Mr. Speaker, on March 13, I asked the Minister of Justice if he would order a full review of the Access to Information Act as recommended by the information commissioner in his 10th anniversary report. In response, the Minister of Justice said that he was considering such a review and hoped to come forward with reforms in due course.
In 1986-87 I was a member of the justice committee which made an extensive review of this act. It issued a report entitled: "Open and Shut" which made 87 recommendations for amendment. Unfortunately, none of those recommendations were implemented by the former Conservative government.
Recently the information commissioner made similar recommendations in three documents entitled: "The Access to Information Act: 10 Years On"; "The Access to Information Act: A Critical Review"; and "Information Technology and Open Government".
The basic principle of this act is that Canadians should have the right to information about their government and to information compiled and held by the government. Of course, this is information paid for with taxpayers' money.
For years prior to the Access to Information Act the government's general policy was to say no whenever information was requested and only to say yes by exception. The purpose of the Access to Information Act was of course to reverse this process. There would be exceptions, of course, for national security, for privacy and for cabinet confidence, but the general rule was to make information available.
The "Open and Shut" report concluded that the act had major shortcomings and weaknesses which should be corrected. As I said, the committee made 87 recommendations to do that.
Among those recommendations were first, that all government institutions, including much of our parliamentary process, be included under the act.
Second, it was recommended that all crown corporations except the CBC be included under the act. These institutions are not included under the act at the present time.
Third, it was recommended that all persons in Canada, not just citizens and residents, have access to the act.
Fourth, it was recommended to entrench the status of the information co-ordinators who are present in every department to facilitate the operation of the act and to give those co-ordinators senior rank in the departments.
Fifth, there were several recommendations with respect to the exemptions. We said that the exemptions should be subject to a significant injury test. We also recommended narrowing certain exemptions.
With respect to the cabinet confidence exemption we said that it should be covered under the act, but subject to a class tested discretionary exemption. In other words, cabinet confidences would not automatically be outside the scope of the act.
We also said that the information commissioner should have the power to issue certain binding orders in some cases, although generally he would still act by recommendation only. We made recommendations that the social insurance number be restricted in its use by outside agencies.
We recommended that the time for answering information requests be reduced from 30 to 20 days. We also recommended that there be legislation to protect whistle blowers within the Government of Canada.
Those are some of the recommendations which were made in 1986-87 in the "Open and Shut" report. I would like to ask the government again tonight if and when it intends to move on the recommendations made in "Open and Shut" in 1986-87 and also on the recommendations made recently by the information commissioner in his 10-year report.