Predictable response?

The introduction of amendments to the accesss to information law in Newfoundland earlier this week caused quite a furor. Not surprisingly, the media and the opposition parties were less than keen to see changes that will make it easier for the government to deny access to information. 

Aside from the fact that these amendments seemed tailor-made to cause the uproar that they caused, I find the timing quite strange.  If you wanted these amendments to seem like normal housekeeping amendments, which seems to be what the government wants, why would they more or less hide the details of the changes until the end of the legislative session and then try to ram the bill through on the same week it was introduced?  Could they have come up with an approach that would be more likely to raise suspicion among the critics whose ire they were hoping to avoid? If so, I'd be curious to see such an approach implemented at some point in time.

Because of cabinet exemptions to the law we will likely never know, but I would really love to know how long these changes have been in the works and how long the text of the current bill has been ready. In other words, how long were they sitting on the bill in its final form before they introduced it? (And as far as I know there hadn't been much discussion of such a bill/changes in the run-up to its introduction - a fact that likely intensified the feeling of shock among opponents).

While here are other aspects of this bill that merit consideration, the issue of it's timing seems particularly peculiar to me.