Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm very happy that the last Assembly in the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act put on an emphasis on proactive disclosure which requires every deputy minister to go look through past ATIPPs and look through their records and see what can be disclosed without an access request. A number of MLAs in this Assembly consistently ATIPPed the same documents and often they come back unredacted.
The scope of what is ATIPP-able and what is public is widely disconnected. So to date, departments have not complied with the act and complied with proactive disclosure of clarifying which records can be made public without an access request.
To date, the culture seems to be using ATIPP as a shield. ATIPP is not there to prevent information from coming out and used to, you know, drag on a process. ATIPP is there to direct departments to get that out before anyone needs to file a request. There's lots of guidance on how best to do this, and we encourage all departments and deputy ministers to comply with the act. Thank you, Madam Chair.