Mr. Speaker, that was an unusual intervention from the parliamentary secretary, to say the least.
She told the House that the government is doing “essentially” what it had promised. I am not sure what “essentially” means in that context, but that appears to be quite a modifier, because clearly the government is not doing what it promised. If it is doing essentially what it promised, perhaps that is supposed to remind us that it is doing the opposite of what it promised.
Let us be very clear: applying proactive disclosure to ministers' offices and the Prime Minister's Office in certain particular narrow cases is not at all the same or even close to allowing the public to use access to information in ministers' offices and the Prime Minister's Office in the same way that it would for other parts of government.
In contrast to the clear statements in the Liberal platform, this legislation treats ministers' offices and the Prime Minister's Office in a completely different way. It does not in any way apply the Access to Information Act to them. It is misleading. What the parliamentary secretary has said is essentially untrue.
I am not going to say that the handling of ATIPs was always perfect under the previous government, although I think the parliamentary secretary exaggerates the point. However, let us be clear about what the legislation is proposing to do. It is proposing to now give the government the power to deny any claim. In other words, it gives them the ability to interfere, to block access to information requests on the basis of specious claims or vexatious claims or bad faith or bad motivations.
The government is changing the nature of the system to make it worse. That is completely different from anything that was even alleged to have happened in the past.