Information & Ethics committee  I would say this. With regard to Bill 29, whatever the motivation for the act as it materialized, the report that had been done prior to ours was replete with examples of senior public servants asking for exclusions and exemptions in the act, and they were put in place. The attit

Information & Ethics committee  I checked last week with the agency that we reported through. The number of requests has gone from about 700 the year before the new act to about 1,400 so far this year. The number of pages released to the public has increased from 16,000 to about 54,000. I don't know why. It may

Information & Ethics committee  That's right, because you don't have to be a citizen to make an application.

Information & Ethics committee  No.

Information & Ethics committee  The request now.... If Mr. Lightbound went to you, the requester's name would be on it for the coordinator to use, but anybody else who is involved in helping collect the information from that request would have no idea who is requesting the information.

Information & Ethics committee  It's to have a good relationship from the start of the request all the way through.

Information & Ethics committee  I'll mention one point and then pass it on to Mr. Wells and Ms. Stoddart. The feedback from the coordinators and the role that we laid out for them is that they feel much more empowered in their position. Sadly, many of the people who were in coordinating positions were the mos

Information & Ethics committee  It was a counter-narrative. Many of the people who came before us felt that public bodies, in some cases, were not welcoming of their effort to find information. We discussed it not only in terms of what we were hearing in our province, but we also looked at guidance from other

Information & Ethics committee  I don't. What I have is an anecdote from a person we dealt with in the access to information system and whom I spoke with recently. This person talked about how the coordinators now feel they are on firmer ground in dealing with requesters, that they now feel that the legislation

Information & Ethics committee  There was already a duty to assist, but there was not much in the way of a narrative around how that should happen.

Information & Ethics committee  Public interest is identified.

Information & Ethics committee  The commissioner has provided a good guidance document. This is one of the things we suggested in our report, that they provide a strong guidance document for public officials on the public interest override. This is really quite evident in the U.K. act, and the commissioner ha

Information & Ethics committee  Yes, and they are the standard ones in all Canadian legislation.

Information & Ethics committee  As imperfect as the existing access law was, there was a feeling that the commissioner was the arbiter of what happened. Even though the commissioner couldn't order public bodies to do things, Bill 29 expressly forbade him from doing certain things. For example, the clerk of the

Information & Ethics committee  Yes, we did. I think Mr. Wells stated it. Let me just see exactly what it is.