Cultivating a culture of open government
Over the past several weeks, and for very good reason, a slow-burning uproar has emerged around the muzzling of Canadian scientists who work for the federal government. Now the issue has taken on new steam with the office of federal Information Commissioner Suzanne Legault agreeing to investigate a complaint that such muzzling constitutes a breach of the Access to Information Act.
The actions of the information commissioner are to be applauded; what is less encouraging are the limits of her ability to resolve the problem. The truth is that openness, transparency and accountability cannot be created by the adoption of new codes or rules alone.
This is because even more than programs and regulations, an open government is the result of culture, norms and leadership. And here the message — felt as strongly by government scientists as any other public servants — is clear. Public servants are allowed less and less to have a perspective, to say nothing of the ability to share that perspective.
This culture is driven right from the top. No single act epitomized how poorly the rules serve us and how damaging the current culture is than when Foreign Minister John Baird handed the parliamentary budget officer — and thus Canadian taxpayers — boxes of documents on stimulus spending rather than a simple digital spreadsheet that could be searched and analyzed. In that moment he made a mockery of what rules around transparency and accountability mean in the absence of culture and norms. Nor was this approach to “disclosure” an outlier.
And of course, let us not forget that this government was found in contempt of Parliament for failing to share costs relating to its crime legislation and F-35 jet acquisition and even prevent its own members from speaking freely. If the rules of Parliament can be hacked to hide documents from Canadians and muzzle its own members, what possible hope can the information commissioner give government scientists?
This breakdown in culture has consequences — some of which may impact the government’s most important priori- ties. Take, for example, the United States’ preoccupation with Canada’s environmental record in general and its specific concerns about the oilsands in regards to the proposed Keystone XL pipeline. The government has spent the last month trying to burnish its environmental record in anticipation of the decision. And yet, it is amazing how few in Ottawa recognize the direct link between the openness around which government scientists can speak about their work and the degree of trust that Canadians — as well as our allies — have in our capacity to protect the environment.
The best research and most resilient plans are those that emerge from debate and scrutiny. This, in theory, is how both the scientific process and our democracy and Parliament are supposed to work. Can our government’s perspective, data and assessments be both muzzled and trusted? It does not make for an easy sell.
This approach feels even more counterproductive given the current U.S. administration’s explicit rejection of similar muzzling tactics by its predecessor. While it may not be a fatal blow, the realpolitik of poor transparency has real foreign policy implications, particularly with allies who share our democratic values.
If for no other reason than self-interested policy and political survival, our political leaders — across the spectrum but in government in particular — need to think not only about rules that will foster a more open and accountable government, but the type of leadership and culture that will support it.
In the absence of that, though, we could paradoxically find ourselves living in a world where technology makes it easier to share information — via the government’s open data portal or its online access to information request system — while our government’s culture makes it harder to talk to the people who can give that information meaning and context. It is a future where trust, both at home and abroad, will be harder to find.
Public servants are allowed less and less to have a perspective, to say nothing of the ability to share that perspective