Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I would like to join my colleagues in welcoming you here today. I appreciated hearing your opening remarks.
I want to go back to the Information Commissioner's “2008–2009 report card at a glance”. In the third bullet, she notes that “DFAIT received more consultation requests than access requests and started the year with a backlog of 459 cases”.
You noted in your opening remarks that “[a]s the Information Commissioner reported, DFAIT faces unique challenges associated with internal and external consultations related to our national security and international relations interests”.
Then you identified, for my colleague, that foreign government consultations are a particular factor in lengthening response times to requests at DFAIT.
To what extent does DFAIT use information-sharing agreements to clarify in advance what can or cannot be disclosed at the time the information is originally obtained?