Information & Ethics committee  There's already a balancing act that's going on there, and there's always an understanding from the person who puts in the request that there are going to be times when the answer is going to be no. We understand perfectly well that if it's national security, of course we're not

Information & Ethics committee  Yes. You're never going to get the full story from access to information. You're going to get pieces of the story that you can pin and stitch together and talk to a lot of people about and fill in the other blanks. There are a lot of blanks in what we get, but it adds to the stor

Information & Ethics committee  I don't even know if it would be possible, because of those three requirements there. We would have to know exactly what we were looking for before we found it.

Information & Ethics committee  That's right. The specificity is unworkable.

Information & Ethics committee  Yes. I find it to be a strange use of the act. When we get back the answers to those questions, they're pretty extensive, because there's nothing secret about it. They're just basic facts about why the government's doing something, but I think it speaks to a bigger problem of sec

Information & Ethics committee  I believe the 30 days is appropriate. So much of the information is digitized now. Why can't you just do a search and find it for us?

Information & Ethics committee  This dates back a few years—

Information & Ethics committee  —I think it was when we first started looking into the relationship between the disappearance in the Pickton case and we were able to get.... I can't speak to the specifics of how hard that was in particular, but I would say that generally when we're after something—

Information & Ethics committee  No, actually, this is one area in which we leave it wide open to reporters to ask as much as they like. We have tried to streamline, but because different people ask different questions in different ways and come up with different results, I think it's better to leave it wide ope

Information & Ethics committee  Absolutely not. There is an almost infinite amount of information within the government, and it's only by asking persistent questions that we can begin to have a decent understanding. Just to go back to the previous round of questions, if the government is concerned about the v

Information & Ethics committee  Yes, I do find that a bit unfair. There's no doubt that frequently we don't know exactly what we're looking for, so we have to ask a broad question, but it's also in our own best interest just to manage the amount of information we get coming into the bureau and keeping it under

Information & Ethics committee  Not really. If we're required to jump through those hoops initially and explain why we want something and have to name it, then even if the Information Commissioner can go back at them—

Information & Ethics committee  Right. If she were able to come in and say, “Yes, this is wrong—”

Information & Ethics committee  I would caution, though, that there has to be a definition of what would be unacceptable, because as I was saying, “vexatious” is a very subjective concept.

Information & Ethics committee  Yes, that could be.