We investigated some cases recently.
With this issue of public-private partnerships, we're getting into a lot of subcontracting for the work that's being done within government. Public Works does a lot of big contracts. The big contracting companies subcontract to a lot of other smaller entities, and we're finding it's getting more and more difficult for people to have access to those records.
We had quite a difficult investigation. We were trying to establish that Public Works is still responsible for those records, but as you move through third and fourth subcontractors, it's very difficult to get the records. That's one issue.
In terms of protecting third party commercial information, we have put in specific proposals to amend section 20. The reason we're recommending proposals here is that it also deals with appropriate protection, trade secrets, and commercial and financial information. Also, the way the act is done right now leads to a lot of inefficiencies in the investigations, because there are about four grounds for refusing disclosure. They all overlap. Some of them are mandatory and some of them are discretionary.
Our investigation is very complex, because we have to go through each step. Everybody quadruple-banks all of these exemptions. This is really our experience in all of our investigative files with third party commercial information. We're recognizing the importance of protecting it, but we want to really streamline the way that exemption is crafted so that it really simplifies the investigation while protecting the information.