Access-to-Information

The ministers overseeing Health, Justice and Innovation departments must do a better job of living up to the prime minister's promises of transparency. By Ken Rubin June 17, 2019 - There comes a time, as the 2019 election looms, that the Trudeau government's handling of access to information requests of public importance needs to be more specifically exposed.

Public Safety Canada confirms that this information gatekeeper exists, and notes the concept for it was briefly mentioned in the government's 2017 national security green paper. Yet there's not a word on it in the national security Bill C-59. By Ken Rubin

The Canadian Committee for World Press Freedom has named Ken Rubin, Senior Fellow at the Centre for Free Expression, as its 2018-19 recipient of the Spencer Moore Award for Lifetime Contributions in pursuit of press freedom and freedom of information. 

Entering the Secrecy Club: Judges, the PM  and PMO Head the List in Bill C-58    By Ken Rubin April 29, 2019 - Judging from the Senators' orchestrated recent cave-in removing the public from getting individual judges expenses, Canada's access to information act is well on its way to being made irrelevant.  What the judges' lobby organizations succeeded in doing, without having to go in-camera to twist arms, was to remove from Bill C-58 any traceable idea of what individual judges spend. 

By Ken Rubin   April 1, 2019 - The Senate Legal and Constitutional Committee is winding its way, clause by clause through Bill C-58. But they have already approved the most divisive change to the Access to Information Act.  That's by their agreeing to divide the Access to Information Act into two parts – one for accessible operational records (part 1) and one outside the Access Act's reach only for government promoted records (part 2).

By Ken Rubin January 28, 2019 - The new year brings with it at least four basic problems that put transparency under threat.  Problem one: “pro-active” sanitized data and propaganda dominates Bill C-58 Canadian government officials and politicians like to spin their messages and manipulate records.No better example of this is found in Bill C-58 where the government gives itself license to post at itsr own pace, and then unilaterally destroy when convenient,government “free” sanitized or selected summary information.