Ask and it shall be given you

An extraordinary excerpt from an interview Dorothy King of the CBC West Coast morning show did with Paul Oram the day after he did a core-dump of this year's batch of letters from the health authorities:

KING: Mr. Oram, what's to be gained by releasing these internal documents?

ORAM: Well, again, the public asked for the documents. When I made a statement in the House of Assembly that there was a particular letter that came from Central Health, and we wanted to ensure that the people understood that it was correct, that there was a document that came back to us with options — which is done every year, by the way, it's been done for years and years and years — that contained options for the regional health authority to move forward and to balance their budget. So, because the public wanted to see these documents, wanted us to, I guess, prove that the document actually existed, we did release that document. And then from that, of course, we felt with the, again, the request that came in from the media, we felt that because we released the Central document, that it would only be appropriate to release the other documents as well.

KING: Are there any further documents to come?

ORAM: Well, no, there's not, I mean, I gave everything out yesterday, and it's open, it's accountable, and it's what government did in terms of budgeting, it's what government did in terms of services for NewfoundlandLabrador.

There you have it. All the public or media have to do, if they want to see documents, is ask for them.

Everyone by now knows the perils of not asking.

So, by way of experiment, what would happen if the public or media asked for past years' editions of the letters which Minister Oram tells Dorothy King have been "done every year... for years and years and years"?