As a rough estimate, I think it's something that the public should probably know.
You may know that prior to being elected to Parliament last fall I was a lawyer in private practice for over twenty years, and I actually studied law with a fellow by the name of Professor Alasdair Roberts, who you're probably aware of and who is a recognized expert in the field of access to information. He's made a number of comments in the press. He's been quoted in a number of journals, both in The Toronto Star and in Lawyers Weekly, which is a journal that I read quite frequently as a lawyer. There are a number of interesting comments.
I'm referring to a Toronto Star article dated November 1, 2003, which quotes Professor Roberts, who was a professor at Queen's University, and he's now at Syracuse University in Syracuse, New York. It says:
Canada's leading expert on access to information issues, Alasdair Roberts, says the system results in unequal treatment for suspect requesters. Media queries are sidelined while others move through unimpeded. Roberts' studies show journalists' requests take longer on average than other types of requests. “Everyone is entitled to equal protection and treatment under the law“, he says. “There is no provision in the law that says journalists and politicians get second class treatment.”
He then went on to refer to the CAIRS system that previously existed:
CAIRS is a product of a political system in which centralized control is an obsession. The system, which has been around in a less sophisticated form for a decade, was upgraded by the Liberal government in 2001 to allow officials across government to review the inflow of requests to all major federal departments, says Roberts, who now teaches at Syracuse University....
Do you remember seeing that article, by any chance? I wonder if you could comment on what was going on in the system for access to information then and what the situation is today.