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The government was slow to respond, owing to the time-span of the request and the volume of documents that had to be assembled from the various locations where they were stored.

Earlier this month, the commission expressed concern about the lack of progress, in a letter cautioning that it would use its summoning power starting March 13.

The implied threat may have been the key to breaking the log jam. But the commission is now content with what it has received so far and confident that there will be no need to resort to summons.

Attorney General David Eby confirmed Tuesday that more than 3,200 cabinet documents have already been delivered to the commission with more to come. They fall into three categories:

• Those from 1996-2005 predate the rule that cabinet documents remain confidential for 15 years.

• Those documents, covering five years of NDP government and four years under Liberals, have already been assembled by public servants and provided to the commission.

• Another package involves cabinet documents from the current NDP government which took office in July 2017.

“Those records were provided unredacted,” says Eby.

In-between those two sets of documents are ones from the years 2005 to 2017 under the previous Liberal government.

Those documents were assembled by public servants under the current government. But departed governments retain custody of the cabinet documents from their era and have the option of asking that they be withheld for reasons of privilege.