Thank you for the question.
Madam Chair, the documents that we requested contained specific information on the number of employees by classification group and the composition, whether it's female-dominated or male-dominated. That's the type of information we were looking for in the public service. The government indicated that it could not provide the information because it was a cabinet confidence, presumably because that type of information was provided to ministers when the government considered the pay equity legislation at cabinet and cabinet committees.
In my opinion, it's difficult to determine whether it is indeed information that is a cabinet confidence because my office or I didn't even get to see it. Because something is included in a memorandum to cabinet or is discussed at cabinet itself doesn't mean that the information could not be provided if it were to be provided separately from the memorandum to cabinet. I often give a simple example. 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. I think in that instance, it may well be a case that the government considered the items or information that we needed to be a part of the cabinet's deliberations, but I'm not sure if it had provided that information to my office, it would indeed have been damaging to the secrecy of cabinet deliberations.
The other question of the member was, does that constitute normal behaviour, or has that been repeated? Fortunately, there have been only very few instances where the office has been denied access to information. Generally speaking, I've had good collaboration on the part of the government. The main exception to that, aside from the pay equity information, has been tax information. Whenever my office or I seek tax information, the government is very circumspect in providing that information to us, even if we ask for a certain level of aggregation when it comes to data.
These are the two general exceptions, tax and pay equity being specific examples of where the office was not provided information that it needed to fulfill its legislative mandate.