[BeaverFever]

$1:

Plague of government secrecy throttles Canadians’ freedom
Canada now ranks No. 55 among 93 nations when it comes to the law that allows journalists and others to get access to federal government documents.

By: Arnold Amber Published on Fri May 03 2013

We have all read, heard or seen them: stories that make our heads snap back about a problem in our food chain, a financial blooper by a government department, or a safety regulation that isn’t being enforced. It is our democratic and free expression right to receive such information. Unfortunately, on this, the annual celebration of World Press Freedom Day, Canadians may be dismayed to learn that we need an extensive overhaul to protect free expression across this country.

For starters, Canada now ranks No. 55 among 93 nations when it comes to the law that allows journalists and others to get access to federal government documents. The ranking by the Centre for Law and Democracy puts us just ahead of Angola and Thailand, but one place behind Slovakia. This is a huge drop from 31 years ago when Canada’s initial legislation on access to information (ATI) was hailed as world-leading.

What has happened since then? For one thing, despite many demands over the years for changes to make our law more effective, successive Liberal and Conservative governments did nothing. Then along came the Harper Tories who, amid the Liberals’ explosive sponsorship scandal, promoted open government in the 2006 election campaign. But once elected, Stephen Harper went to the other extreme, imposing an iron curtain on nearly everything about his government. So much for transparency and the health of Canada’s democracy.

Meanwhile, in many other countries new ATI laws were passed that gave individuals the right to express their views and also enshrined the right guaranteed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights for people to receive information about important things going on in their government and society.

Present Canadian law and processes concerning Access to Information are particularly bad and getting worse in how long it takes for government departments to reply. While 36.8 per cent of requests in 1999 were answered beyond the 30 days the law allows, by 2011-12 that rose to 44.7 per cent. According to a 2011 survey by Canadian Journalists for Free Expression, the average time for an answer was 395 days; on one request, the Department of Defence took an extension of 1,100 days.

The CJFE’s annual Review of Free Expression in Canada, published today, gave a grade of D-minus to the federal Access to Information system.

The lack of proper access to information means that when investigative journalists get no response, severely redacted information, or have to wait through lengthy delays, they often are forced to abandon stories the public should have known about. For inquisitive Canadians it makes it difficult to be well-informed about what the government is doing and to hold it accountable. Or, as CJFE puts it: “What you don’t know can hurt you.”

Another thing that can hurt Canadians is this country’s inability to protect whistleblowers — those brave people who step forward in the public interest to expose misdeeds, corruption or other wrongdoing in their workplaces.

The federal and six provincial governments have laws and regulations about protecting whistleblowers among their employees, but they are flawed in many ways. In the private sector things are even worse. There is no direct legislation at any level that protects the jobs of whistleblowers and they are almost always terminated by their employers. Many never work again in their industry of choice.

Whistleblowers are fundamental to pointing out major problems that could affect all of us. There are not enough journalists, inspectors, prosecutors or auditors to know what’s going on in the thousands of government departments and private sector companies. Other western countries have much better protection laws than Canada.

Amid all these issues, the federal government continues to stop the free flow of information to the public. In successive moves it has stymied federal government scientists, other bureaucrats, even their own backbenchers in Parliament and, most recently, senior RCMP officers from speaking to members of Parliament without permission from Public Safety Minister Vic Toews. In this era of news and views everywhere, the government tries to control its message, undermining democracy along the way.

On World Press Freedom Day, someone in the cabinet should read Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, where our freedom to “receive and impart information” is guaranteed.

Arnold Amber is president of Canadian Journalists for Free Expression.

http://www.thestar.com/opinion/commenta ... eedom.html

[BartSimpson]

Canada is still ahead of the US when you consider that the Obama Administration is secretly investigating reporters in order to silence whistleblowers.

[Public_Domain]

[Xort]

On one hand having the government hand over requested documents in a timely manner seems great, on the other hand having to stop current business of the day to dig out old documents to hand over to reporters that overall report things in the most biased was possible seems like a huge waste of time and money.

I'm more worried about my freedoms being throttled by out courts that seem to think approved speech is the same as free speech, to name a single issue.

[redhatmamma]

Unfortunately Canada doesn't have the same level of 'freedom of speech' that the U.S. does, we are limited.

[Xort]

redhatmamma redhatmamma:

Unfortunately Canada doesn't have the same level of 'freedom of speech' that the U.S. does, we are limited.

Shame so few care enough to try and do something about it.

If only the media cared about the the injustice of throwing people in jail for sharing an opinion, rather than trying to find old memos so they can throw shit at the government we might have a real push for reform.

[2Cdo]

redhatmamma redhatmamma:

Unfortunately Canada doesn't have the same level of 'freedom of speech' that the U.S. does, we are limited.

If you truly believe that, then there is no hope for you.

[redhatmamma]

Well, Canada does not have the 1st amendment and our free speech is limited by Section 1 of the Constitution Act which gives Canadians the right to free speech, but with "reasonable limits." You have a right to speak your mind, but be careful of what you say. Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act has been repealed, but we are still restricted.

[BartSimpson]

redhatmamma redhatmamma:

You have a right to speak your mind, but be careful of what you say.

Then you don't have a right to speak your mind, do you?

[Lemmy]

$1:

...The Court...has defined expression without any explicit reference to the values that are said to underlie the freedom. Indeed, the Court has said on several occasions that it will not exclude an act of expression from the scope of the freedom simply because the message is thought to be of little value. According to Chief Justice Dickson in Keegstra: content [of expression] is irrelevant at this stage of the interpretation [of the scope of section 2(b)], the result of a high value being placed upon freedom of expression in the abstract. This approach to s.2(b) often operates to leave unexamined the extent to which the expression at stake in a particular case promotes freedom of expression principles. The underlying values of truth, democracy, and self-realization only play an active or explicit role later in the adjudicative process, after the Court has defined the category of “expression.”

There are two exceptions to the Court’s broad definition of the scope of freedom of expression under section 2(b). The Court has held that a violent act, even if intended to carry a message, does not fall within the scope of section 2(b).

The Court has also narrowed the scope of section 2(b) by drawing a distinction between two different kinds of state restriction on expressive activity: state acts that have as their purpose the restriction of expression, and state acts that do not have this purpose but nevertheless, have this effect. The significance of this distinction between purpose and effect, which roughly parallels the distinction in American jurisprudence between content restrictions and time, place, and manner restrictions, is that a law intended to limit expression, and in particular the expression of certain messages, will be found to violate section 2(b) “automatically,” while a law that simply has the effect of limiting expression will be found to violate section 2(b) only if the person attacking the law can show that the restricted expression advances the values that underlie freedom of expression.

http://www.ohlj.ca/archive/articles/40_34_moon.pdf

[BartSimpson]

Lemmy, when your courts can issue nationally binding gag orders (Ad-Scam) and when they persecute people fo saying politically incorrect but accurate things (Ezra Levant, Mark Steyn) then there's no freedom of speech save for those who can afford to fight for it in court.

That's not freedom.

Likewise, in the USA now if reporters are now going to face potential prosecution under the Espionage Acts for reporting information that is leaked to them then we do not have freedom of speech, either.

[raydan]

People can't be trusted to drive carefully, so we need laws to protect them and others. People also can't seem to be able to auto-censor themselves.....

[BartSimpson]

raydan raydan:

People can't be trusted to drive carefully, so we need laws to protect them and others. People also can't seem to be able to auto-censor themselves.....

F*** censorship.

[Public_Domain]

[Thanos]

Does the same sort of concern for access apply when the government tucks it's tail between it's legs and lets corporations kick reporters out of disaster zones the way Exxon and BP were allowed to do during the Arkansas pipeline rupture and during the Deepwater Horizon debacle?