Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to our witnesses this morning.
I would like to start by pointing out one of the challenges that we have with this process today. We had excellent presentations from all of our witnesses, and each of our witnesses has touched on several issues as recommendations to our committee on what we may recommend to the government.
However, yet again the budget that has been tabled already deals with this, and it would appear that they have already made some decisions about what we do. Page 208 of the budget discusses what appears to be the government's decision already on certain items, such as moving to an order-making model. We're talking about debating the merits of an order-making model, yet it would appear that we have an order-making model already decided. Notwithstanding that, it has been very good to hear from more experts in these areas.
I would like to have some comments on certain items and maybe touch on some areas about which we've heard from other witnesses.
We had a very compelling presentation last week—or I thought it was compelling—from Professor Drapeau who in his presentation shared many of the concerns that Mr. Wudrick and Mr. Holman raised about the shortcomings and difficulties. In fact, Professor Drapeau said that the access to information system was thoroughly broken and was in a state of crisis, yet his recommendation—made very powerfully to us and stated in very strong terms—was that an order-making model was not necessary and that what really was necessary, among other things, was a change of culture within government.
I thank Mr. Holman for his bit of history on the culture of secrecy. I'd maybe like comments from both Mr. Wudrick and Mr. Holman on what the real problem is. Is it that the commissioner cannot make orders, or is the problem simply that you can't get the information you're asking for? Could this be addressed in other ways, and how do you change a culture?