N.S. needs more open government.
Taxpayers deserve more accountability
If you subscribe to the theory that what you don’t know can’t hurt you, Nova Scotia’s Liberal government is your kind of outfit.
If, on the other hand, you believe that in a free and democratic society government information is by definition public information – with certain limited, specific and justified exceptions – you may want to try a different political flavour.
If, as a taxpaying Nova Scotian, you think you’re entitled to know what happened at Northwood Manor where your tax dollars support the care of hundreds of seniors, the Liberal government would tell you to think again.
Fifty-three residents of Northwood died from COVID-19, leaving the province no choice but to conduct, not an inquiry, but rather what it calls “a review.” Inquiries are public. A review can mean almost anything and in the Northwood case it means that the findings won’t see the light of day.
Options available to the province include the Public Inquiries Act and the Fatality Investigations Act, either of which would have produced a public accounting of the Northwood tragedy.
But the Liberals landed on a third option, one that will deliver the least possible information to Nova Scotians. They opted for a review under the rather obscure Quality-improvement Information Protection Act, a law intended for a different purpose, if we are to believe Leo Glavine, who was Health Minister in 2015 when the law was enacted.
“The Quality-improvement Information Protection Act is the key to unlocking meaningful provincial data analysis that will help achieve positive results for all Nova Scotians,” Glavine said at the time, summing up the bill’s purpose, if somewhat ambiguously.
He told the legislature back then that the act was about data collection to improve patient safety in the province’s health system. No mention was made of its now-convenient application in conducting a furtive review of a provincial tragedy.
Under the provisions of the 2015 law, the government doesn’t have to release anything that comes out of the review, although Premier Stephen Mcneil has promised that the recommendations will be made public. If the government has its way, Nova Scotians may never know the full story of the tragedy at Northwood.
Way back in 2013, when they were trolling for your vote, Mcneil and his Liberals promised to be the most open and transparent government Nova Scotians have ever seen.
Seven years later, the evidence is in and overwhelming. Not only did they break that promise, they took Nova Scotia backwards, delivering a government that tells Nova Scotians only what it wants them to know, when it wants them to know it.
This week the province’s new Information and Privacy Commissioner, Tricia Ralph released her office’s annual report, which shows that as time goes by the government is becoming ever more parsimonious with the information it will release.
Among other duties, the commissioner’s office deals with appeals under the province’s antiquated 25-year-old Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy (FOIPOP) Act – a law Mcneil’s Liberals also promised to modernize and strengthen until they arrived in government and discovered it was actually pretty handy when inconvenient information needed burial.
Applicants can appeal to the commissioner when the government denies access to information, but even when the commissioner sides with the applicant, the government can still withhold the information.
The commissioner has no power to compel compliance with the law. For that the applicant must take the province to court, with all the hassle and cost that entails.
While it’s rare for an applicant to appeal to the courts, it is telling that in every case the court sided with the applicant and found that the information requested had to be released under the provisions of the FOIPOP law.
Ralph reports that her office is now trying to process a threeyear backlog in those appeals, and she notes that there has been a steady, if not precipitous, increase in appeals since 2013, which as noted above just happens to be the same year the Liberal government arrived in office.
The Liberals seem content to suffer the occasional slap down in court, in exchange for the antidemocratic luxury of withholding information whenever it wants, secure in the knowledge that in the overwhelming majority of cases that will be the end of it.
The Mcneil government does plenty of stuff right and we hear all about it. Operating an open and transparent government is one thing they do not do. As a result, Nova Scotians have very little idea what else the government is getting wrong.