Info roadblock hits you too

Managing editor David Wylie Editorial Monday Sep 25 http://www.dailycourier.ca/
The title says it all: Canada’s Right to Know on Shaky Ground.
It’s the headline given on a press release sent out by the Canadian
Newspaper Association about the Freedom of Information Audit 2006. For those unfamiliar, Freedom of Information requests – or FOI requests as they’re often called – are written appeals for information such as crime statistics and top bureaucrat bonus’: in other words, the type of information governments want to make people jump through hoops to obtain. The information they yield is often important, and sometimes damaging. For example, it was an FOI request for former Vernon mayor Sean Harvey’s expense receipts, which was made a by a handful of local residents, that
led to Harvey’s resignation, police investigation and conviction for breach of public trust. So there is certainly value in FOI law. That’s why it’s disturbing that the newspaper association audit – which tested access to information systems in 10 Canadian provinces – showed that Canadians are likely to face “unreasonable barriers in obtaining basic, uncontroversial information that should be readily available,” said the release. Out of more than 100 information requests submitted by reporters from 39 newspapers and the Canadian Press news agency, the information requested was denied or provided only in part in 31 per cent of the cases. So you may be asking, who cares? Well, think of it this way: Almost one-third of the time, reporters are slamming into roadblocks while using the country’s FOI laws to access government information – the same laws you would use to access info about yourselves, your property or city dealings that may affect you personally. So it doesn’t just hit reporters. It hits you. And it hits business, labour and advocacy groups, which also use FOI requests. During our own recent hunt for info using an FOI we’ve also been stonewalled. In May of this year, the Vernon Daily Courier submitted a freedom of
information request to Greater Vernon Services for a lease agreement at the Multiplex. In the 4 1/2 months since the request there has been no word on when the information is going to be available. At the time staff said the request was a simple one, which leaves us to wonder did they forget about us? Was the request lost in a mound of paper? Or did it turn out that the task was harder than they initially thought? Nobody bothered to tell us. The right to know what the government is doing with our tax dollars is a fundamental right, and despite the federal Conservatives’ election pledge to make government more transparent and accountable, there is no evidence that anything has changed.
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