Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the President of the Treasury Board for introducing legislation after 34 years that would modernize this essential right to know legislation, as well as for saying that this is only a work in progress and that he will welcome input at the committee stage, presumably including amendments to this bill.
The Centre for Law and Democracy, like so many other groups, has claimed:
...the bill is far more conspicuous for what it fails to do, putting in place only one or at best one and one-half of the reforms called for by Canadians....
It does nothing to address the broad regime of exceptions (if anything, expanding its scope slightly).
Of course, it does not fix the massive loopholes that currently exist. In fact, it introduces a new one, which I will talk about later.
What confidence can Canadians have that this will truly reflect this new openness by default that the minister spoke of?