It is such a bizarre misuse. It's a cover. It's basically an interpretation that exists, and that's why we're trying to approach this as a cultural, systemic issue. All the things we're talking about, they're not about the magnificent people who work in the department. It's the heavy influence of history, basically, that prevents people from doing what I think they would like to do if left to their own devices. They're great people there.
For example, on the privacy thing, it's uniform: “The law will not allow us to discuss issues that affect the privacy of the individual, our client”. Well, it's our client as well. Dean's talked about getting permission. I've run into the same thing. What I must say—and this is why again it's a cultural or systemic issue—that you find that there are crazy things asked of you the more direct the consular officer is in touch with the problem. I mean people who are consular officers in an embassy have much less discretion, or feel that they have very little power to deal with things, and therefore they ask for things to be signed by Canadians who are imprisoned and have no access, meaning they are in solitary confinement or they can't sign a paper that the embassy wants them to sign.
If you go higher—I'd say in the food chain of the department—where people have more experience and are more willing to take a risk because they're acting based on not only their own feelings about how to advance a case forward but their own experience about how far they can go, you don't have that many problems.
Then when you get to the top—and I know there have been changes lately, so I'm dramatically generalizing—you find that the top of the institution is there to maintain the culture as it has been. I have not seen a leadership from the top that aims at identifying, “What are the things we need to do to provide a more efficient, more thorough, more successful service to Canadians in this difficult situation?”
Again, the cases vary from person to person, but also within the department. People act differently at different stages. Then we're leaving aside what government itself does in these difficult cases.