Thank you, Madam Chair.
I am the only member of this committee who was here at the beginning; everyone else is new. As a matter of fact, I did participate in the all-party committee of former member of Parliament John Bryden, where we considered the proposed bill by Mr. John Reid, the former Information Commissioner. We had several months of discussions, and we did bring forward a report, which we circulated to all members of Parliament. But because it wasn't an official committee, we couldn't table it in the House.
The open government act, which is a complete rewrite proposed by former Information Commissioner John Reid, was considered and basically recommended by the John Bryden committee. The transcripts are still available of that discussion with former Commissioner Reid, for those who are interested. This whole subject we're dealing with about reforms or amendments to the Access to Information Act has been around for a long time.
The reason I asked Madam Davidson to take the chair, the reason I wanted to express my personal views, is that I'm concerned about the direction we're going in.
First of all, I'm concerned about our relationship with the minister. I'm not happy with the Pat Martin motion, in terms of its language. I understand the frustration, but we also have to respect that the minister has to take a certain position. Committees cannot generate legislation; all we can do is propose matters for consideration. It is only the government, and indeed only this minister, who can do legislation.
I think we are aware that the current government, in an election platform, in fact had promised to implement the open government act fully. Unfortunately, that has not been acted on.
The reason I raise it is that our committee, in my recollection of how all of this worked, didn't feel it was important for us to review the act in its totality and to come forward with suggestions and do the hearings, etc., for the reason that the government had promised to do it--without having what the minister, in his letters and so on, created in terms of this disappointment that we're talking about--and it wasn't necessary for us to do that. All we could do was recommend to the minister. But the minister had already committed, indirectly, to do the open government act.
That's point one. Point two is that the Minister of Justice has appeared before this committee on the Access to Information Act only once. Even then he restricted it to an hour: one hour. We didn't get a chance to have a conversation with him. I think the clerk will verify that it even took a long time to get him to come to committee. I always thought there was a reluctance....
I think the committee has demonstrated that we do want to see a serious commitment to some reform and some changes. Now, if you look back at our steering committee recommendations—what we're doing and what we have been doing—the committee came to the conclusion that in a minority government, which is quite short, it would be virtually impossible to do a comprehensive review of the entire Access to Information Act, to come forward with recommendations, to have the government consider them, to have the government propose them, and then to have the government bill handled through the House and its normal channels.
It's clear to anyone who knows the parliamentary process that it would be impossible to go through all of that in the life of a minority Parliament. The Privacy Commissioner had come forward with quick fixes to the Privacy Act. That was before we got the quick fixes to the Access to Information Act. She was of the same view that I could come forward with all kinds of things, but we are not sure that any individual change would be acceptable to the government or whether they would be prepared to touch the act in any way.
As a consequence, I approached Mr. Marleau, the access to information commissioner, and asked him what he thought about quick fixes. He told me that they had also come up with the quick fixes and--