Thank you for your question, madam.
It is important to recognize none the less that the current government broadened the scope of the Act at the outset by passing the Federal Accountability Act. I stated before this Commission that as commendable as broadening the scope of the Act might be, the government has not addressed the fundamental issue, which is departments' performance and their slow response to requests. We can be glad the scope of the Act has been broadened, but we have to lament the fact that it complicated matters and placed a heavier burden on government agencies, mine included, without providing additional resources or harsher penalties for slow responses. The fact that the Act was passed without providing the necessary means is somewhat contradicotry.
As far as expanding the Commissioner's powers and duties is concerned, the Minister's response was that it was incompatible— or inconsistent — with the mandate of other officers of Parliament. He's comparing apples and oranges. The Information Commissioner does not have much to do with the Auditor General or the Chief Electoral Officer; they are separate creatures. In almost every province, Quebec included, the information commissioner has quasi-judicial powers, the power to make orders.
It is not a matter of reinventing the wheel. It's not like a hair in your soup. It's a reality in Canada. The federal government is lagging far behind the provinces, and the counterpart commissioners in the provinces are critical of that. We are setting a bad example for the rest of the world. There's a contradiction: on the one hand, broadening the Act is something to be celebrated, but nothing has been done in terms of applying it, and the broader scope has made things more complicated.