Thank you.
In budget 2018 and the 2018 fall economic statement, your government allotted money to pay for the new administrative framework for the act, yet no details were provided. According to the PBO, his office requested the documents that contained specific information on the number of employees by classification group and the composition, whether it's female dominated or male dominated. The government refused to turn that information over, citing cabinet confidence because that type of information would have been presented to cabinet and/or cabinet committee when discussing this legislation.
However, considering it was just a dataset, the PBO used a simple example as to why he didn't believe the government's response. He said:
If you attach a Globe and Mail article to a memorandum to cabinet, of course it's a confidence of the Queen's Privy Council, a cabinet confidence. It doesn't mean that you have to take back all of the issues within that Globe and Mail or newspaper because somebody discussed a Globe and Mail article at cabinet.
The PBO was of the opinion that the type of information that he requested fell under that type of classification and did not believe that the information would have been damaging to the secrecy of cabinet deliberations.
Given the PBO's opinion that the information should have been open and accessible, can you please explain why your government felt that it needed to hide the information the PBO requested? Were you aware that by refusing to turn these documents over, you were preventing the PBO from being able to fulfill his legislative mandate?