A court cannot have a mediation service unless it sets it up formally, which the Federal Court is not talking about at all for the Access to Information Act or anything else. A commissioner can, and the Ontario commissioner does. This committee and the commissioner do not have the power to order the release of a document or the cleanup of an information management system so that documents are routinely disclosed, the power to approve or reject an institution's request for delay, the power to extend the coverage of the act to any government or government-funded institution, or the power to penalize anybody. Those are all powers that are missing.
No, it's not going to be a panacea. There will be a huge transition, no matter what you do in terms of changing the act: transition periods, there will be difficulties, precedents will have to be set, backlogs will be created. But trying to set up a framework that will actually work to ensure that humans in government institutions follow the rules.... Point to me an area in society where humans just generally follow the rules where there aren't clear rules without loopholes or a fully independent, fully empowered, fully resourced enforcement agency or penalties for not following the rules. Show me where that works elsewhere, and I'll adopt it and say yes, let's just do that in government. But government has proven that doesn't exist, and so has the public in many other areas.