Access restrictions

Canada's Information Commissioner Robert Marleau has weighed in on the Cons' pattern of withholding access to information. And it seems clear that the problem starts at the top:

Public requests for documents are being slowed by lengthy reviews in the central department that reports to the prime minister, the Information Commissioner says.

While Stephen Harper's Conservatives campaigned on opening up the access-to-information system, Information Commissioner Robert Marleau said the government's own statistics show that responses to the public's requests for information are slowing down "across the board."

Access-to-Information and Privacy co-ordinators in federal departments are grumbling that efforts to answer requests are being delayed by lengthy consultations with other departments, and especially the Privy Council Office, which serves the prime minister...

The number of complaints from the public has shot up dramatically in 2007, doubling since April 1 over the same period last year, he said. There were 1,257 complaints to the commissioner's office in 2006-2007...

Almost two years later...the Conservative government has failed to table the bill they promised to reform the access system.

And the Conservatives are now using the same excuse for refusing to release documents that they railed against in opposition: the assertion that a minister's office, including the Prime Minister's Office, is not covered by the access law. Mr. Marleau's predecessor, John Reid, took the previous Liberal government to court to contest that claim, and Mr. Marleau is continuing the case.

It's particularly interesting that for all the Cons' efforts to paint the federal civil service as opaque, the co-ordinators responsible for departmental compliance with access to information laws are themselves unhappy with the PCO for preventing them from doing their jobs. As a result, it's clear that the problem is neither a lack of resources to properly respond to public requests, nor any unwillingness on the part of federal departments to have their work properly made public.

Instead, it's the Cons who have chosen to control and delay the process. Which leaves only the question of whether the Cons will end up facing the scrutiny they deserve for that type of choice.

For now, matters only figure to get worse: based on both the increased complaints and the slowing flow of information, it looks like the Cons are cracking down all the more on any escaping truth as time goes by. But enough attention to the Cons' choice to suppress information could well help to highlight the difference between actual leadership and the Cons' brand of toxic unaccountability - which is exactly the kind of information which can help to ensure that Deceivin' Stephen isn't in power any longer than can be avoided.

Update: Once again Steve V tackles the same topic, while James Laxer documents the lack of information he's received in response to multiple access requests.