Chairman, I thank the member for that question.
I won't comment on the statistics to which he has referred; he's asking about my background in access to information and privacy law.
I've been practising law for almost 20 years. I was called to the bar in 1991, about 81 days after the Ontario Legislature brought into force the first municipal access to information law in the country. I began practising in that area—freedom of information, or access to information, as it's called in many of the provinces—appearing in one of the first eight cases decided under the Ontario statute, appearing in court on two of the first five judiciary applications under that statute.
Shortly before coming here I was engaged on behalf of a requester as legal counsel in a four-year struggle to get the City of Toronto to cough up documents related to a major transaction involving the sale of street lights. I won six consecutive decisions on that point, fighting obstruction and stonewalling. In fact this was such a long case that three of those six successful decisions under the act were argued when I was in private practice; the decisions weren't rendered until after I came here.
I have experience as a requester, as a third party, as well. Before coming here I would lecture routinely on this. Mr. Siksay is from British Columbia, where there is a robust law. Ontario, where I come from, and Prince Edward Island are the only two provinces where hospitals and health care institutions aren't subject to freedom of information laws or access to information. I was an advocate and argued that hospitals should voluntarily adopt access to information policies to make themselves more transparent and accountable.
I was a member of the Freedom of Information and Privacy Association, which is a B.C.-based society that is intended to promote and advance the cause of access to government information. In fact I was a member of that association until the day I took this job. With the conflict of interest rules, I was required to relinquish it.
I have spent my entire legal career dealing with this area of upholding these principles. While as a public servant who was hired under section 128 of the Public Service Employment Act I am subject to certain restraints, I think my experience and my position on these matters are a matter of record.