Harper nixes a basic right
When is a constitutionally protected right in Canada not a right after all? When Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government says so, it appears.
The “law-and-order” Conservatives have just set an appalling precedent by using Bill C-59, the budget bill, to retroactively erase citizens’ Access to Information rights and to protect the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in connection with the now-defunct long-gun registry, one of the government’s pet hates. This casual assault on the rule of law is unprecedented, and abhorrent.
Canadians have rarely seen a government act with such recklessness. Parliament should not let this stand. It will be a dark day if it does.
To her credit, Information Commissioner Suzanne Legault has just blown the whistle on this “very, very perilous precedent” in a scathing report to Parliament.
She contends that the Mounties violated the Access to Information Act between Oct. 25 and 29, 2012, when they destroyed electronic records related to the long-gun registry. They had no right to destroy the data, even seven months after the registry was legally abolished, because it was protected by the act. How so? Because someone had submitted a formal request to see the data back on March 27, 2012, a few days before the law abolishing the registry came into force on April 5.
Once that request was made the Mounties were required to turn over all the relevant records, Legault said, or at least preserve them until the request was dealt with. But the Mounties didn’t comply, she said. After turning over only partial records, they destroyed the rest despite her instructions to preserve the data.
Under the Information Act it’s a criminal offence to obstruct the commissioner and to destroy records to thwart a request.
For their part, the Mounties dispute all this and say they provided “the relevant information that the requester was entitled to” before the database was destroyed. They deny any wrongdoing.
Whatever a judge might make of all this, Legault rightly points out that the Harper government has set a ghastly precedent by stuffing the budget bill with provisions that retroactively shield the Mounties from prosecution. Bill C-59 exempts all records from the gun registry from access requests and from any complaints, investigations, recommendations by the commissioner, applications, judicial reviews in federal court and appeals. It also erases the offence of obstructing the commissioner and the offence of obstructing the right of access, including by destroying records. It’s a wholesale, sweeping get-out-of-jail-free card.
And worse, it is retroactive not to April 5, 2012, when the law killing the gun registry came into force, but back to Oct. 25, 2011, when it was first introduced. That utterly kneecaps Legault, voids the requester’s rights and shields the police and any others from legal consequences.
This is a slippery slope. The Conservatives have just declared open season on rewriting history, by saying “Presto! Your right to lawful access never really existed!” That can only embolden future governments to retroactively rewrite laws to erase their own wrongdoing. Playing by the new Tory rules the Liberals could have absolved themselves of wrongdoing in the sponsorship scandal. Or a government could absolve itself of electoral fraud.
Given the Conservative majority, it’s unlikely that these provisions will be stripped from the budget bill before it becomes law. But they should be. If not, the Tories will head into the election exposed as hypocrites, flouting the very laws and rights they profess to uphold.
Information Commissioner Suzanne Legault has rightly called out the prime minister in her report