“Robert Marleau, the information commissioner of Canada, says that contrary to Mr. Harper’s election pledge to make transparency a hallmark of his administration, a “fog over information” has crept across the government’s activities. Marleau said complaints to the commissioner’s office about lack of access to government information have doubled in the past year.

. . . public servants, ambassadors, as well as cabinet ministers and Conservative MPs are muzzled or kept on a short leash. Canwest News Service revealed last week that Environment Canada’s scientists, once among the most media-accessible specialists, have been slapped with orders to refer all journalists’ queries to the government where communications officers will help them respond with “approved lines.”"

It’s not a good sign when the information comissioner complains that the government is putting a fog over information.

Getting information out to the public is one issue, how it’s presented is another and Harper’s Conservatives have a machine for that too. The Toronto Star² reported (26 May 2008) about the Con machine (first part of a good series they wrote on the topic).

“Questions on the hot issues of the day all get funnelled through this office, the “communications and consultations” unit of the Privy Council Office. . . Public appearances by cabinet ministers – whether it’s a speech or an interview – are carefully staged, starting with a “message event proposal” vetted by the Privy Council Office, the bureaucratic wing of the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO).

And in a marked change from previous governments, now even basic demands for information from reporters, once easily fielded by department spokespersons, are sent to this office for review – and often heavy editing – before they are okayed for public release, government insiders say.”

It shows how contolled the information we receive from the government is, everything is crafted for the spin the Conservatives desire.

It goes further than information and messaging though, government appointed watchdogs that were supposed to ensure more accountability also get silenced when their message isn’t helpful to the Conservative cause. There are a number of examples, I won’t try to point them all out but consider what the National Post³ (18 June 2009) said of budget watchdog, Kevin Page (PBO).

“the Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer (OPBO) provides authoritative, non-partisan financial and economic analysis to support Parliament and parliamentarians in exercising their oversight role over the government’s stewardship of public funds and in ensuring budget transparency.

Kevin Page was appointed as the first budget officer in March of 2008. It was a move intended to create more transparency in government by explaining to Canadians about fiscal planning and scrutiny of budget estimates. In government there is so much spending that goes unaccounted for, unexamined, and unexplained that I had high hopes for Mr.Page. Unfortunately, it appears his job has been hampered by a plague of budget cuts.

Mr. Page has said a lack of consistent reporting and transparency from the government has made estimating difficult, but he has still projected far larger deficits than the government. From reworking the estimates, to revising corporate revenue projections, he has angered the Conservative government by challenging its forecasts. For essentially doing his job. For holding to account Mr.Flaherty when he makes predictions like this. Part of being “accountable” is having an authority which is able to hold the government to their projections.”

The Globe and Mail⁴ (26 June 2009) corroborates this issue. Kevin Page was supposed to more or less say what the Conservatives liked and when he didn’t, they implied they wouldn’t fund his office anymore. That threat would essentially have shut him down, but instead they offered this.

“Mr. Page has been offered the $2.8-million budget he was promised more than a year ago. But the condition is that he no longer report on “the state of the nation’s finances and trends in the national economy” directly to the House of Commons and the public.”

So he gets to keep doing what he was supposed to do, just so long as it doesn’t get easily released to the public, without presumably going through the Conservative stamp of approval machine.

Finally, the Toronto Star⁵ (24 December 2009) reported on the muzzling phenomenon, as I mentioned, it extends well beyond Page.

“Three essential oversight agencies will begin 2010 without leadership and wearing government-issued blinkers. By hook and crook, Harper Conservatives have gutted the effectiveness of the Military Complaints Commission, the Commission for Public Complaints against the RCMP and the Office of the Information Commissioner.

All three top posts are now empty. Not one was vacated quietly.

Peter Tinsley is howling that pushing him out of the job will effectively kneecap the already crippled inquiry into claims that Afghans tortured prisoners. Paul Kennedy is furious not to be staying to bring fully independent investigations and civilian oversight to the RCMP. Robert Marleau retired as information commissioner in June, a few months after issuing a set of failing-grade report cards that blamed those “at the very top” for systematically denying Canadians information about what the government is doing in their name.”

For a party that spoke a lot about accountability and claimed not to have secret agendas, the actions they’ve taken while in office give every impression that they’re anything but accountable or open.

For more information about Canadian access to information take a look at Stanley Tromp’s site⁶, where he’s published an extensive report on the issue. It’s a very long report, several hundred pages, but you can focus in on the issue of the Conservative minority government’s secrecy with the brief and informative postcript⁷ (PDF).

Informative read from the University of Alberta’s Centre for Constitutional studies, regarding Freedom of the Press and Harper’s Media Policy.

The Chalk River reactor/medical isotope problem put the Conservatives in a particularly difficult quandary. Although I think it would have been possible to find a more positive and dynamic solution than to simply choose option a over option b, that’s beside the point. This post is about how the Conservatives chose to deal with the situation rather than what the end result was.

The Chalk River Laboratories in Ontario is a research facility operating a reactor that produces much of the world’s supply of medical isotopes. It is supposed to be regulated by the independent Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, which in 2007 found that the facility needed repairs. The Conservatives pushed through orders that overrode the CNSC’s shutdown of the facility, and the story behind that is what looks rather unseemly. The CBC¹ reported on 13 December 2007

“The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) had ordered the 50-year-old Chalk River reactor closed because its emergency power system was not connected to the cooling pumps, as required to prevent overheating during a disaster such as an earthquake.

But the federal government bypassed the regulatory body’s order by fast-tracking an emergency bill allowing AECL to restart the reactor for 120 days.”

As I mentioned at the beginning of this post that was one solution, a debatable one, but the way they went about accomplishing it was not. They drafted emergency legislation and ousted the head of CNSC, Linda Keen. According to CTV News² 18 December 2007

“The Conservative government issued a cabinet order last week to federal nuclear regulators in an apparent effort to pressure them into letting medical isotope production resume at the Chalk River nuclear reactor.

But the directive, dated Dec. 10, failed to resolve a dispute between Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd., which operates the reactor, and the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission which sets licensing, health and safety rules.

The government brought in emergency legislation the next day that made a temporary end run around the rules to enable isotope production to resume.”

The CBC article mentioned above also said

“…Earlier in the week, Keen told a committee of MPs the government removed the CNSC’s legal counsel so the agency could not dispute the legislation.”

Harper, as he frequently does, wasted no time making the controversy over a dangerously critical situation, political, suggesting the Liberals fought against the Conservatives’ actions because, Linda Keen, had originally been appointed by liberals. But she was just doing her job. Had the CNSC given the go ahead for the reactor to start up after its last maintenance, it would have been acting contrarily to its responsibilities. It wouldn’t have been ensuring that the proper safety was met. But then, Harper is notorious for ridding us of oversight committees and watchdogs. The political gaming was intensified through Conservative MP Lisa Raitt, but I’ll get to that.

Bolstering the public understanding of Keen’s job description is Thomas Walkom’s 17 January 2008 article³ in The Star explaining

“The government’s case, articulated by Natural Resources Minister Gary Lunn at a Commons committee yesterday, is that it was Keen’s job to get Chalk River up and running. In fact, as the minister responsible for AECL, that task belonged to him. Her job under the law was to set and enforce nuclear safety standards – which she did… Certainly, Lunn’s arguments yesterday made little sense. He characterized AECL’s failure to meet the regulator’s safety standards as a “dispute” between two agencies – which is rather like suggesting that someone who breaks the law is having a “dispute” with the convicting judge.”

As promised, here is where things go downhill. Lunn got shuffled out of his job as Natural Resources Minister, and was replaced by Lisa Raitt. As reported by Canwest News Service⁴ (9 June 2009) Lisa Raitt, in conversation with an aide made some unfortunate remarks.

“‘…when we win on this, we get all the credit. I’m ready to roll the dice on this. This is an easy one. You know what solves this problem? Money. And if it’s just about money, we’ll figure it out. It’s not a moral issue.

‘It’s really clear,’ said Raitt. ‘Oh, Leona. I’m so disappointed.’

Later on the tape, the aide says the isotope issue is difficult to manage ‘because it’s confusing to a lot of people.’

‘But it’s sexy,’ Raitt responds. ‘Radioactive leaks. Cancer.’

‘Nuclear contamination,’ the aide says.”

Of course this was a private tape before released to the press. It’s arguable that some of what she said ought not to be taken too seriously, but rather as off-the-cuff remarks. Nevetheless it portrays the attitude that this Conservative representative has toward her responsibilities.

The issue revolves around a reactor, radioactivity, people’s health, our environment. It’s insufficient to reduce it to simply money. Raitt’s flippant remark about it being a sexy issue belies her greater interest in the shallow side of politicking than her deeper responsibility of serving the Canadian public. One would think her career would see better results if she undertook her job responsibilities more earnestly.

(Update: The Globe and Mail reported 19 January 2010 that in Harper’s latest cabinet reshuffling, “Lisa Raitt was downgraded to Labour from Natural Resources after a string of 2009 gaffes”)