We should just walk through section 6 in detail, because obviously we as a committee, as you know, recommended a wide variety of things in our report. The government considered that and opted not to proceed with any number of things. I think my overriding concern here is certainly to make sure that the legislation is not regressing, to use that word.
Maybe we can't apply the act to ministers' offices and be effective in doing so, but certainly we ought to be effective in making sure that we remove some of these additional hurdles that we didn't suggest and you didn't suggest.
Going through section 6, we could remove proposed paragraph 6.1(1)(a), which is “the request does not meet the requirements set out in section 6”. I think that would resolve to a large degree the concerns you've raised.
What about if the person has already been given access to the record or may access the record by other means? You previously recommended a discretionary exemption that would allow institutions to refuse to disclose information that is reasonably available to the requester. If we use that language, is there a concern just in the difference in language here, and one is more restrictive?