Ripped from our site: Canada's information commissioner says existing access-to-information laws are too weak. and lack measures that would force the federal government to hand over the records Canadians have a right to see.
Commissioner Robert Marleau will table “a shopping list of legislative amendments” next month for MPs to consider. But he says it's vital Treasury Board President Vic Toews take steps to force individual government departments to give their access-to-information offices the money and staff to fulfil their legal obligations under Canada's Access to Information Act.
Marleau said the decision by Canada's Foreign Affairs Department to systematically prevent the release of hundreds of thousands of government records, as first reported by Canwest News Service on Monday, is a symptom of a much broader problem, where bureaucrats are trying to use every administrative trick in the book to avoid a mounting workload.
“There is a systemic problem; it's not just a departmental performance issue. The centre, like Treasury Board Secretariat, has to exercise some leadership to turn this ship around,” Marleau said Tuesday.
Canwest News Service reported Monday that, since January 2008, the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT) has prevented the release of more than 160,000 pages of government records on everything from the mission in Afghanistan to new free-trade deals to the NATO briefing materials Maxime Bernier left at his girlfriend's home . . . [ Read the rest of the story]
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re “Canada's information commissioner says existing access-to-information laws are too weak”
Yes, but, what else is too weak is Canada's information commissioner – as I'm sure Robert Marleau would be the first to agree.