Mr. Speaker, as I hope I said both at the beginning and the end of my remarks, I too remain hopeful that the government—finally, a government that has grasped the nettle in trying to modernize this legislation—will, in the spirit of it being a first step and in the spirit of it being a work in progress, take seriously these changes.
As for what is missing in the act, I hope the member understood that it was not me saying that. It was the experts at the Centre for Law and Democracy who said, once again:
...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). And it does not put in place a duty to document.
As for the five-year review, that is true. We hope we can get some action on that. Vince Gogolek, the president of the B.C. Freedom of Information and Privacy Association, said:
This is not the last word on [access] reform, but it might be the last opportunity to weigh in for some time. [Bill] C-58 includes a five-year review, but the first review will take place only a year after the legislation comes into force. Given the glacial pace at which legislation is going through Parliament these days, that could mean the review won’t take place until after the next election in 2019.