Being the only non-Newfoundlander who was honoured to be on this committee, I would say that the actions of the government in passing this Bill 29, which was repealed by the committee we served on, was akin to the government's giving itself, giving the cabinet, a sort of veto power. I say that because so many things were off limits. This created in the Newfoundland population a monumental surge of public anger against the lack of transparency, which led eventually to this commission. When these things are vetoed and vetoed, and not examined by the Federal Court and found to be impossible to reveal, or only partially revealable, because of national security concerns, we get the kind of reaction we saw in Newfoundland. We heard ordinary citizens come day after day and talk about the injustice of not being able to get certain government information, or even to learn why their requests had been rejected.
On May 31st, 2016. See this statement in context.