Thanks very much, Madam Chair.
Ms. Maynard, it's a pleasure to meet you. I didn't shake your hand before the meeting, because we're not doing that these days, but an air high-five or an elbow bump.
There are a couple of things from your opening comments that I'd like to discuss with you. One is the tool that you have for order-making powers. In your words, that was to be able to give an order to an institution to take specific actions including disclosing more records if you find a complaint to be well founded.
An individual who has testified at this committee in the past, Mr. Vincent Gogolek, who is the former executive director of B.C. Freedom of Information and Privacy Association, said, “If someone in government wants a record to disappear, all they have to do is call it a Cabinet confidence.”
I expect that you'll see where my question is going.
He goes on to say:
There’s no reason to keep this black hole in the Act.... Many provincial governments have allowed their Information commissioners to examine these records for years without any problem—there isn’t any reason the federal government couldn’t do the same.
We've seen from other commissioners, other officers of Parliament, that this has been a hindrance to their work when they've been investigating a well-founded complaint. Broadly on the subject of cabinet confidences in respect to how you're able to do your work or not do your work, I'm wondering if you can give me some context. Has that been a barrier to you?