Mr. Chairman, I'll begin by saying that I accept and agree with Mr. Siksay's comment that access of information is the oxygen of democracy. In fact, this is a principle the government adopts and it has been made clear by the Supreme Court of Canada in decisions such as the Dagg decision. The Supreme Court of Canada has actually said and recognized that the access to information law has quasi-constitutional status precisely because it's access to information, which makes our democracy function and allows citizens to hold people in public office accountable.
Now, I have a specific question of the member related to advance notice. I said I could only speak to our office, and the four days to which I referred was an “average”, approximately, in our office--four days. But in general, it's important to remember that there is nothing wrong with that.
Former deputy information commissioner Mr. Alan Leadbeater had the opportunity to appear before this very committee on October 2, 2006. I'm referring to the committee's evidence, number eight, the 39th Parliament, first session, at page 5. The former deputy commissioner was asked about this very point, and he said as follows:
We have no objection to government communications functions or ministerial staff knowing what information is going to be released under the access to information so that they can be prepared with house cards and Qs and As and so forth, as long as the process of doing that does not prejudice the requester by either delaying the answer going out or by changing the amount of censoring that's in the document and so forth. That process, I think, can flow without there being any exchange of identities--and some departments do it very well. So no, as long as timeframes are met under the statute and it is properly applied, we don't have any problem with “sensitive requests” being routed through the communications function of a department.
That is the former deputy commissioner's interpretation of the act, and it's one that I think is correct.