On voluntary restrictions

It shouldn't be news that the claims relied on by the Harper Cons to suppress information from Parliament and the public - including that of cabinet secrecy - reflect areas where Harper and his government are choosing to hide the truth, rather than cases where there's any particular obstacle to providing full and accurate information to Canadians. And Jean Charest has offered up a prime example of what a government can do to open up its operations to the public where it wants to do so:

Premier Jean Charest is forcing the hand of former justice minister Marc Bellemare by lifting some cabinet secrecy restrictions, allowing him to testify before the inquiry looking into the nomination of judges in the province.

Bellemare had refused to testify before the Bastarache Commission, because he said he could not break cabinet confidentiality rules.
...
In a statement released on Friday, the premier's office confirmed an order of cabinet had been adopted suspending the obligation of confidentiality for Bellemare and a handful of others...

Of course, the purpose of pointing out Charest's action isn't to suggest that he's setting any particularly useful standard for transparency. After all, Charest's motives look to be entirely self-interested in wanting to allow an inquiry to test damaging allegations against his government, rather than genuinely opening up his government's decision-making in general for greater scrutiny.

But it's still worth remembering that cabinet confidences can be (and are) opened up where that course of action serves a government's purposes. And the fact that the Harper Cons consistently throw every excuse they can in the way of accountability for their own actions should provide ample reason for concern as to what lurks behind their blanket of secrecy.