Watch what they do, not what they say

What's worst about "amber-lighting" is that the process occurs not after the collection and release of the information (I would consider this an acceptable degree of advance information to be given to senior management) but before the information is collected and released.

Essentially, the system is an open invitation not only to withhold information and documents, but to purge and destroy it.

John Baird's answer is a smoke screen; the issue is not whether there are "government-wide" policies, but that there are such policies at all within any department. The freedom of information system is itended to be non-political and non-partisan in order to protect against this happening...

Bunch of Harpercrites!

Good post. btw, I've nominated Pogge for Best Blog, Best Group Blog, and Best Prog Blog.

>Essentially, the system is an open invitation not only to withhold information and documents, but to purge and destroy it.

What stops them from not producting the information and documents in the first place, or purging and destroying once the paperwork is no longer needed?

You're basically bitching about the fact the government pays attention to its public affairs. Quel surprise.

Although I instinctively react on the favour of information being made public, that reaction is tempered by the fact that journalists can't be trusted to correctly interpret that information.

The government and the press are still playing the same stupid game, one that serves the public interest hardly at all. A pox on both their houses.

I looked at your second link Stephen...and well, I firmly agree with Armine Yalnizyan. There's a reason why we have collective service provision.

"Access to Information" laws have been credited with giving competent bureaucrats a process by which they could keep information secret.

Before, it was just plain old improvised stonewalling. Now they can get you to fill out forms and blah, blah, blah.

But yeah, Harper's integrity act, his open gov't initiatives, ... all total crap. All cynical lies.

He's pretty obvious and clumsy about his con-job, but if the U.S.A. is any indication, there's almost 40 percent of any given country that's too stupid to realize when its being had.

that reaction is tempered by the fact that journalists can't be trusted to correctly interpret that information

I'm having a little trouble digesting that line. As the comment following yours demonstrates, Stephen, "correct" interpretation would not seem to be the issue here, not in a democracy, anyway, where it appears that reasonable people may reasonably disagree with what some consider "correct."

Every democratic charter/bill/declaration worthy of the name protects the liberty of the press for the best of reasons, and that reason has nothing to do with "correct" "interpretation" -- quite the opposite, in fact.

People don't get to make decisions in a democracy because they're experts. They get to make decisions because they're the governed.

The record of alternatives show that inevitably when it's others making the decisions, those others don't fail from lack of expertise, but from having different interests and pursuing them. Surely an economist should understand the concept of people pursuing their interests.

In any case, how the journalist interprets things is of some import, but secondary to whether they publish the facts (Indeed, one of our greatest sources of media slant is precisely failure to publish half the relevant facts on contentious issues). If the facts aren't out there, the public certainly can't come up with their own interpretation.

As to Mr. Gordon's link about multinationals--I seem to remember hearing of studies suggesting precisely the opposite. That in fact, foreign-owned companies in Canada spent substantially less on R&D (in Canada) than locally owned companies, did less value-added (in Canada) and so on and so forth. Plus, presumably they send profits home both the old fashioned way and through those clever internal-pricing arrangements, so there would have to be a significant advantage to this foreign investment before the investee was actually breaking even. So the released information makes me wonder about things like, "Is the government semi-deliberately fooling themselves for ideological reasons?" and "Are there serious flaws in this study?" and "Have there been many other studies done of the question, ideally ones not funded by multinationals or good friends of same, and what conclusions did they reach?" among other questions. All questions I wouldn't be asking myself if I didn't have the initial squib of information.
Although to be honest, that doesn't read like the real result of a real access-to-information pull. It sounds more like a hybrid--a government leak along the lines of "Ask for access to *this* information, then you can write an article about the wonders of foreign multinational ownership but look like a crusading journalist extracting information from the government; and best of all, we can black out anything that muddies the rosy picture."
Then they run a "dissenting" economist who still admits that basically multinationals are wonderful. Whatever. Once again, the problem with experts is not so much knowledge (although I think the knowledge is way more limited than they'll admit) as trust. We used to have parades of experts saying smoking wasn't bad for you. And that only served the interests of a *couple* of multinationals.

Speaking of FTA, WTO and softwood lumber (you were, wern't you?)

He is an interesting little article from the venerable New York Times. It concerns housing prices in the USA.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/03/nyregion/03census.html?em&ex=1160107200&en=e5e1e929222330ee&ei=5087%0A

I recall living in northern Alberta during the perpetual housing boom there. Plywood went from being outrageous in price to being OMG! expensive. It seems it had been a bad hurricane fall in the southern US and all the softwood in Canada (save for the stuff with knots, bungs and bad splintering) took off for the gulf coast.

The article does not mention the the basic cost of a house and home, but focuses on the (also manufactured) "desirability" of the structure and of course the three most important things on Real Estate (location, location and location).

Still, I gotta believe that the cost to build is not without its' impact on this market, and the good, honest, patriotic American producers of softwood products are equal opportunity screwers ... they will happily screw their own population just as fast as they will that of another country.

Ain't the majic of the marketplace wunnerful as the working out of capitalism?

Now, back to access to information:

When the Tories (Reformerites) complained about this in oppostion I just took it for a manufactured crisis. Now others are complaining, I still hold that opinion. (and this email, included by "mistake" looks suspicious to me.)

I can see no change to the Access To Information Act involved in this. Does the government secrets act (or what ever it is called) cover applications to the privacy commissioner? Is the very fact of applying for something under the AIA (?) a secret?

Can not, even now, any department head, Deputy Minister or Ass. Deputy Minister in the government phone up Harvey, Marianne or Jilly and ask who is looking for what, today?

I know if I were CEO of a corporation (government in this case) and someone asked one of my department heads about something they should know - and the answer was "DUH!" I would be no end of torqued - and the career of said Dept. Head would be shortened considerably.

Does this not just formalize the system? I WANT department heads to be able to respond to questions about their departments - whether the questions are put to the Minister in Parliament, or to the head him/herself. The DMs and ADMs have to know what they are talking about. This is an opportunity for them to refresh themselves in what could be a long past incident.

To suspect that this knowledge, that is already available, will lead to coverups, dispositions of information and general paper shredding is to fear that what is now happening, will still happen.

Now, back to access to information:

When the Tories (Reformerites) complained about this in oppostion I just took it for a manufactured crisis. Now others are complaining, I still hold that opinion. (and this email, included by "mistake" looks suspicious to me.)

I can see no change to the Access To Information Act involved in this. Does the government secrets act (or what ever it is called) cover applications to the privacy commissioner? Is the very fact of applying for something under the AIA (?) a secret?

Can not, even now, any department head, Deputy Minister or Ass. Deputy Minister in the government phone up Harvey, Marianne or Jilly and ask who is looking for what, today?

I know if I were CEO of a corporation (government in this case) and someone asked one of my department heads about something they should know - and the answer was "DUH!" I would be no end of torqued - and the career of said Dept. Head would be shortened considerably.

Does this not just formalize the system? I WANT department heads to be able to respond to questions about their departments - whether the questions are put to the Minister in Parliament, or to the head him/herself. The DMs and ADMs have to know what they are talking about. This is an opportunity for them to refresh themselves in what could be a long past incident.

To suspect that this knowledge, that is already available, will lead to coverups, dispositions of information and general paper shredding is to fear that what is now happening, will still happen.

To put my earlier point in context, I'll quote Paul Well, from last May, during the skirmish about the list of people who would be allowed to ask questions:

We have become a ridiculous bunch. For the past five years it was hard to find 200 words, in even the Globe and Mail, on the contents or ramifications of any bill before the Commons. In fact, for months at a time, the people whose job it is to cover Parliament would claim there was nothing going on in Parliament. Oddly enough, when a session was suspended or prorogued, or Chrétien dropped the writ for an election, we would read long, long lists of important-sounding legislation that would now never be passed. How come we never heard about a bill until it died on the order paper? One of life’s little mysteries.

I have taken you through this grim landscape to demonstrate something you probably have already noticed: the stuff you devote your lives to — quality, well-designed delivery of services to Canadian citizens — has vanished from the Press Gallery’s priority list.

I asked another friend of mine, a broadcast producer, what public servants mean to her. She said, "That report they spend two years of their lives working on? I pick up a copy of it and give it to my reporter, so when he interviews the minister he can point to it on-camera and say, 'There’s a lot of stuff in here.' It’s a prop. He’ll never read it."

In the list of obstacles facing productive public debate about policy issues, access to Top Secret Documents ranks well below the MSM's unwillingness and/or inability to report intelligently on the stuff that is already publicly available.

Trivialization ill becomes you.
FoI isn't about "Top Secret Documents", it's about finding out *anything* from government that they aren't actually publishing.
If you want to know anything whatsoever about whether the government is actually making good on its promises, say, Freedom of Information rules are what supposedly ensures that you get it. If Freedom of Information rules are instead to be used to make all information in effect "Top Secret" if the government doesn't like the person asking, I would think that's moderately serious.

And yes, Croghan, I'm sure the Liberals did it too, and any complaining the Cons did was pure hypocrisy. Doesn't matter--as long as it's perceived as a bad thing and ragging on about it has a political effect, it'll help rein in the worst abuses. If people become cynical and blase about the whole thing, on the other hand, and pressure for disclosure dissipates, then gosh, I guess we'll just have a secret government. Apparently, this will be unimportant.

Or, wait, sorry. I realize now that, although it's rather off topic, you were just drawing attention to the ineffectiveness of the mainstream media because you know the radicals that hang out around here just place their complete faith in the competence and impartiality of the mainstream media, and desperately need to be woken up in this regard. Hello! We know the MSM suck. Better than you, I'd say. Effectively maintained government secrecy and opacity aren't great either.

Sorry, slight confusion there--
First paragraph was addressed to Stephen Gordon, second to Croghan, but third went back to addressing Stephen Gordon without any transition.

As I said, my instinct is for more publicly-available information, not less (ex: why does StatsCan charge for its data, when the US govt gives it away fro free?).

What I'm cynical about is the MSM's play for credibility as a crusader for transparency, when its usual role is as a muddier of waters. If you agree with me here, you could do so with a reduced ration of condescension, don't you think?