Okay. Well, I'm somewhat surprised that on the tail of that report and on the tail of that conference, where it was nothing short of a scathing indictment of this government's compliance with the Access to Information Act, you would come in here and say that the record of your party should be met with approval of some sort.
She reviewed 24 different ministries, and a majority of them failed. If you look at the record, indeed there are some that she marked with an âFâ. Environment Canada and Foreign Affairs and International Trade were off the chart and given a red alert. She said the delays are tantamount to censorship.
You said in your opening remarks that, really, there's no interference by ministers, none whatsoever, that the decision, really, is by the access to information officer. Yet on page 52 of her report, under Natural Resources of Canada, she says:
The combination of staffing instability, a diffuse delegation of authority and senior officials being inappropriately involved in approvals resulted in an unacceptable level of access to information compliance at NRCan in 2008 and 2009. The deemed refusal rate doubled from 2007 to 2008.
That indictment is endemic in a number of other institutions, a number of the other ministries she reported on. We need to know, by what authority do these ministers interfere? You said yourself, it's the ministers and not the staff who are responsible. By what authority do they interfere? Is it convention or legislation? I can't find the exceptions in the Access to Information Act that would, by my estimation, allow this kind of interference.