Mr. Chair, on May 1 of this year, after some toing and froing over, I would say, the past eight months--which included getting legal advice from outside the government as well as from my current legal advisor, who's on my staff--the department came back and actually published the policy. It was a letter signed off by Madame Tining on May 1 that describes what the policy is. In essence they will restrict. They believe that the order in council, as they interpret it, prohibits us from having access to their legal advice, solicitor-client privilege between the department and their Department of Justice advisors, as well as confidences of the Privy Council.
Having said that, we had it on good authority that there was a strategic study conducted on the homelessness situation. In fact we contributed to a study, but the study never ended up in our office. This information was withheld from us and was actually classified as secret. From the advice of my legal advisor, it was very much overclassified based on the information that was contained in that study. When my lawyer inquired about it, we were told that there was information in there that could ultimately become confidences of Privy Council. It may seem trivial that the department has said that they will restrict us from legal advice, as well as confidences of the Privy Council, but what it does is it can bleed out into many other types of information.