Information & Ethics committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'd like to thank the committee for having invited me to testify. I'd like to acknowledge the presence of Mr. LaPointe. I'm very honoured to be attending this meeting in the company of such a distinguished journalist. I will dispense with my biography. I

Information & Ethics committee  Yes, of course. I don't think I need the rest of the time. I think—

Information & Ethics committee  There's feedback coming. I'm hearing feedback from the floor. Should I try again?

Information & Ethics committee  No. I do hope that we're going to get to actually speak at a little bit more length about these issues—

Information & Ethics committee  No, of course not. It dates from the 1980s, and I've said in my opening statement that we need a transparency law for the 2020s and 2030s.

Information & Ethics committee  Citizens, taxpayers and voters have information on all of the outputs of government. They see the results of the decisions, the announcements, the procurement contracts, the awarded grants and contributions, the audits, the evaluations, the research studies and so on. All of the

Information & Ethics committee  I agree with Mr. LaPointe on a 10-year rule. Something like 10 or 12 would be perfectly adequate now.

Information & Ethics committee  I think the bigger issue, Mr. Kurek, is that there is an entire nervous system of political staffers who work for ministers in the Prime Minister's Office who are equal partners, and in some cases, the most important partners, in the decision-making process. You have an act that

Information & Ethics committee  I'd like to expand upon some of the messages in my document. Records are not just required under the Access to Information Act. There is an infrastructure of document management, storage and retrieval that feeds requests under the Privacy Act: discovery and litigation proceeding

Information & Ethics committee  No. However, a deputy minister or someone of equivalent rank has to establish a process. In fact, accountability initially rests with the public service and the head of the institution. A minister, or people in the minister's office, shouldn't be getting politically involved in

Information & Ethics committee  To begin with, there is feedback from the commissioner through institutional performance records and investigation reports. There are also committees like yours.

Information & Ethics committee  One of the things that could be covered by the proactive disclosure provisions that I'm recommending would be that departments and agencies would have to post every single request that has been filed, every request that has been disclosed and the elapsed time. That would create a

Information & Ethics committee  I think that people in good faith in the departments are trying to comply with the requests and then sort out the various exemptions and reasons why there would be a need for confidentiality or withholding. It could be legal advice. It could be something like evidence in a harass

Information & Ethics committee  I believe that for a system to be transparent, there are two important factors. The first is a legislative framework that establishes all the obligations and practices for proactive disclosure. There is nothing stopping the next government from rolling back, curtailing or making

Information & Ethics committee  No government that I've ever worked for has really taken record storage management or retrieval seriously. I worked as the deputy minister at the department of aboriginal affairs, and we were often called upon in litigation and other proceedings to go back to documents from the l