It's important to understand what we're proposing. A lot of the time there's a misunderstanding about what we're proposing.
Under the law right now, cabinet confidences are described very broadly, very broadly. For instance, any record that contains anything that's described in the whole definition of cabinet confidence can be excluded as a cabinet confidence. In our investigations at this time, we are not allowed to see the records. We see a schedule, a brief description of the records. Without seeing any records, in 14% of the cases of cabinet confidence investigations we find that it was improperly applied overall and historically at the OIC. That's without seeing any of the records.
We also see under the current definition things like dates of cabinet committee meetings not being disclosed because of cabinet confidence and then being published.
What we're proposing is to narrow the scope of the definition of what is a cabinet confidence such that it protects the deliberative process that occurs within cabinet. The aim of the recommendation is that we properly protect what needs to be protected, but we don't have a definition that truly catches so much that it then becomes a shield against disclosure and there's no oversight.