How many deaths have there been in Bermuda's waters in the past two years?

That's just one of many questions that may never get answered even though Bermuda is set to get freedom of information legislation in the next year.

Ask the same question in the Cayman Islands or Jamaica, and public officials are obliged to tell you the answer.

Freedom of information expert Carole Excell yesterday cited the above example as a major reason why Government needs to rethink its draft Public Access To Information legislation and bring it into line with virtually every other jurisdiction that has introduced PATI.

Mrs. Excell says it is common practice to make freedom of information retroactive — yet Bermuda plans to only give people the right to get information after the date PATI goes on the statute books, likely 2010.

That means anyone trying to find out details about anything that happened in the years leading up to that date faces the chance of their request falling on deaf ears.

Mrs. Excell, who helped set up freedom of information in Cayman and Jamaica, told The Royal Gazette yesterday: "I really think they need to look at that provision as it might create more unhappiness with the law than we already have without it.

"In small islands, things that happened last year can affect you and you can want to find out how decisions were made.

"My experience has been even in Jamaica people want information that's relevant to them and important to them today. A lot of requests are based on things that happened in the last couple of years."

She said in Cayman people had recently inquired about the number of water-related deaths, while one of the most commonly asked questions is: how much taxpayers' money did a Minister spend attending a recent conference?

Neither of those could be answered without retroactivity, she said, while another example would be parents wishing to find out how much grant a school has received in recent years.

She pointed to some progressive aspects of Bermuda's draft law, such as the appointment of an independent commissioner but said: "Bermuda needs to be more progressive than its neighbours. Why restrict access in this way? It makes it more dififcult in the long run."

Mrs. Excell is on the Island to share her freedom of information experience with Government and the people while the drafted PATI bill remains up for public consultation.

So far only three people have come forward giving their views on the draft, compared with 100 people in Cayman who gave their thoughts on that country's version which came into play this year.

"I don't think people yet are understanding this right, how it can help them find out what they would like to know if it's implemented properly," said Mrs. Excell.

"In Cayman, at first a lot people had a feeling the law would be too small to have an impact. It requires public education. It's not just about changing the minds of civil servants, you have to change the minds of the public."

She said in Cayman people have begun to accept the significance of the law when it's affected themselves, such as people with work permit issues being able to see immigration files to see how decisions are made on their futures, patients accessing their hospital records, and parents finding out why their children have been singled out for disciplinary measures at school.

Freedom of information in the Caymans has also highlighted that a huge proportion of children are clinically obese, leading to the introduction of health programmes, she said.

Some information on obesity has already been released into the public domain in Bermuda, but other health-related statistics remain unknown.

Mrs. Excell, a senior associate at the World Resources Institute, a Washington D.C. think tank, is at Hamilton Rotary at lunch time today, and at a public meeting at the Bermuda College Blue Room from 6.30 p.m. to 8 p.m.

Government's policy analyst Kimberley McKeown called for people to give their thoughts on the draft law by visiting pati@gov.bm.