Information & Ethics committee  I'll quickly give an answer and then I'll hand over to Mr. Murray. We were extremely active in this. We met with the review committee before the hearings even commenced. We were the first group to present to the committee. We provided a 95-page submission with numerous recommend

Information & Ethics committee  Thank you very much for that question. I'll sum it up by saying that it's coming from the darkness into the light, and I'm not talking about the sunshine list that's currently being debated in St. John's. I'm not going to take long with this question. I know we're short on time.

Information & Ethics committee  Thank you very much. I will say that prior to ATIPPA, 2015, our office could only undertake a privacy investigation if we received a complaint. Under the new act we can undertake own-motion investigations. In fact, in terms of the public bodies reporting, it's a work-in-progres

Information & Ethics committee  Yes, thank you very much for another excellent question. I would start by saying that it's a question of proportionality. I understand that in some cases, when you consider all the factors involved, you have conflicting factors when looking at the individual's right to informati

Information & Ethics committee  Yes, that's correct. We have several very large bodies, such as the university and so on, that have a small office with dedicated staff, and other large-bodied bodies, such as government departments, that are double- and sometimes triple-hatted. That filters down to the smaller g

Information & Ethics committee  Thank you very much for that question. It's been the practice of our office to publish our reports, straight from the first report that was written. The public interest override is something that is new to our province. It didn't exist in the old act; it's only since the most re

Information & Ethics committee  —except that we have an applicant who made a request through a particular public body and is not satisfied with the response. As recently as yesterday—actually, it was a bit earlier than that—we were notified that she has taken the issue to the courts, hopeful to get a decision f

Information & Ethics committee  Thank you very much. That's an excellent question. As I said earlier, the new law came into force on June 1, 2015, so it's relatively young. Even though there was 100% buy-in, 100% acceptance by the government of the new act, certain things had to be done to ensure that the resu

Information & Ethics committee  No, there was not a significant increase at all. In fact I don't think there was any increase at all, but I know that during the presentation to our review committee, it was viewed and supported by Commissioner Legault that the nominal fee that was being charged was probably more

Information & Ethics committee  That's a very good question. This is one of the recommendations that I think large public bodies are struggling with. We have a number of large public bodies in Newfoundland and Labrador that have not just dedicated ATIP coordinators, but offices with two or three people. In most

Information & Ethics committee  Thank you very much. First of all, I'm the commissioner for Newfoundland and Labrador. I've been in that position for almost eight and a half years. Mr. Sean Murray is the director of special projects. Sean has been in the office a bit longer than I have been and has excellent k