Exemption from commissioner's review is different.
We eliminated that because we felt the commissioner was a trusted servant of the public. Lawyers in the Department of Justice are entrusted with solicitor-client information. Why wouldn't the lawyers in the commissioner's office be entrusted with it? They can only properly discharge their duty to determine whether or not something is genuinely a solicitor-client privilege if they can look at it and assess it. If they can't see it, they can't possibly do it.
The need for total elimination of the exemptions and allowing the commissioner's office to examine it was demonstrated clearly by information provided to us by that office. When a court decided that you couldn't get access to solicitor-client information and that the commissioner couldn't assess it, all of a sudden there was an overwhelming increase in claims of solicitor-client privilege. The court of appeal set that decision aside and said that the commissioner could look at it. When the commissioner did get a look at it, 80% of them had nothing whatsoever to do with solicitor-client privilege. They weren't even remotely connected to it. When one public servant heard the courts say they didn't have to disclose solicitor-client privilege, that public servant was quoted as saying that they just claimed solicitor-client privilege to avoid disclosure.
Clearly, the system can only work fairly and in the public interest if the commissioner can look at all of it.