Yes. I saw that my colleague sent a letter to the committee yesterday indicating that, should my office get order-making power, we should not get order-making power for the exemption dealing with personal information under the Access to Information Act. I am very surprised by this position and I think it would be completely unworkable.
We did a quick look last night in terms of our cases. What happens is that the exemption for personal information under the Access to Information Act has been interpreted by the Information Commissioner for over 30 years. These investigations are conducted in private, and recommendations are made in private. There has not been an issue with that. Waiting until 2018 to make a decision about that is not going to change the reality that the Information Commissioner is allowed to interpret the legislation under the Access to Information Act.
It's as if we said that the Information Commissioner cannot interpret the exemption on national security; that the Information Commissioner cannot interpret the exclusion under the Income Tax Act that excludes the application of the act, that—it's endless if we go there.
As I said, my colleague has had a five-minute conversation with me about this. I think it would create an unworkable regime where you would have order-making power for a case, but if there is a case with several exemptions being applied, including section 19, you would have an order-making model for the rest of the exemptions but not for section 19. You would have a recommendation model, so one would be an adjudication, it would go to the Federal Court on appeal as a judicial review, and the other one would go to the Federal Court on a de novo process. This is in a context where I think we had 2,000 cases in our history where there was a mix of exemption, including section 19.
I think what my colleague is proposing is that the Office of the Information Commissioner should not have order-making power, and that we should wait until 2018 even though he has stated before this committee that he does not wish to have order-making power for himself, so I am terribly confused about this position.