Sure.
The first is the broader question of why we are concerned about the bill. Perhaps I can summarize it in four or five different points. The addition of the test that there should be a threat to our independence is something that is unprecedented in terms of the countries or jurisdictions that we've looked at: Ireland, the United Kingdom, Australia. Moreover, as you've heard from Mr. Carty, the concept of independence is misplaced in the context of access to information. It's a concept that is very important under our Broadcasting Act and our relationship with the government.
But when the time comes to deal with the programming, journalistic, and creative material that third parties are at liberty to request and that we have to provide, or not provide, depending on whether we are successful in demonstrating that this test is passed or not, it doesn't become very helpful in terms of our ability to do our job, in terms of our ability to keep that kind of material from going into the hands of individuals or companies who have, perhaps, an interest in making sure that this material doesn't get aired.
So the test itself I think is flawed. The absence of precedent causes us some concern, and the absence of jurisprudence is a guarantee that, unlike the current situation where we've had other court cases that have decided quite clearly what the Information Commissioner can and cannot see, this particular amendment almost guarantees us a number of different trips to the courthouse in order to clarify how far this concept of independence actually goes in protecting our ability to do our journalistic work.
In terms of the bill and whether it actually does what the court of appeal decided, I'm not actually sure how to answer that because the court of appeal essentially said very clearly that the commissioner, herself, had the ability to see all of the information, even though it was covered by the journalistic, programming, or creative label, except for sources. The court of appeal was extremely clear on that because, quite naturally, the court of appeal concluded that in order to decide whether something is journalistic, the commissioner does not need to know the name of the source. Just the fact that you know there is a source is enough to conclude that it's journalistic, and under the current system, once you conclude that something is journalistic, it's off limits. It doesn't have to be disclosed.
Much like the Supreme Court judges themselves in the famous Ma Chouette case, who still to this day, to my knowledge, don't know what the name of Ma Chouette is, they figured quite properly that the commissioner did not need to know the name of the source in order to adjudicate as to whether something was covered by the journalistic label or not. So that is very clear.
We have declared ourselves to be satisfied with that. The commissioner has declared herself to be satisfied with that. The government, in its own submission to this committee, declared itself to be satisfied with that. So as far as we're concerned, that particular case is closed.
This particular amendment doesn't seem to shed any further light on this. As a matter of fact, I would submit that because it sends us back to this whole notion of having to show a prejudice to our independence, we are going to be arguing over the sources as well as over all of the other types of journalistic material in our future court cases. To me, it's both a step back in terms of where the court of appeal decision had put us, and it's also a huge level of uncertainty that gets introduced into the process.
I think the last question that you had was on the sources. It's fair to say, to my knowledge, that we haven't had any direct access requests for our sources. In terms of the actual journalistic material that gets protected under the current system, it's actually a pretty small portion of our overall complaints.
I have some statistics here. We have received a little over 1,700 requests since 2007. Of those requests, there were approximately 252 instances where the provision of section 68.1 was used to withhold records in their entirety, on the basis that they were either programming, journalistic, or creative material. So we're talking about a fairly.... It's not insubstantial, but it's by no means the lion's share of the requests we get. The lion's share of the requests we get do get released.