Information & Ethics committee  Yes, I have a couple of examples. First of all, concerning the examples that you reference, I think that as long as you have harms-based exceptions incorporated into your statute so that you are not necessarily excluding entire classes of documents but are saying, if the disclosu

Information & Ethics committee  Commissioner Ring and I spent eight hours in total in front of the review committee, reviewing every aspect of the legislation and discussing all of our recommendations. We had ample opportunity to debate and discuss back and forth, while it was carried on the parliamentary TV ch

Information & Ethics committee  There are no penalties for failing to report a privacy breach. However, as the commissioner pointed out, we certainly would have the ability to conduct an audit of the privacy practices of a public body, and their breach reporting practices are certainly something we could audit

Information & Ethics committee  The only situations like that we've really encountered are situations of disgruntled former employees who have filed a large number of requests over a long period of time. That's not something we're currently experiencing. That's something of a historical experience we've had. E

Information & Ethics committee  Let me explain that the banking provision is in relation to the review or appeal function at our office as opposed to being at the request level. There is no banking system in terms of public bodies banking requests from applicants when they first receive an access to information

Information & Ethics committee  I like having the separate federal offices. I think it makes sense for the provincial and smaller jurisdictions to have the combined oversight, but at the federal level it has been nice that some of the spokespersons who have represented those offices on the national and internat

Information & Ethics committee  No, I think....

Information & Ethics committee  We have a guidance document available on our website about how to interpret the public interest override. It is certainly available. If anyone wishes to contact us, we can direct you to it. Our assessment of how the public interest override should work was based partially on re

Information & Ethics committee  The previous government also initiated an open government process that the current government is carrying on. More and more information is being made available proactively, and in formats that are easily usable by recipients. We have, then, seen some progress in that direction.

Information & Ethics committee  Yes, that would be the offence provisions. The offence provisions are oriented toward non-co-operation with the commissioner's office, wilful destruction of records, wilfully evading an access to information request, and things of that nature. In terms of penalties for delay and

Information & Ethics committee  Let me add that we have a provision in our act now that relates to frivolous and vexatious and overly broad requests. A public body that's facing a request of that nature can come to the commissioner's office and ask that the request be disregarded. You don't need a fee, then, to

Information & Ethics committee  It's been expanded for municipal entitles. If a municipality creates a corporation to carry out its role in some way, then that corporation would be subject to the act. For example, in the city of St. John's, the bus service is operated by a separate corporation, which up until

Information & Ethics committee  Thank you, Commissioner Ring. First of all, I'll just begin by saying that—as the commissioner referenced—government, with this latest review, explicitly stated they wanted to have the best access to information legislation in Canada when they were finished. The Centre for Law a