Did you know the current Ontario government has moved to formally limit public access to government information, including records from the Premier’s office, cabinet ministers, parliamentary assistants and all their staff?
Or that last year, the government of Alberta changed the province’s information access legislation to exempt more materials from information requests, such as communications between ministers and their staff?
And in British Columbia, there have been efforts to expand the grounds on which the province can refuse to comply with Freedom of Information (FOI) requests altogether.
Then, at the top, the federal government wants to exempt “routine communications” from similar requests? Greater freedom to ignore, if you will.
If you didn’t know, now you do.
Each case is a different flavour of the same problem — governments increasingly appear to not want the Canadian public knowing why and how decisions are made.
It hits journalists — those tasked with communicating information to the public — particularly hard. As I’ve written before, sometimes FOI requests are the only means by which journalists can show Canadians what their public servants are doing.
FOI requests, for example, played a critical role in revealing the Ford government’s Greenbelt development plans — plans they pulled back from after facing significant public backlash.
It is true; all levels of government get (understandably) annoyed by the volume and sweeping nature of some FOI requests. Our elected officials are well aware that there will always be someone, or some groups, taking them to task for utterly ridiculous things, or totally misconstruing an issue or decision. Processing FOI requests takes valuable public resources, not to mention time.
Unfortunately, that resource expenditure is necessary. And I’ll hazard to assert the amount of taxpayer money spent on FOI requests is a pittance compared to some of the other wastage governments create.
A free and independent media is a key pillar of functioning democratic systems. Legislative moves, like those mentioned earlier, do not directly impede that independence, but they do make it ever more difficult for journalists to effectively do their job.
And it comes at a time when newsrooms are under pressure from many sides — closures and the collapse of traditional revenue streams, uninterested corporate overlords, a public severely segmented by social media, and even the banning of genuine news outlets from those same social media platforms awash in misinformation.
Sometimes FOI requests are the only means by which we can find answers.
For the record, sifting through pages and pages of uncopiable emails or poorly scanned documents is not my idea of a good day at the office. It can be very time-consuming and mind-numbing. It’s a drain on resources — much-needed resources — in the newsroom too.
So here, dear reader, is my request — please stay engaged. Support the news. Keep absorbing news stories, and if you have the chance, help reporters connect with the people they need to get the facts.
From Alto high-speed rail to Department of Defence radar installations, the costs of overhauling the province’s conservation authorities, and beyond, it might be the only means for the public to know.
Oh, and thanks for reading.
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