Information & Ethics committee  There have been about seven.

Information & Ethics committee  I don't have that information.

Information & Ethics committee  My recommendation is to jump over the step of the Attorney General referral and go directly to the police force, who I believe would be better placed to do the investigation.

Information & Ethics committee  Personal emails creep in sometimes too: “Are you coming for lunch?” We have to make sure we capture what the discussion was about. You don't have to keep the emails if you go back and make a memo out of it that says, “We discussed this. This is what was taken into consideration, and this is the decision that was made.”

Information & Ethics committee  I would say it is a majority of requests, now.

Information & Ethics committee  Yes, because it is rare for a person to request a particular briefing note. Instead, they ask for a briefing note, an email, a text message, or a video on a particular subject. The person then receives a large volume of information in which there are often a number of duplicated items.

Information & Ethics committee  We have to make sure that the documents being saved have corporate value. The other thing we see is that there are conversations that have no corporate value.

Information & Ethics committee  I can review all the documents, yes.

Information & Ethics committee  I don't think my jurisdiction should include investigation of criminal offences, because you have to be able to separate those two. What I would like to be able to do is directly send more information.... Right now, the act says that all of the information is confidential, so I have a very limited amount of information that I can share with these bodies and the Attorney General.

Information & Ethics committee  That's it.

Information & Ethics committee  I already have access to legal opinions and solicitor-client privilege documents that are claimed to be privileged. I do not have access to cabinet confidence at this point, so that's something. Canada is one of only a few commonwealth countries that don't have an independent review of cabinet confidence.

Information & Ethics committee  Well, sometimes we have to ask them to go and get it from a contractor or another private entity. If there's a contract between those two and there are functions being done for the institutions, I believe that the institutions are entitled to get those documents as well.

Information & Ethics committee  I think we just need more resources. We need more innovation, and we definitely need more leaders who believe in access and tell their institutions that they should have the resources for that.

Information & Ethics committee  What we see the most is destruction of documents. These are documents that we know existed and have disappeared.

Information & Ethics committee  My office has issued a guideline on this subject, to help people better understand their responsibilities in relation to emails. It is entitled "9 Tips for ATIP-Friendly Email Management". We find that this is a problem even in our own office, in fact. We often allow employees a half-day to clean up their email inboxes because we have run out of memory.