Under international standards, exceptions should conform to a three-part test. The first part of the test is that they should protect legitimate interests. We heard from the Swedish ambassador that they have a list of seven principles in their law that responds to seven categories of interests. We have a lot more exceptions in the Canadian law. A better practice around the world is to have a relatively limited number of types of interests that can be protected. Of course, the specific modalities of that protection might be elaborated in another law. For example, the access to information law recognizes privacy as an interest. Then you have the Privacy Act, which protects that in more detail.
The second metric under international law is that it should apply only where disclosure of the information will cause harm to the interest.
I see you nodding here because it's just so logical and obvious.
It's only where harm would be caused by the disclosure of the information that it could be withheld or its disclosure refused. Many of the exceptions in the Canadian act do not correspond to that value. There's no harm required. Cabinet documents are covered, period—no harm, no interest even. If a third party deems information confidential, it is confidential, even though no harm to any legitimate interest would be caused by disclosure of that information. It's kind of a third-party veto. There's a whole list of exceptions in the Canadian act.
Finally, under international standards and better practice, there is a public interest override. Where the overall public interest would be served by disclosure—keeping in mind that the right of access is in most case recognized in Canada as a human right, as part of the right to freedom of expression—the public interest should override the secrecy interest. I may have a minor privacy interest, but information discloses evidence of corruption. The information should still be disclosed.
In many other pieces of legislation—the Swedish act, the Indian Act, the South African act, the Mexican act—their exceptions correspond to those three tests. Ours do not. I think that if were to apply those three principles, we would come up with a very different set of exceptions under our law. I think this would be more logical and easier for civil servants to apply, and less abusive grounds to refuse to provide information for no good reason. I think there's a lot to be done in the area of exceptions.