Our remarks today are based on a comparative scan of the provincial freedom of information and access to information mechanisms, with reference to some international ones.
One of the things we find as a standard for robust and effective transparency laws is the inclusion of a public interest override that allows for information that is deemed to be in the public interest to be released—indeed, requires it to be released, in some instances proactively released—and overrides exceptions and exemptions that would otherwise apply to certain categories of information.
There are lots of instances in which this could arise, but it's been reported that this is one of the defining features of meaningful transparency laws, and we do want to see this in Canada. Right now we do have, in the Canadian Access to Information Act, a very limited public interest override in section 20 that pertains exclusively to third party information, so expanding that at bare minimum to cover all of the other grounds on which information can be withheld would be a really important step in the right direction.