The McNeil government’s casual relationship with the citizens’ right-to-know is off again.
This time the differences between the province and that basic tenet of democracy appear irreconcilable. The government’s contempt for the freedom of information law is thinly disguised, and its hostility toward the public official whose thankless task is to try to make it obey the law is out in the open.
The government’s standard defense of its selective compliance with the freedom of information law is that 80 per cent of the time it releases a record when asked. What remains unsaid is that many of those documents are so heavily redacted they are useless.
And, somewhere in the 20 per cent that’s withheld from public view is the stuff that would tell citizens whether they are getting decent government or taken to the cleaners. Where information is withheld, the logical assumption would be the latter.
The government approaches requests for access to potentially embarrassing — or worse — information like a toddler approaches “Where’s Waldo” — a few cursory looks, a shrug and off to a shinier toy.
And, when the Freedom of Information, Protection of Privacy (FOIPOP) commissioner/officer steps in on behalf of an applicant wrongly denied public information, government officials — sadly for Nova Scotia, both politicians and bureaucrats — remind her that in Nova Scotia, unlike most western democracies, the right to information law is toothless.
Catherine Tully is the FOIPOP commission, or so it says on her office’s website and letterhead, but she’s always just the “officer” to a government that seems intent on diminishing her role, and thereby blunt her criticism of its violations of the law.
Tully’s latest report is a full-throated condemnation of the health department’s changing and contradictory excuses for to why it couldn’t comply with a request for information from a Halifax journalist.
The request was related to former Health Minister Leo Glavine’s use of a non-government email account to conduct departmental business. Any resemblance between Glavine and former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton begins and ends there.
Premier Stephen McNeil said Glavine — now Minister of Communities, Culture and Heritage – has stopped using non-government email for government business, so there’s nothing more to see here.
With a little misdirection and some political slight of hand the government would have you believe the problem is solved. The toddler points to a clown and says, “Waldo!” and, the people are none the wiser, which was the real objective all along.
The minister’s email account is periphery to the very real and troubling issues here.
The department’s casual disregard for its obligations under the FIOPOP law, and the government’s subsequent obstruction of the FIOPOP commissioner’s attempt to get to the truth are what Nova Scotians need to care about.
What the commissioner/officer actually found was that the health department failed to meet its most basic responsibilities under the Act, and when Tully tried to find out why, her way was blocked in every direction, up to and including the premier’s office.
Tully asked to speak to the executive assistant that the minister said handled most of his emails, but her request was denied by the premier’s deputy minister.
For his part, Premier McNeil adopted bluff, bluster and false dilemma — i.e., would you rather health officials look for doctors or emails – to defend his government. While Glavine just barely resembles Clinton, McNeil’s behaviour mirrors that of the guy who beat her to become America’s 45th president.
The stonewall reaches to the top of the government and, in this case, its foundation is in its largest department.
“The (Health) Department failed to make any effort, let alone every reasonable effort (as required by the law), to search for (the requested) records. It failed to communicate to the applicant any concerns it had with the clarity of the request and its response letters were neither open, accurate nor complete.”
The reference to “the clarity of the request” concerns the rationale the department eventually landed on to deny the records, but only after it had initially said it didn’t have them. That first excuse was bogus because the department didn’t bother to look.
What all of this says about the nature and character of the provincial government is open to debate. But, generally governments with nothing to hide, hide nothing.
