions to delaying tactics.
We've invited the Minister of Justice to come and discuss this with us on a number of occasions. The first justice Minister, Vic Toews, did appear before us, but all he did was to put the ball back into our court so as to do nothing or to keep committee members busy. The new minister has not even shown his nose here. At some point, we threatened to have all his officials appear, and he gave us an approximate date, but in the end, he never came. It is extremely difficult to get him to appear before us. I must say that I am very surprised, because every time we talk about an Access to Information Act, the representatives of the parties that could form the government in the not-too-distant future are reluctant to follow our lead.
In addition, I have said this publicly, Mr. Marleau, and I said it to you at a private meeting, it is not my impression that you want to enforce the act rigorously. I would like you to tell us what your arguments are, as you explained them to me at our meeting. A number of people are calling for this new legislation. Last week, I even saw a new bill that a journalist had put forward that would make the changes to the legislation that he would like to see. After John Reid's draft bill, a journalist drafted a new bill in his spare time. There are major problems and shortcomings with the current legislation. As you said, when the act was written, cellphones were huge, but I do not think there were any cellphones in 1983. I got my first one in 1988, and was one of the first people to have one.
I would like you to tell us clearly whether you intend to enforce this act rigorously. What are you really prepared to do to modernize the Access to Information Act?