Information & Ethics committee  To be clear, the Canadian Association of Journalists and I are not recommending entirely doing away with exemptions and exclusions. I think what the Canadian Taxpayers Federation just mentioned about, for example, national security issues, privacy issues, etc.... These are legiti

Information & Ethics committee  That's right.

Information & Ethics committee  Yes. As I mentioned earlier, there is an established narrative when it comes to the history of access to information that we have gone from a global leader to a laggard. It's this idea that, over time, freedom of information has eroded in Canada. While there certainly have been

Information & Ethics committee  I suppose it is the principle that is more important. Yes, no system is ever going to be perfect. Every system we create is a human system and human systems are not perfect, but you mentioned for example the idea of whether the public should know you are going to golf with someon

Information & Ethics committee  I would concur, and I would even question whether or not it is necessary to have those deliberations protected. What are we really protecting here? Are we protecting cabinet ministers from embarrassment? Are we protecting a fiction that more than a dozen people in a room will alw

Information & Ethics committee  I appreciate the question and I appreciate the research that the member has conducted prior to this meeting. I would say that elected officials are in a role different from journalists'. Elected officials were elected by the public to serve the public. Journalists serve the publ

Information & Ethics committee  The Canadian Association of Journalists would also be opposed to the idea of a commissioner who wears both hats. When he was justice minister, John Turner delivered a speech entitled “Twin Freedoms”. He was referring to both the freedom to privacy and also the freedom of informat

Information & Ethics committee  I listened to Professor Drapeau's testimony with interest and this particular recommendation that he made to the committee. For my own part, I would say we would disagree with the idea of turning access to information coordinators into political appointees. I understand Professor

Information & Ethics committee  Would it be possible, for example, that access to information coordinators be put under the jurisdiction of another independent body? For example, would the Auditor General be a possibility? I haven't given a lot of thought to what the solution might be, but I think the solution

Information & Ethics committee  What I'm trying to do with the single recommendation is to rationalize the system and provide greater openness. The commissioner has made various recommendations regarding the exemptions and exclusions within the act. I think the Canadian Association of Journalists' position wo

Information & Ethics committee  I guess I would ask you why people who are not Canadians should have less of a right to information that may impact them. It's interesting that one of the reasons we ended up getting freedom of information legislation in this country was because Canadians were able to use the Uni

Information & Ethics committee  We would concur with the view that's been expressed by the CTF. Again if there were fewer exemptions and exclusions in the act, then less time would be required to release information to the requester. This is a major problem. I joined Mount Royal University four years ago, afte

Information & Ethics committee  I would question our overall spending on access to information. If we had fewer exemptions and exclusions in the act, then it would cost less to have government documents released to the public. That simply makes logical sense. As an example, in fiscal year 2014-15, in Canada, th

Information & Ethics committee  To be clear, I was actually referring to just simple requests for information from media and the public. We would phone up a communications officer, or we would have to go through a communications officer, in order to get information from the government. But to your point, yes, t

Information & Ethics committee  I think that giving the commissioner order-making power would be a good idea. However, to use a sports analogy, it's great to give the referee more authority to clamp down on cheaters, but when the rules of the game are unfair, it is more important to change the rules of the game