While we agree with the report in its broad strokes, I would encourage the government and the members of this committee to think about access to information, to think about freedom of information in a more expansive way. The Information Commissioner has made recommendations that relate to the Access to Information Act itself. The Canadian Association of Journalists believes that there are further actions that need to be taken outside the scope of the act to increase open government in this country.
We have a cultural problem when it comes to secrecy. We have a structural problem when it comes to secrecy. Fixing the Access to Information Act is only one part of addressing those problems. In fact, I would argue that the problem with the Access to Information Act when it was introduced was that it was grafted onto a secretive political system. We did not deal with the actual problem; we instead introduced legislation that conformed to the system as it currently existed.