My main point about Newfoundland and Labrador was that they undertook a comprehensive process of reform, where they really looked root and branch at the legislation, at what to change and so on, and ended up with legislation that is very substantially stronger than their legislation had been. In other words, they really went through a process of reform that was genuine and very substantially improved the legislation.
For example, on our RTI rating it jumped by 20 points, and we are now, I think, 15th in the world. Only countries are rated, so we're not really 15th, but if we were a country we would be 15th.
I was encouraging the federal government to do the same thing, rather than engage in some piecemeal reforms at this point and put off real reform until later.
The Newfoundland and Labrador model is kind of a hybrid model. We are still to see how well it works. It's very unique. They have given a lot of powers to the commissioner in terms of, for example, approving further delays in responding to requests and in extending the overall period for the presumption of secrecy of 20 years. I can't remember exactly what it is under the law. They have very significantly tightened up their regime of exceptions, so it looks very different from the Canadian federal or many of the other Canadian jurisdictions. They have improved the procedures so that the way and manner of making requests, fees, online extensions, as mentioned, have to be approved by the commission.
Many of the issues that I raised in my presentation have been addressed in the Newfoundland model. Of course, it's not perfect. It's really being tested, so it's a bit difficult to say whether this hybrid model is going to turn out to be the success they hope it will, but my main point really was that they did not engage in a smaller or piecemeal reform. They really engaged in a proper process of reform.