THE WEEK CANADIAN JOURNALISM WAS BETRAYED

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The National Post's front page endorsement of Conservatives Leader Stephen Harper could have troubling consequences for its employees, as well as its bottom line. (Graphic by National Post)

The National Post’s front page endorsement of Conservative Leader Stephen Harper could have troubling consequences for its employees, as well as its bottom line. (Graphic by National Post)

By endorsing the Conservatives for another term in government, some of Canada’s biggest dailies have betrayed both democracy and themselves.

Last week, papers owned by Postmedia Network Inc., the country’s largest English-language daily newspaper publisher, ran editorials with headlines such as “Conservatives are the most prudent choice,” “Let’s keep Harper’s steady hand on the helm” and “No change is best.”

Those papers were joined by the Globe and Mail, which endorsed the Tories but not Stephen Harper – seemingly and improbably suggesting his party colleagues weren’t, at the very least, responsible for enabling their leader’s baser decisions.

In the main, the pith of those newspapers’ contestable argument is that, according the Vancouver Sun, “The Harper government has kept a steady hand on the economic rudder” and, as such, is “best able to maintain a stable and healthy economy.”

Yet at least some of those editorials also affirmed the Conservative’s slide into crypto-despotism.

For example, the Montreal Gazette wrote that the party has “demonstrated high-handed disrespect for Parliament and the democratic process on occasion.” Meanwhile, the Ottawa Citizen was even more fulsome, stating Harper has:

…picked political fights with major pillars of our democratic system – Elections Canada, the judiciary, officers of parliament – for no obvious reason apart from the fact that they appear to stand in his way. Under his watch there were unreasonably high levels of moral and even criminal corruption among some of those closest to him. He has indulged his MPs in their quest to make a mockery of Question Period.

That means, in their endorsements, those papers weren’t just choosing between left and right. They were choosing between democracy and stability. And, in the end, they choose what they see as stability.

In a strange way, it was a very Canadian decision.

Our nation was born in the lukewarm cauldron of colonial deference rather than revolution, with its founding document declaiming the importance of peace, order and good governance.

That secular trinity of stability – which contrasts sharply with the American commitment to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness – is exemplified by our secretive, winner-take-all, Father Knows Best political system and is part of our often unacknowledged political values.

For example, in 2014, 24 percent of Canadian surveyed by AmericasBarometer said it would be justifiable for the prime minister to govern without Parliament if the country was facing very difficult times.

Among the other countries polled in the western hemisphere, only respondents in Haiti, Peru and Paraguay were more supportive of such a coup.

Similarly, just 45 percent of Canadians approve of people participating in legal demonstrations – 10 percentage points lower than respondents in the United States.

Nevertheless, it was still jarring to see newspapers favour a party that has shown such disdain and disregard for democracy because, in its absence, journalism is put in peril.

Without the twin freedoms of expression and information associated with that political system, the power of reporters to challenge the decisions and actions of those they cover is crippled.

Those freedoms have always been less than absolute in Canada – sometimes to serve the public interest and too often to serve the private interests of the powerful.

But the Conservatives, like the Liberals when they were in government, have further attenuated them, something the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders decried in a statement released late last week.

That attenuation deepens Canada’s democratic deficit, and possibly the financial deficits of its already flagging newspapers.

After all, who will pay to read those publications if the journalists who write for them become more and more frustrated in their ability to report on what the government doesn’t want the public to know about?

Yet neither Postmedia nor the Globe and Mail seem to have recognized that four more years of the Conservatives might be bad news for them – regardless of what it would mean for the rest of Canada.

It would be easy to blame the owners and managers of those newspapers for this lack of foresight. But, with a few notable exceptions, too many reporters in this election were just as negligent in covering issues such as government secrecy and accountability.

That collective failure brings into relief the question of how much responsibility journalists and their employers feel they have to protect the freedoms they exercise on behalf of the public. And during this campaign, in newsrooms across the country, the answer, tragically, appears to have been very little.

SQUIBS (FEDERAL)

• University of King’s College journalism professor Fred Vallance-Jones’s latest annual freedom of information audit has been released by Newspapers Canada. That audit “ tells the story not only of Newfoundland and Labrador’s success and Ottawa’s failure, but also of foot-dragging by police forces, and widespread resistance at all levels of government to releasing computer data in formats useful in the digital age.”

• Canadian Journalists for Free Expression has released a report card grading the four major political parties for their stances on critical free expression issues.

• A coalition of 22 civil society groups concerned about the disrepair of Canada’s Access to Information Act has distributed a statement noting “the NDP and Liberal parties have included commitments in their platforms to improve the Act. Unfortunately, the Conservative Party did not see fit to even mention access to information in its platform.”

• CBC News’s Neil Macdonald argues that the federal government is simply prosecuting embarrassment by calling in the RCMP to investigate leaks at Citizenship and Immigration Canada.

• “Four years after he first asked Health Canada for all the information it had on a popular morning sickness drug, Toronto doctor Nav Persaud finally has the documents,” reports the Toronto Star. “But he cannot tell his patients or any other Canadians what’s in them” because of a confidentiality agreement he had to sign with the federal regulator.

• “Thousands of pages of correspondence and briefing notes on the federal government’s anti-terror Bill C-51 are so secret the government won’t disclose its reasons for censoring them,” according to Global News.

• “Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau scolded some of his own supporters Thursday after a journalist’s question on the resignation of his campaign co-chair elicited groans,” reports the Huffington Post.

• “Transport Canada is not releasing the results of its last two inspections of the Ambassador Bridge,” reports CBC News. (hat tip: Ian Bron)

• CBC News takes a look at the back-and-forth debate over cameras in the courts. (hat tip: Ian Bron)

SQUIBS (PROVINCIAL)

• “Despite several high-profile privacy breaches and controversies over the destruction of government documents, MLAs studying changes to B.C.’s Freedom of Information legislation have had to cancel public meetings due to lack of interest in the topic,” reports the Vancouver Sun.

• IntegrityBC executive director Dermod Travis argues that cancellation may have had less to do with a lack of interest and more to do with the fact those meetings were announced during a federal election campaign, on the Friday before the Thanksgiving Day long weekend.

• The Telegraph-Journal opines that the New Brunswick government’s “treatment of a series of independent legislative officers shows a disturbing pattern — a growing cavalier attitude toward these important watchdog roles.” That treatment includes ignoring the province’s information commissioner.

• The Times-Transcript’s Norbert Cunningham writes that the Atcon fiasco demonstrates “why taxpayers should demand far more acountability from provincial governments, They all provide grants, subsidies, and loans in efforts to spur economic development. Have we ever seen a full accounting of outcomes? We hear positive announcements and expectations. Politicians boast when recipients prosper, but run for cover if they fail. We get an overall accounting of spending and losses, but few details.”

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

LATE NDP ANTI-SECRECY PROMISES LEAVE QUESTIONS

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The cover of the NDP's campaign platform promises that party leader Tom Mulcair is "Ready for Ch" But what kind of "Ch" will the Mulcair make to the country's records access law? (Photograph by NDP)

The cover of the NDP’s campaign platform declares that Canada is “Ready for Ch.” But what kind of “Ch” would party leader Tom Mulcair make to one of the country’s most important anti-secrecy laws? (Photograph by NDP)

BETTER LATE THAN NEVER? Last month, the Toronto Star reported the NDP would have more to say on freedom of information reform before Election Day.

Twenty-eight days later (and just ten days before Canadians go to the polls) the party has finally opened its mouth after having spent the past nine years criticizing the Conservative government’s secrecy.

As part of its election platform, the NDP has promised six bullet points worth of fixes to the Access to Information Act — the long-broken law that is supposed to allow the people and the press to obtain unreleased government records but too often doesn’t.

Those proposals, totalling 116 words, match or surpass many of those already advanced by the Liberals.

Both parties promise to eliminate all access to information fees except the $5 cost to file a request.

Both parties promise to give the information commissioner the power to order the release of government records.

And both parties promise to make the administration of Parliament, the prime minister’s office and minister’s offices subject to the Access to Information Act.

The NDP isn’t committing to review the Act every five years or require government data and information to be available in “formats that are modern and easy to use,” as promised in the Liberal platform.

Nor does it make the so far empty promise of making government information “open by default” — which, according to commissioner Suzanne Legault, is the way that law is already written.

But, unlike the Liberals, the NDP would require public officials to document their action and decisions.

It would make claims of cabinet confidentiality subject to review by the commissioner.

And it would give access to information users a means of forcing the government to release information that’s in the “public interest.”

That appears encouraging.

But the effectiveness of that mechanism will depend on how the NDP defines the “public interest.”

After all, the public interest override in British Columbia’s freedom of information law is so narrowly defined that it’s been almost useless.

Similarly, the NDP has promised to “start implementing the Commissioner’s recommendations to strengthen and modernize the Act.”

But does that mean all of those recommendations, including proposed reforms 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?

I’ve emailed Mulcair’s press secretary George Smith asking for answers to those questions with a deadline of Wednesday.

I’ll let you know if I get an answer.

OPEN AND SHUT The NDP’s proposed Access to Information Act reforms are part of the party’s  commitment to lead a “transparent government” that’s more open and accountable than the Harper administration. But some of the party’s dealings with journalists during the election campaign could give cause to doubt that claim.

On Saturday, the Globe and Mail published a 8,927-word profile of Tom Mulcair after “all efforts” to interview him over a two-month period failed. According to the newspaper:

E-mail and in-person requests made to various people, from the chief press officer and chief of staff to the press secretary and campaign manager, led nowhere. Eventually, our inquiries were sent down the chain of command, and landed with a junior press officer, who did not return calls. Ten weeks after our initial request, and shortly before going to press, The Globe and Mail was offered a telephone interview – an offer we declined due to the imminent publication date. That prompted a senior aide to say that a face-to-face interview could be arranged; this request was rejected for the same reason.

That wouldn’t be so troubling if Mulcair hadn’t also refused to take questions during his campaign launch, with the Toronto Star noting he was the only leader not to do so:

Conservative Leader Stephen Harper, notorious for how rare he is available to media, took five questions from reporters outside Rideau Hall Sunday morning. Those questions had conditions, though: the questions were restricted to those media outlets that have agreed to go on tour with the Conservatives, at a cost of $12,500 a week. Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau, who launched his campaign in Vancouver several hours after the other two, was prepared to answer more questions than the seven reporters there had for him.

This could just be incompetence on the part of Mulcair’s campaign staff. Goodness knows there’s enough reason to believe that. But it could also be a sign that a NDP government would only be open and accountable on its own terms.

TOTALLY TRANSPARENT National Newswatch’s Don Lenihan continued overstating the Liberal’s government transparency platform plank last week, writing that party leader Justin Trudeau “has a long list of Open Government reforms.” For the record, that list is comprised of five bullet points and totals 128 words.

BY THE NUMBERS Last week, I noted that reporters are estimated to have filed over ten times more freedom of information requests with British Columbia government ministries per 100,000 people living in that province than they did in Alberta. But how does the rest of the provinces outside Quebec stack up? Well, only four other provinces track the data needed to make that comparison. Nevertheless, the numbers we do have make for interesting reading:

Ontario (calendar 2012)

215 media requests

1.9 percent of all requests

1.6 requests per 100,000

Alberta (fiscal 2012/13)

110 media requests

4.6 percent of all requests

2.8 requests per 100,000

Nova Scotia (fiscal 2012/13)

73 media requests

4.7 percent of all requests

7.7 requests per 100,000

Manitoba (calendar 2012)

146 media requests

8.7 percent of all requests

11.7 requests per 100,000

Newfoundland and Labrador (fiscal 2012/13)

73 media requests

25.6 percent of all requests

13.9 requests per 100,000

British Columbia (fiscal 2012/13)

1,356 requests

28.1 percent of all requests

29.9 requests per 100,000

RIGHTS BUT NO RESPONSIBILITIES? In Canada, journalists exercise our right to information, as well as our freedom of expression, in their own interest, as well as the public interest.

But to what extent do journalists have a responsibility to protect those rights and freedoms?

And, if journalists don’t feel such a responsibility or don’t feel able to act on that responsibility, why is that and how is that affecting the decline of journalism and the ascendancy of spin in this country?

Those are just some of the questions I’ve been asking myself after the news media provided little or no coverage of an effort to make freedom of information an election issue, as well as the 20th anniversary of Alberta’s broken records access law.

I’ll be ruminating more about this in the future. But, in the meantime, I invite you to share your own perspectives by emailing me at this address.

SQUIBS (FEDERAL)

• The Hill Times reports the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development has called in the RCMP to conduct an investigation into the leak of an internal briefing document warning senior federal government insiders that Canada’s clout in the international community is diminishing.

• Meanwhile, according to CBC News, the Mounties are also looking into the leak of internal documents showing the Prime Minister’s Office directed officials to “stop processing a preliminary group of Syrian refugees, pending an audit of their cases.”

• The Tyee reports Conservative Leader Stephen Harper “met privately with select media outlets at the Red Truck Beer Company in East Vancouver this morning.” A source told the online magazine that “those invited were asked to submit three questions days ahead of time [and] then told which ones they could ask the Prime Minister.”

SQUIBS (PROVINCIAL)

• The Telegraph reports Newfoundland and Labrador’s information commissioner has ordered the “release most of a controversial, secret report into sexual exploitation in the province.” According to the newspaper, the government has “argued that the report was based on interviews with sex workers and vulnerable individuals who could be put in danger if it was released publicly.”

• New Brunswick’s public safety minister has, according to the Telegraph-Journal, “shut down a right-to-information request seeking details around the death of man at the Saint John Regional Hospital last month, citing an ongoing coroner’s investigation.”

• The Telegraph-Journal reports New Brunswick’s Horizon Health Network is “refusing to release two reports about how to improve hospital security and patient safety after the death of Serena Perry,” a 22-year-old patient who was staying in Saint John Regional Hospital’s psychiatric unit on the nigh of Valentine’s Day 2012.

• The Globe and Mail reports, “Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne agreed to bar the media from three events with a high-ranking Chinese official at the request of the Communist Party.” (hat tip: IntegrityBC)

• The Times-Transcript opines that New Brunswick’s “access to information and protection of privacy regulations appear to have worked well in the case of a Moncton daycare inspection report, in that the public’s right to know has been upheld in a way that also protects an individual worker at the daycare in question.”

• An all-party legislative committee is reviewing British Columbia’s freedom of information law, with submissions being due on Jan. 29, 2016. (hat tip: Dale Bass)

• SooToday.com reports the Ontario government “fought beak and claw” to prevent the release of information about wood turtles in the vicinity of the Bow Lake Wind Farm.

• Freelancer Bob Mackin tweets the British Columbia government “wants to charge $3K to show info about its propaganda website redesign.”

SQUIBS (LOCAL)

• Metro Ottawa’s Steve Rennie tweets that the Ottawa Police Service wants him to pay $6,300 for a freedom of information request.

• The Vancouver Sun’s Daphne Bramham reports an online poll of 611 Metro Vancouver adults was asked to rank the University of British Columbia’s assets. According to the poll, “transparency was dead last, with 32 per cent saying it was ‘not very’ or ‘not at all’ representative of UBC.” (hat tip: IntegrityBC)

• UBC Insiders reports University of British Columbia board members are likely using private email addresses to conduct their business. (hat tip: Katja Thieme)

• According to the New Westminster Record, British Columbia’s Douglas College has “declined to answer questions about the departure of its former president or why the institution continued to pay him $14,000 a month after he left suddenly last year.”

• A freedom of information request filed by the Collingwood Connection for the Town of Collingwood, Ont.’s Elvis festival contract has been denied.

• The Richmond News quotes the City of Richmond, B.C.’s planning policy manager Terry Crowe as saying the switch from the mandatory long-form census to the National Household Survey means, “You’re starting from scratch so it’s difficult to get a sense of the trends.”

• The Region of Peel, Ont. is debating creating a lobbyist registry, reports the Calendon Enterprise. But, according to the newspaper, the “hiccup is not knowing what a lobbyist is.”

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

FEW CELEBRATE ALBERTA ACCESS LAW ANNIVERSARY

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Reporters were among those who failed to observe 20 years of freedom of information in Alberta. (Graphic by Shutterstock.com)

Reporters were among those who failed to observe 20 years of freedom of information in Alberta. (Graphic by Shutterstock.com)

It was the 20th anniversary of Alberta’s freedom of information law last week. But there were few Albertans who observed that anniversary, even among reporters who should be – but too often aren’t – using that law in the public interest.

Alberta tabled its records access legislation in 1994, 14 years after the same thing happened in Canada’s Parliament and 29 years after the American Freedom of Information Act was introduced in the United States Senate.

That made the province the second to last jurisdiction on the continent to give its citizens a legal means of requesting unreleased government records. Yet Alberta replicated and reinforced the flaws in Canada’s other access laws.

Like those other laws, the province’s Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act restricts or denies access to records that would reveal internal discussions, debates or divisions over government decisions.

Moreover, the regulations accompanying that legislation made Alberta the most expensive province to file freedom of information requests, turning something that should be a right into a privilege.

It also allows public bodies to refuse access to the meeting minutes and agendas of their governing councils. And it was later amended to deny access to ministerial briefing notes and binders.

Indeed, according to Halifax-based Centre for Law and Democracy, Albert’s access law features an “enormous amount of wiggle room for recalcitrant public officials who would seek to avoid disclosure of embarrassing information”

That explains why the Edmonton Journal’s Linda Goyette once described that law as being an “oxymoron in action,” with her colleague Graham Thompson joking that FOIP stands for “Fuck Off, It’s Private.”

It also explains why Alberta, along with New Brunswick and the federal government, has been ranked as having the worst freedom of information law in the country.

And it explains why Newspapers Canada recently awarded the province failing grades in the timeliness and completeness of the records it releases.

Nevertheless, Alberta’s access law has still helped journalists tell stories the government would have otherwise suppressed, the very definition of news, according to 19th century British newspaper baron Alfred Harmsworth.

For example, in 2013, the Edmonton Journal’s Karen Kleiss and the Calgary Herald’s Darcy Henton used freedom of information requests to prove the ministry of human services had “dramatically under-reported the number of child welfare deaths over the past decade, undermining public accountability and thwarting efforts at prevention and reform.”

Then, a year later, CBC News’s Charles Rusnell and Jennie Russell used freedom of information requests to help uncover the “personal and political use of public resources” by former premier Allison Redford.

The 20th anniversary of Alberta’s access law coming into force, which took place this past Thursday, was a chance to comment on those successes, as well as the legislation’s failings.

The province’s information commissioner Jill Clayton even organized Right to Know Week forums in Calgary and Edmonton where that could happen.

Yet it was the bureaucrats responsible for processing the province’s freedom of information requests who seemed to make up the majority of the audience.

For example, in Edmonton, a show of hands revealed there were just three members of the public in attendance, as well as four reporters: frequent freedom of information request filers Rusnell and Russell, as well as the Globe and Mail’s Justin Giovannetti and the BBC’s Matt Danzico.

That’s both maddening and saddening when you consider the Edmonton Journal’s downtown headquarters is just a 13-minute walk away from the Federal Building, where that forum took place.*

Nor, according to the Canadian Newsstand and Google News, did the Journal, or any other newspaper in the province, print a word about the anniversary of Alberta’s freedom of information law.

Yet, that might not be surprising when you consider how little reporters use that legislation.

For example, in fiscal 2012/13, the media is estimated to have been responsible for just 110 access requests to provincial government ministries.

That represents 4.6 percent of the total or 2.8 requests per 100,000 people in this province.

By comparison, the media filed 29.9 requests per 100,000 people in British Columbia – over ten times more.

Alberta’s $25 freedom of information application fee, as well as the time-and-cash-strapped condition of its news outlets, may be part of the reason for those numbers.

But if it were the whole reason, wouldn’t you expect more op-eds and editorials demanding the repair of the province’s broken access system?

Wouldn’t you have expected reporters to write and talk about that disrepair during the recent Alberta election, where one of the most important issues was government accountability?

After all, it was in their private interest, as well as the public interest, to have done so.

Of course, Alberta’s reporters aren’t alone in being an inconstant friend to freedom of information.

According to Canadian Newsstand and Google News, the only newspapers to mention Canada’s Right to Know Week were the Chronicle Herald, the Coast, the Provost News, the Telegram and the Winnipeg Sun.

The Provost News and the Chronicle-Herald, along with the Medicine Hat News, were also the only newspapers to write about an effort by 22 civil society groups to convince political party leaders to commit to four key reforms to the federal Access to Information Act.*

My colleagues may look askance at me for writing this column. Such is the sensitivity of too many reporters in this country.

But this country, compared with the United States, has precious few resources for reporters who want to be more than heralds for the privileged and the powerful.

Freedom of information laws, however flawed they are, are one of those resources.

But unless reporters use and advocate for that legislation, those flaws will continue to deepen until the laws themselves fracture, leaving nothing left to celebrate.

* = Disclosure: I was an invited speaker at the Right to Know Week forums in Calgary and Edmonton. I’m also 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 organized the meeting where those reforms were drafted.

SQUIBS (FEDERAL)

• The Coast, Halifax’s alternative newspapers, says it best: “Canada really sucks at access to information.” (hat tip: Dean Beeby)

• Vice News reports on a leaked email showing “Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs is miffed its employees are leaking classified internal documents to the media and wants them to stop.”

• Freelancer Bob Mackin reports lawyer Amelia Salehabadi Fouques, a director on the board of the Canadian Soccer Association, believes the organization needs to take drastic action to make it a leader in transparency.

• The National Observer reports, “A potentially explosive parliamentary investigation into the Harper government’s so-called ‘muzzling’ of government scientists shows no signs of being released before the federal election on Oct.19, despite Canada’s Information Commissioner digging into it for more than two and a half years.”

• According to the Canadian Press, NDP Leader Tom Mulcair, while visiting Nunavut, announced, “A New Democrat government would create a new parliamentary office to provide solid scientific advice and analysis to politicians, and would encourage scientists to speak their minds.”

• The Edmonton Journal reports a group of University of Alberta scientists have joined the Canadian Association of University Teachers in calling for a “new direction in science police and an end to [the] muzzling of federal scientists.”

SQUIBS (PROVINCIAL)

• New Brunswick’s public safety department is refusing to give the Telegraph-Journal details about the deaths of the 11 people who died in provincial custody since 2004. A department spokesperson told the newspaper in July that those details were being kept secret “out of respect for the deceased and the families.” But the government is now promising to review that policy.

• The Telegraph-Journal’s Karissa Donkin filed a freedom of information request for records related to her fight to obtain New Brunswick’s daycare inspection reports. The response was less than illuminating.

• The Chronicle Herald reports Nova Scotia’s chief information access and privacy officer believes the province’s freedom of information legislation “serves members of the public quite well.” But columnist Paul Schneidereit reports on the repeated complaints about that legislation, as well as the government’s refusal to keep a commitment to fix the law.

• “The Ontario government funnelled at least $2.1-million in taxpayers’ money over the past two years to Liberal-connected consultants and advertising agencies,” reports the Globe and Mail. “The funds came from the caucus services budget, a pool of money subject to minimal disclosure rules.”

• “The Federation of New Brunswick Faculty Associations is taking St. Thomas University to court over the universities refusal to release details of severance agreements of three administrators between 2012 and 2013,” according to the Aquinian.

• The Winnipeg Sun reports Saskatchewan Finance Minister Greg Dewar has announced “the public will now have greater access to information related to government contract [sic] with the creation of a database that includes monthly summaries of purchase orders and outline agreements worth $10,000 or more. Details will include the name of the vendor, the purpose of the contract, the value, the duration of the contract, and significant contract amendments.”

• Newfoundland and Labrador has released a draft open government plan. That plan promises to “streamline and enhance the access to information process,” as well as “expand the amount of publicly available government information.”

• Public servant Bonnie Nelson has been awarded the 2015 Robert C. Clark Award which “recognizes a significant contribution to advancing access to information in Alberta.” According to the office of Alberta’s information commissioner, Nelson “successfully implementing the first routine disclosure program for Alberta Environment, which helped pave the way for other open data initiatives in the province.”

SQUIBS (LOCAL)

• Former Vancouver Non-Partisan Association council candidate Mike Klassen encourages whoever becomes the city’s new manager to make it a “model of openness and ask staff how you can exceed standards for access to information.”

• The City of Winnipeg has announced “public information released by the City through Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA) applications, along with additional proactively disclosed civic government documents, will be published online and accessible to everyone.” (hat tip: Ian Bron)

• “Coun. Richard Carpenter is filing a complaint of an improper closed meeting against the City of Brantford for a budget task force meeting,” reports the Brant News.

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

THE MOST UNWANTED RIGHT IN ALBERTA?

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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

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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

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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

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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.

LATEST TWEETS ON FREEDOM OF INFORMATION IN CANADA

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I’ll be taking a break from column writing for the next few weeks. But follow me on Twitter, where I’ll continue bringing you the latest news and views about secrecy and openness in Canada.

Update: After a longer than anticipated hiatus, I’ll be resuming regular publication of the Unknowable Country on September 7. So be sure not to miss any of my forthcoming coverage by becoming an email subscriber to this Website. Sign up by typing your email address into the box on the right.

A TRANSITORY PROBLEM?

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How many of these files will be saved and how many will be deleted? (Photograph by Shutterstock.com)

How many of these files will be saved and how many will be deleted? (Photograph by Shutterstock.com)

Freedom of information should give the people the power to know what decisions their governments are making, as well as how and why those decisions are being made. But Canada’s records access laws often curtail the public’s right to those hows and whys – a restriction that has been broadened in British Columbia, thanks to the use and alleged abuse of the province’s document destruction legislation.

The absence of that access is often difficult to appreciate amidst the volume of information routinely released to the public. For example, so far this year, the federal government has published 4,447 news releases and at least 708 other records.

But that’s usually information the government has chosen to make public – stuff it wants us to know about.

By contrast, freedom of information laws should allow access to information government doesn’t want us to know about.

Yet those laws, as they’ve been written in this country, often keep government policy advice secret – with the same privilege being afforded to cabinet and caucus meeting records. It’s these records that could best help Canadians understand the decisions made by their elected representatives.

To make British Columbia’s records access law even more impotent, provincial employees also delete information they define as “transitory” but others might not.

Consider this: on Feb. 26, cabinet minister Andrew Wilkinson appeared on a radio show to respond to criticisms that government communications officers have been frustrating media access to public servants.

A day later, I filed a freedom of information request for:

Any and all records, emails and communications materials Q&As, briefing notes, etc. connected to Andrew Wilkinson’s February 26, 2015 appearance on CBC Kelowna and preparations for that appearance…

In response, I received just nine pages of information which included media clippings, a four-page issue note and an email requesting the preparation of that document.

The note also included a list of public servants from several ministries who had spoken to the reporters in the past. So right then and there, I knew Wilkinson’s staff would had to have been in communication with those ministries to assemble that list.

The issue note would also have gone through an often extensive approval process before it was finalized. Those approvals, along with the communications to other ministries, may have included information that wasn’t in the issue note, helping further explain the whys and hows of its making.

Rodney Porter, the communications director for Wilkinson’s ministry, assured me that’s not the case. But I can’t make that determination for myself because the approvals, as well as any communications with other ministries, were deleted.

“As you know yourself, there would have been back-and-forth like, ‘What are you looking for? Why are you looking for this?’ And then, at the end of the day, what we keep is the final. Everyone’s happy with it. Send it to the minister’s office and that’s what you got.”

Everything else was wiped because, according to Porter, there was “no need” for that back-and-forth to “be kept as permanent records.”

Indeed, under the Document Disposal Act, government employees are allowed to delete transitory records but the definition of what constitutes such a record can seem ambiguous.

On one hand, for example, employees are advised they can trash “drafts and revisions that are not needed to document decisions and associated approvals,” as well as “routine correspondence about drafts and decisions.”

On the other hand, they are advised they have to save “drafts or revisions with information about a decision or associated approvals that is unavailable elsewhere (e.g., directions to change a proposal and recommend a different course of action).”

They are also advised to save “useful information that helps explain the history of a relationship, decision or project” – as well as “any transitory records that are relevant to a FOIPPA request.”

However, the interpretation of that advice is left with the employees themselves, which is more than a little like letting a half-starved fox guard a henhouse of well-fed chickens – especially given last week’s passage of legislation that eliminates penalties for improperly destroying documents.

And, if Tim Duncan – a former executive assistant to the province’s transportation minister – is to be believed, the government’s political staff have been abusing that liberty.

Speaking with the Times Colonist last week, Duncan said the “big joke” around the legislature was, “Well, everything’s transitory for us. So, we keep nothing.”

Moreover, when Duncan expressed concern about such practices to a superior, he was allegedly told, “It’s like in the [TV show] West Wing. You do whatever it takes to win.”

But secrecy, as the late United States senator and sociologist Daniel Patrick Moynihan once wrote, is actually for losers.

It means our governments believe their decision-making is so suspect that it can’t withstand opposition, press or public scrutiny.

That’s the way our freedom of information laws were written.

That’s the way they’ve been repeatedly abused.

And that’s why the public right’s to know continues to be more honoured in the breach than the observance.

SQUIBS (FEDERAL)

• The Times Colonist’s Jack Knox asks, “How goofy has the control-freak chokehold on the flow of information become in Ottawa? So goofy that placing a simple meeting notice in a community newspaper became a months-long process requiring the stamp of approval of the prime minister’s office.”

• The Globe and Mail reports, “The Canadian government is refusing to make public the assessments it conducts to determine whether Ottawa’s $15-billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia is compatible with foreign policy or poses a risk to the civilian population in a country notorious for human-rights abuses.” (hat tip: Ian Bron)

• Criticism of the government’s decision to retroactively deny access to long gun registry records continues, with the Law Times calling it an “outrage” and the Chronicle-Herald describing it as an “Orwellian attempt to change history.” (hat tip: Ian Bron)

• According to the Canadian Press, Treasury Board President Tony Clement has dismissed those criticisms saying, “You know, now we’re getting into angels dancing on the head of a pin, which lawyers are very good at and Ms. [Suzanne] Legault is a lawyer.” Legault is Canada’s information commissioner.

• “The federal government is using students and temp workers to bolster overwhelmed access to information offices,” according to the Toronto Star.

• CBC News’s Charles Rusnell tweets the University of Alberta’s upcoming access and privacy conference has “zip for FOIP/ATIP users.”

• OHS Canada quotes Rob Creasser, spokesperson for the Mounted Police Professional Association of Canada, as saying, “We have RCMP members that, literally, are too afraid to tell the Canadian public about their workplace.” Creasser told the magazine criticizing the RCMP is a “career-ending move.”

• Commenting on the muzzling of government scientists, the Chilliwack Progress’s Margaret Evans writes, “Without sound, peer-reviewed science, evidence-based policy decisions for the benefit of Canadians can’t be made. Canadians have a right to know what that science is.”

SQUIBS (PROVINCIAL)

• Tim Duncan, a former executive assistant to British Columbia’s transportation minister Todd Stone, has alleged, “Abuse of the Freedom of Information process is widespread and most likely systemic within the [Christy Clark] government.” That allegation, which was included in a letter sent to the province’s information commissioner, has been covered by the Canadian Press, CKNW, the National Post, the Times Colonist and the Vancouver Sun, among other. It was also the subject of commentary by CBC News’s Jason Proctor, the Georgia Straight’s Charlie Smith, the Times Colonist’s Les Leyne and the Vancouver Sun’s Vaughn Palmer, as well as the North Shore News.

• According to a poll conducted by Insights West Marketing Research Inc., just 15 percent of British Columbians think the province’s governing party has done a good job handling the issue of government accountability. (hat tip: Bob Mackin)

• The Edmonton Journal’s Paula Simons reports the Alberta body that reviews police-involved shootings has investigated nearly a dozen deaths in five months but won’t be releasing the names of any of the victims.

• Alberta Premier Rachel Notley has told reporters she is “concerned” about that policy, having “asked officials within the public service to put together a briefing for us on the issue and bring it back to us.”

• The Edmonton Journal reports Notely has also “asked for a full review of rules that dictate how high-ranking government officials document their work, and how the resulting records are stored and accessed by regular Albertans…She started the most recent review after Alberta access-to-information and public interest commissioners launched a joint investigation into allegations of illegal shredding in the dying days of the Tory dynasty.”

• Speaking of those allegations, the Canadian Press reports Notley believes that shredding may have been justified. The wire service quotes her as saying, “It’s important to understand that there are a lot of circumstances in which shredding is entirely appropriate and, in fact, failing to shred, in and of itself, can breach the legislation.”

• The Canadian Press reports, “The Manitoba government has spent public money conducting opinion polls and focus groups on its Steady Growth, Good Jobs advertising campaign, but the results are being kept secret under the province’s freedom of information law.” (hat tip: Ian Bron)

• The Winnipeg Free Press reports Manitoba Opposition Leader Brian Pallister has “accused Premier Greg Selinger of hiding behind the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act” in refusing to disclose severance payments made to former NDP staff members.

• CBC News reports, “The Manitoba government appears to have financial forecasts that outline when the province might return to a fully balanced budget as required by provincial law, but it is not making them public.”

• Ontario’s information commissioner is calling on the provincial government to “immediately” implement the recommendation of the Open Government Engagement Team’s Open By Default report.

SQUIBS (LOCAL)

• Freelancer Bob Mackin reports the media relations department for Vancouver’s regional transportation authority told him to file freedom of information requests to get a response to “easy-to-answer” questions about its “consultants and the values of their contracts.” Mackin also discloses records showing a communications consultant telling an authority staffer not to return his messages.

• The Toronto Sun’s Sue-Ann Levy writes, “I attended last Thursday evening’s [Toronto Community Housing] building investment, finance and audit committee hoping to get a copy of TCHC’s 2014 audited financial statement.” But Levy’s hopes were dashed.

• The Winnipeg Free Press reports, “Winnipeg city hall is moving ahead with plans to establish a lobbyists registry. Council unanimously supported a plan to instruct the administration to prepare a report outlining the required legislative amendments that would need to be made to the City of Winnipeg Charter Act.”

• The Frontenac Gazette reports Frontenac County, Ont. councillors and staff seem to have a lot of questions about the province’s new public sector accountability and transparency legislation. The newspaper quotes chief administrative officer Kelly Pender as saying, “Records management is now mandatory. I’m not sure what that means but you’ll have to keep records of emails.”

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

Author’s note: Publication of this column was delayed due to illness. Its regular publication will resume next week.

HARPER TRIES TO TAMPER WITH THE PAST

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The BC Freedom of Information and Privacy Association takes a satirical shot at the Harper government. (Graphic by BC Freedom of Information and Privacy Association)

The BC Freedom of Information and Privacy Association takes a satirical shot at the Harper government. (Graphic by BC Freedom of Information and Privacy Association)

Last week, much ink continued to be spilled about the Harper administration’s plan to retroactively deny access to long gun registry records and its muzzling of federal scientists. But those were just two of many freedom of information stories that made headlines and twitter posts in Canada.

SQUIBS (FEDERAL)

• In response to federal government legislation that would retroactively deny access to long gun registry records, the BC Freedom of Information and Privacy Association has released a satirical Back to the Future movie poster criticizing Stephen Harper for creating the “greatest Parliamentary time machine ever built.” The RCMP had earlier deleted many of those records, despite a pending request for them. The government’s proposed law would make that deletion legal.

• The Globe and Mail’s Tabatha Southey takes a similar sarcastic approaching in commenting on the proposal.

• Meanwhile, the Winnipeg Free Press writes, “As usual, the Tories will be counting on their belief Canadians are more interested in pocket-book issues than matters of democracy and due process.”

• And, for its part, the Toronto Star states, “The Conservatives have just declared open season on rewriting history, by saying ‘Presto! Your right to lawful access never really existed!’ That can only embolden future governments to retroactively rewrite laws to erase their own wrongdoing. Playing by the new Tory rules the Liberals could have absolved themselves of wrongdoing in the sponsorship scandal. Or a government could absolve itself of electoral fraud.”

• However, according to the Canadian Press, legal and parliamentary experts say there’s “nothing to stop the Harper government” from doing such rewriting – even as Ontario Provincial Police investigate the RCMP’s deletion of long gun registry records. (hat tip: BC Freedom of Information and Privacy Association)

• The Rebel’s Brian Lilley criticizes the media’s “selected outrage” over the government’s move to amend its records access law. Liley notes such outrage wasn’t present when the CBC was “flouting” that legislation nor when the Ontario government exempted information about abortion from being requested in that province.

• Recently retired Fisheries and Oceans Canada biologist Steve Campana has told CBC News the “muzzling of federal government scientists is worse than anyone can imagine.” According to Campana, “We have very strict directives of what we can say and the approval steps we have to go through, and very often that approval seems to be withheld for totally arbitrary reasons.”

• Canada’s three largest unions organized demonstrations last week protesting the muzzling of government scientists. Evidence for Democracy has put together a roundup of the resulting coverage and commentary. The unions are also looking to add language their collective agreements that would allow those scientists to publicly discuss their findings.

• “Stephen Harper skipped out on answering opposition questions in the House of Commons more often in 2015 than in any other year he has been prime minister,” according to the Ottawa Citizen. “Harper has attended only 35 per cent of the daily question periods in 2015, his lowest rate for any year since 2006, a Citizen analysis found.”

• “Canada Post is refusing to disclose any information related to complaints about mail delivery last year or the end of door-to-door home delivery,” according to the Toronto Star.

• The Globe and Mail reports that, even though many diplomatic missions produce annual reports evaluating the state of human rights for most countries, no such records appear to exist for the Saudi Arabia. That omission is notable because Canada recently signed a $15-billion arms deal with the Middle Eastern country. (hat tip: Dean Beeby)

• “The federal Public Works department kept documents secret about an Ottawa building where concerns have been raised about employees being exposed to asbestos,” reports the Ottawa Citizen’s Jordan Press. Press later added on Twitter that the department “took issue” with that story.

• Suspended Senator Mike Duffy’s defence lawyers, Donald Bayne and Peter Doody, “want a copy of an internal report from 2013 on the Senate’s rules for figuring out whether senators actually live in the provinces they represent. They also want minutes from a closed-door meeting discussing what it found,” according to the Ottawa Citizen. But the “Senate is refusing to honour a subpoena asking for all that stuff” because, according to a court filing, it would imperil the institutions’s “freedom of speech, exclusive cognizance and control over debates and proceedings, control by the Houses of Parliament over their internal affairs, and disciplinary authority over its members.”

• The Ryerson Journalism Research Centre recaps some of the discussions that took place at the recent Flying Blind conference in Toronto, which examined the increasing lack of transparency in Canada.

SQUIBS (PROVINCIAL)

• CBC News asked the Yukon government for a “list of people, job titles and salaries, where salaries were more than $100,000” – information that is routinely released in many other Canadian jurisdictions. But, according to the broadcaster, “the Public Service Commission would not release specific salaries, names or even titles with specific salaries.” The president of the union representing those employees says such as sunshine list would be a “complete invasion of privacy,” while the province’s acting deputy minister of finance says it could pose a “real security risk” to civil servants. (hat tip: John Thompson)

• The Times Colonist’s Les Leyne reports that, thanks to a six-month backlog of complaints waiting to be investigated, British Columbia’s information commissioner will be exercising her legal discretion to turn down cases. (hat tip: BC Freedom of Information and Privacy Association)

• The Right to Know Coalition of Nova Scotia is expressing concern about recent amendments to Nova Scotia’s Fisheries and Coastal Resources Act. The amendments make “information on the health of farmed fish even less available by exempting veterinary records from the ambit of Nova Scotia’s access to information laws.”

• “Premier Kathleen Wynne insists she and her aides are not trying to suppress a controversial new behind-the-scenes documentary about her,” reports the Toronto Star. “As first disclosed by the Star, TVOntario has cancelled plans to broadcast Premier: The Unscripted Kathleen Wynne after the film’s director quit in protest.”

*• The Calgary Herald criticizes the Alberta government for taking almost three years (and counting) to release the expenses of Calgary Health Region chief executive Jack Davis.

• The Telegraph-Journal reports New Brunswick’s education and early childhood development departments “won’t disclose any details about a daycare that had a worker on staff last year who failed a criminal and social background check” for legal and privacy reasons.

• Commenting on the alleged improper shredding of documents by Alberta government ministries, the Mountaineer’s Bernadine Visotto writes that such actions reflect the outgoing Tory government’s “way of doing things.”

SQUIBS (LOCAL)

• Sudbury, Ont.’s Bob Daigle has “scored a major victory in a long-standing battle with city hall.” The Sudbury Star reports the province’s division court has ruled in favour of his five-year-old request for the “salaries, leaves of absence, severance, vacation, pension benefits and other benefits” of senior city employees.

• Brampton, Ont. councillors “voted unanimously on a motion Wednesday to have all closed municipal meetings electronically recorded and kept on file,” reports the Brampton Guardian.

• Grey County, Ont. is “joining many of its major municipal peers across the country by creating opportunities for anyone to dive into government-created data through an Open Data portal,” reports the Meaford Express.

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