Information & Ethics committee  I just want to alert the committee that the last point made by Monsieur Lacroix is actually part of the arguments before the court. I certainly wouldn't want to comment on that specific point in terms of parliamentary debates and their evidentiary weight before the Federal Court of Appeal, because that is part of the argument.

Information & Ethics committee  The other similar provision is the one that applies to Atomic Energy of Canada Limited. Section 69 is different, in my view, but it is also part of the argument made before the court. Atomic Energy of Canada Limited gives us the documents so we can conduct our investigations.

Information & Ethics committee  No. There are two things in your question. I think it's important to clarify. The Information Commissioner has very broad investigative powers under the legislation. We have the power to compel people to testify under oath, and we have the power to compel the production of records in order to conduct our investigation.

Information & Ethics committee  That's a good question for the British legislator in terms of why they separated it. It's a system that I'm not aware exists in other jurisdictions, in the sense that in the U.K. the commissioner has order-making powers, which is different from my office, obviously, but also the information tribunal reviews the case completely de novo.

Information & Ethics committee  Yes. It's a completely de novo appeal process with the information tribunal.

Information & Ethics committee  It's very difficult for me to make that kind of determination. It's a question that's better posed to the institution. I haven't seen any of the records, so I don't know.

Information & Ethics committee  Again, I'm very limited in that respect. It seems to me that it's essentially a volume issue. That's my impression. My difficulty is in knowing how long the litigation will last. And we still haven't determined what journalistic programming and creative material mean.

Information & Ethics committee  Again, I would have the same answer. My impression is that it's simply a volume issue, because they had so many requests in their first year, and then they carried over quite a large number of requests from year to year and still had to deal with their ongoing workload.

Information & Ethics committee  Well, I mean, they've explained that they also had issues with qualified staff and retention of qualified staff. I'm not quite sure how the review and approval processes work. That wasn't clear to us, in terms of how many levels or reviews the records go through before they're actually released.

Information & Ethics committee  Well, at this point, because of the position taken by the CBC in the litigation, we cannot resolve this. I cannot do the investigation because I cannot review the records. We would not make, and we never do make, a determination on an investigation only based on the wording of the requests.

Information & Ethics committee  I did not measure that, in other words, whether proactive disclosure had an impact on requests. I did not examine that at all.

Information & Ethics committee  I just want to clarify something that was said by Mr. Lacroix, that section 68.1 excludes the records from the review of the commissioner. I totally disagree with that interpretation of that section. Obviously it excludes the records that are for journalistic, creative, or programming material.

Information & Ethics committee  I think it would be appropriate to have an extension that dealt with multiple requests in a very short period of time by the same party. At least it would allow the institutions to request an extension, and that would be provided for under the legislation.

Information & Ethics committee  They can just say they have no records that are responsive to their requests. That is currently done under the legislation. If the requester is not satisfied with this response, they can make a complaint to our office. We investigate whether, in our opinion, there are or aren't responsive records to the request.

Information & Ethics committee  There is no provision for anything that is frivolous and vexatious under the legislation. I would say that most if not all information commissioners before have not supported such an amendment. I'm not like that. I think that having “frivolous and vexatious” in the legislation would be appropriate.