Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you witnesses for being here today.
Although this is of utmost importance to the committee, it has been something where we thought we had goodwill from the minister. When he came before the committee, he even made a change to the act prior to coming to the committee in the reversal of the five-dollar fee, which we thought was an act of goodwill. We thought we had started a good relationship with the minister. However, now, through the media, it seems that he has announced that he won't be going through with changes to the Access to Information Act, which should be of priority to this committee because, quite frankly, that's what we have spent a lot of time doing.
He was given the priority to do this and to do this fast. I believe he said he would have those changes in early 2017. Unfortunately, it is now early 2017, and he has reneged on those changes.
As this committee is familiar—I have quoted it many times before—in the “Real Change” document that the Liberal Party ran on, number one under the section on open and transparent government were the words, “We will update the Access to Information Act”. It seems to be yet another example of backing away from this promise. There seems also to be a bit of a trend for this particular government to do this.
We would like to nip this in the bud, catch it before it goes anywhere, and have the minister come before us and explain why he has decided to renege on this promise.