Chair, the issue revolves around access to cabinet documents that are considered cabinet confidences. Some members will remember that in 2006 we had a number of issues in two audits that we were doing at the time, having to do with access to documents that demonstrated that Treasury Board Secretariat had challenged an analysis function. We were able to resolve that going forward by a new order in council. I was very appreciative that government actually worked well with us on that and resolved it, to what we thought was our satisfaction at the time.
What has happened since is that legal counsel in certain central agencies have interpreted that order in council very, very narrowly. The order says, for example, that we have analysis related to the Treasury Board submission. Counsel have interpreted that to mean only the final submission and not draft submissions. That is one example. Or we have access to records of decision, and in one case that record of decision referred to an annex. In just reading the record of decision, you couldn't actually know what the decision was, and we were refused access to the annex. So there has been a very strict, very legalistic interpretation of the order in council.
We have been to-ing and fro-ing with government for many weeks on this, and when senior officials finally got engaged, I am pleased to say, they agreed with our interpretation of the order in council. They agreed that the interpretation had been far too strict, and guidance is going out, as I said, this week to deputy heads and to legal counsel that I believe will clarify our right of access and resolve the issue going forward.
We'd be happy to provide that guidance to the committee, if the committee wishes