Yes, I have a couple of examples. First of all, concerning the examples that you reference, I think that as long as you have harms-based exceptions incorporated into your statute so that you are not necessarily excluding entire classes of documents but are saying, if the disclosure of certain information could reasonably be expected to lead to well-defined harms, then I think you can ensure that your statute is designed to protect against those harms occurring, if the disclosure happens. I think there is a way to deal with the concerns you're referencing.
I would address one example you mentioned, procurement. I think in all of the access to information legislation across Canada, if someone requests, for example, a copy of a contract to provide goods or services—a contract between a private sector entity and the government or a public body—there is a process whereby notification must be given to a third party, and the government can either refuse access or can decide to give access, but the third party can then object and attempt to refuse access.
What we're trying to pursue in this jurisdiction is something called open contracting. I don't know whether you've heard much about it yet in your process, but open contracting basically is a concept whereby, if an entity has a contract to provide goods or services with a public body, by and large that information should be available to the public. Sometimes there may be proprietary information that is associated with it or that had been provided along with it, and that can be withheld. But what the government is paying to a private sector contractor and what they're purchasing in terms of goods and services for that money can be made proactively available.
That's one way that I think we can in fact avoid some of the processes and the delays that are associated with access to information, by designing your process in that way, for proactive disclosure.