We think that one of the provisions of the act that gets overused is section 21(1)(a) concerning advice or recommendations, resulting in completely redacted documents. In those cases, we order the institution to disclose the factual or statistical information that does not contain advice or recommendations. The briefing notes often contain several pages of that kind of information, which should have been disclosed.
In our submission to Treasury Board, we recommended including a list of information in the act to which the exemption provided in section 21(1)(a) should not apply. We see that kind of clarification in the equivalent Ontario act and it helps the provincial officials a lot in applying that exemption more consistently.