Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for the fine work he has produced in the access to information, ethics and privacy committee, one of the committees on which I serve.
He is absolutely right. There are certain exemptions to ATI requests now, and I mentioned that in my opening comments. Crown corporations such as Canada Post and VIA Rail are exempted from these requests. In other words, if people wanted to find out some information, because they had heard there may be something going on, and if they make a formal request for that information, neither Canada Post nor VIA Rail have to respond.
I use those two crown corporations because they were named in the sponsorship scandal. The presidents were political appointments. According to Justice Gomery, they were involved in the sponsorship scandal and must be accountable for their spending. Yet today they are not required to answer any access to information requests.
I talked earlier about the culture of entitlement combined with the culture of secrecy. One wonders how scandals occur. This is how they occur. Yet if they were required to respond to access to information requests, there is a chance those scandals may not have happened in the first place. At the very least, they would understand that they would be subject to ATI requests and it would act as a deterrent to future misuse.