Last year, the Globe & Mail revealed that Canadian Forces in Afghanistan had been turning over their detainees to certain Afghan authorities that would almost certainly torture their prisoners. The backlash was incredible, and then-Defence Minister Gordon O’Connor’s dithering handling of the situation got him shuffled out of the ministry.
The Globe’s reporters obtained the records of prisoner transfers through the Access to Information Act, a delightful little piece of policy enacted by the Trudeau government in 1983 that allows all Canadians access to government records. According to the act, information that is restricted to the public should be limited, and restrictions should be reviewed independently of the government. The act has been well used over the years—other “fun” moments in our country’s proud history uncovered through access to information include the sponsorship scandal and the tainted blood scandal.
While it would be comforting to believe that our government is fully transparent and that all information could be easily accessible from any government institution, we don’t live in that kind of utopia. Citizens—particularly journalists—requesting information have recently gone up against the bureaucratic equivalent of the Berlin Wall.
Since the current government has come to power, the average wait time for access requests has risen from 30 to 60 days to 150 to 250 days, with some requests taking over a year. The backlog is typically higher for some departments, such as Defence and Foreign Affairs.
The delays are no coincidence or mere fluke. The government’s strategy is a simple one—make information- seekers wait a ludicrous amount of time to get their records. Information requests lead to reports that expose the federal government’s bad behaviour, and the government would rather not have inconvenient, scandalous information surface— particularly when Ottawa is in election heat.
The delays are simply inexcusable, particularly since many journalists, NGOs, and other investigators can’t release a conclusive report until they make two or three subsequent requests. In a case of human-rights violations, like that of the Afghan detainees, each subsequent request could end up in tacking on another 200-odd days during which Canada condones and contributes to abuse, or even torture.
Robert Marleau, who’s been Canada’s Information Commissioner since last January, is partially to blame. He’s been widely criticized as being soft on government departments that are slow to fulfill requests. Marleau is the opposite of Sheila Fraser, our tough-as-nails Auditor-General. A position vital to governmental transparency shouldn’t be in the hands of a hesitant do-nothing. Whether Marleau is a Conservative lackey or not is irrelevant, he’s playing into the hands of those in power and limiting our ability to judge our elected leaders.
In light of last week’s discovery of the “Tiger Team,” a team of military officers whose main role is to limit the Canadian public’s knowledge of our role in Afghanistan, this becomes more disturbing. Created by the Department of National Defence in the wake of the Afghan detainee revelations, Tiger Team has been described as an additional barrier for those attempting to get access to information about our military.
For a government that rode into office on a platform of transparency, complicating access requests isn’t helping their image. If there’s no hidden agenda, then why hide information?
