Deliver on transparency

Justin Trudeau’s Liberals are going to be watched closely for their promises to deliver such things as infrastructure investments, action on climate change, a revival of the long-form census, a reform of Canada’s electoral system, changes to child-care support and marijuana policy changes.

It would be great for Canada if another “real change” issue made it onto the action list, and sooner rather than later. The federal bureaucracy has drifted into troubling territory in terms of its adherence to the nation’s access-to-information legislation.

The most recent evidence of this was in the findings of the latest Newspapers Canada audit of various government agencies. This is an important, independent, methodologically rigorous and yearly review of whether public agencies comply with the spirit and letter of access-toinformation legislation.

This year’s audit shows once more that too many of these agencies are failing to honour the open-government spirit. Various federal departments and Crown agencies come off poorly in their FOI compliance in the audit.

This follows Canada’s information commissioner, Suzanne Legault, advising Parliament earlier this year that our nation’s Access to Information Act structure was a system “in crisis.”

It’s unclear whether our last federal government paid much heed to Legault’s notions or was amply invested in improving the openness of government at the national level. We hope the incoming regime demonstrates a will to enhance transparency.