Thanks very much, Madam Chair.
Thank you very much to the witnesses for being here this morning.
Certainly I appreciate the fact that you've given us this big binder full of information. Unlike my colleague across the way, I haven't had the opportunity to go through it. I look forward to doing that, and I know there will probably be some information in here that I would wish I could have had beforehand, to ask you questions on, but that's not the case.
I'll go ahead with questions on some of the information we've had supplied to this committee before. The one thing I want to say up front is that I don't think there's anybody sitting in this room who's questioning the point that we need to have section 68.1 to protect the integrity of some of your data. I don't think that's in question at all. Certainly if it's information that needs to be protected, then that's fine. I think what we're asking is how much of it is being protected and who is doing that protection? Are there requests being made that are having section 68.1 applied to them without it being further examined?
When we had the commissioner before us, she stated she's concerned with the guidelines for the interpretation of section 68.1, where an access to information request might be refused on the face of it by the person with the delegated authority and that decision could be made on the sole basis of the wording of the request. I think that's what's at the basis of this. We need to know.
Could you clarify the guidelines for us? Are the decisions really made on the basis of the wording of the request? I know that some of that information is probably in the information you've given us, but I'd appreciate it if you could answer that for me this morning, please.