Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to the comments of the member for Regina—Lewvan, and I want to thank him for the measured, substantive approach he is taking to debate on this very important matter of improving our access to information process in Canada.
He made the point several times in his remarks that there is really no connection between the provisions to require proactive disclosure and access to information. I want to say that I could not disagree more. One of the key complaints about the access to information system, and one of the failures of the system, is the number of access to information requests that are not answered within the statutory time frames, as much as attempts are being made to do so. Why is that? One reason is that there are so many requests today. In fact, 10% of all the requests made in the 34 years this regime has been in place were made in just one recent year. There are an overwhelming number of requests.
What proactive disclosure will do is reduce the number of requests, so it goes directly to the heart of that key challenge for our access to information system's timeliness and effectiveness.
If proactive disclosure is required, not just policy, and it covers 240 institutions, plus members of Parliament, senators, the Prime Minister's Office, institutions of Parliament, and the courts, does the member not believe that this will actually directly assist in the improvement of access to information?