Monthly Archives: September 2015

THE MOST UNWANTED RIGHT IN ALBERTA?

1 Reply
Do Albertans really care if they don't know what the politicians in this building are doing? (Photograph by WinterforceMedia)

How much do Albertans care about knowing what the politicians in this building are doing? (Photograph by WinterforceMedia)

TWENTY YEARS OF OPENNESS? “Canada’s freedom of information laws are like transplanted organs. Grafted onto our public institutions decades ago, they have been constantly at risk of rejection, with the body politic doing comparatively little to ensure their acceptance. And perhaps nowhere is that more apparent than in Alberta.”

Those are the opening lines of a speech I’ll be giving Right to Know Week Forums being organized by Alberta’s information commissioner Jill Clayton.

To hear more, I encourage you to attend one of those forums, which will take place on Sept. 29 in Calgary and Oct. 1 in Edmonton.

The forums mark the 20th anniversary of Alberta’s access law.

Clayton will also be speaking, along with her staff who will give a presentation on the importance of the Magna Carta as the “foundation for access to information and the public’s right to know.“

In addition, in Edmonton, the city’s corporate and department initiatives director Wendy Gnenz will talk about her community’s Open City Initiative.

RUBIN-ESQUE Ken Rubin is one of Canada’s first and foremost access advocates and practitioners.

That’s why his upcoming mini-memoir in Ottawa Magazine is well worth the read for anyone concerned about government secrecy in this country.

In it, Rubin recounts how his fights against real estate development and for consumer protection in the seventies eventually resulted in him become a leading voice for greater freedom of information.

Here’s a taste:

Helping citizens of Centretown obtain data about its area improvement plan did not prevent my own downtown block north of Gloucester Street from falling prey to demolitions, high-rises, and parking lots. Indeed, despite my door-to-door research and activist efforts, the changing tide meant that my wife, Debbie, and I were evicted in December of 1972. I was down but not out — in fact, that battle emboldened me to become the determined investigator I am today.

The memoir is being published in the magazine’s October edition.

A FAST ONE In an interview with the Toronto Star last year, Treasury Board President Tony Clement admitted the Access to Information Act needs to be reviewed — with his government having failed to deliver on its 2006 promise to reform that law. But not everyone in the Conservative cabinet seems to think such reform is necessary.

Speaking to the Abbotsford News’s Tyler Olsen, International Trade Minister Ed Fast said, “I’m not sure the [access to information] system is in need of repair.”

A 2014 survey found Canadians have less access to government information than the five other Anglosphere countries.

When that access was measured on a scale of one to ten, New Zealand and the United States scored a nine, while Australia, Ireland and the United Kingdom scored an eight.

By comparison, Canada scored a six. That puts us in the same company as Croatia, Hungary, Japan, Luxembourg and Mexico.

SUFFERING IN SILENCE Last week, I reported on how an op-ed by Medicine Hat News reporter Collin Gallant appears to have been one of only two stories published covering the launch of a national campaign to fix Canada’s broken Access to Information Act.*

Asked about why he didn’t think there was more coverage, Gallant told me, “I think people just get sort of worn down. And I think we’re sort of at the point, sadly, that they’re not going to be able to get a live quote or the information they are looking for in a story.”

As a result, “Journalists and younger journalists just feel like they are running into a situation where they are wasting their breath complaining about FOIP because it’s just so ingrained.”

* = Disclosure: I’m vice-president of the Canadian Association of Journalists, one of the 22 civil society group supporting the campaign to reform our broken access system.  I also organized the meeting where those reforms were drafted.

SQUIBS (FEDERAL)

• The Ottawa Citizen reports, “There will be more strategic leaks by the Canadian Forces/DND to journalists who are deemed ‘friendly’ to the military,” while those who are “trouble-makers” will be the subject of “phone calls to media bosses, letters to the editor, etc.” (hat tip: Ian Bron)

• The Tyee reports, “Anyone who wants to know how many temporary foreign workers have come to Canada in the first half of 2015 will have to pay to find out, according to Citizenship and Immigration Canada.” But the online magazine notes, “The request for payment comes more than a year after Employment and Social Development Canada, a separate department, promised it would publicly post such data each quarter in a press release detailing changes to the Temporary Foreign Worker Program.” (hat tip: Ian Bron)

• Green Leader Elizabeth May calls for greater transparency in Canadian politics by endorsing four reforms to the Access to Information Act advocated for by a coalition of 22 civil society groups. May is the only leader so far to have made that endorsement.

• According to the Ottawa Citizen, “Tom Mulcair pledged Tuesday that an NDP government would lift the lid of secrecy around the federal budgetary process — providing Canadians much more information about how government spends their money.”

• CBC News’s Dean Beeby tweets that Finance Canada has audited its access to information system “without talking to any requesters & (surprise) gives itself high marks!”

• Freelance journalist Shanifa Nasser tweets that the 30 day time limit to respond to access to information requests “has lost all meaning.” That tweet comes after Nasser filed a request on July 22 that was forgotten about until Aug. 19 when the government requested a 150-day extension.

• “As International Right to Know Day on Sept. 28 approaches, it is worth reflecting on the state of access to information across Canada,” writes the Centre for Law and Democracy’s Toby Mendel, noting that our country ranks a “very poor 59th place globally from among 102 countries with right to information laws.”

• The Globe and Mail’s Lawrence Martin writes, “The Conservatives have taken a lot of heat over information suppression. But it has had little effect. There are few signs of change. Their attitude is ‘stay the course.’ If you say too much you are dangerous; if you know too much you are a threat.”

• The Kelowna Capital News’s Kevin Parnell writes that if you ask Conservative MPs about gagging federal government researchers “you will hear denials. They don’t muzzle scientists and aren’t trying to control the flow of information. They would never! But how do we trust what a politician says when the track record of truth versus lies is a joke.”

• The Centre for Law and Democracy is hosting a panel discussion in Halifax celebrating International Right to Know Day. Panelists include Newfoundland and Labrador’s deputy premier Steve Kent, whose government recently reformed that province’s records access law.

SQUIBS (PROVINCIAL)

• The Yellowknifer’s Shane Magee tweets that the Northwest Territories “remains one of four jurisdictions in Canada where municipalities aren’t covered by access to info legislation…That’s despite more than a decade of calls by information commish to update the law.” (hat tip: Karissa Donkin)

• “David Fraser, a lawyer with McInnes Cooper, will be representing Bullying Canada when the charity takes the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development to court later in the fall over responses to two right to information requests,” reports the Daily Gleaner. “The first file relates to how [New Brunswick] spent its $700,000 anti-bullying budget, while the second file pertains to the work of the Positive Learning Environments committee. In both cases, Bullying Canada co-founder Rob Frenette said he received heavily redacted responses to his requests.”

• Ontario’s information commissioner Brian Beamish marked Right to Know Week in Sault Ste. Marie, delivering a speech that also talked about “important issues surrounding health privacy.”

• British Columbia’s information commissioner encourages citizens to participate in the review of their province’s access law as part of Right to Know Week.

SQUIBS (LOCAL)

• “The Vision Vancouver majority on council may be violating the province’s open meeting laws by conducting caucus meetings before their regularly-scheduled council sessions,” according to a veteran lawyer quoted by the Vancouver Sun. (hat tip: Bob Mackin)

• The Telegraph-Journal reports New Brunswick’s “faculty associations are taking St. Thomas University’s administration to court over its refusal to disclose the amounts of three employee severance packages.”

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

CENSORS BLACK OUT MORE USING WHITE-OUT

2 Replies
Does blanking out information hide more than blacking it out? (Image by Shutterstock.com)

Does blanking out information hide more than blacking it out? (Image by Shutterstock.com)

WHITEWASH Unlike many of Canada’s provincial governments, British Columbia blanks rather than blacks out the information it censors from records released under its freedom of information legislation — a practice that could threaten the public’s information rights.

During a recent review of New Brunswick’s own access law, that province’s government found concerns about public bodies using white for redactions, stating:

…white-out makes it exceedingly difficult to know where something has been redacted or how big the redacted section may be. This can be important information when seeking to understand what has and has not been released, and this can infringe on the applicant’s right under the Act to challenge redactions.

In addition, blanked out records are much less telegenic than those that have been blacked out, reducing the impact of showing them during video news reports.

The British Columbia government ministry responsible for handling freedom of information requests didn’t respond to either of those concerns.

But a spokesperson did state in an email that, “Using white for redaction is a long-standing practice in B.C. for optimal readability for applicants.”

The spokesperson added that white “saves on printing costs (photocopies) for both government and applicants.”

SELF-HELP? Last week, a coalition of 22 civil society groups called on political parties to help reduce government secrecy by fixing the country’s broken records access law.

But, even though those repairs are in the public interest and journalists’ self-interest, that announcement got little coverage.

The groups, which included some of the country’s most prominent freedom of information advocates, asked political parties to endorse four reforms to the Access to Information Act.*

Those reforms included making significant changes to the exclusions and exemptions in the Act — loopholes that our public officials use and abuse to hide even the most basic information about their decisions from Canadians.

Such changes are especially important for journalists since access requests are one of the few means reporters still have of obtaining information that hasn’t been spun by the government.

That’s because, in the words of Medicine Hat News reporter Collin Gallant, “Long gone are the days when a simple phone call could put a reporter in touch with the person they needed in the federal government, be they anyone other than a communications handler.”

But despite those frustrations being shared by journalists across the country, Gallant’s op-ed supporting the recent call to fix the Access to Information Act was, according to the Canadian Newsstand database and Google News, one of just two stories published by news outlets about that reform effort.

* = Disclosure: I’m vice-president of the Canadian Association of Journalists, one of the 22 civil society groups calling for freedom of information reforms. I also organized the meeting where those reforms were drafted.

SQUIBS (FEDERAL)

• Maclean’s magazine has published a cover story investigating the crisis in government data.

• “The information commissioner is taking the Prime Minister’s Office to court, accusing it of refusing to release documents about four senators embroiled in scandal,” reports the Canadian Press.

• The Ottawa Citizen reports Health Canada has repeatedly refused to say why it paid a “dodgy” Website in Croatia to publish some of its food safety science documents. The department also hasn’t responded to two 10-month-old access to information requests about that arrangement.

• Burnaby Now’s Jennifer Moreau demonstrates the frustration of dealing with Conservative media handlers by publishing a transcript of her conversation with one of them.

• This Magazine reports on the urgent need to reform Canada’s information legislation, quoting the Centre for Free Expression’s Jim Turk.

• Reuters investigative resources correspondent Mike De Souza tweets that, in response to a recent access request, “the Canadian government censored part of a published media article.”

SQUIBS (PROVINCIAL)

• British Columbia’s Interior Health Authority won’t say how much it is spending on a new residential care facility, with a spokesperson claiming that information can only be disclosed via a freedom of information request. The Kelowna Capital News also reports the “health authority has even gone so far as to tell the winning bidder not to reveal the figure either.”

• “The Nova Scotia government passed legislation last spring giving Halifax the green light to release a ‘sunshine list’ of the municipality’s top earners,” reports the Chronicle-Herald. “But several months later, city hall is still refusing to release the salaries of senior bureaucrats, citing privacy legislation.”

• Halifax Media Co-op reports, “A group of organizations in Nova Scotia is calling on the provincial government to implement improvements to the access to information framework – improvements they say are both essential and long overdue.”

• “The Alberta government released its list of sole-sourced contracts Thursday, in a publicly searchable database,” reports Huffington Post Alberta.

• According to the Hamilton Spectator, Ontario MPP Monique Taylor’s private member’s bill, which would require the province’s children’s advocate to be notified when a child in-care dies or is critically injured, has passed second reading.

SQUIBS (LOCAL)

• “Two months after a deadline to produce race and ethnicity data for people stopped by Peel police in 159,303 street checks — a practice known in Toronto as carding — the force has not produced the information requested [by the Toronto Star] under access to information laws.”

• Concordia University’s student newspaper reports the McGill University had previously tried and failed to have access requests for information about its military research classified as frivolous or vexatious. Such a classification would have allowed McGill to not respond to those requests.

• The Winnipeg Free Press reports Mayor Brian Bowman has fulfilled one of his campaign commitments by announcing that, beginning on Sept. 30, council records will be “produced in a format known as machine-readable, which will allow for easier online searching, record-keeping and management.”

• The Winnipeg Sun reports city councillors have voted to spend $30,000 to establish an online submission system for freedom of information requests, something that could save the city $122,000 a year.

• The BC Freedom of Information and Privacy Association will be celebrating this year’s Right to Know week by hosting a Vancouver workshop on filing freedom of information requests.

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

THE RACE TOWARD TRANSPARENCY

3 Replies
Which federal political party is ahead in the race for open government?

Which federal opposition party is ahead in the race to promise an open government? (Photograph by Shutterstock.com)

THEY’RE THE CHAMPIONS? “The Liberals have announced the most robust plans for access reform so far in the marathon election campaign,” according to the Toronto Star.

But a reading of recent proposed amendments to the country’s freedom of information law introduced prior to the campaign suggest the NDP might actually do more to open up the federal government.

The outline of the Liberal plan for access reform was first sketched out in party leader Justin Trudeau’s proposed Transparency Act, which was introduced in June 2014.

As I wrote earlier, that bill included laudable proposals such as eliminating fees for access requests and giving the information commissioner the power to order the release of records the government has denied access to.

But, despite what National Newswatch columnist Don Lenihan seems to believe, the bill’s text did little to fulfill Trudeau’s promise to make all government records “open by default.”

After all, according to information commissioner Suzanne Legault, that’s the way the Access to Information Act is already written.

But there are so many exceptions to that rule in the law that government has instead become secret by default.

The Transparency Act didn’t lay a hand on those exceptions and, in an earlier interview with me, the party’s open government critic Scott Simms repeatedly confirmed the Liberals are comfortable with them.

“I wouldn’t want to say this is exhaustive, it’s perfect, it’s fine, it’s just a matter of how you are applying it. But I think, for the most part, what frustrates Canadians is how the [exemptions and exclusions] are applied,” he said, later adding he wouldn’t want to endorse all of the exceptions.

Such a statement does not exactly inspire confidence in the Liberal’s commitment to openness.

By comparison, in Jan. 2015, NDP MP Pat Martin introduced a reform bill that would have explicitly provided greater (albeit not unrestricted) access to cabinet and policy advice records.

That’s important because the exceptions to making those records public are among the most abused and frustrating provisions in the Access to Information Act.

Martin’s bill wouldn’t have eliminated any of the fees associated with using that legislation.

But it would have given the commissioner order-making power, as well as requiring public officials to create records that “document their decisions, actions, advice, recommendations and deliberations.”

Martin’s bill would have also made all public bodies subject to the Access to Information Act, with a requirement to disclose any record if the “public interest in disclosure clearly outweighs in importance the need for secrecy.”

Again, that’s a more robust proposal than the one put forward by the Liberals in their election platform, which merely promises to make the “Prime Minister’s and Ministers’ Offices, as well as administrative institutions that support Parliament and the courts” subject to the Act.

And it’s worthwhile remembering Martin — who has been introducing bills to reform records access since 2005 — isn’t the NDP’s only prominent right to know advocate.

The MP who seconded Martin’s most recent reform effort, Murray Rankin, helped draft British Columbia’s freedom of information law and was an early promoter of such legislation federally, having written a research study on the subject in 1977 for the Canadian Bar Association.

That being said, the NDP hasn’t yet laid down a government transparency policy plank, with the party telling the Toronto Star it will have something to say on the issue before Election Day.

So, despite Rankin and Martin’s presence, it’s possible the NDP will retreat from its past proclamations now that they could win the election.

The reason: most opposition parties become considerably less enthusiastic about freedom of information once they form government.

But, until Canadians know one way or another, it’s too early to declare the Liberals champions of our information rights.

SEEING GREEN? If you’re wondering, neither Green Leader Elizabeth May or her parliamentary colleague Bruce Hyer have introduced private member’s bills that would reform the Access to Information Act. The party’s election platform, however, does promise to “overhaul” that law, without providing further details.

TAKING ACTION ON REDACTION Journalists have increasingly been using the term redaction to describe what happens when public bodies remove information from records requested under Canada’s freedom of information laws. But is there a better word they could be using to explain what’s happening?

According to the Canadian Newsstand database, in 2006 there were at least four stories published where that term appeared along with the words freedom of information request, access to information request or right to information request. Nine years later, there were at least 93 such stories.

But when public bodies redact information, they are actually censoring it — something the New Brunswick government acknowledges in its recent review of that province’s access legislation.

So shouldn’t journalists just write that instead?

Number of stories about record requests that include the term redaction*

2014 – 93

2013 – 54

2012 – 47

2011 – 44

2010 – 35

2009 – 23

2008 – 11

2007 – 6

2006 – 4

* = To find those stories, I used the following search string: (“freedom of information request” OR “access to information request” OR “right to information request” OR “FOI request” OR “FOIP request” OR “ATI request” OR “ATIP request” OR “RTI request”) AND redact*

MIA ON RTK The Harper administration’s secrecy has been making headlines across the country, something that should mean more public interest in this year’s Right to Know Week events. But, unfortunately, Canada’s information commissioner won’t be part of any of them.

That’s because, according to a spokesperson from the commissioner’s office, “As a non-partisan Agent of Parliament, that the Commissioner has decided that she and her Office will not participate in events during the federal election period.”

As a result, the Grace-Pépin Access to Information Award also won’t be awarded until after the election is over.

SQUIBS (FEDERAL)

• iPolitics reports former Conservative nomination candidates risk losing a $1,000 “Good Conduct Bond” if they publicly criticize the party or its hopefuls during the election.

• The Montreal Gazette has published a helpful primer on how to use Quebec and Canada’s freedom of information laws to “peek into government files.”

• Unmuzzle Canada, a “grassroots group of people” concerned about the federal government’s “increasingly restrictive communications policies” have launched a petition campaign to end the gagging of scientists, ambassadors, librarians and MPs. They are also encouraging supporters to pose with duct tape and share photos of how that hardware is supposed to be used, as well as send actual rolls of duct tape to Ottawa.

• BuzzFeed Canada’s Ishmael Daro writes that, nine moths after requesting information about @Canada’s first tweet, he’s finally received a response from the federal government. But, as a result of that delay, “I can’t even pretend it’s newsworthy at this point.” (hat tip: Sherwin Arnott)

• CBC News’s Dean Beeby tweets that five surveys ordered by the Harper administration, paid for by Canadians, have been blacked out under the Access to Information Act. What’s there to hide, he asks?

SQUIBS (PROVINCIAL)

• The Telegraph-Journal’s editorial board comes out against the New Brunswick government’s plan to consider proposals that would make it more difficult to request records in that province. The board writes, “This information belongs to the public — the bureaucracy are merely caretakers. The public deserves reasonable access.”

• After a two-year fight, the Telegraph-Journal has obtained details of inspections at daycares, which had previously been kept secret by the New Brunswick government. But two daycares are trying to keep their inspection reports private.

• A woman who was previously banned from visiting the continuing care centre where her parents reside has said Alberta Health Services shredded records about that decision. According to the Edmonton Journal, she had asked for those records under the province’s freedom of information legislation.

• A Winnipeg man, who has accused the Winnipeg Police Service and Province of Manitoba of using secret records to stop his bid to be a foster parent, says his requests to see the incriminating information were denied under the province’s freedom of information law. The Winnipeg Free Press quotes the man as saying, “They put this black mark on your file, but then there’s no checks or balances in place so you can go and fight it.”

• Deirdre Wade, the former chair of the Canadian Bar Association’s National Privacy and Access Law Section, has criticized a recommendation by New Brunswick information commissioner that her office should have the power to review cases where the provincial government has claimed solicitor-client privilege to prevent the release of information under its records access law.

• The Vancouver Sun’s data journalism specialist Chad Skelton is leaving the paper. In a posting on his blog, Skelton writes he’s taken a buyout offer to mainly “pursue my other great passion: teaching. Both at Kwantlen [Polytechnic University], where I’ve been a part-time faculty member for the past decade, and through my own data visualization training workshops. I’ll also be looking for other opportunities to put my data and storytelling skills to use.”

• The Lloydminster Source reports, “The Saskatchewan NDP party joined forces with the privacy commissioner to demand stronger legislation after the Office of the Premier released private information about a whistleblower who went public about poor conditions at a seniors home where he was employed.”

• Describing freedom of information legislation as a “pillar of democracy,” the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternative’s Keith Reynolds writes in Rabble.ca that, over the years, its base has been “chipped away” in Canada. That’s why Reynolds is encouraging British Columbians to take part in the current review of the province’s version of that law.

SQUIBS (LOCAL)

• “A group of students from McGill University says the university continues to stymie their efforts to uncover what goes on in certain research labs and is going to great lengths and expense to try to block students from accessing information about its military ties,” reports the Montreal Gazette.

• The Canadian Press reports, “Days before Toronto must decide whether to bid for the 2024 Summer Olympics, critics are sounding the alarm over what they call unprecedented secrecy surrounding the process.” (hat tip: Ian Bron)

• The City of Brandon, Man.’s poverty committee has, according to the community’s daily newspaper, “submitted a report asking for council’s support in reinstating the national long-form census, which was abolished by the federal government in 2010.

• Alberta’s information commissioner has decided the Town of Ponoka no longer needs to respond to freedom of information requests about a local improvement project. The reason: according to the town’s paper, after responding to three earlier requests, the commissioner found the remainder filed with the town “are repetitious and of a systematic nature.”

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

PAY PER VIEWING GOVERNMENT RECORDS

Leave a reply
The New Brunswick government's records access law recommendations will do little to help information seekers in that province. (Graphic by Province of New Brunswick)

The New Brunswick government’s records access law recommendations will do little to help information seekers in that province. (Graphic by Province of New Brunswick)

COST BENEFIT? New Brunswick may soon demonstrate how little excuse Canada’s governments need to take away our information rights — especially when compared with how much is needed for those rights to be upheld.

Right now, the province is the only place in the country where access requests are free, having eliminated them in 2011.

But a recent government review of its Right to Information and Protection of Privacy Act, stated public bodies had asked for the “re-instatement of a fee regime, not for full-cost recovery, but as a way to share some of the cost between themselves and the applicant.”

In response, the government recommended the request be evaluated, even though the reports acknowledges the province continues to have “the lowest number of RTI requests per capita.”

Indeed, in 2013-14, government departments received just 581 requests at an estimated cost of $680,000 or an average of $1,170 per request.

That means, even if the province introduced a $25 filing fee — matching Alberta, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut for the highest amount in Canada — that watchdog tax would only bring in $14,525 for those departments.

And if it introduced separate processing fees to help cover the cost of locating, reviewing and copying records, many journalists, activists and their employers couldn’t or wouldn’t pay them.

But none of that, including arguments from reporters that “imposing fees is undemocratic,” seems to have swayed the New Brunswick government.

Nor did the government seem worried about the involvement of communications officers in processing access requests, the amount of censorship allowed by its right to information law and the commissioner’s inability to review claims of solicitor-client privilege in preventing the release of records — all complaints mentioned in its review that aren’t planned on being addressed.

Indeed, taken as a whole, the review’s recommendations would likely do little to help that right and much more to harm it, despite a 2012 report from the Centre for Law and Democracy rating New Brunswick’s access legislation as already being among the worst in the country.

Yet what more can we expect in a country where almost every other government has delayed fixing their own broken freedom of information laws while exploiting that disrepair for their own benefit?

YOU CAN’T FIGHT CITY HALL If New Brunswick does re-instate a watchdog tax, its municipalities will be partially to blame.

The province’s cities, towns and villages have long had a conflictual relationship with its right to information law.

The government made them subject to that law just three years ago — something they tried to delay.

The reason for that attempted delay: concerns about the cost of requests, as well as the amount of staffing and training required to respond to them.

Those concerns continued even after that effort failed.

There were reports some municipalities would need to hire expensive lawyers to cope with the province’s records access law.

Local politicians also worried their constituents might be afraid to come to them with their complaints if a request might disclose their identity.

And those same politicians had their own complaints about the price tag of this new transparency.

In 2013, the Daily Gleaner paraphrased a Fredericton councillor as saying the city spent more than $100,000 in staff time responding to access requests over the past year, with one taking over 100 hours to process.

Then, two years later, the same newspaper reported a request filed with New Maryland required the reading of 2,000 pages of information and consultation with the village’s law firm.

“If this went on on a monthly basis it would drain us,” Mayor Judy Wilson-Shee told the Daily Gleaner. “It’s very time consuming and we are not compensated in any way.”

Such financial complaints resulted in local government association resolutions asking for a right to information cost-recovery system — something the province is now considering.

Yet, according to the government, New Brunswick’s three largest cities dealt with just 227 filings in the two years after Sept. 2012, with all but one other community having gotten less than a dozen over that same period.

THE MOST UNWANTED RIGHT IN ALBERTA? That’s the title of the speech I’ll be giving in Calgary and Edmonton at Right to Know Week forums being organized by the Alberta’s information commissioner Jill Clayton. Those forums will take place on Sept. 29 and Oct. 1 respectively, providing an opportunity to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the province’s freedom of information legislation. So if you’re in either city on those dates, I’d love to see you there.

SQUIBS (FEDERAL)

• Writing in Maclean’s magazine, former Power & Politics host Evan Solomon opines that “Hillary Clinton’s use of her personal email for state work could well derail her campaign.” But in Canada, where public officials routinely use similar tactics to hide their communications from freedom of informations requests, “it’s still the dirty secret of government.” (hat tip: Dale Bass)

• “Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government has made more than two dozen secret cabinet decisions, hiding any trace of them from Parliament and Canadians,” reports iPolitics.

• Maclean’s magazine filed an access request for “how many Syrian and Iraqi refugees have arrived in Canada since January, how many are privately sponsored, and how many came with government assistance.” But that request was denied because it concerned “material available for purchase by the public.” The magazine was also informed the cost of producing a customized report from Citizenship and Immigration Canada’s database would be “$100 for the first 10 minutes or less of access…plus $30 for each additional minute or less of access. (hat tip: Ian Bron)

• The Province reports a protracted federal access request for records about the strangling death of Jeremy Michael Phillips by his cellmate at the Mountain Institution in Agassiz in 2010 “provided little access and not much information.”

• The Canadian Press reports, “The federal department in charge of the monthly universal child care benefit is refusing to say how many families who had yet to sign up for the benefit opted to do so after a nationwide push earlier this year.” According to the wire service, “The decision to not release the numbers appears to be linked to a practice during election campaigns where federal departments decline to put out information lest they be considered to be acting in for or against the electoral interests of any party.”

• A promised federal government database on missing indigenous women is late and the costs for it have doubled, according to CBC News. (hat tip: Ian Bron)

• In a column opining on the importance of democratic values — and the fact a “couple of key ones are mostly talk” in Canada — The Ottawa Citizen’s Shannon Gormley writes, “There’s a distant but distinct possibility, as I’ve argued before, that media outlets unfairly excluded from asking questions could theoretically start a charter challenge to protect the public’s right to know.”

• Embassy News managing editor Carl Meyer tweets that he filed an access request for any reports related to “technical and operational assistance” provided by the Communications Security Establishment Canada to “law enforcement and security agencies.” But the intelligence service has denied that request in its entirety because the disclosure of those reports would be harmful to the country’s national defence.

• The Toronto Star’s Alex Boutilier tweets that Canada’s top bureaucrat and cabinet secretaries met on Jan. 21 but “you can’t know a single thing about it.”

•  CBC News’s Dean Beeby tweets that the federal government has blacked out the results of 17 polls on oil that were requested under the Access to Information Act.

• Beeby also tweets that a seven-page Q&A document prepared for Finance Minister Joe Oliver on voluntary contributions to the Canada Pension Plan was also blacked out.

SQUIBS (PROVINCIAL)

• The Daily Gleaner editorializes against increasing fees for information requests in New Brunswick, writing that “all levels of government should focus on the process itself. For starters, how they can make it more efficient. Whether it’s checking out groceries or paying bills at a terminal instead of through a person, people are being asked more and more to do some tasks themselves. Governments need to find out how much of the information people want can be placed online and have them find it.”

• The Daily Gleaner isn’t alone in its opposition to increasing information request fees. CBC News reports the province’s information commissioner has questioned the logic of that proposal, along with a recommendation to give bureaucrats the power to disregard frivolous or vexatious request.

• Former Times & Transcript editorial page editor Norbert Cunningham advances his own recommendations for freedom of information reform in New Brunswick. Among them: have government explicitly acknowledge one of the fundamental tenants of democracy theory — “with few exceptions, the public has a right to know what its government is doing on its behalf. Create and practice a culture of openness among politicians and bureaucracy. This must be the default approach. Compared to the United States, Canada has a political and bureaucratic culture of secrecy, often the default position for no good reason.”

• “The co-founder of a national anti-bullying charity says he’s disappointed with the response he’s received to an information request filed in relation to the work of a [New Brunswick] ministerial committee he was supposed to be part of,” reports the Bugle-Observer. “After five months of waiting, Rob Frenette of Bullying Canada said he received a response to a Right to Information request he made on April 20, seeking notes, emails, memos, briefing notes, letters and reports related to the work of the Ministerial Advisory Committee on Positive Learning and Working Environments.” But “most documents drafted by the committee were withheld, as they fell under the umbrella of opinions, advice, proposals, and recommendations developed for the department or the minister.”

• The Centre for Law and Democracy has called the Quebec’s government proposed records access reforms “only a start.” As a result, it has prepared a submission outlining the “further changes it believes are necessary to bring [the province’s] right to information law more fully into line with international standards in this area.”

• Former British Columbia attorney general Geoff Plant, who introduced the province’s first lobbying legislation in 2001, writes in the Globe and Mail that the law is “increasingly being undermined by a misdirected focus on trivial violations of filing requirements.” (hat tip: Ian Bron)

• The Federal Court has ruled against the Peace Valley Landowner Association’s request for a judicial review of the government’s approval of the Site C dam in British Columbia. The Alaska Highway News reports the court found that decision was “justified — even though the government chose not to reveal its reasoning behind the decision to the courts.”

SQUIBS (LOCAL)

• “The Ottawa Police Service is going to great lengths to keep secret a publicly funded consultants’ report into a controversial officer transfer policy that the force scrapped months ago after backlash from its own officers,” reports the Ottawa Citizen.

• The Georgia Straight reports the B.C. Supreme Court has ruled in favour of the police complaint commissioner’s refusal to “disclose documents regarding his oversight of a Vancouver police officer’s fatal shooting of animator Paul Boyd.” (hat tip: Ian Bron)

• The Macleod Gazette reports a Fort Macleod, Alta man will “have to file an official request to find out how much the Town of Fort Macleod paid its former chief administrative officer when David Connauton was fired.”

• The Toronto Community Housing Corporation has “opted to meet in privacy Thursday for their first meeting since the end of July,” reports the Toronto Sun’s Sue-Ann Levy. That decision was made despite an interim report from the Mayor’s Task Force on Community Housing that recommended the corporation’s staff need to be “respectful and courteous” to tenants, as well as listen to and communicate with them.

• Prince George, B.C.’s city council will be discussing “implementing a new process to release information from incamera [sic] sessions.” According to the northern community’s daily newspaper, “One method would be to have staff develop a policy like Vancouver or Nanaimo, who have developed policies around proactively releasing info online on a quarterly or semi-annual basis. Council could use another method where individual staff reports would identify what information in said reports was subject to closed meeting criteria and how or if it could be released. Or the city could keep the status quo, with releasing information on a case-by-case basis.”

• The Prince George Citizen’s Neil Godbout writes that the city’s councillors are “taking some encouraging steps towards increased transparency.” But Godbout also writes that demands for “unrestricted access to what is being shared at in-camera to what is being shared at in-camera meetings held by government and public sector officials” are “often unrealistic and unfair.”

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