Keep promise on access law
Access to information laws have become an essential feature of modern democracy. They allow citizens to watch over their governments and hold them to account. So it’s deeply disturbing that Canada’s access law, designed for a pre-digital world, and largely unchanged for three decades, is so profoundly broken.
Justin Trudeau’s Liberals came to power promising to fix the problem, quickly setting up an all-party committee to review the law. The committee published its recommendations in June and the government vowed to reform the legislation later this year, or early in 2017. A long-overdue change seemed within view.
But last week Treasury Board president Scott Brison quietly backed off those timelines, indicating the government would implement initial changes later this year, but conduct a fuller review of the act starting in 2018. A concerned Information Commissioner Suzanne Legault told CBC News that she now doubts the legislation will be amended before the next election.
That’s a shame. In recent years, loopholes in the law have too often been used to keep politically inconvenient information secret. Federal officials have invoked so-called cabinet confidentiality with alarming frequency. In 2013-14, it was used a record 3,100 times — a 49-per-cent uptick over the previous year. As the information commissioner has argued, the law meant to ensure openness has metastasized into an effective shield against disclosure.
Many recommendations have been made over the years on how to improve the act, but two simple, widely supported changes in particular would do a great deal to foster more openness.
First, the loophole should be shrunk. Cabinet confidentiality is meant to protect the frank and open exchange among cabinet ministers. But it should not be used to prevent Canadians from having the facts and background information that informed their government’s decisions.
Second, Ottawa should invest the information commissioner with the authority to issue “binding orders” that would force government disclosures required by the act. Under the current system, she can overturn a government decision only by taking Ottawa to court.
The first is a long-standing recommendation of transparency advocates and the information commissioner, endorsed by the all-party parliamentary committee. The second was a Liberal campaign promise. Canadians should not be made to wait until after the next election to see them realized.
The trouble is that while democracy loves openness, governments quite often do not. Canada no doubt needs a modern access law that ensures transparency and a watchdog capable of enforcing it. The Liberals understood this in opposition. In government, the temptation to carry on in the dark will be strong, but promises were made and democratic principle, not political expediency, should light the way.