Mr. Speaker, as usual when the member for Winnipeg North gets up to speak, many things are said, some more relevant to the subject matter than others. I want to address some of the member's more relevant comments, which, in my view, were the ones around proactive disclosure. I just note that even those are a bit of a non sequitur, because of course there is no law prohibiting the government from proactively disclosing any information that it wants. The point of laws on access to information is for citizens to be able to get information that the government does not want to release.
I was on the access to information, privacy and ethics committee when we did a comprehensive review of the access to information laws. We made a number of recommendations. It was a unanimous report by the committee, but the lion's share of those recommendations is not in here. It is, frankly, a little misleading of the government to be touting the benefits of the proactive disclosure provisions within this legislation. It is to distract people from the fact that on the real substance of the matter, when it comes to access to information so that citizens can get information the government does not want to share, there is actually very little in this legislation.
I invite the member to stop trying to make the debate about proactive disclosure and to address the recommendations of the committee. He mentioned one recommendation, order-making power, that is in the legislation. That is a good thing that the committee recommended. However, we also talked a lot in the committee proceedings about the need to get rid of exclusions from the access to information laws, because when certain types of information, such as cabinet confidences, are subject to exclusions rather than exemptions, it means that the Information Commissioner cannot review whether that information was rightly not passed on to citizens who would want it. An exemption would allow the Information Commissioner to confidentially review the material and then make a decision as to whether the government appropriately withheld that information.
It is great to have order-making power, but it does not go very far if there is a loophole like the exclusions loophole, which is going to remain. One can drive a truck through it—in this case, a truck full of government documents that the government can say has been made advice to a cabinet minister just by driving it by his or her apartment. That is a terrible loophole. The Liberals have not done anything to address it. It undermines granting the Information Commissioner order-making power. I wish we could talk about some of those concrete things that actually have to do with access to information, rather than proactive disclosure, which the government is able to do at any time it wants and which does not require legislative amendments to do it.