What we find in these kinds of cases are two things. When there are issues dealing with other levels of government at the national level there's also an ability to seek consent. What we often find is that consent is just not provided. It could be a municipal government. It could be a police force. It could be any other kind of provincial entity. We find that it prevents disclosure because they're mandatory exemptions. Oftentimes it is Library and Archives Canada dealing with those cases. Oftentimes they are dealing with historical records. Unless there is consent, the institution can't disclose them because they can't get consent. We're basically saying that for anything that happens at the national level, because it's possible to get the consent within a certain period of time, it should be provided for.
Internationally, it should be done when it's reasonable to do so. It depends if you're seeking consent from the U.S., or if you're seeking consent from a country where we don't have diplomatic ties anymore, where we have severed diplomatic ties, or where we cannot obtain the consent. It would not be reasonable to do so.
That's why we've made that distinction in that context. The international standard is that you are careful to protect your international relations. That's why we're saying that you should seek consent when it's reasonable to do so. We recognize that in some instances it's not even possible or reasonable to do so. That's not clear in the act in the way it's written right now.
This is also very much anchored in our investigative experience. It really is based on the 30 or so years of experience, and on what we're hearing in terms of the difficulty in these cases to make a distinction between the national and the international jurisdictions.