On this request in particular, we were involved with another country. There was information that had to come from another country to be able to identify whether or not we could release all or part of the material. It involved a court case, so there were legal ramifications as well. We were working through the Department of Global Affairs to deal with a third party in South America. We were dealing with a legal case that was at play. We didn't know what the impact of all of this would be on what we could or could not release.
We made our best estimate of how long that would take to come forward, and were in fact able to release it before that full period of time.
This is one case among all of the thousands of cases that we deal with. Sometimes we end up with really complex cases that involve security at levels higher than secret, so we have to deal with that. They often involve international treaties and negotiations that we have with our Five Eyes partners or other members of the defence community. They will involve third parties, such as companies and other organizations. We can't release the information without checking with the individual to get a right of release. Then, we have to look at what exemptions need to be applied as we work through it.
In some circumstances we try to do a partial release to the individual, but the risk in so doing is that we don't know if there is anything in that release that the third party, another government party, or another government would have an issue with. Some of the ones we deal with are long and complex.
In this case we used our best judgment. We will be looking at future cases to try to refine the decisions that are made regarding staff. We've also escalated the authority within the department, so that if there are extensions being taken for a significant number of days, the approval for that is higher up in the organization than it has been in the past.