Nathaniel Erskine-Smith on Access to Information Act

Madam Speaker, I have to say my colleague highlighted the problems, in his view, of creating a requirement or an ability to decline requests that are vexatious and frivolous. That was a recommendation from the Information Commissioner. When we undertook at our committee a study of the Access to Information Act, that was one of our recommendations based on the evidence. We did hear concerns and testimony about the culture of delay and we heard concerns about governments having this ability not just to refuse for vexatious and frivolous reasons but for other reasons as well, and so we made an amendment. The member previous said we did not listen to any of the recommendations from the Information Commissioner, but in fact we did. A specific amendment that we made was to ensure that, where the government is refusing access on any of these new grounds, the Information Commissioner must first sign off. I wonder what the member thinks about that.