What I'm trying to do with the single recommendation is to rationalize the system and provide greater openness.
The commissioner has made various recommendations regarding the exemptions and exclusions within the act. I think the Canadian Association of Journalists' position would be that we need to go further than that. We believe that these two sections of the act, as well as established practices and traditions and structures within government, create an unacceptable zone of secrecy for government decision-making. Canadians cannot easily, if at all, access information about why their government has made the decisions it has made.
I would ask the committee members to ask themselves why that is. Why is that kind of secrecy really important? Do we want a government that is scared of the public? Do we want a government that hides from the public? Or do we want a government that is open to the public and treats the citizenry as participants in this thing we call democracy? Do we want an informed public? I would hope that the members of the committee will agree that we want citizens to have a better understanding of why government made the decisions it did.
Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan—