Mr. Speaker, that is a very good point. I cannot think of any single reason why a government would choose to operate on the basis of oral exchanges of information and planning other than to hide from the public what it is doing and hide what it is doing from the Auditor General.
The Prime Minister made all kinds of promises to end that and even as I mentioned in my speech, just a couple of weeks ago the government continued to behave in exactly the same way by issuing contracts from its departments with specific instructions to have no paper trail that an auditor or investigation could follow.
Clearly, the government has learned nothing from the Gomery inquiry into the sponsorship scandal. It continues to operate the same way. It is very clear in listening as we did to the Information Commissioner that time and again departments abuse their exemptions under the Access to Information Act claiming excuses not to release the information. The Information Commissioner time and again has to go to court to access the information on behalf of Canadians.
I have great admiration for the job that the Information Commissioner did in creating this draft legislation for us and I support it completely. I absolutely reject, as I think 99% of Canadians would, the right of a government to operate orally and hide that information from Canadians. It is just wrong.