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Information & Ethics committee It could be applied nationally as well.
May 31st, 2016Committee meeting
Clyde Wells
Information & Ethics committee It was a pure ombudsman model. The commissioner made his recommendation and the public servant could ignore it. If the public servant wouldn't comply with it, the requester had the obligation to then go to court, create money, engage a lawyer, and so on. This was a tremendous det
May 31st, 2016Committee meeting
Clyde Wells
Information & Ethics committee That's why we changed the wording and moved the burden from the requester to the department.
May 31st, 2016Committee meeting
Clyde Wells
Information & Ethics committee You can charge a certain amount of money beyond 15 hours.
May 31st, 2016Committee meeting
Clyde Wells
Information & Ethics committee That was always there. We reduced the burden of collecting the money and accounting for it. For example, there was a requirement to pay a $5 fee, and I believe the federal system still has that. You still pay a $5 fee. The cost of receiving, recording, treating, banking, and admi
May 31st, 2016Committee meeting
Clyde Wells
Information & Ethics committee You have to think of the overall public interest. The general public of Canada or of the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador, whichever you're dealing with, has an interest in making sure government expends its funds wisely and soundly and doesn't waste them. Why should a part
May 31st, 2016Committee meeting
Clyde Wells
Information & Ethics committee That's part of it.
May 31st, 2016Committee meeting
Clyde Wells
Information & Ethics committee There would be different considerations to different parts of it. If you're just thinking about the resolution part, whether it's a hybrid or order-making model. I don't see there being any great difficulty moving from your present ombudsman model to a hybrid model. I would thi
May 31st, 2016Committee meeting
Clyde Wells
Information & Ethics committee The commissioner would have a better basis for expressing an opinion on that than I would. I don't see why the numbers make the difference on that issue. There are obvious circumstances where numbers do make a difference, but what's the difference if you have to make 70,000 ord
May 31st, 2016Committee meeting
Clyde Wells
Information & Ethics committee Yes, I think he wrote something like 32 decisions in one year.
May 31st, 2016Committee meeting
Clyde Wells
Information & Ethics committee It was the average.
May 31st, 2016Committee meeting
Clyde Wells
Information & Ethics committee Government—
May 31st, 2016Committee meeting
Clyde Wells
Information & Ethics committee There are two critical factors in the decision. One is that you can't be held properly to account, as government should be held fully to account to the public, if the decisions and activities of government are not properly documented. There's nothing to release. You can't ask in
May 31st, 2016Committee meeting
Clyde Wells
Information & Ethics committee No, I don't have any doubts about it. Everything government does, in the end, must be in the public interest, or government shouldn't do it. That's the standard I would apply. If it's not in the public interest, government shouldn't be involved, because it's in the private or p
May 31st, 2016Committee meeting
Clyde Wells
Information & Ethics committee We did a good deal of that, but you have to be careful about these rankings by the Centre for Law and Democracy and others that rank the most unexpected countries as numbers one, two, three, and four. For example, I have always felt that the constitution of Pakistan is one of the
May 31st, 2016Committee meeting
Clyde Wells