Liberals say no to public’s right to know

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This article was published 28/01/2002 (8894 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

When Prime Minister Jean Chretien and his Liberals were first elected in 1993, he was greeted by a strong message from the federal information commissioner about protecting open government.

John Grace had watched for years as the former Tory government of Prime Minister Brian Mulroney flouted the letter and the spirit of the Access to Information Act, frustrating attempts by the media and the public to get government information.

“There is a political price to be paid by a government that does not respect the public’s right to know,” Grace wrote in his 1994 annual report, the first under Grit rule.

‘Open government’

With the Liberals, Grace saw hope. After all, in the 1993 Red Book, the Grits’ infamous election handbook, there was a promise that “open government will be the watchword of the Liberal program.”

Nearly a decade later, however, it seems the Liberals have yet to fulfil that promise. In fact, when the current Liberal reign comes to an end — if it comes to an end — there is a good chance it will be known as among the most secretive in Canadian history.

The most recent Liberal attack on freedom of government information comes in the form of a Treasury Board directive that orders federal departments to withhold detailed expense account information for ministers and their political staff.

The directive was uncovered after the Free Press requested the travel and expense accounts of Industry Minister Allan Rock, who was then the health minister, and a senior political aide. The aide had admitted to having spent significant amounts of time in Manitoba, and other provinces, organizing for Rock’s leadership campaign.

Despite the fact the expense accounts of ministers and their political staff had for years been fodder for the national media, the health department quashed the Free Press application under the Access to Information law on the basis the records were exempt. The Free Press has appealed the decision to withhold the information to the federal information commissioner.

Opposition MPs, and advocacy groups such as Democracy Watch, have reacted to the policy with a shock that is only tempered by the fact this is not the first time the Liberals have thwarted Access to Information laws.

Since taking office, Chretien’s government has been in nearly constant conflict with the office of the information commissioner, whose job it is to monitor compliance with Access to Information legislation, which was created in 1983. Under the act, government information is made available to any member of the public who pays a $5 application fee.

Just a year after taking power, the Liberals were already on the wrong side of the information commissioner. In his 1995 annual report, John Grace noted that fundamental concerns about non-compliance remained, including unreasonable delays in processing applications for information.

By 1997, Grace had become so frustrated with the Liberal manipulation of access laws, he took the gloves off completely with an annual report that would become famous for its extreme language. “Delay in responding to access to information requests is now at crisis proportions,” Grace wrote. “The flouting of Parliament’s will in some institutions is a festering, silent scandal.”

It is hard to tell if Grace believed his public criticism would change the government’s attitude. It is only clear that it did not. Since Grace left his position, the Liberals have continued to generally discourage access requests and endure criticism from the information commissioner.

“The track record of the Liberals is to try to deny the right to even ask questions about activities by shutting down all information,” said Duff Conacher, co-ordinator for the advocacy group Democracy Watch.

“The Liberals’ track record is to say, ‘don’t worry about what is going on behind closed doors, just trust us.’ But in doing so they send the opposite message to Canadians, that they are not trustworthy.”

Alasdair Roberts, one of Canada’s foremost experts on access to information law, said the Liberals have been responsible in whole or in part for an infamous era of government secrecy.

“I think it’s fair to say that this government has been chipping away at the access law in fundamental ways for some years now,” said Roberts, who teaches at both Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont., and Syracuse University in New York State.

Not only has the government itself been accused of circumventing the Access to Information Act, Roberts said, but on its watch the country has seen several tragic examples of deliberate attempts to destroy or withhold government information.

During the commission of inquiry into the tainted blood scandal, it was determined key officials with the Canadian Red Cross destroyed documents to avoid having to disclose them in an access to information application.

In another glaring example, officials at the Department of National Defence admitted they destroyed documents relating to the Somalia scandal. In addition, a public affairs officer was disciplined for changing government documents requested by a reporter under Access to Information.

Roberts said the Liberals have distinguished their contempt for open government in several unique ways. First, the Chretien government has been much more aggressive in ignoring compliance orders from the information commission, and in fighting these orders all the way to Federal Court.

The information commissioner has the power to subpoena senior bureaucrats to give information for compliance investigations, Roberts noted. Rarely used when Chretien took power, the information commissioner was forced to issue 36 subpoenas in the last three years alone.

Meanwhile, the Prime Minister’s Office continues to fight tooth and nail with Information Commissioner John Reid over the release of Chretien’s agenda books, a legal tilt that is not expected to be resolved for years, Roberts noted. (Former information commissioner John Grace called the PMO’s attempts to exclude the agenda books “informational rape.”)

Second, the Chretien government has routinely excluded organizations from the prying eyes of the Access to Information Act, Roberts said. These federal entities include the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and the House of Commons.

Finally, the Liberals have been very aggressive in excluding newly created entities from the access act. These include Nav Canada, the arm’s length body that runs the nation’s air traffic control network, The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, The Canadian Foundation for Innovation, and the Canadian Millennium Scholarship Foundation. In total, Roberts noted, more than a dozen important government bodies, which control more than $10 billion in public spending, have been protected from public scrutiny.

In an act of cruel irony, the Liberals have also de-listed the recently created Canadian Blood Services, the agency set up to replace the Canadian Red Cross after the tainted blood scandal.

Roberts said he is not hopeful that the Liberals will be persuaded to change their attitudes towards open government, or overhaul the Access to Information Act, which several information commissioners have stridently recommended.

An internal government committee established in 2000 was to study changes to the act but it has failed spectacularly to make any progress to date. Frustrated by the lack of progress, an all-party committee led by Liberal MP John Bryden last year publicly criticized the PMO and Privy Council Office for invoking government policies that undermined access to information laws.

Roberts said it’s important to note that the only significant amendment to the Access to Information law was made while Chretien was in power. However, it was a backbench Liberal MP, not a cabinet minister, who moved the amendment to punish any federal employee caught destroying documents.

A lack of effective opposition in the House of Commons, and a near complete absence of funding for advocacy groups to lobby for open government, combine to create little motivation for the Liberals to reverse their tendencies, Roberts said.

“This government doesn’t have a healthy attitude towards access laws but there is just no effective lobby in Canada to fight them.”

dan.lett@freepress.mb.ca

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