Information & Ethics committee  That's why we changed the wording and moved the burden from the requester to the department.

Information & Ethics committee  It's an easy step. You just switch the burdens. We've stayed with the ombudsman model where what the commissioner directs is a recommendation. The public servant has to comply, unless it goes to court to get an order to set it aside.

Information & Ethics committee  There was no recommendation to us and no complaint about that system. It worked fairly well. As a matter of fact, the privacy side of it had been enacted only a short time before. It started out as being just a statute with respect to access to information, and the privacy sections were implemented some years after the initial one.

Information & Ethics committee  You can charge a certain amount of money beyond 15 hours.

Information & Ethics committee  That was always there. We reduced the burden of collecting the money and accounting for it. For example, there was a requirement to pay a $5 fee, and I believe the federal system still has that. You still pay a $5 fee. The cost of receiving, recording, treating, banking, and administering a $5 fee must be probably $150 for each one.

Information & Ethics committee  You have to think of the overall public interest. The general public of Canada or of the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador, whichever you're dealing with, has an interest in making sure government expends its funds wisely and soundly and doesn't waste them. Why should a particular citizen who will make a request for an incredible amount of material be able to place that burden on the taxpayers generally?

Information & Ethics committee  That's part of it.

Information & Ethics committee  The commissioner would have a better basis for expressing an opinion on that than I would. I don't see why the numbers make the difference on that issue. There are obvious circumstances where numbers do make a difference, but what's the difference if you have to make 70,000 orders as opposed to 700 recommendations?

Information & Ethics committee  Yes, I think he wrote something like 32 decisions in one year.

Information & Ethics committee  It was the average.

Information & Ethics committee  There would be different considerations to different parts of it. If you're just thinking about the resolution part, whether it's a hybrid or order-making model. I don't see there being any great difficulty moving from your present ombudsman model to a hybrid model. I would think it would be even easier to move from an ombudsman model to a hybrid model than from an ombudsman model to an order-making model because you'd have to put in place procedures and rules and hearing practices, and so on.

Information & Ethics committee  Government—

Information & Ethics committee  No, I don't have any doubts about it. Everything government does, in the end, must be in the public interest, or government shouldn't do it. That's the standard I would apply. If it's not in the public interest, government shouldn't be involved, because it's in the private or personal interests of those involved in government or their friends in the private sector.

Information & Ethics committee  There are two critical factors in the decision. One is that you can't be held properly to account, as government should be held fully to account to the public, if the decisions and activities of government are not properly documented. There's nothing to release. You can't ask individuals involved to release their thoughts or their conclusions.

Information & Ethics committee  We did a good deal of that, but you have to be careful about these rankings by the Centre for Law and Democracy and others that rank the most unexpected countries as numbers one, two, three, and four. For example, I have always felt that the constitution of Pakistan is one of the best organized federal constitutions I have ever read, but I really wouldn't want to be a federalist in Pakistan.