Thank you, Chair.
I want to add a very brief comment on this.
I think the minister is trying to throw the ball back in our court when the ball is actually in his court. I don't see any possibility of understanding the situation differently than that. We've had report after report, study after study. We've had a former Information Commissioner draft legislation. We've had private member legislation. We had a detailed platform commitment from the government on many of these issues in 2006. I don't know what more we can do as a committee.
The government is the place where legislation will be drafted. I'm sure in the department there is a draft bill sitting somewhere. I can't imagine that all of this work would have been done over this long a period of time without that existing within the department. If the government were serious about access to information reform, if they were serious about the commitments they made to Canadians in their own election platforms, I think we would have a bill before us.
Frankly, there's nothing more that this committee can do than it has done. I'm disappointed that some discussion paper was misdirected, or that it didn't get tabled properly or whatever, but that's still no place for the government to hang its hat and say the work hasn't been completed, not when you look at the history of what's been done around access to information reform over the past years, including our most recent work, which I don't want to depreciate for one second. It was dealing with very specific suggestions from the Information Commissioner about the hot button issues that he believed could be fixed most appropriately and easily.
When it comes to other issues on its agenda--when it comes to criminal justice bills, for instance--the government has no problem taking and introducing bill after bill on a whole bunch of different subjects. These could have been combined together. We could have progressed that agenda much more quickly. To say that we can't deal with the quick fixes separate from an overhaul of the Access to Information Act--a complete overhaul--I think is a complete fallacy, especially when you look at their own choices about how they pursued their legislative agenda in this Parliament.
Frankly, I don't think there's an argument that we haven't addressed successfully, or that this committee hasn't addressed in its history of the last few years, and that others haven't addressed.
I think if they were serious, they'd get on with it.