Maude Elisabeth Barnstone

VI

Maude: Perhaps surprisingly, it was Liberal governments that past two key pieces of legislation that would completely and absolutely deny the citizen’s right to know what his government was up to. The first was the Access to Information Act of 1980.

Johnny: Wasn’t this type of legislation designed to give citizens more access not less?

Maude: Usually, but not in this case. This Act is still used today, in political science classes mostly, to illustrate what an Access to Information Act should not be.

What strikes a first time reader of the Act is how many times the words refuse to give access or refuse to disclose appear.

Johnny: Isn’t that unusual for legislation meant to give citizens more access to information about their government’s activities? Transparency I think they called it.

Maude: It definitely is unusual. The Canadian Access to Information Act was designed to deny access while pretending to do the opposite. Just about any type of information that the government did not want its citizens to see could be categorized as exceptions to the rule under the multitude of exceptions that appear in the Act. Read it sometimes, it’s a real eye opener.

Johnny: Reading legislation tends to put me to sleep.

Maude: [smiling] Okay, a real eye opener was not the best characterization but it is a good substitute for sleeping pills and it’s definitely not addictive.

Johnny: You say that “just about any type of information” the government did not want its citizen to know could be denied using the Access to Information Act. For what type of information was the Act not an effective barrier, and would this have anything to do with the second piece of legislation?

Maude: Absolutely! The Privacy Act of 1985 became the bucket that captured and contained any leaks from the Access to Information Act.

Johnny: You’re not now going to tell me that legislation, which I assume by its name was designed to protect the privacy of individuals with respect to personal information about themselves, was bad?

Maude: It can be when the government and its bureaucrats claim the same rights to privacy as those guaranteed to citizens under the Act.

Johnny: Do you have an example? Of course you do!

Maude: As a matter of fact I have two; one involving politicians and their friends and the other government officials. In 2004 or 2005 Prime Minister Jean Chrétien made someone, we don’t know for sure, an instant citizen and refused to tell the Canadian people who the lucky person was. Suspicion fell on the newly appointed head of the planned Canadian mission to the Sikh homeland, the Punjab, a Sikh by the name of ... I can't remember.

Johnny: You mean a Sikh-Canadian?

Maude: Maybe yes, maybe no. Some claimed, and the appointee himself would later give credence to that claim, that he was not a Canadian citizen when the well-remunerated, high-profile appointment to a foreign country was made, and therefore not eligible for the appointment.

Johnny: Why did they not just ask him when he became a Canadian citizen and settle the matter then and there?

Maude: They did ask him, and he said that when he became a Canadian citizen was nobody’s business but his own, more or less.

Johnny: I can understand why naturalized-Canadians, after The Fracture, might be ashamed to admit they were ever Canadian citizens but … and the government that appointed him said nothing.

Maude: It was in the government’s interest to back their appointee's claim that under the Privacy Act, when he became a citizen was a private matter.

Johnny: Perhaps, but only if it was not illegal.

Maude: It may not have been illegal but it was despicable. It was rumoured, and never denied – that was the beauty of the Privacy Act, every answer could be a maybe, and what can you do with a "maybe yes, maybe no" – to get their man his patronage job the government had used a provision of the Immigration Act usually reserved for making instant citizens of children who could not be brought into Canada otherwise and whose health and well-being were in jeopardy. Imagine that!

Johnny: And they got away with it?

Maude: A Canadian Prime Minister could bloody well do anything he wanted, if he was willing to wait-out the tempest-in-a-teapot that the Canadian press made of the most blatant abuse of the Office. And of course, he could always count on the short-term memory and blind allegiance to a political brand of the Canadian electorate when election time came around.

Johnny: And your second example?

Maude: The bureaucrats would better the politicians at using a law mainly meant to shield citizens from the prying eyes of government, to shield themselves from answering legitimate questions from citizens about their activities.

In the 1980’s a Federal Public Servant discovered that Canadian diplomats stationed abroad were helping themselves to millions of dollars worth of goods and services to which they were not entitled. I think it was Joe Who, I mean Joe Clark, who was their political bosses at the time.

The person who discovered the theft was deemed to be insubordinate and fired, and a few managers who had been involved in the misappropriation, or let it happened, at the insistence of this Joe fellow, saw their prospects for promotion temporarily diminished.

Johnny: Wait a minute, are you saying that the public servant who caught the thieves, red-handed I assume, was fired.

Maude: Yes, you can read all about it in an excellent book with a most appropriate title Shooting the Messenger.

Johnny: The guy who catches the thieves gets fired, and the thieves’ suffer what had to be a minor career setback. That’s outrageous.

Maude: It gets better! A few years later, he discovers that the director who orchestrated his firing, on retiring, was given a substantial bonus for the promotions he may have missed while his career was on hiatus due to the discovery of the theft.

Johnny: These people knew no shame.

Maude: After hearing about the bonus he writes to his former employer asking why and how big was the bonus. The reply he got is a textbook example on how the Access to Information Act in conjunction with the Privacy Act was used to deny what should have been a legitimate requests about bureaucrats paying themselves bonuses in secret using taxpayers’ money.

Johnny: Do you have a copy with you?

Maude: Yes, on my Blackberry. I can broadcast it to your viewing audience if you like.

Johnny: By all means, please do. [the following appears on the studio’s television screen]

March 23, 2008

Request for information on Pension Bonuses re: DFAIT's whistleblower.

Dear Mr. Payeur,

We regret to inform you that we are unable to comply with your request. If such information did exist, it would be reasonably expected to be withheld pursuant to subsection 19(1) of the [Access to Information] Act.

19(1) Subject to subsection (2), the head of a government institution shall refuse to disclose any record requested under the Act that contains personal information as defined in section 3 of the Privacy Act.

...

Yours Sincerely,

------------------

Monique McCulloch

Acting Director

Access to Information and Privacy Protection

Maude: Bonuses paid to public servants, for reasons unknown, none of the taxpayers’ business. Can you believe it!

Johnny: What a sad state of affair. What about a concerned public servant coming forward with information he or she felt the public needed to know?

Maude: If the information was classified, and the Canadian government probably classified more information vital to the public interest than any Western democracy, that public servant would have faced fourteen years in jail under the draconian, not to say totalitarian Official Secrets Act. A sentence, by the way, that was twice as long as the penalty imposed by Russia for a similar offence.

Johnny: Amazing. How could a modern democracy function with such a poorly-informed electorate?

Maude: It couldn’t!