I don't understand it. It certainly doesn't comply with any democratic or government principles that have been established at the international level. It also breaks the Liberal government's promises in terms of open government that were made back in 2015—it continues to break them, I should say.
The government is focused on and claiming that open data—making some information more proactively available online—is the same thing as open government. Open government is the public's right to access information the government wants to hide. Open data is just making the information the government wants to disclose more available. They're not the same thing.
This government has a record of excessive secrecy, as the Information Commissioner has documented. It has broken all of its open government promises, except for a couple of them.