I can address that. As an author, I'm duty bound to look at the past. I think the system changed at the very moment of its actuation. It was basically put in place by a Liberal government at the time—Mr. Trudeau's—but the first government that came under the access regime was the Mulroney government.
Soon after that particular government, with the bells and whistles going, we now had working access to information, and requests were not flowing in but were being received. There was one request made for, if I remember correctly, records associated with the construction at Sussex Drive for a wardrobe for the shoes of Mrs. Mila Mulroney. The word went out at that time that before you would release any such record, which made the lady of the time...you would check it out with “Fred”, Fred being, if I remember correctly, the cabinet secretary to the Prime Minister.
From that time onwards, there was a sort of resistance that took place and a sort of self-survival instinct. They said that before they would release any of it, they were going to check first before they released any such records, because they might be enduring the ire of the political leaders. At that time, there was a sort of cloud of carefulness as to what you'd release in response to legitimate requests, and the thing has never gone away.