Information commissioner wants Mounties charged; government rewrites the law
OTTAWA - The federal information commissioner says the Conservative government is setting a "perilous precedent" by retroactively rewriting Canada's access-to-information law to absolve the RCMP of wrongdoing.
Suzanne Legault says if the government is allowed to retroactively change the law, there's nothing preventing parliamentarians from rewriting election laws to stop cheaters from being prosecuted.
A special report tabled in Parliament on Thursday reveals Legault recommended almost two months ago that charges be laid against the RCMP for its role in withholding and destroying gun registry data.
But instead of Justice Minister Peter MacKay moving on the recommendation to lay charges, the Harper government rewrote the law, backdated the changes and buried the amendment in an omnibus budget bill last week.
Legault said the issue goes far beyond the now-defunct gun registry.
"We could do the same thing after investigating potential electoral fraud. We could erase these things retroactively," she said in an interview.
Or the former Liberal government, she said, could have stripped auditor general Sheila Fraser of her investigative power at the height of the sponsorship scandal.
"This is the kind of precedent that we are proposing to set with these proposed amendments. Now that is why this matter is very serious," said Legault.
She said each member of Parliament "is going to have to look themselves in the mirror and decide whether they can, in their own integrity, actually vote in favour of those proposed amendments."
Legault filed a suit Thursday in Federal Court in an effort to preserve the rights of the complainant in the case, who had been seeking copies of the now-defunct, long-gun registry.
READ MORE: http://www.nationalnewswatch.com/2015/05/14/information-commissioner-wants-mounties-charged-government-rewrites-the-law/#.VVTmEWdFDcu
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