Unnecessary secrecy

CanWest reports that the Cons have followed through on their earlier plan to hand responsibility for collecting student debt to the Canada Revenue Agency. But while the transfer itself doesn't come as too much of a surprise, it's clear that the decision is just one in a line of many where the Cons have done virtually everything possible to avoid any public attention to their actions:

The shift in debt-collection responsibility, and the transfer of some 450 debt collectors at Human Resources to the 4,000 already at the tax department, was made without any public announcement.

"We didn't hide it," said Guy Proulx, assistant commissioner with Revenue Canada's debt-collection service.

However, it wasn't publicized either, and documents obtained through the Access to Information Act reveal that the plan was to keep the communication of the move "low-key."

Much like the previous story this weekend about pay raises for high-ranking civil servants, the issue isn't as much with the content of the moves (though in both cases there's still some cause for skepticism) as with the pattern of trying to limit public knowledge of the changes. After all, if the Cons are looking to restrict public attention even to relatively small decisions such as these, one can only speculate about how much secrecy would surround anything truly controversial. Which may mean that the Cons' current attempts to deflect attention will ultimately give rise to another valid wave of concern about what they're keeping hidden.

Update: Stageleft has more.