Hurdles to information: It's difficult but not impossible to get to the facts Diligent journalists and lawyers have been gnawing away at those old stone walls since John Wicklein wrote the 1998 article below. Jim Bronskill has created this useful Access to Information Page. There are people on the internet who will help you find what you are looking for. As it is on the street, just because an item is on the net doesn't mean it is true. The net serves many functions, disseminating information being just one. You have to develop standards against which to judge the truth of the material. Generally reports from newspapers can be trusted. As far as they go. Lawsuits like the one recently won against CBC's fifth estate, and threats of lawsuits like the ones that have not yet materialized against us, put a chill on publishing information. Our spooks and dirty tricksters (CSIS, RCMP) spread disinformation as part of their jobs. These fucks are paid by us and we don't all think it is proper. The story of Delmart Edward "Mike" Vreeland who claims to be a U.S. spook his handlers are trying to extradite is hot enough that, although it was initially written by Toronto reporter Nick Pron, there has not been any follow-up. As soon as the Promis story was threatened with wide exposure, Canadian dirty tricksters scooped it themselves by claiming to have dumped the plan, thus postponing further investigation. You can be sure the same people are still working. And they are looking at you and me. | ||
How the Canadian government foils reporters With all the stonewalling and petty delays, freedom of information laws don't work by John Wicklein, July/Aug 1998, Columbia Journalism Review Wicklein, a former reporter for The New York Times, is an independent writing, reporting, and editing coach for newspapers. If you want to do an investigative report on the government of Ontario, think twice. Restrictive amendments to its Freedom of Information Act "make it impossible to know what the government is doing," says Wayne Sharpe, head of the Canadian Committee to Protect Journalists. The spirit of the amendments, put through in 1996 by the province's Conservative regime, is captured by a clause that lets a department head refuse a request for information if the official finds it "frivolous or vexatious." Even if not vexed, she or he can dam the flow by assessing new fees that put records out of reach of most news operations in Ontario. One filing to the Ministry of Food, Agriculture, and Rural Affairs must have vexed its bureaucrats mightily: after initially resisting a request for records concerning mistreatment of animals at provincially funded laboratories, the agency eventually did release fifty documents. But most of the substance was blacked out. The Ottawa Citizen had some fun with that. Under the headline access to obfuscation, it reproduced a couple of pages in which the only words that could be made out were: "frogs . . . frogs . . . frogs . . . mice . . . rabbits . . . rabbits . . . guinea pigs . . . rabbits . . . rabbits . . . rat . . . rat . . . rodent." Access to federal documents is not much easier. Winding up his term as information commissioner, John W. Grace expressed concern about willful noncompliance with the Access to Information Act. "Delay in responding . . . is now in crisis proportions," he wrote in his 1997 report. Access delayed, he said, is access denied. A few officials "have connived to thwart the right of access," and, because the law has "proved itself toothless," conniving officials can violate it with impunity. Grace singled out for particular scorn the Department of National Defense, reporting that its officials had subverted journalists' FOI requests by altering or destroying documents that would have reflected badly on Canadian forces. "The act has gained renown more for efforts of bureaucrats to thwart access than for the news stories it produced," says Jim Bronskill, a national correspondent for Southam News who regularly battles for information with federal and Ontario agencies. Other provinces -- Alberta, British Columbia, and Manitoba -- are tightening access. When Manitoba was revising its law, which went into effect this year, a journalists' group claimed that under the proposed legislation even the phone book would be in violation. That clause was changed, but the revision made things tougher for requesters. Bureaucrats' tendency towards secrecy cuts across party lines, whether it's the Liberals in power in the federal government, Conservatives in Ontario, or the New Democratics in British Columbia. Every province except Prince Edward Island has an FOI law, but almost everywhere journalists complain about officials' stonewalling through delays and exemptions. Sound familiar? No worse than the foot-dragging that reporters in the U.S. encounter when they file FOI requests? Along with the exemptions Americans are familiar with -- national security, personal privacy and the like -- Canadian journalists have a bigger frustration. Based on English precedent, access laws absolutely exclude "cabinet confidences" -- anything defined as a ministerial document is sacrosanct and may be kept secret. Using this so-called "Mack Truck" clause, a minister can tell a reporter "Don't even ask," and there is no appeal. For other exemptions, there is an appeal: each province and the federal government have an information commissioner, a kind of ombudsman who can negotiate an agency's denial of a request. In fact, defenders of Canada's progress in making information available point out that in the U.S., reporters have no such ombudsmen -- their only recourse when finally denied access is to take an agency to court. But it's the jump in access fees that Ontario journalists see as the greater threat to their investigations. When Bronskill asked the Ontario minister of finance for documents on a story he is still pursuing, he was told that fees for search and preparation time would come to $1,260 Canadian, with copying costs at 20 cents a page on top of that. Southam News decided there must be some better way, and Bronskill is working on it. Says he: "Fees are certainly a deterrent." Unlike her federal counterpart, Ann Cavoukian, Ontario's information and privacy commissioner, doesn't have a problem with provincial officials' way of handling FOI requests. "I think it's been a wonderful experience to watch the culture of government access and privacy grow over the last ten years," she says. (The original Ontario law was enacted in 1988.) "It's been a learning curve -- government officials have to become accustomed to the idea that government records should be made available to the public." So far the curve hasn't solved the problem of costs. And reporters are worried that the federal government may be planning to follow Ontario's example -- a Treasury Board report said the current fee schedule is out of date. For a start, it suggested raising the FOI application fee from $5 to $25 Canadian. A government spokesman said fees would likely be increased as part of a plan to overhaul the information law. Mike Gordon, a news producer for TVOntario, says he's frustrated that journalists haven't done much to combat the increasing restrictions. He and some like-minded members of the Canadian Association of Journalists intend to set up a advocacy groups that will monitor FOI compliance and establish connections among those who are working for more open government. What's needed, he thinks, is some concerted lobbying. "It's hard to get people excited about this," says Robert Washburn, a reporter turned journalism professor. "There is a core of journalists dedicated to investigative reporting, and they fight to make a difference. But we can't seem to get the industry energized to go after these changes." The Canadian Newspaper Association has commissioned a study by professor Alasdair Roberts of Queens University to check on the effectiveness of the FOI laws. And in Parliament, several back-benchers have introduced bills to improve the federal statute. The most comprehensive was drafted by John Bryden, a Liberal M.P. and former senior news editor at the Toronto Star. In a major change, ministers who invoked "cabinet confidences" to withhold a document would need to demonstrate to the information commissioner that its release would somehow damages the country. His bill would provide substantial penalties for deliberate violations. Bryden says 130 members out of 301 have signed on as sponsors. But for it to pass, it needs the backing of his party leadership, and that has not yet been forthcoming. Canadian journalists face other obstacles, many of which would not pass muster under the U.S. Constitution. Broadcast journalists, for example, are forbidden to use language that does not display "sensitivity to problems relating to sexual stereotyping." Reporters are barred from reporting background on the case between the time charges are brought and the start of the trial. Judges can stop the broadcast of a documentary when a company complains that proprietary information would be revealed. Prior restraint of publication, anathema in the States, is permissible in Canada because, as its chief justice pointed out in a recent ruling, the country does not have a First Amendment. To investigative reporters, those are fights for another day -- the battle now is to pry open access to records, without which investigations become hearsay.
Post Office warned over privacy violations By DANIEL LEBLANC Ottawa -- Canada Post is willfully breaking the Privacy Act by selling the new home addresses of people who move and ask for their mail to be redirected, the privacy commissioner said yesterday. "Canada Post Corp. is breaking the law and refusing to cease doing so," George Radwanski said in a letter to André Ouellet, president and chief executive officer of Canada Post. The commissioner urged Canada Post to provide a box to check on the change-of-address forms where people would explicitly consent or decline to have their new addresses disclosed. index to Sask police stories | Stinchcombe | Dueck's notes | Perjury in the Ahluwalia case | Internet law | RCMP reneges on paying porn hacker | Promis: In who we trust? | Vreeland: spy who told cops about 911 in August muzzled in Toronto jail | | ||
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