I think you really know better than I do. I'm given to understand....
Mr. Nicholson sat through three years of hearings on the Privacy Act, from 1984 to 1987. He signed on to the Open and Shut report, and he knows that the Mulroney government did nothing, in part because they hated the Access to Information Act. The great heritage from Pierre Trudeau to Brian Mulroney was the Access to Information Act. Nobody likes that.
One of the problems is that the bureaucracy thinks of the privacy and freedom of information acts together. They think they have to fix both at the same time. There's nothing that wrong with the Access to Information Act--I couldn't be here and be highly critical of it--but the Privacy Act is something different. We have to keep them on the Privacy Act focus because of the resistance on the freedom of information side. People don't like open, accountable government.
I happen to have been an information commissioner. I regard my work as an information commissioner as much more important than my work as privacy commissioner, but it doesn't mean the privacy commissioner work was trivial. I did a lot to help open up society in British Columbia so that people could know what was going on. I even opened The Province in Vancouver one day to see all my expense accounts flashed across the front column. It wasn't a charming experience, but it's what happens in an open and democratic society.