Why are those meant to defend democracy flouting it?

If Canada’s armed forces exist to protect our democracy, why does their leadership flout laws meant to protect citizens’ rights to know what the government is doing? The Ottawa Citizen’s David Pugliese recently reported that top military officers denied the existence of an internal report even though they were warned doing so would be illegal under the Access to Information Act, which gives individuals the right to government records for a small fee. The office of the Canadian Armed Forces’ top legal adviser, Judge Advocate General Commodore Geneviève Bernatchez, denied the existence of an internal report highlighting problems with the court martial system. But, in reality, there were electronic and paper copies of the document. This incident falls on the heels of a Department of National Defence official telling the pre-trial hearing of Vice-Admiral Mark Norman that his superiors deliberately omitted his name from documents to skirt Access to Information rules. After receiving an access request concerning Norman, the official brought it to his superior. According to the testimony, “he gives me a smile and says...‘Don’t worry, this isn’t our first rodeo. We made sure we never used his name . Send back the nil return.” (Feeling the need to protect the military witness from reprisals, the judge ordered a publication ban on their name.) The Liberal government has said it has made openness and transparency its guiding principles, and has blamed the former Conservative government, in power until 2015, for delays in releasing access documents. But DND has repeatedly broken access laws. Informed that an officer attended a talk that then-Rideau Institute for International Affairs director Steven Staples delivered about the war in Afghanistan on Jan. 26, 2006, Pugliese requested all CAF documents mentioning public speeches in Halifax between Jan. 15 and 30 of that year. Department officials claimed they did “a thorough and complete search” and couldn’t find any record of an officer who attended the function and wrote a report. But, the officer assigned to Staples’ speech inadvertently left a record. When The Ottawa Citizen turned it over to the information commissioner, DND finally acknowledged the record existed. The secrecy is long-standing. In 1996, information commissioner John Grace pointed to a “culture with ND of secrecy and suspicion of those seeking information.” As part of its cover-up of the murderers committed by Canadian soldiers in Somalia, CAF officials illegally doctored documents concerning the brutal murder of Shidane Arone. As part of an investigation into the March 1993 slayings in Somalia, CBC reporter Michael McAuliffe requested briefing notes for officers dealing with the media. DND was caught hiding documents, wildly inflating the cost of releasing them, and altering files. At the 1995-97 inquiry into the killings in Somalia, the then-chief of the defence staff, Jean Boyle, admitted the CAF deliberately violated the spirit of Access to Information rules. Dishonoured Legacy: The Lessons of the Somalia Affair: Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Deployment of Canadian Forces to Somalia described DND’s “unacceptable hostility toward the goals and requirements of access to information legislation.” The secrecy is not about security. DND can restrict information under access legislation for numerous reasons. This includes if information is deemed “injurious to the conduct of international affairs, the defence of Canada or the detection, prevention, or suppression of subversive or hostile activities.” It seems the military leadership would prefer the public only learn about the Canadian Armed Forces what they deem necessary to release, despite laws that say otherwise. Should we trust an institution that flouts the rules of democracy to defend democracy? Yves Engler is the author of 10 books, including his latest, Left, Right—Marching to the Beat of Imperial Canada. The Hill Times

Why are those meant to defend democracy flouting it?

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Why are those meant to defend democracy flouting it?

It seems military leadership would prefer the public only learn about the Canadian Armed Forces what they deem necessary to release, despite rules that say otherwise.

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