A Guelph blog

Canada GeeseI came. I saw. I Guelphed.

That phrase came from some jokesters who wrote for the student newspaper at Ryerson Polytechnic Institute (it had not yet become a university) when the head of that institution, Brian Segal, became president of my alma mater. The Ryerson guys did a whole issue at that time poking fun at Guelph. Segal, who is the brother of Senator Hugh, would go on to become an important executive with Rogers Communications. I quite liked what the Ryerson guys did — I thought it was very witty — and have repeated that phrase as often as I could.

But I digress …

Sue Richards – who I was so pleased to hear from as I haven’t heard from her in ages, probably not since her days as one of the first co-conspirators to get the now world famous Hillside Festival on the map —  has just alerted me to the existence of a Guelph Blog where you will find lots of things about Guelph, the Royal City, in southwestern Ontario, where I grew up and did all my schooling. The photo at the top of this post is a picture of a Canada Goose crossing the frozen Eramosa River in Guelph. I must tell my good friend Erik F. all about this site …

Now, I won’t tell you exactly which one it was but the window in one of the apartments I lived in while at the University is in this excellent picture.

 

Meanwhile at the Wheat Board …

Barley producers finished voting on Tuesday, March 13 on the question of the Canadian Wheat Board’s single-desk selling monopoly. Agriculture Minister Chuck Strahl put out a press release today saying that he’ll announce the results “soon”.

The “rigourous approach” that is being taken by the independent third-party vote-counters (accountancy KPMG) apparently takes some time.

 

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John Reynolds, lobbyist

He said he wouldn’t — but he did. On March 1, John Reynolds — one of the most influential Conservatives within that party — registered as an unpaid lobbyist for three non-profit organizations — The Rick Hansen Foundation, Science World, and Vancouver Mayor Sam Sullivan’s initiative to fight drug addiction. After quitting politics and joining the law firm Lang Michener, Reynolds promised he would not lobby his “good friend” Stephen Harper and would only provide Lang Michener clients with “strategic advice.”

But sharp-eyed Vancouver Sun reporter Peter O’Neil spotted this in the lobbyist’s registration database and wrote it up.

In his piece, O’Neil quotes Reynolds:

“I'm a prominent person within the party, and I'm going to make recommendations to our guys, cabinet ministers and others, including MPs, that 'hey, these are good projects for my province and I'd like them to happen.' And I will put myself down as a lobbyist when I do that.”

And quotes Duff Conacher of Democracy Watch, who worries this is the thin end of the wedge:

“His definition of a good cause may not be another person's definition of a good cause. And he's still trading on his inside access and relationships, which means he's advocating a who-you-know system as opposed to a merit-based system.”

After long service as a Conservative MP, Reynolds was national campaign co-chair in 2006 and will likely do so again.

Tip of the toque to Jarrett Plonka, a Conservative, who’s ‘outraged’ by Reynolds failure to honour his promise.

2002 Access to Information Review: Ensuring Compliance, A Better Access Process

Some notes from my review of the final Report of the Access to Information Review Task Force, June 2002:

… in recent years, the relations between the Office of the Information Commissioner (OIC) and the government have become increasingly strained and there are now a number of proceedings before the courts dealing with the scope of the Commissioner’s powers and with questions of procedural fairness. This suggests that there are serious issues to be addressed. (p. 89)

The Task Force is of the view that the government should develop the ability to process requests electronically, and do so as soon as possible. The United States has legislated a move toward electronic access, and the government could borrow from, and build on, its experience. (p. 119)

Access to information is here to stay, and the government needs to think about budgeting for it in the same way as it does for regular program delivery to Canadians. In other words, it must explicitly identify and plan for resource requirements (skills, technology, money, etc.), monitor trends, measure performance, and identify efficiencies. Government institutions should also consider the implications for access to information when planning a new program, or making revisions to existing ones. Several departments have significantly improved their performance by considering access as a program like any other.

Now playing: Ma, Kremer, Phillips, Kashkashian – Franz Schubert: Adagio & Fugue in C minor, K.546: I. Adagio

Nicholas Kristof: Aid

…Robert Calderisi, a humanitarian who has had plenty of experience in Africa, calls for aid cuts in The Trouble with Africa: Why Foreign Aid Isn't Working. Calderisi is a Canadian who spent three decades at the World Bank dealing with development problems. His book is more focused on Africa, while [William] Easterly [author of The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforst to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good] concentrates on aid in general, but they make similar arguments and, in some respects, have similar prescriptions. Calderisi emphasizes that the problem of aid is not just a matter of quantity:

Almost everyone in North America and Europe who shares my ideals believes that more aid, along with additional lecturing on governance, will help Africa. I want to puncture that illusion. Africans need breathing space much more than they need money. Not a Marshall Plan, but real backing for the few governments that are fighting poverty, plus political support for the millions of Africans who are resisting oppression and violence in the rest of the continent.

At the end of his book, in a chapter offering a series of specific recommendations, Calderisi suggests cutting direct aid to individual countries in half. He explains: “Contrary to conventional recommendations, direct foreign aid to most African countries should be reduced, not increased.” In his view “most” African governments are using aid corruptly, ineffectively, and wastefully. Helping people who seek different political arrangements at least offers the hope that governments may change their ways or be replaced.

Both Easterly and Calderisi argue that the world concentrates too much on amounts of aid given and not enough on how well it works …

…Several studies have shown no overall connection between aid and growth. But one very important study, by the economists Craig Burnside and David Dollar in 2000, found that aid did boost growth in countries with good governance. So that conclusion has become the new conventional wisdom, and it's partly behind the effort in the US Millennium Challenge Accounts, a new federally sponsored aid program, to channel assistance only to countries that are less corrupt and better managed.

Unfortunately, Easterly repeated the study by Burnside and Dollar but drew on a larger pool of data. This time he found no evidence that “aid works in a good policy environment.” Raghuram Rajan and Arvind Subramanian of the International Monetary Fund came to the same conclusion, and they also suggest a reason. After closely examining the evidence they concluded that “aid inflows have systematic adverse effects on a country's competitiveness.”

From Kristof, Nicholas, “Aid: Can it Work?” in The New York Review of Books, October 5, 2006, p. 41

Amartya Sen has some thoughts about Easterly’s book.

2002 Access to Information Review: The Access Process

Some notes from my review of the final Report of the Access to Information Review Task Force, June 2002:

We believe that requesters should be able to choose the format for the copy they receive, if the record can be disclosed, and already exists in that format. (p. 71)

Some government institutions are not releasing any information to a requester before the deadline for responding, or until the full request is completely processed. Others are releasing batches of information to a requester as it is processed. We believe this is the better course. If the requester wishes to receive some information as soon as it is ready for release, there is usually no reason why it should not be provided. (p. 75)

For 2000-2001, the average cost per [ATI] request was $1,035; the average fee collected per request was $12.47; the average fee waived was $7.45.

Flaherty to be locked up

For the first time, a federal Finance Minister will join the hundreds of journalists in the budget lock-up next week.

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty will table his government’s second budget on Monday March 19 shortly after 4 pm Ottawa time. But around 2 p.m., Flaherty will take questions from journalists in the budget lock-up. This is a practice Flaherty would have been familiar with when he was Ontario’s finance minister. And it’s no coincidence that this innovation is happening as Richard Brennan takes over leadership of the Parliamentary Press Gallery. Brennan was president of the Queen’s Park Press Gallery for eight years and thought that the good idea they had in Toronto ought to work in Ottawa.

Brennan ran the idea by Dan Miles, Flaherty’s director of communications, and it was a quick and easy sell. Miles and Brennan go way back. Miles was at Queen’s Park with Flaherty and before he became a political staffer, Miles was a Queen’s Park reporter for the CTV station in Toronto.

Lock-ups in Ottawa happen all the time — for the Auditor General’s reports, for a major CRTC decision, for Bank of Canada interest rate announcements and so on. But the budget lock-up is the king of them all. Journalists can go into the lockup as early as 9:30 a.m. where they must stay — without cell phone, BlackBerry or any other way of communicating with the outside world — until Flaherty stands in the House of Commons at 4 p.m.

Food is available for purchase inside the lock-up although — if you’re going to be in one of these for the first time — you’re better off bringing your lunch. Prices last year were astronomical – a single oatmeal cookie was two dollars! — and the food on offer was pretty pedestrian. Finance officials have apparently promised that the food will be better this time — but there’s no free lunch. Journalists and all others in the lockup will have to pay for their meals.

This lock-up will be held at the Ottawa Congress Centre and there will be hundreds — including yours truly — inside.

You can look over all the lock-up details yourself at Finance Canada’s Web site.

2002 Access to Information Review: Chapters 4,

Some notes from my review of the final Report of the Access to Information Review Task Force, June 2002:

Public interest is always the key factor in determining whether a requested record should be disclosed. The purpose of the exemptions and exclusions in the Access to Information Act, therefore, is to define
in a narrow and specific way those instances where the public interest may lie in the protection of information. The right balance has to be achieved in each exemption and exclusion as well as in the overall
structure of exemptions and exclusions. The Act must be looked at in its entirety to fully appreciate the delicate balancing of public interests that it embraces.

In 2000-2001, Section 69 was claimed in 6% of all refusals to disclose (exemptions and exclusions). (p.44)

Section 69 states that the Act does not apply to confidences of the Queen’s Privy Council for Canada – which includes Cabinet and Cabinet committees. The Act does not define such confidences, but provides a list of examples including: Cabinet memoranda, agendas, records of decisions; communications between Ministers on matters relating to the making of government decisions or the formulation of government policy; pre-Cabinet briefings of Ministers and draft legislation.

Section 69 has been the subject of strong criticism.

Section 21 accounted for 18.6% of exemptions claimed in 2000-2001. (p. 47)

Section 21 of the Act is a discretionary exemption allowing the head of a government institution to refuse to disclose a record containing:

  • advice or recommendations developed by or for a government institution
    or a Minister;
  • an account of consultations or deliberations involving officers or
    employees of a government institution, a Minister, or a Minister’s staff;
  • positions or plans developed for the purposes of negotiations, and considerations
    related thereto; and
  • personnel management or administrative plans that have not yet been put into effect.

Section 21 is the third most frequently claimed exemption. Requesters and commentators have criticized it for being too broad, and too broadly applied. No one disputes the need for government to conduct some deliberations in private and for ministers to receive the full and frank advice needed for effective policy-making. The issue is how to strike the right balance in the legislation, and in practice, between the principle of openness and the need for some confidentiality. We believe several changes should be made to improve this balance.

2002 Access to Information Review: Introduction and Main Points

Some notes from my review of the final Report of the Access to Information Review Task Force, June 2002:

…the Task Force has concluded that the Access to Information Act is still basically sound in concept, structure and balance. (1)

These legislative and administrative measures, by themselves, will not be enough to ensure the objectives of the Act are achieved. They must be supported by a strong “access” culture within government.

…providing information to Canadians must be recognized as a legitimate, and indeed, core aspect of every public servant’s day-to-day work. Access to information must be valued and recognized and become a matter of pride for the public service.

Many requesters feel that the essence of the Act is sound, but it continues to be applied inconsistently and in such a way as to contradict the principles of openness, transparency and accountability that underlie it. Delays, fees and inconsistency are major complaints. (3)

The Information Commissioner is critical of what he perceives to be a deeply entrenched culture of secrecy in government, and a lack of commitment to the principles of the Act. (3)

Access to information needs to be resourced in the same way as any program delivered by the Government of Canada. (5)

The total costs of administering the Act are in the order of $30 million annually or less than $1 per Canadian per year. (5)

Over one-half of all requests (52 per cent in 2000-2001) are made to five government institutions: Citizenship and Immigration Canada; National Archives; Health Canada; Human Resources Development Canada; and the Department of National Defence. (9)

The largest request received at this point was to the Department of Foreign Affairs for 1.2 million documents.

Since it was first enacted, the Access to Information Act has been amended three times. (13)

In 2000-01, the ratio of access to information and privacy requests at the federal level to the total Canadian population was about 0.004 or half the ratio in the U.S. (0.0079). (15)

 

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Go ahead, use your phone in the hospital, study says

A new study out of the prestigious Mayo Clinic in the U.S. says cell phones do not interfere with hospital medical equipment, suggesting that the usual bans on cell phone use in hospitals are unwarranted. That said, there are some devices, apparently, that could interfere with medical equipment. Some portable CD players, for example, caused odd ECG readings.

METHODS: Two cellular telephones from different cellular carriers were tested in various patient care areas between February 15, 2006, and June 29, 2006. To monitor the medical devices and equipment in the patient care areas during testing, we observed the device displays and alarms.

RESULTS: Interference of any type occurred in 0 of the 75 patient care rooms during the 300 tests performed. These 300 tests involved a total of 192 medical devices. The incidence of clinically important interference was 0% (95% confidence interval, 0%-4.8%).

CONCLUSIONS: Although cellular telephone use in general has been prohibited in hospitals because of concerns that these telephones would interfere with medical devices, this study revealed that when cellular telephones are used in a normal way no noticeable interference or interactions occurred with the medical devices.