Softening support

Another day, another prominent former Con (of one stripe or another) turning on a party for whom he apparently had high hopes. Today it's former Progressive Conservative candidate and access-to-information guru Michel Drapeau lamenting how the Cons have managed to make information even less available than it was under the Libs:

Michel Drapeau, an access-to-information specialist, said there is a move toward more secrecy at the Defence Department and in government in general when it comes to responding to requests made under the access law.

"The culture at DND is changing towards more secrecy where you have to fight for every bit of information," said Mr. Drapeau, a lawyer and author of a 2,800-page legal textbook on the Access to Information law.

The access legislation allows Canadians to request government records by paying a $5 fee per request.

Mr. Drapeau, a retired colonel, said the bureaucracy is making it more difficult for people to make requests for information by charging hefty search fees for material that just two years ago was readily produced, or withholding records for long periods of time.

"I never thought I'd say this, but the situation has gotten worse under the Conservatives," said Mr. Drapeau, who ran unsuccessfully in the 1997 federal election as a Progressive Conservative candidate.

What is ironic, he noted, is that Mr. Harper ran his last election campaign on openness and accountability in government.

So far the Cons have managed to avoid much public attention to their steady stream of defections and disgruntled members. And it may be time for the opposition parties to start correcting that state of affairs - particularly the Libs, given that the Cons can't hear a Lib member sneeze without attributing it to Stephane Dion's lack of leadership.

But even if the Cons are winning the PR war to a limited extent, the more important story has yet to play out...and it figures to do plenty of damage to the Cons. Any real loss of support - both among those who actively backed the Cons last time out, and among prominent figures like Duff Conacher and Drapeau who have apparently had enough of the Cons' broken promises - looks to entirely outweigh any additional backers the Cons may have won while in power. And that should help ensure that the Cons have nowhere to go but down.