Evidence of meeting #11 for Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was citizens.
A recording is available from Parliament.
12:50 p.m.
Liberal
12:50 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Paul Szabo
Okay. We have just a few minutes left.
I want to thank you, Commissioner, for your thought-provoking remarks. For a two-hour session, this was not dry. This expanded the mind, and all of a sudden, we can look at the possibilities.
I participated in your initiative, the Right to Know round tables. The principles that came out of those have to be on the table with this, because questions have come out about too much information, for example, and in some of the statements, about some of the principles underlying access to information. I guess some people have boldly said, “Well listen, the taxpayers paid for it and they're entitled to know what's there.” Some things are embarrassing to governments and to opposition members and public servants, but the public still has a right to know.
There may be enormous amounts of information that very rarely would be of measurable public interest. There are ways to deal with that. But we probably have to work on the rationalization of the compelling arguments for why we move from where we are today to a system that really allows us—maybe not so much our generation, or maybe my generation—to understand that the kids today are working in a whole different world of information velocity. The synergies that are available there...yes, they will be able to scrutinize things and will probably impose greater scrutiny on accountability. But they will also identify opportunities and threats and weaknesses, all kinds of things that we couldn't possibly do when we were working with paper and pencil.
With velocity of information, the new age or new generation of information, we have to look forward. We need to prepare, because if we were to envision this project, this is not going to take a couple of years but probably a decade. I think we're on the first step here.
So I want to thank you very kindly for opening up and offering to continue to support the committee in its work. We may even think of renaming our initiative to be more reflective of the reality.
Thank you kindly.
12:55 p.m.
Interim Information Commissioner, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada
Thank you.
