Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to speak to this motion as well. This is one that again has been recommended by the Information and Privacy Commissioner for quite some time. The report of the Gov Ops committee mentions that as far back as 2008-2009, the Information and Privacy Commissioner has been recommending a general review of the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act. Again, it’s a recommendation year after year that the Commissioner makes that has been ignored by the government.
Our world is rapidly changing and information is far more available in a number of different sources – electronic in particular – than what it was when the ATIPP Act was originally written. So we need to do a review of the act and ensure that we are looking after our information in light of our current information environment. I don’t think that our act does that. There are areas where we are glaringly, obviously, not looking after information in the right way.
The other issue that’s addressed in this motion is the role and the powers of the Information and Privacy Commissioner. Those haven’t been reviewed for a fairly long period of time, as well, and I think that we need to consider whether or not we need to expand the role of the Information and Privacy Commissioner, and we especially have to look at the powers of the Information and Privacy Commissioner, and determine whether or not we wish to give her office a bit more force to compel people to abide by decisions and recommendations made by the Information and Privacy Commissioner. At the moment all she can do is make recommendations. She cannot force anybody to abide by a decision that she has made. I think there have been a couple of cases where a GNWT department, for instance, does not agree with the Information and Privacy Commissioner, and they kind of shrug their shoulders and say, oh well, we don’t agree so we’re not going to do anything. That, in my mind, is not the way we should be treating
our Commissioner. It goes against the purpose of the office, in my mind.
I think this is a reasonable request. I think the time frame is reasonable as well. We’re kind of getting towards the end of our first year, so I could appreciate if the government said, well, we can’t do it in the first two years, but we could do it in the first three years of the Assembly, but I do believe we need to move forward on this.