Like any reporter should, I cringe at anonymous sources. In many cases, I worry it's lazy journalism that allows people to take swipes at rivals with no consequences or manipulate a story in secret. Anonymous sources also make it hard for readers to judge someone's credibility and motivation for speaking to the media. It's up to the reporter to ask "why is this person really talking to me? Is there a reason that undermines the information they're offering?" In the race to be first with a good story, we may not always ask that enough. I've tried, in recent years, to avoid using anonymous sources, especially in political stories. In fact, when Shelly Glover was named Manitoba's federal minister, Bruce Owen and I made a little deal with each other to only quote people on the record for a short profile we were assigned. (The result was kind of a boring story, unfortunately, which also illustrates why unnamed sources can be hard to resist.) But what should reporters do when people who know the most about a complex and troubled system are barred from speaking publicly? That's the case with child welfare, a system always under scrutiny, again since the death of Tina Fontaine.  In the years since Phoenix Sinclair's murder, I've talked to probably two dozen child welfare workers - some for hours, some for a few minutes, some over and over, all off the record. I don't think I've ever quoted one by name. When they're hired, child welfare workers sign gag orders barring them from speaking about their work. They say they would face discipline or termination if they spoke to a reporter, and their union agrees. They often give me information I can use to question the province or child welfare agencies, but sometimes I resort to the familiar "sources said." This blanket gag order protects the agencies, the authorities, the government and even First Nations chiefs who have some degree of control over child welfare services. I can't see how it protects children. I can understand barring CFS workers from revealing private, deeply personal information about kids and families in care. In my experience, CFS staff are incredibly careful not to do that. I once had a long and detailed conversation with a social worker from a northern agency who referred in passing to a death review done on a child she'd had contact with. I asked her which child, figuring I'd recognize the name. She would not tell me anything - not the gender, age, where the kid lived, whether we'd written about him or her before. She got mad that I even asked. Privacy, I get. What I don't get is why child welfare staff can't talk about the system - staffing levels, funding, programs, political interference, corruption, their own safety. Given the problems we've seen for a decade in child welfare, and the huge cost both in money and misery, there is a public interest in hearing from the people who know the system intimately and who might help us fix it.  Today, I did a story quoting two anonymous support workers who staff group homes. They raised fears about the quality of service provided by Complete Care, a for-profit firm that backfills group homes. I got two more phone calls this morning from group home staff who echoed all the same fears, which assuaged some of my anxiety about building a story around nameless people. The value in reporting their detailed experiences, especially in light of mounting evidence about Tina Fontaine's last days, outweighed my qualms about quoting them anonymously. They had credible, valuable, interesting first-hand information we couldn't get quickly any other way.  By the same token, social workers often feel, quite legitimately, that we pick on them, that they are blamed when things go wrong. Off-the-record conversations have been invaluable to me in mitigating some of that, in helping me understand the pressures, the case loads, the profound damage done to kids that no one worker can fix. On-the-record conversations with a face attached would help me explain that to the public. If real people were allowed to come forward, it might spur the kind of change we need in child welfare. It might prompt public support for the cash to invest, for example, in skilled shelter workers who are paid a decent enough wage to stay for a while, instead of contracting kids out to a temp firm.

It's been a season of fun nominations and tonight could be the mack daddy. New Democrats will gather at Club Regent for what's already been a fairly petty battle for the party's nod in the federal riding of Elmwood-Transcona.

That's the riding held for decades by NDP elder statesman Bill Blaikie. The party lost it, embarrassingly, to Lawrence Toet's Tories in 2011 and hopes to recapture it next year. Seeking the nom is rogue MLA Jim Maloway, who made a brief leap to Ottawa and then lost to Toet, and Daniel Blaikie, son of Bill. Also running is lawyer Chad Panting, who is relatively unknown to Dippers in the riding but who appears confident of victory tonight.

Over the weekend, both Maloway and Panting sent out somewhat combative emails to members, fueling the perception the riding's NDP politics tend toward the childish.

Panting styles himself as "the only candidate to insure Victory 2015." In his email blast, Panting took swipes at Maloway for losing the constituency in 2011 and accused Blaikie of riding his father's coattails and being "worthy of being included in the dictionary under 'status-quo'." Panting has, in the past, also taken issue with the media calling Blaikie an electrician when he is not yet a journeyman.

| It’s always heartening when independent research confirms the reasonableness of one’s frequent desire to use one’s pile of FOI rejection letters to start a small bonfire in the parking lot and dance around it naked until someone calls 911.

That’s what happened today with the release of Newspapers Canada’s tenth annual freedom of information audit. This year, the audit focused on data, the reams of information kept by government that are supposed to make it smarter and more efficient and that can help us hold them to account.

Researchers, led by University of King’s College journalism professor Fred Vallance-Jones, fired off the same access to information requests for databases and documents to governments across Canada and then compared the results.

Sen. JoAnne Buth resigned today. I was channel-surfing before heading in to work the night shift, and I learned this from a screen crawl on CBC News Network. It did not occur to me until about an hour later that Buth might be one of Manitoba's senators and this might be of local interest.

After I alerted my boss, he said we probably just wanted a shortie, a brief. Not really that interesting, he said. I was slightly indignant. She's one of Manitoba's constitutionally-guaranteed voices in the upper chamber! Her resignation matters! This leaves Manitoba with half its Senate seats vacant!

As I drove in to work, I began to reconsidered this. Since Prime Minister Stephen Harper appointed her more than two years ago, she has not been quoted once in the Free Press, not even when I canvassed all four sitting senators to find out what they thought about the Wallin-Duffy-Brazeau scandal. An entomologist by training, Buth has deep roots in agriculture. But she was never quoted by the Manitoba Co-operator either. I have never seen her at any political events, not even lame photo ops. I have never heard any gossip or intel about her. I know of no issues she championed or causes she backed. We aren't even absolutely sure how to pronounce her name.

Though I'm sure she is a very nice and capable person, she was, like most senators, an invisible member of a irrelevant and disgraced institution. A shortie was probably all her two years in the Senate deserved. 

Let me preface this rather long and nerdy post by saying I have rarely had a more head-explodingly frustrating experience with any government in my 15 years of journalism. To illustrate my feelings, please enjoy the short animated GIF at the end of this blog.

Also let me preface this with one important definition: Open data refers to the idea that government information ought to be, to the fullest extent possible, available to the public. Data - everything from mosquito trap counts to oil well licenses - should be downloadable for free in an easy-to-use format that allows citizens to sort and search and map. Data don't lie. Open data is how citizens hold their government to account. Open data is how entrepreneurs create cool apps like this and this.

The city of Winnipeg (and the province, for that matter) is years behind other governments, even the uber-controlling Harperites, on open data. Very, very little information is available for download.

What we do get is only available after months and months of FOIs. I've been arguing for the last seven months with the city, for example, over a bit of harmless info nearly every other municipality in Canada released years ago.

A dozen Winnipeggers, nearly all Tories, are travelling with Prime Minister Stephen Harper on his mission to Israel. This is quite inconvenient for us because many also happen to be in the centre of the latest round of political speculation. It's tough to ask someone whether he's running in River Heights when he's a little busy gladhanding in the Knesset. The Winnipeggers in Israel include:

Michael Kowalson, the rambunctious River Heights Tory. Is he thinking about another run for city council now that John Orlikow is stepping down to run for mayor? Or, might Kowalson be interested in provincial or federal politics, perhaps doing the kind of backroom work he did in the area during the last provincial election? Ian Rabb, the property manager and addictions expert. His next political move is being watched closely. Will he challenge Jenny Gerbasi again for the Fort Rouge-East Fort Garry city council seat, or will he run provincially against Education Minister James Allum down the line?Joyce Bateman, the Winnipeg South Centre MP. What's her take on the rumours swirling about who the Liberals will run against her in 2015? Marty Morantz, the cerebral Tory candidate in River Heights in the 2011 provincial election. Will he run again in 2016? Kowalson was his campaign manager, which might make for some interesting chatter during the long flight home.Shindico's Robert and Sandy Shindleman. They've most recently been embroiled in city hall's land swap debacle.David Asper, chair of the Asper Foundation. Several Winnipeg lawyers, including David Kroft and Howard Morry.

I was part of last week's jury duty cattle call and spent two days with about 200 other Winnipeggers waiting to see if we'd get picked for one of four trials - three murders and a sexual assault.

The experience was an eye-opener. It's one part raffle as we all waited for our numbers to be drawn, one part nerves when we finally came before the judge, and five parts boredom. Here are a few observations:

Everyone had an excuse. Not long ago, Mike McIntyre wrote about the growing frustration among judges with the sometimes-dubious reasons people give to duck jury duty. That was on full display last week.

When called, at least three quarters of the people offered the judge an excuse - everything from epilepsy and anxiety to poor English skills to the loss of sales commissions. The judge offered some pushback, and occasionally rejected excuses, but mostly people were released.

The NDP has just launched what it's calling its Fairer Deal for Renters campaign. Flyers and emails (like the one below) are appearing in people's mailboxes directing them to a website where citizens can fill out a brief survey on how to fix the province's rental crisis.

How great is that!? Finally, the NDP is taking action on what's arguably the city's most pressing poverty problem -- our complete lack of decent, affordable rental units. Maybe the NDP is planning to tackle some of the recommendations smart people have made in recent years to fix this! Hallelujah!

Except the campaign is the most offensive kind of bogus. It's just a bait-and-switch push poll designed to pad the NDP's list of supporters. The website does nothing but promote the small tweaks the NDP already made to landlord-tenant rules, and then it asks which of the party's well-established and totally unrelated campaign promises you like best, including several meant as backhanded attempts to demonize the Conservatives.

It's one thing not to care much about poor renters. It's another thing entirely to use their issues as a marketing strategy to build up your pre-election warchest. At best, cheesy. At worst, shameful.

In the last few months, I've been dealing with some laughably outrageous fees levied by the city for access to information requests.

One is for $5,440 for some rec centre data my excellent former colleague Jen Skerrit originally asked for in January. You know what else the Free Press could get for $5,440? Almost an entire summer intern.

Anyway, Jen seriously scaled back her request, asking for data from just one year instead of three. The new fee came in at $1,960. Jen asked for a fee waiver. No dice. We finally, nine months later, got some data, but it was a fraction of our original request.

Then, as part of this project, I asked for the database of inspection orders issued against rooming houses since 2008. The city said it would cost $6,480. I tried negotiating but could only get it down to $2,210.40. Remember, this doesn't involve rifling through boxes of old papers and spending hours photocopying. This is a database, so it's clicks and maybe some coding. By this time, the stories on rooming houses had already run, and I gave up.

Let me acknowledge something right up front: Journalists like people who return their calls and say stuff. We sometimes mistake accessible, open politicians for those with real talent, smarts or insider knowledge.

With that caveat, let me tell you a bit about putting together today's story on physician-assisted suicide and what it revealed about some long-standing issues we've had dealing with Manitoba's Conservative MPs. 

I'll start with Steven Fletcher, who is either on fire with interesting policy proposals and opinions, or systematically kablooey-ing his political career. I genuinely hope it's the former, since it's not a huge exaggeration to say he's made more news -- on powerlines, assisted suicide, moose -- since being punted from cabinet than he did the whole time on the inside.

He's typically been reasonably accessible (which means he'd comment maybe half the time) but now he's offering something better than the occasional returned phone call: Real ideas and opinions. By testing the limits of PMO control over MPs, could Fletcher be clearing the way for other Manitoba Tories to speak out just a smidge more?

| A reader inspired a good question today – how much will this spate of federal and provincial byelections cost? I checked. The answer is $2 million.

That includes roughly $885,000 for each of the federal byelections — one in Merv Tweed’s old seat in Brandon-Souris and one to replace Vic Toews in Provencher. It also includes about $250,000 for a provincial byelection to replace MLA Larry Maguire in Arthur-Virden.

Elections aren’t the time to penny-pinch, and it’s small-minded to be miserly about the chance to exercise our democratic right. But it’s still a wee bit galling to spend $2 million on such boring byelections. I fear none will result in a fulsome exploration of national or provincial issues, and even Liberals and NDPers have to admit there is minimal chance anyone but the Conservatives will win in the three ridings.

Most data nerds look forward to census day, and I’m no different. Last Wednesday, I was pretty geeked up about the last release from the 2011 national household survey, the juicy stuff on income. I knew the data would probably be dodgy, but I held out hope.

I spent most of the morning trying to find a story in all the numbers, clicking through page after page of StatsCan data, downloading tables, getting more and more frustrated as my boss kept asking me questions I couldn’t answer. What’s the richest town in Manitoba? In the North End getting poorer? Where do the one-percent live?

Those are questions I could have answered in the last go-round in 2006. As you drill down to the tract level – the only level we care about as a local paper – the data becomes so spotty as to be nearly useless.

Here’s an example – a nifty chart showing what proportion of each community lives below the poverty line. Problem is, more than half the Manitoba census subdivisions have no data because not enough people responded. Most of the communities with no data are the ones whose poverty rates we’d most like to know about - First Nations reserves. And, is it really possible that 43 per cent of Ethelbert-ians live in poverty? That sounds nuts.

I traditionally use this space to gleefully slag government, especially for being secretive and stingy with what ought to be public information.

In this case, I offer praise for what I think is the best example of open government in the province (which is maybe not saying much, but, hey, it's summer).

This kudo lands on unlikely shoulders  – the province’s petroleum branch, the folks who oversee the big bad oil companies and the booming oilpatch that Bartley Kives has been writing about.

For those less nerdy, the concept of open government holds that citizens have the right to access the maximum amount of raw government information as a key element of good governance. That means we should get access to everything from paving contracts to political donation lists to nursing home inspections to solitary confinement records so we can hold government accountable (and also, potentially, use information to make cool apps.)

Normally, I use this space to gripe about government types. This time, I am full of love.

Saturday’s feature story on baby names wouldn’t have happened without the speed and forthrightness of the data geeks at Vital Statistics, and the forbearance of provincial media guy Glen Cassie. Last year, on a whim inspired by this, I asked for the top baby names broken down by postal code prefix. Glen rolled his eyes, said he would check, and a day later I got an Excel spreadsheet with exactly what I asked for.

A day later. That’s service. That’s also transparency. Granted, we’re talking about baby names, not outstanding warrants or flood claims or the mess of other, more controversial data sets the province keeps. But still, that’s how open government is supposed to work.

This was, like, a year ago that I got the baby name data. I then sat on it for months because we needed to figure out how to map it, which meant buying forward sortation area boundary files for crap I don’t even understand. That’s when my own data geek (and boss), Free Press Online Editor Wendy Sawatzky, started to work, creating this interactive map. Unfairly, she doesn’t get a byline in the paper, so she gets no love, except from me. ‘Twas ever thus for nerds. The Vital Stats folks probably don’t get many public pats on the back, either. I don’t even know their names – maybe it’s just one dude? But, along with Glen, they responded quickly and carefully to my endless string of questions, requests for updated numbers, fiddly problems and “one more thing...” emails. I thank them.