I would actually disagree. You said the majority of those would be political. I don't believe so. I think there's a very strong interest in academia, and even among Canadians, about the operations of the Canadian Armed Forces. National defence, I think, is quite appropriately an interest and a preoccupation for many Canadians, particularly as the world becomes an increasingly dangerous place.
I would also point out that in supporting national defence, we're spending public dollars. Therefore, the public has every interest in how we're spending those dollars. Even when the questions come from a political source, I don't question their legitimacy.
One of the challenges we face, because of the nature of the work we do, is some of that information doesn't necessarily reside only with us. For example, I can think of one request that happened fairly recently with respect to the national shipbuilding strategy. To respond to that request, we also required information from a number of private contractors we are working with in the building of those ships, and their legal requirements for the disclosure of that information are different from ours. Finding the ability to respond appropriately.... We make every effort to try to get as much accurate information as possible, but working with contractors and private entities presents a particular challenge.
Additionally, some of the work we do is sensitive by its very nature, as well as complex, and the disclosure of that information publicly could have the effect of compromising the CAF's ability to do its very important job of keeping the country safe and defending our national interests. There also has to be work done—it's just the nature of many of the requests for information that we receive—to make sure the information disclosed is disclosed publicly.
There are certain circumstances when information may be deleted from ATIP responses and blacked out, as it were, but we try very hard to err on the side of transparency whenever possible.