What does the latest polling tell us about the importance of transparency issues in Canada?

Why did the British Columbia government claim it didn’t have records that actually exist?

And should the public have a right to know the circumstances behind the firing of senior public officials?

Those are just some of the questions raised by stories about freedom of information that made headlines and twitter posts in Canada last week.

SQUIBS (FEDERAL)

• Forum Research Inc. reports, “When presented with five major issues facing the Canadian government now, two thirds of voters say ethics and transparency in government has ‘a great deal of influence’ on their vote.” (hat tip: BC Freedom of Information and Privacy Association)

• The Canadian Food Inspection Agency attempted to charge La Presse $104,050 for statistics on how often the organization has verified the nutrition facts on food labels over the past four years. (hat tip: Leslie Young)

• In response to CBC News’s request for records about food labelling. Health Canada provided a package of 400 documents. But one of those documents, an issue summary, had a “curious” redaction: “Review of serving size (deleted word) guidelines.” According to reporter Kelly Crowe, that word was deleted because it’s a cabinet secret.

• The Haisla Nation had to wait “nearly four years” for Environment Canada to respond to a request for records related to proposed consultation process for the Northern Gateway Pipeline.

• CBC News reports Ontario Superior Court Justice Herman Wilton-Siegel will decide this week whether a “secret settlement made between the Canadian government and U.S. Steel will be unsealed…While lawyers for U.S. Steel argue the deal is privileged and protected information, lawyers for the steelworkers union and City of Hamilton say it would be ‘fairness 101’ to disclose the deal during bankruptcy protection and amidst the potential sale of the Hamilton steel plant.” (hat tip: Ian Bron)

• “The federal government has decided to stop publishing contact information for all of its departments and agencies in the blue pages section of telephone directories,” reports the Canadian Press. “A spokesman for Shared Services Canada says the department has yet to receive any complaints about the dropped blue pages listings.”

• The University of Alberta’s Faculty of Extension is hosting the 2015 Access and Privacy Conference on June 11.

SQUIBS (PROVINCIAL)

• The Tyee reports that, last week, the BC NDP raised three examples of documents the provincial government claimed did not exist after the party filed freedom of information requests for them. But it turns out those documents actually did exist, with the BC NDP having obtained them through other means.

• The Times Colonist’s Les Leyne’s writes that those revaluations are “not exactly news. A national survey a year ago turned up a similar conclusion. And FOI law is a background issue that doesn’t really move too many people.”

• Reader Merv Adley counters Leyne’s claim, writing, “The Freedom of Information and [Protection of] Privacy Act protects our democratic institutions by forcing governments to inform us of what they are up to. It’s a damn shame Leyne doesn’t find a government routinely evading the act more appalling.” Adley’s letter was published, in part, by the Vancouver Courier.

• Freelancer Bob Mackin has been successful in his four-year quest to obtain the BC Lions’ rent contract with the BC Pavilion Corp.

• CBC News reports, “Sherry Jeffers and Charlene Pitre are suing the [New Brunswick] government for allegedly breaching their confidentiality as informants to a Department of Social Development investigation into the Saint John special care home where they once worked.” (hat tip: Ian Bron)

• The Newfoundland and Labrador government has introduced a new bill implementing the recommendations of an independent committee that reviewed the province’s access to information legislation. According to CBC News, “The new law remains on track to come into effect June 1.”

• Ontario’s new information and privacy commissioner will be coming to Brock University on May 6 to “meet with regional stakeholders and talk about the trends and future direction of access to information and protection of privacy.”

SQUIBS (LOCAL)

• Kevin Kaardal, the superintendent for Burnaby, B.C.’s school district, was given a golden handshake worth close to $430,000. But the district isn’t saying why Kaardal left by “mutual agreement,” prompting Burnaby Now to ask, “What do taxpayers have the right to know, or need to know, when top brass in city positions are shown the door?”

• “A year after it was asked to disclose detailed ridership studies for the Union-Pearson Express, Metrolinx has released some of the reports,” according to the Toronto Sun. “But key financial information is blacked out from the documents.”

Have a news tip about about the state of democracy, openness and accountability in Canada? You can email me at this address.

Canada’s access commissioner Suzanne Legault thinks the federal government should have the power to disregard “frivolous, vexatious or otherwise abusive” record requests. But that power could be dangerously easy to abuse, as was recently demonstrated in Alberta.

Legault made that recommendation in her recent report on modernizing Canada’s decrepit Access to Information Act, the law that allows the public to obtain internal government documents.

But past commissioners have described frivolous or vexatious requesters as rare, with John Reid writing in his 1998/99 annual report, “There are, happily, none in the system” – despite government claims to the contrary.

Similarly, Legault recently told the committee that reviewed Newfoundland and Labrador’s access law that out of the around 9,000 files she’s seen “there may be one case where I would have considered whether that would be frivolous or vexatious.”

The commissioner is away from her office and, as a result, was unable to personally explain why she still recommended government have the power to dismiss such requests, a decision that could be appealed to her office.

Instead, in a response to a series of written questions, a spokesperson stated in an email that power would “ensure more efficient use of limited public resources and protect the access rights of other requesters.” But it could also violate those rights.

That recently happened in Alberta, where the government can disregard frivolous or vexatious requests with the approval of the province’s independent information commissioner – a weaker version of the power Legault has proposed federally.

Last May, Service Alberta, the ministry that administers the government’s records, asked for that approval when an opposition party researcher requested a summary of the living allowances and benefits given to employees over a three-year period.

The ministry claimed the researcher, James Johnson, had submitted “up to five times” more requests than other freedom of information applicants and that he had been using them in a “repetitious and systemic nature that unreasonably interferes with the operations of the public body.”

Johnson countered that he had only filed around 26 requests with Service Alberta over 25 months, adding that it’s his public duty to research the ministry on topics the public is concerned about.

In the end, the commissioner decided there wasn’t enough evidence for his newest request to be disregarded. But that process ended up taking three months, delaying Johnson from obtaining the information he had requested.

I suspect if officials in Ottawa had an even stronger power to disregard record requests, it might be abused in the same way, beaten into the service of secrecy.

After all, since the Access to Information Act came into force over 30 years ago, successive Liberal and Conservative governments have done the same thing to every exception in that law, without respect for public and press opinion.

Of course, Legault isn’t the first commissioner to recommend government should have the power to disregard frivolous or vexatious access requests. For example, John Grace did so in his fiscal 1993/4 annual report, as did Reid in his 2000/01 annual report.

But when those recommendations were made, they were chained to proposals to do away with the $5 fee to file an access to information request. The rationale was that if those proposals were accepted, government would need some means of discouraging trivial requests.

Legault’s recommendation for dealing with such requests doesn’t seem to make a similar linkage. That could make it easier for the Harper administration or its successors to take that piece of advice while ignoring others that would result in more transparency.

Asked about such opportunities for cherry picking, a spokesperson for the commissioner’s office stated Legault’s report – which also proposes eliminating freedom of information charges, needs “for the most part, to be read together.”

But the history of freedom of information in Canada has repeatedly demonstrated that any ambiguity becomes an opportunity for opacity.

The commissioner’s modernization report should have taken that into account by, at a minimum, recommending government seek her permission before disregarding frivolous or vexatious requests – a system similar to the ones used in Alberta, British Columbia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island. The commissioner must also ensure this recommendation is not acted on unless government makes freedom of information requests free.

Her report may have been, in the words of its title, attempting to strike the “right balance.” But when the scales of governance in this country are so tipped in favour of secrecy, achieving that balance requires a heavy counterweight of openness – something that doesn’t appear to have happened here.

SQUIBS (FEDERAL)

• The World Justice Project has released a report ranking Canada as the seventh most open country out of 102 examined. But the same survey also puts Canada behind 20 other countries when it comes to our right to information. Those countries include all the other Anglosphere nations that were part of the survey.

• “The Federal Court says the government can no longer charge people fees for the search and processing of electronic government documents covered under access to information legislation,” reports the Ottawa Citizen. “The government has 30 days to decide whether to appeal the ruling and is reviewing [Justice Sean] Harrington’s decision in order to determine the most appropriate next steps, according to a spokesman from the Attorney General’s office. (hat tip: Joshua Sohn)

• The Canadian Press reports, “The genesis of the Harper government’s ‘Strong Proud Free’ slogan that is currently bombarding Canadian television viewers is considered a cabinet confidence and will be sealed from public scrutiny for 20 years.” (hat tip: Dean Beeby)

• The federal government has invoked a clause usually used in terrorism trials to keep information about the prime minister’s family from being made public, according to the National Post.

• The Canadian Press reports lawyer Jack Gemmell filed an access request for legal opinions and memos spelling out why the government believes its anti-terrorism bill is consistent with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. But, according to the wire service, “Gemmell was disappointed when the Justice Department asked for $4,772.80 in Access to Information fees just to get his written request to the next step.” (hat tip: Althia Raj)

• “Spokesmen for federal whistleblowers are crying foul after the Harper government appointed a judge with a Conservative background to a key panel,” according to CBC News. “Peter Annis, a Federal Court judge, was appointed in late February to the Public Servants Disclosure Protection Tribunal, effective March 3 for a four-year term, serving part-time.”

• The Globe and Mail reports on attempts to block its investigation into the friendly fire death of Sgt. Andrew Doiron.

• The Guelph Mercury predicts information commissioner Suzanne Legault’s call to modernize the Access to Information Act is “unlikely to become a hot public talking point for the federal government as it readies for a re-election bid. But Canadians should press for Legault’s report becoming a catalyst for political action and legislative reform.”

• CBC News reports, “Canada’s pipeline regulator took a ‘big step forward’ on a promise to be more transparent with the release of a map of spills and other incidents. But gaps in the data still exist.” (hat tip: Ian Bron)

• The Canadian Journalists for Free Expression has organized an event at Ryerson University in Toronto that will “look at the current challenges to creating, accessing, and sharing information in Canada, and work to create a path forward.” The event will take place on May 8.

• CBC News’s Dean Beeby tweets that he asked for the Treasury Board’s plans to “deal with surges” in the number of access to information requests. “Got blank back, cuz it’s a secret!”

SQUIBS (PROVINCIAL)

• The Calgary Herald reports new Alberta government rules requiring the disclosure of government contracts that aren’t tendered contain an apparent loophole allowing the Tories to “keep details of large-dollar deals secret from taxpayers.”

• As part of its bid to form government, the Wildrose Alliance Party of Alberta is promising to expand the province’s sunshine list – which discloses the salaries departmental employees earning six-figures – to include government agencies, boards and commissions.

• The Alberta New Democratic Party is promising to “create a public Infrastructure Sunshine List to show how school and hospital projects are prioritized.” The list would include the “standards used to make the decisions, and will identify when and how changes are made to those priorities.”

• The Montreal Gazette reports a series of coming hearings connected to the Charbonneau Commission’s final report will be subject to a blanket publication ban. The commission has “spent more than three years examining corruption and collusion in Quebec’s construction industry.”

• “The B.C. government has made a funding agreement to ensure that 33,000 boxes of important documents will finally be archived,” reports the Times Colonist. “The deal with the Royal British Columbia Museum means court records, executive correspondence and documents about commissions of inquiry can be archived.”

• “The Centre for Law and Democracy has praised Newfoundland and Labrador’s amended Right to Information legislation, saying the province has done ‘a major about-face’ and has taken ‘bold steps’ to improve the law,” according to CBC News.

SQUIBS (LOCAL)

• The Toronto Star reports that Mayor John Tory promised to “maintain a weekly, easily accessible schedule.” But “one year and an election victory later, his staff instead email daily itineraries to the media, which occasionally say only ‘There are no public events scheduled’ and provide no information about the mayor’s activities.”

• The Montreal Gazette reports, “The number of complaints is mounting about a lack of transparency at city hall. Access to public information appears to be controlled, delayed or blocked by the mayor’s office, said Lise Millette, president of the Federation professionnelle des journalistes du Quebec, representing close to 1,800 journalists in the province. She pointed to several complaints in recent weeks from journalists and news groups, particularly from a broad range of weekly newspapers on Montreal Island, about the Coderre administration.”

• Kamloops This Week reports, “Data collected during a review of president Alan Shaver won’t be released to faculty at Thompson Rivers University. Brian Ross, chairman of TRU’s board of governors, said a request by journalism assistant professor Shawn Thompson to release the information has been denied. Ross said Thompson was asking the university to violate an employee’s right to privacy.”

• A London, Ont. councillor is pushing the city to create a lobbyist registry. But, in an interview with the London Free Press, Martin Horak, the head of the University of Western Ontario’s local government program, wondered whether such a registry worthwhile in a city of London’s size.

• The Tribune paraphrases Dalhousie, N.B. Mayor Clem Tremblay as saying the Restigouche Regional Service Commission is not “open enough” because it doesn’t allow for a question period for journalists and the public after the conclusion of its regular monthly meeting.

Have a news tip about about the state of democracy, openness and accountability in Canada? You can email me at this address.

Canada’s information commissioner Suzanne Legault wants new rules that would force federal officials to document their decision-making.

But concerns about their lack of documentation began long before recent investigations revealed some of the highest levels of government in this country have been strangers to the printed word, shielding them from scrutiny.

And it’s likely those concerns will remain long after Legault, who has about two years left in her seven year term, leaves office.

The commissioner’s “duty to document” recommendation is included in her 108-page report on modernizing Canada’s aging Access to Information Act.

In the report, which was released earlier this month, Legault states “no federal statute or regulation” currently includes such a “comprehensive legal duty.”

The commissioner also wants to see penalties for ignoring that duty.

After all, if officials aren’t recording their decision-making, there will be no documentation for the public to request under the Access to Information Act.

Those recommendations follow a 2013 investigation by Ontario’s then information commissioner Ann Cavoukian that found a “verbal” culture within the offices of that province’s former premier and energy minister.

Cavoukian stated it was unclear if records weren’t kept “to increase efficiency or to prevent any of these materials from seeing the light of day and forming the subject of a freedom of information request.”

But the result contributed to a lack of documentation about a controversial and costly government decision to cancel the construction of two gas plants.

Similarly, British Columbia’s information commissioner Elizabeth Denham found the “general practice” within Premier Christy Clark’s office has been “to communicate verbally in person.”

As a result, “email communications usually consist of requests to make telephone calls or meet in person” and staff “do not make substantive communication relating to business matters via email.”

But the tendency for officials to not record their decision-making was also being reported shortly after the Access to Information Act came into effect on July 1, 1983.

Less than a year later, the Globe and Mail paraphrased federal official Don Page as saying the law is causing government employees to “use the telephone more and not put a full record of conversations and meetings on file.”

Speaking to a session of the Canadian Historical Association at the annual meeting of the Learned Societies conference, Page, the deputy director of the Department of External Affairs’s historical division said, “There is no way to document how extensive the changes are but you can sense a different atmosphere.”

That’s why, in 1994, Canada’s second information commissioner John Grace recommended a duty to create records be imposed on the federal government.

“These rules would rebuke the disdainful practice of some officials who discourage the creation and safekeeping of important records in order to avoid the rigours of openness,” Grace wrote in his annual report.

That recommendation was then repeated by his successor John Reid.

And since Legault has been doing the same thing since at least 2013, you can probably guess what happened to those recommendations, like so many others from the commissioner’s office.

Perhaps, though, you may think the accumulated weight of that advice will be enough to finally force our politicians to act.

But what’s more likely is that accumulation has taught Canadian politicians that recommendations from the commissioner carry little weigh with the voting public.

After all, Brian Mulroney, Jean Chretien and Stephen Harper all won re-election despite accusations of opacity.

And that culture of secrecy will continue so long as the oh so Canadian culture of passively accepting such disregard for citizens continues.

SQUIBS (FEDERAL)

• Long-time right to know advocate Ken Rubin writes that information commissioner Suzanne Legault’s recent recommendations for fixing Canada’s broken access law “barely stops the erosion of the public’s right to know and does not open Ottawa to a large changeover in record disclosures.”

• University of Manitoba political studies professor emeritus Paul Thomas takes an opposing position, writing, “There is much to applaud in the commissioner’s rigorous analysis of the weaknesses of the access regime, and her recommendations provide a valuable starting point for debate on how to ensure it serves Canadians better in the future.”

• The Globe and Mail’s editorial board appears to have a similar opinion, describing the commissioner’s report as “excellent.”

• Former Sun Media Ottawa bureau chief David Akin writes about  Canada’s “rotted” freedom of information law, noting that “University of Laval political scientist Anne Marie Gingras published a paper in 2012 in which she reviewed the then-thirty year-old Act and found the Harper government and all of its predecessors – Liberal or PC – have failed to live up to the spirit and, too often, the letter of the Act.”

• The Hill Times reports that, according to Legault, “Journalists are self-censoring their access to information requests to avoid being denied on the grounds of Cabinet confidences.”

• “You’re kidding me.” According to the Canadian Press, that’s how former CIA agent John Kirakou reacted when he heard that Canada’s opposition “doesn’t get to see or scrutinize national-security intelligence files.”

SQUIBS (PROVINCIAL)

• The Telegraph-Journal reports New Brunswick’s government has started publishing the annual inspection reports for the province’s licensed daycares online. But “the new online reports do not contain all of the information included in the paper copies” nor will the government post details from older inspections. The newspaper earlier had to fight the government to release those copies.

• The Telegraph-Journal reports it has “filed several Right to Information requests over the past several months with the goal of building a [province-wide] Sunshine List. Requests for salary disclosure are still outstanding from the Saint John Police Department and the Town of Rothesay. When asked, the City of Saint John provided a list of employees making more than $100,000. The Town of Quispamsis declined to provide names, but offered the titles of employees making more than $100,000. A quick Google search reveals the names of those employees.”

• Prince Edward Island’s Progressive Conservatives have promised to turn the province into an “Open Island” if the opposition party forms government in the upcoming election. That commitment includes promising to publish online all government loans, grands, write-offs and contracts over $1,000. It will also make research and background documents “digitally available so that the public can view the same information being used by government to address issues and make decisions,” among other measures.

• The Calgary Herald reports a Royal Tyrell Museum researcher wasn’t able to speak to the newspaper about his work “because there’s a protocol restricting provincial employees from doing interviews during the Alberta election campaign.” (hat tip: Erika Stark)

• Vice reports the Government of the Northwest Territories isn’t requiring natural gas companies to “disclose the toxic ingredients contained in their tracking fluids and chemical additives.” Instead, those companies can decide for themselves “whether or not they will divulge the chemical makeup of the substances used to drill, fracture the shale bed and extract oil or gas to the surface.”

• The Globe and Mail reports, “British Columbia’s Ministry of Justice says a ruling that ordered its Civil Forfeiture Office to disclose the names of its employees did not properly consider the safety risks and should be discarded.” The agency has “faced questions of fairness and transparency.”

SQUIBS (LOCAL)

• The Mississauga News reports Peel, Ont. regional police wouldn’t reveal the name of a 22-year-old Toronto man who died after being “brutally assaulted with a compressed air horse on March 6 at his Mississauga workplace.” The victim’s family had requested that lack of disclosure. But the newspaper reports it “simply delayed the eventual release of his name, and in the end served no real purpose.”

• Earlier this month, Surrey, B.C.’s mayor refused to speak to News 1130 about a dozen shootings that have taken place in her city, instead referring questions to the RCMP. In a subsequent interview, with the Vancouver radio station, the mayor explained, “I am not the sheriff. I can’t do more than that which we are doing, which is getting those police on the ground, responding to the events, and actually doing some significant preventative work.”

• British Columbia’s information commissioner has found it was “inappropriate” for a city councillor to mention “by name a citizen who had made a number of requests for information to the city. The disclosure led to several references to the requester in the local paper…” (hat tip: Bob Mackin)

• The Toronto Star reports, “Ontario’s privacy commissioner has ruled that the City of Markham needs to reconsider its reasons for keeping documents related to the failed NHL arena project under wraps.” But the city is now asking the commissioner for more time to re-examine those reasons.

• The Telegraph-Journal reports Saint John Coun. Greg Norton is “proposing the city create a Sunshine List, which will detail exactly how much city employees make on an annual basis, and post those documents online for anyone to see.”

• The Windsor Star reports the WindsorEssex Economic Development Corp.’s chief executive officer’s salaries wasn’t on Ontario’s Sunshine List, which discloses the salaries of public employees making more than $100,000 a year. It didn’t have to because the corporation’s $1.9 million in core funding comes from Windsor and Essex County taxpayers rather than the province.

• The Woolwich, Ont. citizen committee “tasked with overseeing cleanup of the township’s polluted water supply is boycotting a secret meeting Thursday on the committee’s future organized by Mayor Sandy Shantz,” according to the Waterloo Record.

• The Toronto Sun reports the number of people asking the city’s local government for access to their own personal records is increasing, while the number of general access requests continues to decrease. According to the newspaper, “The city has been trying to be more proactive in disclosing run-of-the-mill information without people having to pay $5 to file an access to information request.”

• The Montreal Gazette’s Bill Tuerney, the former mayor of Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue, Que., asks, “What can and cannot be shared with the general public? The main rule I remember is that you should be careful with all information that is “nominal.” That is, it has people’s names attached. Everything else should be public. All you can do, if it is time-sensitive, is time its release.”

Have a news tip about about the state of democracy, openness and accountability in Canada? You can email me at this address.