Yes. We have had our act for 36 years now. Canada was the 12th country in the world to enact access to information legislation, making it one of the first countries, one of the leaders. Today, 120 countries have access to information legislation. Of course, the most recent statutes provide more powers and fewer exemptions.
The act itself can certainly be amended and improved, but its application also needs to be reviewed. Some countries have very liberal statutes, but their institutions or governments fail to enforce them to the extent we do. Here, the government appears to have a good understanding of exemptions and exclusions.
When we recommend legislative amendments, we look at what other governments do. In Canada, the provinces have their own information commissioners and their own statutes. They often have practices that could be adopted. We have also looked at what Australia is doing, which is to publish any records for which three access requests have been received. I believe another country also does this.
One constraint in Canada that does not exist in other countries has to do with our official languages. The institutions tell me that they would like to provide more information, but that the need to provide it in both languages requires resources and additional costs.
We are trying to find solutions to this in order to see whether there might be another way of giving access, for example by publishing records or preparing summaries. Canadians are clearly entitled to receive information in both languages. When they submit an access request, though, what they will receive is the record in the language in which it was written. This means that there are constraints as a result of the fact that we are a bilingual country.