Thanks, Scott, for the question.
Philosophically I am absolutely not opposed to a mechanism that protects confidential journalistic sources. I simply don't know how you'd draft that, given the commissioner's broad powers under section 36, which says that she can enter government offices without warrants, she can compel the disclosure of documents, and she can compel people. Then subsection 36(2) says that no document shall be withheld from the Information Commissioner for any reason.
She testified to this very question when she was here two weeks ago. Exclusions are problematic because they take away any review from any independent entity. If the CBC says this is a journalistic source privilege and invoke their exclusion, that becomes the end of the debate, subject to one going to court.
I would prefer that there be some ability to review documents if journalistic source privilege were in question. I'm simply not convinced it can be drafted. Section 68.1 was an attempt at an exclusion and we all know how badly that ended up with protracted litigation. When the Information Commissioner was here last week, I think she said she has handled 1,200 complaints against the CBC, with 200 are outstanding, and that not a single one of those dealt with journalistic source privilege. I really believe, with all due respect, that the government's approach to provide an exclusion for journalistic source privilege is a solution in search of a problem.