Federal cabinet secrecy is being misused: Editorial
Federal information commissioner Suzanne Legault has found a troubling increase in Ottawa’s claims of cabinet secrecy. Reform is needed to ensure openness.
There’s good reason for Ottawa to keep some cabinet documents secret — ministers must feel free to discuss policy in a frank manner without worrying about bad publicity. But a troubling new study shows there has been a dramatic jump in claims of cabinet confidentiality, triggering understandable suspicion that this has become a handy excuse for hiding documents from the public.
The numbers are in the latest annual report from Canada’s information watchdog, Suzanne Legault. She found that government departments and agencies invoked cabinet secrecy more than 3,100 times in 2013-14, in response to requests for disclosure of federal records under the Access to Information Act. This represents a 49-per-cent jump in confidentiality claims over the previous year, which itself saw a 15-per-cent jump from the year before that.
What’s especially disturbing is that even Legault, in her capacity as federal information commissioner, is forbidden from seeing the documents involved. So there’s no way for her to review the matter and determine if cabinet secrecy is being properly cited.
http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorials/2015/12/09/federal-cabinet-secrecy-is-being-misused-editorial.html
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