As a general response, I feel it could have some definition in terms of scope, but a broad mandate would be more useful. It would give the commissioner the kind of flexibility I think is required to change the behaviours that are not necessarily vexatious and frivolous but borderline. But if I have to go to court and prove “vexatious”, I might not win the case. That's a lot of investment and resources.
I'm accountable to Parliament. Certainly using categories and that sort of thing would make our annual reports on cases we may have declined to investigate as transparent as I can without violating the privacy of the requesters or the complainant so Parliament gets a sense that the commissioner is not going crazy and abusing his or her authority.
We're 25 years out. We're a mature democracy. If you're going to confer upon the commissioner some pretty extensive search powers and trust me or her to use them, it seems this is a very small step towards trying to build some efficiency in the system. I think with the other powers we already have under the act, which demand considerable responsibility and accountability, it's a small adjunct.