It's a very narrow one. I'm not sure if it's going to be ruled in order in light of what you've just said. Where currently the act says that you can withhold information “on strategy or tactics adopted...by the Government of Canada relating to the conduct of federal-provincial affairs”, this would simply narrow it to say “federal-provincial negotiations”. In a federation, to give you an example of what I just said before, there are certainly a lot of things that have to do with federal-provincial affairs, so you see why this can be abused. That's why so many commissioners have asked for it to be narrowed. This would merely affect those things where there are negotiations. Fair enough, there should be an exemption, I would submit, for that, but this is an example of where the exception can swallow the rule. I was hoping that this committee would be consistent with its predecessors and try to improve it for Canadians.
On November 6th, 2017. See this statement in context.