Thank you, Chair. I'll try to go quickly.
I was looking through, Mr. McArthur, your office's recent records. You had about 20,000 requests over a five-year stretch. Only 20 of those went to an appeal to the commissioner after the request had been made. There was a complaint by the public, and you folks got involved.
I was looking at a recent survey—I don't know if it was by Mr. Nick Taylor-Vaisey's organization or another—looking at grading all the provinces and the federal government. You got a B. You didn't get one of the As that four other provinces got, but four got Bs, and two Cs, and three unfortunately got Ds. The loser in this was the federal government, which got an F, and was the worst.
I'm wondering about this condition of duty to assist. I have an access to information request that was done by a Canadian into Finance Canada asking for information with respect to the divestment of the finance minister. They wrote back saying, ”I must inform you that, after a thorough search, no records exist in the Department of Finance Canada concerning this request.”
Is the duty to assist, then, at that point when the officer would then find out where the records do exist, then assist the applicant in finding out where they are? Because that's where it ends. That's the dead end federally.
Provincially if someone wrote to Finance, and the records weren't in Finance, but they were over in the ethics department or some other department, would the duty to assist require that officer to then assist the public to get to the place where the records are?