Thank you, Chair, and thanks to members of the committee for the opportunity to join you today by video from Victoria to share some perspectives from British Columbia on reform of the access to information law federally.
My work since 1999—in the last millennium—as commissioner here in B.C. has only strengthened my conviction that a well-crafted access to information law is absolutely indispensable to the proper functioning of any democratic government. These laws are entirely consistent with the theory in practice of parliamentary democracy and have indeed become a keystone of the foundation upon which our governments are accountable and open.
Of course all laws must be periodically reviewed and amended, whether to correct errors or oversights or to keep pace with changing needs and opportunities. It has been a generation now since Parliament's comprehensive review of the law--the Open and Shut report, to which the chair has already referred--recommended reforms to the federal act. Since then numerous reform initiatives have come and gone.
Since the act was passed in the early 1980s, many provinces and territories have passed much more modern access to information laws. We are now, I think it's fair to say, in the third generation of access to information laws in Canada. The Access to Information Act is, plainly put, a first generation law that has unfortunately not kept pace with the times. I believe, with deference, that this committee has an excellent opportunity to recommend reforms to improve the law in important, practical, and achievable ways. I thank the committee for its interest in the law, which again I say is a key tool in a democratic toolbox.
I would like to touch now on recommendations made to you by my colleague, Robert Marleau, Information Commissioner of Canada. With two exceptions, I don't propose to speak in any detail to each of the recommendations that he has made to you. He has, of course, already done that in appearing before you. I will say that his recommendations would, in my view, introduce important features that are already found in access to information statutes in British Columbia and elsewhere across the country.