Strong and robust rights for access to information held by federal government departments helps citizens hold their government to account, learn about their government, and increases transparency and accountability. I think we're all agreed on that point, are we? Of course we are.
And yet, despite broad agreement to that principle, one government after another continues to pay mere lip service to ensuring that federal government departments, boards, and agencies live up to the spirit and principle of the federal Access to Information Act.
The latest evidence? The annual “Report Cards” from the federal Information Commissioner. Because successive federal governments (both Liberals and Conservatives are culpable here) have failed to give the Information Commissioner any real legislative “teeth” to force change, all the Information Commissioner can do is use the carrot of public praise and the stick of public shame to encourage change.
The commisioner, Suzanne Legault, has a few carrots:
I congratulate Atomic Energy of Canada Limited; the National Arts Centre; the Office of the Auditor General; the Office of the Privacy Commissioner; and VIA Rail for achieving these strong compliance rates with the Access to Information Act.
But mostly, Legault is forced to pull out her stick for a few well-placed whacks in some departmental behinds:
… we did see some of the worst results in the 12 years that we have been doing the report cards. We issued a red alert this year to the Canada Post Corporation, which means that its performance was so far off the chart that we were unable to ascribe a rating …
We also issued a failing grade this year to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. …
Legault also notes that one of the centrepiece pieces of legislation in the Harper government's first term — the Federal Accountability Act — has been a bust when it comes bringing more transparency and accountability on access to information:
After more than three years of experience with the changes introduced by the FedAA, it is my view that the FedAA resulted, at best, in marginal advancements for transparency. The legislative scheme increased the number of institutions covered by the Act by 70, which represents about 2% of all requests received in 2009-2010. At the same time, however, it introduced new exemptions and exclusions that prevent the Act from being applied generally.
“Strong and robust rights for access to information held by federal government departments helps citizens hold their government to account, learn about their government, and increases transparency and accountability.
I think we're all agreed on that point, are we? Of course we are.”
I would agree — if I were absolutely certain that the information would trickle down to us plebeians without add-ons, embellishments, detractions, tinkering, distortion, or simple misunderstanding of that information once it winds its way through the media voices.
Also, what exactly is the information that a government, the PM, or an individual MP needs to divulge to the general public?
For instance, ever since I learned that emails to the PM were subject to ATI requests, I've stopped occasionally emailing the PM, because I don't want my emails in the grubby little hands of some journalist who needs to find something to write about. What could journalists possibly want to cull from such emails? Whether complaints or praise from the average Canadian, those emails should not be fodder for lazy journalists.
On the other hand, I urge all governments to put whatever can be disclosed online, with user-friendly web pages. I've visited some pages which are very easy to use and others that are like an onion, with layer upon layer of links leading only to users' frustration.
You can look it up at the InfoCommish's Web site: But I believe less than 30 per cent (and maybe even less than that) of ATI requests across all govt departments are from media. The rest are from individual Canadians, businesses, NGOs, and academics.