Mr. Speaker, the response is as follows:
a) The documents requested on March 5th, 2007, by the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages contain confidences of the Queen’s Privy Council for Canada, within the meaning of section 69 of the Access to Information Act and section 39 of the Canada Evidence Act, and therefore cannot be disclosed.
b) The documents requested were very specific and necessitated an exhaustive search by a number of stakeholders within the Treasury Board Secretariat of all documents on file related to official languages and the expenditure review decision making process. Once the pertinent documents were identified and compiled, they were carefully reviewed and assessed as to whether they could or could not be disclosed. Since the documents contain confidences of the Queen’s Privy Council for Canada, they could not be disclosed. A reply letter explaining this was provided to the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages on May 3rd, 2007.
c) The documents requested are confidential as they contain confidences of the Queen’s Privy Council for Canada and are thus protected from disclosure for a period of 20 years pursuant to section 69 of the Access to Information Act and section 39 of the Canada Evidence Act